Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. Not in living memory has our country entered an election against such a backdrop of global uncertainty. The medical economic and geopolitical impacts of COVID-19 remain unpredictable but we know that these impacts are on New Zealanders' businesses on their household finances on their jobs and on their mental health. We politicians enter this election campaign with a job to do. The world is changing all around us and our small island nation must find its place anew in that ever changing world.At the same time people's faith in our politics in this Parliament is at an all-time low ebb and it's not just the most recent highly publicised ructions that have led to that low ebb; it is a long period over the past three years of poor-quality delivery and poor-quality lawmaking. We all know the examples: KiwiBuild light rail child poverty the gun buy-back the oil and gas exploration ban the Provincial Growth Fund. It's been one disaster after another. I think it's fair to say that we have a disaster Government led by a disaster Prime Minister because if it wasn't for the disasters what we would have is a long series of let downs where everything the parties over there promised in 2017 has been a failure.Let me say that that's not a personal critique; I happen to like our Prime Minister as a person and I admire what she's done holding people together at critical times of disaster. That's not the problem. The problem is that the world is changing and a different style of leadership is required. We require problem solving. We require an open debate about what exactly New Zealand's public health strategy is because at the moment the Government would have it that we can either remain physically isolated from the world and borrow to paper over the cracks or we can open it up and people will die. In other words they want us to be either dead broke or dead. I believe that this country deserves an open debate not a state of fear; asking what we can do not what we can't; going country by country when it comes to the border; working together with not against the private sector; and embracing technology to augment our public health response. Those are the principles of a smart public health response and when we've done that we can start being honest about the debt because my army of 14-year-old Instagram followers have been sending me messages saying David who is the Government borrowing all this money off and who has to pay it back?" You know if 14-year-olds can figure out that the Government borrowing $140 billion is a problem and it is for them maybe we in this Parliament need to start being honest about this country's fiscal track.If we can do those things then we can seize the opportunity of a lifetime: an island nation on a pandemic planet that actually for once is the place that skills and capital want to go to—if only we're prepared to seize the opportunity and stop being so hostile to foreign investment and wealth-creating activity in this country. That is what New Zealanders need out of this election debate and that is what the ACT Party brings: a consistent constructive critique and contribution to the challenges that our country faces at this time about the challenge of a country finding its place in a world that is changing around it. That's what New Zealanders need out of this election debate. That's what the ACT Party will be bringing and I look forward to a group of independent-minded thoughtful ACT MPs sitting across here on the cross benches supporting a Government far more competent than the one that we have now. That is why you give your party vote to ACT. That is a positive future for New Zealand. Thank you Mr Speaker."