Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Madam Speaker it's with great pleasure that I rise and join with others that have spoken in congratulating you on your recent ascension to the role of Assistant Speaker a role I'm sure you'll discharge with a high level of confidence and aplomb. Having done the requisite greeting I shall get on to explaining why the ACT Party opposes this bill.It's tempting for people to say Oh well it's just fixing up a broken system. There's nothing particularly malign in the bill so why not support it?" The reason not to support it is that by supporting even useful changes to a malign system of tax policy you're endorsing that system of bad policy. We heard from the National Party spokesperson for finance that the bill would be better if only it included a provision to adjust the thresholds at which different tax rates kick in. Well there's a theme emanating from that comment which is that a significant part of the tax changes here are necessary only because we insist in this country on having five different tax rates: four income tax rates and trust and company rate. Much of the business that's gone through the Finance and Expenditure Committee and through this Parliament with regard to tax over the years that I've been in this Parliament has been necessary only because the inland revenue is constantly engaged in a game of cat and mouse with the taxpayer trying to ensure that the correct tax has been levied at the correct tax rate.This is symptomatic of a wider problem that New Zealand has. Some members I'm sure will be familiar with the professor of economics—whose name's going to escape me I know him so well—Tim. Who for a long time at Auckland—[Interruption] On a first name basis: Tim Hazledine in fact. Tim Hazledine's a lefty but everyone has their uses. I think one of his most useful contributions is to point out that New Zealand's productivity has been addled by spending far too much time on what he calls "transactional activity" and not enough time on what he calls "transformational activity"—far too much time arranging to do work organising other people to do it getting permission to work and checking that work has been done and not enough time actually doing work. This tax legislation and so much like it is symptomatic of that exact problem.Some people might say that it's defensible because there is so much more revenue raised by having a system with multiple tax rates. Members might be surprised if they asked themselves—and many of them won't have—how much revenue really is gained from having a system of multiple rates? Well this Government raises from a combination of income tax on persons and companies around about $50 billion a year. Less than 20 percent of that or $10 billion is raised from the fact that we have multiple tax rates.We could dramatically simplify our lives in this Parliament—and on the Finance and Expenditure Committee I might add—but much more importantly the lives of so many New Zealanders if we levied income and company taxes at one rate. If we were to do that we'd also find that we might not need to have an R & D tax credit scheme which simply introduces more bureaucracy and more transactional activity for people trying to work out when exactly they should be paying how much tax.So I oppose this bill. ACT opposes legislation that makes life more complicated for minimal gain. The ACT Party believes we could have the fairest simplest and most aspirational tax policy of one rate in the world if only this House rejected bills like this and chose to do so. Thank you Madam Speaker."