Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Mr Chair and thank you to the member in charge of the bill for that quite colourful run of clichéd and rather hackneyed colloquialisms. I'd say to him that he's a conscientious member. I suspect he's an insomniac because he's spent a lot of time reading Hansard over the years and the problem he might find is that people might remember something he just said—that the way his opponents make policy is it's a good idea when it's on their side and it's a bad idea when it's on our side. Well what he might find is that if his career progresses those words will come back to haunt him once or twice I suspect. I can't speculate whether any members will bother to look up the Hansard to see what he said but if they did those are some words that might come back and haunt him. Mr Chair I thought it was also a rather loose speech if you don't mind me saying. The purpose of the committee of the whole House stage is to debate whether or not the bill as currently drafted and its wording suits the intention of the bill that the House agreed to during the second reading. I don't think we got near that particularly when the member was talking about the integrity and philosophy of members opposite him throughout most of his speech. That's demonstrably a long way from where the bill should be. CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! To the member it's entirely the role of the Chair to decide. I've been listening to all contributions very carefully and some have strayed. Most have then come back to those clauses. So a general encouragement to everyone contributing is to get to Part 1 of the bill quickly. Kia ora. DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you Mr Chair. I don't mean to at all trespass on your territory; I was simply trying to be helpful. As an example of what could happen if members were to stray I might take offence at what Clare Curran had said—that I was scrambling for relevance—and it occurred to me that Clare Curran saying that one is irrelevant is like Albert Einstein saying that one's a physicist because she'd know all about it. But perhaps we should just stop saying things like that to each other—OK—and maybe get back to talking about Part 1 of this bill and whether the way that it's worded will achieve the kinds of intentions that we'd like to achieve. I was just saying before—and it's a shame I couldn't carry on because I was just getting into some really interesting economics and I know it's interesting because Dan Bidois told me so. I could see him getting excited in his chair. I was talking—Hon Stuart Nash: You've wasted three minutes already. DAVID SEYMOUR: Well I know Mr Nash and the problem is that members of your party have been so—how shall we put this—rambunctious and disorderly that it's become difficult to give my economic sermon. I'm trying to get back to it but Stuart Nash is interrupting me again. But as I was saying it might be that clause 5 of this bill restrains the supply of labour on a particular worksite and it might be that restraining that supply of labour will make the price—i.e. the wages paid on that particular worksite—go up. That's absolutely true. The difficulty is that those costs are passed on to consumers and the problem—Hon Dr David Clark: What about a competitive market? DAVID SEYMOUR: —with this idea is that workers are also consumers. Ah Dr David Clark is entering into the debate into economics and I welcome him. The problem is Dr Clark that this law—and this is why it's so important that clause 5 has been taken out. I'm glad—Hon Dr David Clark: The profit goes down because the market's competitive surely for the employer. DAVID SEYMOUR: Well that's a very good observation Dr Clark because you see the point is that clause 5 of this bill would stop the market being competitive. It would require all people on a particular worksite to have the same collective agreement. That's why I'm so glad it's gone. So Dr Clark absolutely gets it. I think he's got a lot of potential as an economist. What does Dan Bidois think? Dan Bidois is not so confident. But I look at the alacrity and the pique with which David Clark grasped that point. I think that even though he sort of grasped it back to front—he was sort of pulling the plough backwards—he grasped the point counterintuitively and I think he's got some potential. So we're going back to the story. Ha ha! He's surrendering. He's waving a white flag. The effect is that those increased wages end up in costs of products that are passed on to consumers and workers are also consumers. Of course the answer might be if we follow the logic for—[Time expired]