Mark RonRON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): It is my duty tonight to speak to the bill and I am going to start by congratulating the member. I quite enjoy listening to the member James Shaw's speeches so often in this House but it is regretful that I have to tell him that New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill through this reading. I guess people will ask why. I am going to start by saying that we do not disagree with the concerns that other members of the House have in terms of the debate and the discussion as to whether GDP is an accurate measure of the health of the New Zealand economy.I would do no better I think than to take a cue from Mr Bishop who made quite a sarcastic comment—which is pretty normal befitting him as his reputation is growing out there in the Hutt as being pretty sarcastic most of the time. But I take the quote from Albert Einstein. One of his greatest insights was that no matter how where when or by whom it is measured the speed of light in a vacuum is constant. Measurements of light's price though are a different matter: they can tell completely different stories about [how they are made]." There is a lot more that was written from Albert Einstein's conversation on that matter in respect of GDP.I would have to say that we do share the concerns of other parties in this House about the continued use of GDP as the be-all and end-all measuring stick and yardstick as to how the state of the economy sits. We would just point out a couple of things. GDP does not take into account the level of debt that a country has. For example Japan has the fourth-highest GDP in the world behind the EU the US and China in that order and yet it has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world. Then you could talk about how the GDP also does not take into account the cost the country pays to service its debt. I am looking at the Italian Government which is paying over 5.5 percent interest on 10-year bonds—eighth by GDP. Canada ranks ninth by GDP and has to pay just over 2 percent to borrow money for 2 years. GDP does not take into account the risk of public policy changing. It does not take into account the level of corruption in a country. We all know that in New Zealand the level of corruption is increasing and yet this Government pays no mind to that matter at all and will continue to tell us that everything in the country is rosy.So although we have some empathy and sympathy for parties that would like to see a different measure and yardstick we have to simply say that looking at this bill—and looking at clause 6 in particular which introduces a range of indicators—all of this information is currently available. It is not really a case of changing the law; it is really a case of changing the Government. If this Government was to truly use the information that is before it right now and if it was to look at the state of the well-being of people who are homeless the state of the well-being of people who are having to hold down two or three jobs and the state of the environment it would be painting a completely different picture and it would give itself an "E" for effort and probably an "F" for failure in that respect.We do wonder if you were to introduce this legislation how much time you would spend debating and discussing the state of the economy as opposed to getting on and fixing it. Like a lot of things we can sit here and pass legislation and we can implement tougher finer measures and methods through legislation as to how we better manage and control the economy in the interests of the well-being of the nation but we actually think it is a lot simpler than that. The steps to take going forward are very pragmatic: to look at the number of unemployed to look at the number of people working two to three jobs to look at and recognise when you have a housing crisis and to take active and proactive steps to address those issues.Probably if one is to measure the well-being of the economy of the nation you would look at the well-being of people and it does not take a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to see and to know that people are not well in this nation. That is the core of the issue that the Government should be addressing."