Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. I know this is the third David to speak in this debate tonight and I would like to share my condolences with my fellow David David Parker whose heart really is not in it. You can tell that he is about as passionate about this bill as a very passionless person is about a very dispassionate thing.We have heard some very interesting arguments about why the Government should own Kiwibank at all. If you want to be a supporter of this bill then you have to believe first and foremost that the Government of New Zealand is somehow advancing the interests of New Zealanders by owning Kiwibank. It is worth just thinking about how that might be. What we heard from Mr Parker is that the ownership of Kiwibank by the Government somehow makes the rest of the banking sector more competitive and somehow ensures that we get better service lower mortgage rates lower fees or some combination of the above from the remainder of the banking sector.There are many sectors that might be described as oligopolistic in the economy—for example jumbo jets. There are only two serious providers of those in the world but nobody is seriously suggesting that the New Zealand Government should own a jumbo jet manufacturer just to ensure that New Zealanders get decent service from the jumbo jet industry. Indeed we could go through quite a range of different industries where the argument that David Parker made could be applied but of course we would not because it is absurd. It is equally absurd in the case of the banking sector.But even if we look past the absurdity of the notion applied to other sectors we just have to ask ourselves how it is that Kiwibank could offer a better level of service to New Zealand consumers than other banks. There appears to be really only two ways. One is that it is going to be somehow smarter more innovative and more efficient than the other four major banks—let us not forget some of our smaller domestic competitors here in New Zealand as well and all of the non-banking entities in the financial services sector—and that somehow Kiwibank has knowledge and information that none of them have that it can bring to bear to operate more efficiently than they can. If the Government could set up entities that were that ingenious then I think it should be doing it in quite a wide range of sectors. But of course the Government does not have that sort of insight. The other way and the more likely way is that by investing in Kiwibank on behalf of the taxpayer the Government is prepared to accept a lower return than those taxpayers could get if they were to invest elsewhere—for instance somebody who might have some of their portfolio invested in a trading bank. So the Government would be taking money off New Zealanders that they could be investing elsewhere and forcing them to invest it in Kiwibank at a lower rate of return. That is the Green Party's proposal: to effectively subsidise mortgages by shovelling cheap capital into the back of one bank. It is a clever trick politically but it does not actually make anybody better off in the long run and on average.There is a range of technical problems with this bill which Andrew Bayly brought up I thought quite loudly and eloquently. What changes in capital structure are permissible under Kiwibank? This is the reason why Government ownership tends to be less efficient. There are these additional political constraints such as: what can be the capital structure of ownership for an entity such as Kiwibank? Also lots of questions start to arise as it tries to change its ratio of debt and equity funding. It just does not have the level of autonomy that a privately owned entity would have.I just want finally to touch on a couple of comments that Julie Anne Genter made and in particular the xenophobic nature of them. The thread running through her speech was this implicit assumption that if foreigners are involved—if foreigners buy the bank—then somehow that is more sinister than if New Zealanders owned the bank. I think it is regrettable that the House has come to that standard of debate all too often these days on issues that should be a question of economic debate rather than parading as xenophobia. With those thoughts I will resume my seat in opposition to this bill. Thank you very much.