Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in sole opposition it would seem to this abomination of a bill—a house of cards built on a series of fallacies. One thing all New Zealanders want is to be richer to have a higher level of productivity so that they can work less earn more and enjoy their life to a greater extent. That is what's agreed upon. But in a pathetic series of contributions in this debate over the last few minutes and hours we have heard absolutely no justification logic or explanation for why taking $300 million of taxpayers' money and putting it into a venture investment fund is going to help us achieve that goal.So we understand what the goal is and we understand that rhetorically at least taking some taxpayer money and putting it into some businesses sounds like something that might make us more productive more sophisticated in terms of our economy wealthier and achieve our goals. But there is no explanation of why the policy should work. Nobody that is supporting this bill in this House has gotten up and actually given us the explanation.The first fallacy they might want to address is the old French economist Bastiat: Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas." There is what is seen and what is not seen. Everybody stands up and talks about how all the money the $300 million will be used the companies that will take it and what they will do with the money. They all want to talk about what is seen. Not one of them talks about the fact that in order to do as much the same money—$300 million—has to be taken off taxpayers who could have used it to achieve their own goals.As soon as one confronts that fallacy suddenly the benefits evaporate unless somehow the Government has greater knowledge about how to invest taxpayers' money and what to invest in than those taxpayers do. I say to the people clamouring to get their hands on this money: if you find it hard to get taxpayers to invest in the business well I don't mean to be rude but maybe they are trying to tell you something. Because the fact is the only reason that this money will get invested is not because it's a good investment; it's simply because it is politically fashionable to do so.And here comes the third fallacy. The second one was that politicians or the guardians of this fund have a better idea how to spend taxpayers' money than the people who earned it but the third fallacy is simply the idea that somehow we're going to get better incentives for people spending other people's money. So the first problem is they've got to take the money off somebody else. The second problem is that they have no knowledge of how to better invest it and the third problem is they have worse incentives.The incentives that people have when they're spending other people's money is ultimately to do what is politically fashionable. We've already heard it in this debate. The Green Party thinks you shouldn't invest in certain companies because they think those companies should be deemed politically unfashionable. The incentives for people investing this money are not to put it where it's going to best satisfy the customers of the companies getting invested in the incentives are not to get the best return for the taxpayer; the incentives are to do what is best politically.For all those reasons you have got other people's money being spent by people who have no greater knowledge about how to spend it by people whose incentives are actually more political than economic. It's a disaster and what's really incredible is that ACT is alone in opposing it because it's one thing to criticise the Government for doing it. In a way they don't know any better. The truth is if they knew what to invest money in they wouldn't be doing this job. But what is truly shameful is to have the leader of the National Party on the black and white tiles complaining about Government waste while his colleagues are in here trying to justify—and badly—voting for this bill. ACT proudly opposes this public policy abomination."