Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in reply to the Prime Minister's statement and let me start by paying her a compliment. Our Prime Minister has extraordinary communication talents. She's used them throughout this crisis and New Zealanders have responded in her words astoundingly well. When we commemorated Anzac Day on this weekend just been I couldn't help but think that the original Anzacs would recognise the call for cooperation and sacrifice against a common enemy the same call that modern New Zealanders just heard. Surely as they rest in peace they are proud of the way that New Zealanders a century on can still rise to a challenge and cooperate to repel a common enemy.I also said when this Parliament last met that the role of an Opposition was to give constructive criticism where necessary and helpful suggestions where possible and the Government even took notice of some of the suggestions. No one was more astonished than me to see the words safe not essential" go from an ACT Party newsletter to Government policy in just one month. I welcome the Government adopting my suggestion of an MP pay cut—Grant I know you read it—and I will seek leave to introduce a bill to that effect at the end of this speech. The nation's hunters were pleased to see the original ban on hunting walked back even if only for private land and issuing a proper section 70 notice so the legal rights of New Zealanders were in writing was the right thing to do after the Epidemic Response Committee asked for it.But we also require some more honesty from our Government about where we're up to in the fight against COVID-19. We need to confront the simple fact that the rate of growth in new cases was already flat-lining as the lockdown came into effect. The Prime Minister said this morning we had a transmission rate of four before the lockdown. Well that's news because Shaun Hendy says he couldn't calculate it. She should tell us which days that rate of infection that was so important to key decisions occurred. It's not good enough to obfuscate the numbers and then point to the worst-performing countries in the world pat New Zealanders on the head and say "Aren't you lucky that you're not them?" That is the politics of fear and post-justification and we need to have a politics of aspiration and openness as this situation carries on.If we scare ourselves by looking at Italy we must ask why Australia is doing better. We should be asking how Taiwan—23 million people heavily integrated with the Chinese economy—managed only 400 cases and six deaths with no lockdown. The simple answer is they went smart and went very early. We should be asking what Sweden tells us about the original warnings that tens of thousands "would die if we did nothing." We need this more honest open and aspirational approach to solving our problems for one simple reason: the situation is not over. The Government will have to be much more agile. It will have to make decisions led by that wide-ranging debate without the spectre of fear haunting its background.We should start by acknowledging that the debate we face is not lives versus the economy; it is lives versus lives. Not only has the lockdown created a backlog of people awaiting other healthcare; it will mean greater shortages of healthcare in the future. Just last week Pharmac froze its plans to fund Keytruda because it was concerned about cost. The ability to afford warm dry homes for many people has just been set back years and that has health implications too. And then most sadly there are the costs of domestic violence depression and anxiety throughout this period and to come which can cost lives too. I'm sorry to say that to the best of my knowledge this Government has made no attempt to quantify those costs that is remotely comparable with the enthusiasm it has shown for modelling and pointing to the risks of the virus. We shouldn't be paralysed by fear of the one thing while ignoring those other dangers; we need to balance them both.When it comes to the recovery we need to talk about the role of Government. Some say that the role of Government must expand in the wake of this crisis. Well let's think about this for a minute. When a business underperforms it loses market share it loses customers and make no mistake—and let me just explain what I mean by this. Government the institution of it has done a poor job. That's not a political attack on these Ministers and their colleagues who happen to be elected right now. I suspect behind closed doors they've been as frustrated as any of us at times. It's also true that Governments around the world in many cases have done worse than ours but the fact remains that we have had a debacle just trying to source and distribute personal protective equipment. Thank you to the entrepreneurs who filled those gaps with planeloads of private initiative. The level of testing got to world-leading levels but only after weeks of obfuscation and poor contact tracing meant that we had stay locked down for another five days. The elusive tracing app has finally been released but I'm sorry to say as a proud Kiwi in Australia.All of this is a reminder that the institution of Government as someone once said is not the solution to the problem; it very often is the problem. What was good economic advice before COVID-19 remains good economic advice after it. We now hear the finance Minister asking his officials "What new functions should the Government take on?". "What goods should we make in New Zealand?" we just heard from the Deputy Prime Minister. It would be a mistake to reward the institution of Government by expanding it when its failures are in part responsible for the scope and size of the crisis we now face.Politicians in Wellington cannot plan a long-term recovery. It must be a bottom-up recovery led by business and led by workers. It won't come from the Reserve Bank printing free money. It won't come from the Government trying to borrow its way to prosperity. Normally it would be a caricature of a Labour finance Minister that he or she was dropping money from a helicopter. I had to read and check twice when I saw our actual finance Minister suggesting helicopter money might be an option. If the Government abandons sound cost-benefit analysis and diverts resources away from the projects that have the best return just because it's a crisis and somebody needs to do something it will make us poorer and it will make the recovery slower.The aim of Government first and foremost should be to do its public health job well. It needs to test track trace and isolate so we don't have another outbreak. We need to resume international travel as soon as possible while managing coronavirus or COVID-19. The Government is going to have to look around the world and partner with the private sector and with other like-minded countries because as the most isolated country and one that has pursued a strategy of elimination our economic survival will depend on having the world's smartest borders.After that the goal should be to return to surplus by 2024 at the latest without raising taxes or relying on more unconventional monetary policy that deflates New Zealanders' savings. If Government is going to offer relief it should be targeted at businesses and events in tourism those types of businesses that cannot carry on even at level 2 because their whole point is to bring people together. The Government should be asking about all of the costs that it imposes on business. If Southern Cross can give its policyholders a premium holiday then why can't ACC? We know there have been less car crashes and less workplace accidents. When every business is cutting costs Phil Twyford should be threatening the councils with punishment if they do increase rates not if they don't.This is a good day for New Zealand. We now need an open transparent and aspirational debate to go forward together again."