Seymour David; Rurawhe AdrianDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well if this Government's going to raise productivity then they can't afford to burn up $1000 like that member Michael Wood just did. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill and I suspect it may become a feature of this Parliament that the ACT Party stands alone in favour of the taxpayer opposing the continual expansion of our entitlement culture and society in this country. The National Party it's been said has a habit of campaigning from the right and governing from the left. Well tonight folks you skipped a step and if you don't carry out the first step you're very unlikely to get to the second step.I would like to draw members' attention to this very helpful cover sheet on the regulatory impact statement recently implemented by the previous Government. It starts with a very simple question: what is the problem and proposed approach? Good problem definition is supposed to be the start of every piece of policy making and actually the Prime Minister summed it up quite nicely in her Address in Reply speech that we will use Government to achieve things that we can't achieve by ourselves. Well that's what good policy should do but folks this ain't it because in this problem definition it asks What problem or opportunity does the proposal seek to address? … This proposal implements the Government's manifesto commitment". That's what it says. It doesn't say that there's a problem that we can't solve alone that must be solved through the State. It says "The Government campaigned on this and therefore we're going to do it." It is politics. There is no rational basis for this policy whatsoever because if you think about it there is no reason why people cannot anticipate the costs of having kids and cannot prepare for having kids and cannot provide for themselves when having kids.Hon Member: There speaks a father in the making.DAVID SEYMOUR: If it is true that they can't—if it's true that they can't—then we're going to have to do a hell of a lot more than extend paid parental leave by four weeks in 2020. I just take a brief aside to respond to the heckler at the back—I can't tell who it is—who thinks it's OK to attack me for being a guy mocking me by saying "You're a father-in-waiting." Well actually I'd like to have a debate on the facts and the facts are that there is no reason for the Government to be doing this other than that they think it is politically popular. This is nothing to do with good policy; it's to do with finding a group of people over here who have some money and giving it to a group of people over here because we think they will vote for us. Well the job of this Parliament is to stand up for minorities and one very important minority—common in the Epsom electorate I might add—is the net taxpayer in this country who deserves defence from the continual expansion of the entitlement culture that we see too often in New Zealand. They are not going to be getting it from the National Party tonight and what a shame.But if we go further through this regulatory impact statement—which by the way doesn't tell us what the cost is. They won't tell us what the cost is. The cost of taxpayer money is so cheap to the Labour Party—and apparently the National Party tonight—that they don't even bother to tell us how much money this is going to cost. But the regulatory impact statement says other things. There is no assessment of broader impacts for example on employers—particularly small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs)—or on women's employability. "It would be important to evaluate the monitoring data to assess these … impacts once the policy is implemented."—in other words we don't know what the policy is going to do. We don't know what it's going to do for the SMEs which two members got up and talked about so passionately in their maiden statements tonight saying how important they are to prosperity all over New Zealand and in the regions. We don't know what the fiscal impact is. We don't know what the impact will be on employability particularly for women. We don't know what problem we're trying to solve but it's politically popular—we're going to take a whole of taxpayers' money here we're going to put it over here and hopefully get some votes in the process. What a sad shame to see the National Party joining in on this tonight.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The Hon Michael Wood—Woodhouse sorry."