Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. There's an old Chinese quote May you live in interesting times." We certainly do at 20 past 11 passing a bill under urgency the second in as many days. In fact really in one parliamentary day; technically it's still Tuesday in the Wonderland of parliamentary paradise passing this legislation.It's a pretty short bill as the Minister said. He said it's only six pages but it says so much about the juncture at which New Zealand finds itself on multiple levels. The fact that we're up this late at night passing the bill—that's one thing. The fact that it is a bill that is about transferring Government cash is another. And the fact that it is a bill that if it's necessary at all it's necessary because there's been so much Government cash transferred through this COVID period that the cost of living for New Zealanders up and down this country at the petrol pump at the check-out when they pay their rent and try to build new homes has been skyrocketing under the binge of borrowing printing and spending money that this Government has taken on: 4.9 percent inflation in the last year only 2.4 percent increase in wages.That's why this Government is desperately passing a bill that will increase the amount of cash transferred to select New Zealanders. That's why it wants to adjust the various amounts transferred and the thresholds for qualifying for a transfer and the abatement rates for receiving transfers under Working for Families. This Government is doing its best to make sure that at least the people it hopes will vote for it are insulated at least partly from the enormous changes that are occurring to the cost of living in New Zealand. I have no doubt that the Government will have picked up from listening to those few New Zealanders it does listen to and perhaps from its market research that the things that people are overwhelmingly concerned about now are the cost of living the cost of life and the cost of COVID and that cost comes from the fact that this Government has run such an inept response to COVID 19.It's been shielded by cheap credit but that cheap credit has led to enormous amounts of inflation in nearly everything New Zealanders buy and the chickens are coming home to roost. That's why the Reserve Bank has started to put up interest rates. So here's how this goes in the next year or so. Prices are going to keep on rising. Now we had one of the Labour members stand up and I can guarantee you that that member is not an economist because they're a Labour MP and just by simple logic that means they're not an economist because no current Labour MPs are qualified in economics. And the fact is—Mr Speaker's waving his fingers. Don't worry Mr Speaker. I'll check my fingers after the Labour Party's been around. I don't want to lose anything. They certainly like to tax and take people's money amongst other things don't they? And so we can guarantee that there is no Labour MP who is trained in economics because even if the Speaker was he wouldn't be identified as a Labour MP. He'd be presiding in his usual even-handed and dispassionate way over the proceedings—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member even though I probably invited him will leave me out of the debate.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well there you go ha ha! Thank you Mr Speaker for that intervention.SPEAKER: Does that member want to stay?DAVID SEYMOUR: Well Mr Speaker it seems you're now participating in the debate quite considerably. But we know that the member—as I was saying before the Speaker started debating with me there was a Labour Party MP who we know is not an economist by just source of elimination who said "Don't worry this is going to look through inflation." I suspect that that Labour MP was looking through the magazine rack at New World and accidentally saw a copy of The Economist and that's what they picked up on the way through!Well I can tell you: when a Government spends an extra $50 billion on COVID and then the Reserve Bank prints an extra $60 billion or you know about 12 percent of GDP—oh actually no about 15 percent of GDP stimulus in 18 months—that has an effect on prices that's a bit more than something you can look through. But I can understand if the Labour Party is confused about the things that can be looked through because members may recall at one point the Labour Party said they were going to be an open and transparent Government. Now you can't look through that. Maybe they're saying that you can look through this inflation in the same way that the Government was going to be transparent but I don't think that that was the case with the Government and it won't be with this inflation. You print all that money inflation is here to stay for quite a long time. And what that means is that people are going to continually find that the prices they pay go up.And as the Reserve Bank tries to achieve what's left of its mandate having been given very irresponsibly in my view a dual mandate by this Government the Reserve Bank is going to start raising interest rates. They're saying another seven 25 percent basis-point increases. Let me tell you what that means. That means that by the middle of 2023 by election year we're going to be facing a 2.5 percent official cash rate and mortgage rates will be pretty standard at 5 percent. Now for people that were getting used to mortgage rates in the low 2 percents well you know for someone whose got a $1 million mortgage—and some people do in Auckland under this Government—that's another 600 bucks a week that they're paying. That is going to be really really hurtful.And that explains why this Government is passing a bill in the dead of night under urgency to try and shuffle as much cash as it can in order to try and get people that it thinks might vote for it onside in the face of these cost of living increases that it has created with its expenditure. That's the real truth. The problem is that it's just not sustainable. It creates a spiral of wage and prices as the Government tries to stimulate the economy—the more it does the worse it makes it.So what should it be doing? What sort of legislation should we be debating tonight? We should be asking how we stop dividing New Zealanders commodifying them into identities; how we stop dividing wealth taking money off one group of people and giving it to another as the Government so wants to do and is doing with this bill; how we unite New Zealanders behind good ideas to create more wealth. Stop whacking farmers. Stop whacking landlords. Stop whacking small business. Stop putting more regulations on to people. Stop making it harder for people from overseas to spend money. All of those things are things that this Government has done lately. And instead of facilitating real production of real goods and services things that are valuable that New Zealanders can sell to each other and the world it's done things like spent $50 million on a bike bridge that it didn't build. You know?I mean this Government spent $600000 on a 30-second advertisement and I kid you not Mr Speaker there were no actors there was no filming in this advertisement it just zooms in on a series of pictures and then makes a noise like a camera clicking and it cost $330000 and they spent another couple-of-hundred grand putting it on the news. What this ad says is "save energy". So at a time of record energy prices this Government is spending even more taxpayer money on ads to tell people to save energy. The great irony is that when the Government spends money on something that's not actually useful it puts cash into the economy but not useful goods or services and that is inflationary and one of the things people are dealing with is actually inflation of ironically among other things the cost of energy. So that ad in its own small way will make people save energy because they won't be able to afford as much of it but I don't think the ad itself will be very persuasive.Then there's the fact that Kāinga Ora—I mean that's only 600 grand and you know whatever I guess that's not much for this Government—is going to spend $2 billion bidding against private developers to buy land they would've bought and developed anyway bidding up the price of housing even further in an effort to bring down the price of housing.Just about everything this Government does now is inflationary and stops production. As a result they are having to put in place legislation to hand out what cash they can get their hands on to people they hope will vote for them as they are overtaken by a tsunami of inflation of their own making in the two years to come. Well the ACT Party's going to be standing in this House providing real solutions to create real productivity so that New Zealanders can really have the things they want not this hopeless midnight hand-out smouldering. Thank you Mr Speaker."