Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): No worries Madam Speaker I know you've just come on shift but thank you for the call. I rise in support of my colleague's speech. These long-term fiscal statements are extremely important. I think they're one of the most important things that our Treasury does. They're especially important for young New Zealanders and those not even born yet because the long-term fiscal statement allows us to think about what sort of finances this Government will have when everyone currently in Parliament has moved on. It allows us to understand how our decisions today will affect the options that our children and grandchildren have tomorrow.In my opinion it doesn't get nearly enough attention. And I have to say when I look at the standards of this report which used to be called the long-term fiscal outlook the way it's been watered down and focuses on a whole lot of different things—well if you go back to say I think it was about 2009 it was very clear: it set out what the figures were what the drivers were and where we'd get to if we didn't make any changes and what some of the options might be. You read the executive summary of this report now and all you get is word salad. So I am concerned about the quality of the report. I'm concerned about the quality of Treasury I think it's been neglected and diverted from its true purpose—not just by this Government but frankly by the previous one.Nevertheless there are some messages that come through that are inescapable and they are similar to earlier long-term fiscal statements or outlooks that if we keep doing what we're doing we will run out of money. And the reasons are simple and they haven't changed for as long as we've been debating these statements: there are more people living longer requiring more healthcare and staying on super for longer and as they do so they have fewer children meaning fewer taxpayers picking up the bill for more dependants.To give you an idea the number of people who are over 65 at the moment's about 16 percent; in 40 years' time it's 26 percent—more than one in four people eligible for the pension. And by the time you take out kids that don't pay any tax—and there always seem to be a few people on unemployment benefit especially under Labour—then the number of people left to pay the bills is vanishingly small.And to give the Treasury some credit they do go into what might make it possible for those bills to get paid. Well actually they make a few assumptions: they think that Government will be able to borrow at 2.3 percent by 2045. So they're predicting that interest rates are going to be stay really low—I hope they're right. They're predicting 1 percent per year labour productivity growth. And GDP growth is therefore a measure of labour productivity and how many working-age people come and stay in New Zealand. And that gets you to a few conclusions: for the next generation and the one after that the people who are going to be working and paying taxes in this country for the next 40 years according to this report what matters is how many people choose to come and make their home in this country and stay and what is their labour productivity.And you can guess from that that a few more things are going to matter. Do we make it attractive for young people to be in New Zealand? Do we make this a place where they have good jobs that are connected to global opportunity? Or are we going to spend most of our time and our national life navel gazing about identity obsessing over co-governance and political correctness—that most people disagree with and have never had a say on? Are we going to have an economy that ties people up in constant bureaucracy where it takes longer to get permission to do things than actually do it?And is it going to be the case that every time this Government worries about the cost of living its only answer is to tax off people who are productive and give it to someone else? Because if that's going to be our philosophy—and I'm sorry but that's a summary of this Government's philosophy—then we are not going to attract highly productive people we're not going to attract them to come to New Zealand we're not going to retain them when they're here and we're not going to get foreign investment. We're going to be a place that will actually lose the ability to look after people. That's the thing that the Labour Party often fails to understand; if you can't get production then you can't pay for Labour's projects. And this report is a wake-up call that this country needs to start thinking about productivity and stop indulging Labour's fantasies. Thank you Madam Speaker.