Seymour DavidHon DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Mr Speaker. These are challenging times. If anyone's seen the unemployment rate—up to 4.6 today—there is a severe shortage of energy essential not only to big businesses but small ones and households that I hope one day the parties opposite will take some ownership of for what they did. There is a geopolitical situation that's pretty unstable and not enough knowledge being transferred from one generation to the next. And yet we heard an Opposition party and two and three actually who tried to do a quiz on the articles of the Treaty and talk about an invitation to an Australian to a party. That's the standard that we're getting from the Opposition and I'd rather be talking about those other issues and what the Government is doing in each and every case to ensure that our spending is wise that the economy is back under control that people can afford to get to the end of the week with some money left in their account thanks to tax cuts and what we're doing to make sure kids are getting to school and learning. But Mr. Speaker I chose to take a speech in the general debate today on behalf of the ACT Party to talk about a value that is essential to the beliefs of our party and I would hope every party in this Parliament. That is the simple idea that each of us are a sovereign human individual with the right as an adult to choose somebody to go and speak for us freely in public affairs whether it's this parliament or the local council; you have the right and each one of us has the right to pick a representative to go and express our views no matter what they may be so that we can settle our differences as a country and come together in consensus and make progress in public affairs in a peaceful way with no Vladimir Putin Russian threats of violence no intimidation just the best arguments eventually prevailing in healthy public debate. I love that value. It is foundational to our country and the prosperity that we all enjoy as citizens of a free and democratic society. And so when I hear that a councillor in New Plymouth by the name of Murray Chong is on the radio saying that he has had to change his vote on a matter he believes important because he's being intimidated he's having people firing air rifles at the car outside his house he's told that he can't walk at night because he'll be king-hit and wake up in hospital" that goes actually not just to the heart of New Plymouth or Murray Chong but to every single New Zealander who's grown up in this country and inherited that basic right: to be able to choose a representative to participate and express their views in public affairs without being intimidated or threatened or talked down like somebody might if they tried to contest an election in Moscow or Pyongyang. That is why the ACT Party is calling on every single political party in this House to condemn the threats of political violence against Murray Chong to agree that while we may differ on the question of Māori wards—and this Government certainly has a view—that it is absolutely wrong that anybody in an elected office should ever be threatened with violence or a sanction of changing the political views. They should be able to express the views of the people who elected them without fear or favour or concern for their physical safety. If there's anyone in this House who doesn't believe that then they ought to ask themselves what exactly it is that they're doing here or why it is that perhaps their own arguments are so feeble that they cannot win them in an intellectual contest but would seek to win them in some other type of contest.I have been disappointed at how little response there's been from other party leaders. We've heard a lot today about invitations we've heard a quiz on the Treaty we've had questions about what the Government is doing about a 4000-year-old conflict on the other side of the world but I haven't heard from the Opposition parties condemnation of political violence against an elected councillor in New Plymouth. Murray Chong might be an eccentric character he might not be the person that you or I would vote for should we live in New Plymouth but nobody including him deserves to be threatened or menaced with political violence for holding a view that's sincerely held on behalf of the people who elected them. They have the rights and the duty to express those views on behalf of the voters in order for that democratic inheritance from which we've all benefited so greatly to continue to function and work in a society where all of us are blessed with equal rights and freedom.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."