Williams Andrew: Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7057. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on the Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill on behalf of New Zealand First. We will be different from the other parties in that we will not be supporting this bill. The reason we are not supporting it is mainly that we think it is irrelevant and totally unnecessary. 
This Parliament currently has something like 64 Government bills on the Order Paper—64 Government bills. It is incredible how much legislation should be coming before this House instead of irrelevant bills like this that are basically just again moving the deckchairs around on the  
Titanic 
 and tinkering around the edges in terms of finance and taxes. We believe that if the Government was doing its job correctly and as it should be this bill would absolutely be totally unnecessary. Basically this is just another waste of parliamentary time when the Government should be getting on with a lot more important things on the Order Paper. 
We have only to look back to things such as the  
Rena 
 disaster where there was legislation on the books that was sitting there for something like 2 or 3 years waiting to be put through. It had buy-in from every party in this House and the Government did not move that legislation on. And because it was tardy and did not move that legislation on the  
Rena 
 hit the rocks and we were then caught with our pants down literally and as a result it cost the New Zealand taxpayer another $30 million or $40 million because that legislation had not been put through. 
At the same time there are things such as the war pensions review which sat around for 2 years under this Government and finally has been moved on in the last couple of months. But again with our senior veterans getting longer and longer in the tooth and older and older all the time and desperately waiting for this Government to move on the 170 recommendations of the Law Commission it took 2 years to get that review finally into action. We commend the Government for doing it finally but it took 2 years while rubbish like this bill which is totally unnecessary is put before the House. If the Government was actually doing its job properly and if it was overseeing managing and governing the Public Service as it should be then this bill would be totally irrelevant. 
The bill proposes to amend the Public Finance Act to include three new principles the extension of an existing principle regarding revenue and a new reporting requirement to assess past fiscal strategy. These changes are unnecessary. The principles are in fact common sense. There is no need to write them into legislation. It goes without saying that people elect a Government to manage resources effectively and efficiently. Anything else would be wasteful even reckless. Any Government that cannot manage resources effectively and efficiently will soon be found out and punished by the electorate. 
It also goes without saying that a Government should formulate fiscal strategy with regard to monetary policy. By definition macroeconomic policy has to take into account the whole economy. There is something seriously wrong with a Government that does not see the bigger picture. In that respect we have heard other speakers tonight allude to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Amending Primary Function of Bank) Amendment Bill which was brought to this House by the Rt Hon Winston Peters in terms of having a full review after 30 years of having the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act and seeing what other mechanisms the Reserve Bank could put in place to have our economy performing better in terms of the New Zealand dollar and the overvaluation of the New Zealand dollar. That bill was dismissed outright by this Government—absolutely dismissed outright by this Government. It did not want a bar of it. It did not even want to put it through to a select committee to consider looking after 30 years at a review of the Reserve Bank. This is absolute hypocrisy on the part of this Government. On the one hand it is not prepared to look at the Reserve Bank but on the other hand it wants to tinker around with the Public Finance Act. 
The third principle states that Governments should be “formulating fiscal strategy with regard to its likely impact on present and future generations;”. Well that in fact is an admission by the Government that it has failed to take these matters into account in the past. If it is having to put that into legislation now what was it doing before? We do not oppose the need for Governments to be explicit about any intergenerational trade-offs their fiscal policies may have. We are simply saying that it is unnecessary to write this into legislation. It is nothing more than another symbolic gesture from the National Government. 
The Public Finance Act also provides a legal framework for the financial management system of the New Zealand Government. It controls the manner in which Parliament keeps a watch on Government expenditure. This is fundamental for our democracy. It provides an essential check and balance which ensures transparency and accountability. We believe that the Act in its current present form is fit for purpose and does not need further amendment. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 
This Government should have jobs as its priority such as the parliamentary inquiry into manufacturing. Again this Government dismisses what is a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into the manufacturing sector in this country which has seen 1300 companies go out of business in the 4 years that National has been in power and has seen more than 40000 jobs go out of the manufacturing sector while this Government has been in power. So while it tinkers around playing around with the Public Finance Act it ignores a very vital manufacturing inquiry that has been put forward by the Opposition parties to seriously look at how we can get manufacturing in this country back on its feet. 
We need policies to stimulate growth. This bill does nothing to get New Zealanders back into work. It does nothing to boost exports. Again as we have seen with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act situation this does nothing to address the seriously overvalued New Zealand dollar. 
It also does nothing to develop new industries or broaden the productive base of the economy. We had only to look at the  
Q+A  
session on the weekend and look at the suggested ideas that were put forward there. You know some of them were a little bit extreme but others were interesting concepts. But again what did we see from the Minister Judith Collins? Basically cold water poured on any good ideas that any New Zealanders who came forward put to her. Basically typical of this Government it was: “Let’s not listen to anybody else. Let’s just do what we want to do.” This bill is a reflection of that. Government members want to just tinker with an existing Act instead of getting on with new business new growth new opportunities growing the New Zealand economy and looking at real ways to improve the economy. 
New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. We think it is a waste of time. We think the Government should be getting on with some of the other 64 Government bills that are on the Order Paper that have greater impact on New Zealanders and on the New Zealand economy. This is only window dressing and another glossy attempt by National to just put nice words and nice rhetoric around a Government bill. But at the end of the day it is just plain tinkering around the edges.