Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Madam Assistant Speaker I remind you that the power and discretion is really all yours and thank you for using it in this way. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this Child Poverty Reduction Bill and I suspect that I'll be the only vote recorded in this House today opposing that legislation.But you know while being the sole member of a political party is sometimes disappointing at election time it does give a certain amount of freedom to say things that other members can't say. I thought Peeni Henare gave the best speech in this House today by a member who was voting for the bill but disagrees with it. He said it repeatedly and strongly whilst the Prime Minister and the author of the bill were sitting metres away from him. He said it's not really a question of a poverty of material things—nothing that this bill matters—it's a poverty of spirit.And Dan Bidois who I would say is one of the sharpest public policy minds in this House—he worked for the OECD in Paris; he's an economist. And he got up and he thought What do I say now? The National Party my party is supporting this. I completely disagree with it." So he got up and he acknowledged here and he acknowledged there and he acknowledged people everywhere. And then he thought "What do I say now?" And then he talked a bit about describing the bill without endorsing it and then he thought "I've got two minutes to go." which he rounded out by talking about his grandma and how she beat poverty in ways that wouldn't be acknowledged at all by this bill.They don't believe in this bill. Neither Peeni Henare nor Dan Bidois believe in this bill; neither do I; and the difference is the ACT Party is not going to vote for it. Why? Because it's an admirable intent. There's almost nothing Jacinda Ardern does that is not admirable in its intentions. But what will be the outcomes? The outcome of this bill if we're to believe its promoters is that it will change the way that we look at child poverty. It will make us reflect each year on the level of income that different households have and what the gap is and what the distribution is for different household incomes. It won't tell us anything about consumption. It won't tell us anything about the absolute amount of resources that a child has or that they consume.What it will tell us about is simply the amounts of income and the relative gap between the incomes of different households. That is folly because what it tells us is that the best way to reduce poverty under this bill is to tax some people and transfer income to others. Well if that works to reduce child poverty then we would have solved child poverty in this country a couple of hundred billion dollars of Government spending ago. But it's worse than that because when this bill has its effect and encourages people to tax in this House and to spend in this House to transfer income to reduce those income gaps what they do is they increase the amount of money that low-income earners lose when they earn more. The incentives that this bill creates are actually to increase and strengthen the very poverty trap that we are supposed to be getting rid of through better policies in this House.The National Party are supporting it because they have negotiated for a minimum of one measure to be added to the bill by the Minister of the day who is probably a Minister that they deeply disagree with in every aspect of their philosophy. I think that it is absolute folly to sell out to bad policy for such simple reasons.I have to acknowledge that there are some measures of absolute consumption in this bill. They will be swamped by the income measures but they are simply not the right ones being defined by the chief statistician as measures of absolute poverty. The measures of consumption that are in this bill—and I should acknowledge them—are simply inadequate.So what do we have? A well-intentioned Prime Minister on a mission throughout her political career introducing a bill that is going to have no effect other than changing the incentives for politicians who will tax more who will transfer more who will make the poverty trap worse and leave the real welfare of children no better than she found it. I'm proud to oppose this legislation on behalf of ACT. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."