Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I rise to take hopefully a short call and respond to a few things that have been said. Aupito William Sio—well where to start? First of all this is not about income as he said; it's about relative income and that's one of the problems with the bill and that's one of the reasons why I have proposed to change it and remove those relative income measures because knowing that a household is within a certain percentage of another household's income doesn't actually help. The whole society could get twice as wealthy and have the same people underneath half of the median income—it doesn't make any difference at all as to what can be bought. And I'm not surprised that Aupito William Sio didn't understand that because his argument was ad hominem—to attack me because I'm rich I mustn't understand what income is about. And I've got good news and bad news for Mr Sio. The bad news is I'm not rich; the good news is I do understand.Now of course I can't really blame him for his poor standards of argument because he's got a leader that does similar things. Jacinda Ardern the Minister in the chair stood up and said Well I don't have any answer to David Seymour's criticism of these relative income measures. I can't explain why they work or why they will make New Zealand a better place"—in fact it almost sounded like she was accepting the criticisms. And then she said "But the rest of the world does it so it must be right." Well imagine if Kate Sheppard had used that logic.The fact of the matter is that New Zealand throughout its history has not sought to be like the rest of the world. We've sought to lead the world. And I'd like the Prime Minister or the Minister in the chair in this case to stand up and explain not that UNICEF and the OECD have similar measures but actually why relative income measures are actually going to make New Zealand a better place and why they won't be befallen by the criticisms that I raised. Because your saying "Everyone else has bad policy as well" is not an argument for good policy.The next thing I would say is that she is right in her attempt to win my last recalcitrant no vote on this bill to say that yes some of the measures but far from all of them that are laid out in this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) this amendment to this bill are in the current chief statistician's definition of material hardship. That's true. I'd be crazy not to have used some of the things that the chief statistician uses. But the bill as returned from the second reading doesn't actually give those definitions; we just rely on the chief statistician to decide what the measures should be.I put it to this committee that actually we'd better achieve the objectives of the bill if only we were prepared to put them out in writing. And I'd put it to the committee that actually the amendments proposed and the measures proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 155 that I've put forward are the right ones. They are the things that people want to know: are kids physically safe? Are they getting access to education? Are they getting access to essentials—food and so on? Those are the things and if they're the right things—and the Minister's tried to say that they are—then let's have an amendment that actually sets them out in the legislation rather than having one line that says the chief statistician can decide what should be material hardship. That's the next thing I'd say.There was another problem with the bill as the Minister introduced it that she kind of let slip out as she was speaking. And it's this: all of the measures currently in the bill are already being produced. Anybody can go to the website of the Ministry of Social Development or Statistics New Zealand and find out what income distributions are and find out what the material hardship measures are. And now the Minister's turning around to ask the officials if that's true. I love it. The Minister didn't know. But the fact of the matter is that we actually have all of the measures that this bill brings about already available. What this amendment that I've proposed will do is stipulate that the Government will actually be reporting those statistics that matter.And so I ask again perhaps the Minister could be the first member to join me in supporting this SOP."