Leary Ingrid; McLellan Tracey; Pugh MaureenINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to just pick up on something that the Minister himself brought into the debate around good public policy and cost recovery and to question him about the evidence base. But before I do that this is a genuine point that I raise and a question to the Minister and I bring this point because I note that in a previous committee stage in the House today when a Minister in the chair was texting or was on the phone the presiding officer felt that that wasn't really engaging in the debate. So I'm very grateful that the Minister has answered the subsequent questions. We haven't heard answers on the original one. So I do have a question to the Minister. It's not my primary question; it's a little bit of a supp but I would like to know if the Minister will continue to debate with us without going on to his phone so that we know he is engaging because I think it's really important. If we're spending the money that my colleague from Dunedin in the Green Party Francisco has said is being spent it's really important that all sides of the House are engaged including particularly the Minister in the chair.But my real question is around his statement that good policy making requires the costs to be recovered and that's what he's doing. And there just doesn't seem to be an evidence base. So I'm wondering what is the evidence base that is leading to this title of Fines Collection Costs [Recovery]" of the policy before us. And when I look at the cost recovery impact statement it actually says that other options were "not proceeded with due to significant uncertainty around whether actual benefits would outweigh the loss of fees revenue. To progress this option extensive consultation and data collection would be required to determine whether it would be worth progressing and if so additional policy work would … be required."Now my point is that it feels like we've got this the wrong way around. Surely if this was something that the Government wanted to do the first thing to do in a policy process is to collect the data in order to be able to get a baseline to be able to understand where the deficit is. And this goes very much to the heart I think of what Dr Duncan Webb was asking. He was saying "What are the numbers?" I'm saying well isn't this in the wrong order? There has been a decision made we can't see an evidence base and we have a cost recovery impact statement that actually says the information is not there.So my question to the Minister is: how can this be good public policy—which is what he said and what he brought into the debate—and how can he say that there is an evidence base? Because what is disturbing to me is that viewers hear these words being thrown around a little about good lawmaking or good public policy and they're accepted on face value. But it's our job particularly in urgency and when there is no select committee process to interrogate what the basis of the decision making is. And I'm no closer to understanding the basis of that decision because I haven't heard from the Minister what the evidence is. He certainly hasn't illuminated the numbers in the questions of Duncan Webb. But I want to know given that it's actually in black and white here on the statement that there is no evidence how could he make an evidence-informed decision and therefore how can he say this is good public policy?Now there may be an element that I haven't seen. Maybe there was some kind of statement made by officials at some point. Maybe there were some text messages between Ministers from different coalition parties. Was that the evidence base? I don't know. Was it a conversation? Was it a coalition agreement? Because sometimes in this House we've been told that the evidence base is a coalition agreement. Certainly I've heard in relation to perhaps say Gumboot Friday that the evidence base for that decision was a coalition agreement and that seems to have been accepted. So if it's a coalition agreement I'd like to hear it but I would then also like the Minister to say if that's the case how does that make it good public policy? So there's a logical framework here. There's a logical train of thought. And at each point in that logic there seems to be missing elements. I think if we can get to that point we may ultimately be able to find the answer to Dr Duncan Webb's question which is around what the actual numbers are. Without the evidence base underneath I just don't understand how we can do that. So if the Minister can clarify that and put those more sinister thoughts to bed because you know I don't know if it was based on text messaging or whatever but I'd like to understand the public policy basis.Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I think that that was a really good question that's just been raised for the Minister to consider. And hopefully whilst he's looking through some information or taking some advice and we hear an answer about that—particularly about the evidence base and what constitutes good evidence—I would like to ask a question along the same sort of vein I suppose. But if we go back to the title itself and think about "Fines Collection Costs" it's implicit within that that there are cost pressures. So I've got two questions. So if we accept that it's implicit that therefore there are cost pressures given that there's a need to address fine collection costs as my colleague Ingrid Leary has just said we still don't know what the evidence of that is. In fact in the—what's it called?—the cost recovery impact statement (CRIS) it specifically says that that information is absent. You know it doesn't exist. So we don't know what the basis of that is. So I really do think it's going to be difficult for us to move on from this clause which is important. It serves the purpose of being able to—as the Minister said it should be about what's written on the tin. So it's incumbent upon us here as members of this House to be able to do what we can do to make sure that that turns out that way.So when we think about that the second part of that—and I don't think we've really got to the bottom of this part either. So I'd also like to acknowledge whilst we're waiting for this answer that I agree from the question that Ingrid Leary has posed and the Hon Kieran McAnulty has also suggested. Why is the "Budget Measures" part still there? On the one hand—we're hearing all this contradictory information. I think that's why it's making it so sketchy. We're hearing that this has got nothing to do with the Government having to make its tax cuts add up or having to fill in gaps in its budgetary hole so to speak. But on the other hand it's explicit in the title. So on one hand we've got this implicit implication that it's to do with cost pressures that we don't know anything about but on the other hand it's explicitly stated in the title.So I think before we can move on we really do need to get to the bottom of what that is because when we look at the cost recovery impact statement on page one just past the executive summary it literally says under "Constraints - Time and Budget Sensitivity" "To support the Government's Budget priority of finding $1.5 billion". That is the purpose. Which one is it? We're getting told one thing by the Minister in the House tonight because he's trying to minimise its association with the Budget or you know the impetus for the need to find some money to prop up the Budget but on the other hand all the way through the information including in the title we're told otherwise. So I think that the Minister really needs to explain that before we can move on and I'm sure other people have other questions along those lines as well.CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I'll just let the members know that that's the third time we've had a speech about costs and cost recovery. Just warning the members that we are looking for new material."