Cunliffe David; Mallard TrevorHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I do apologise for that spontaneous expression of mirth but it has been quite amusing seeing members opposite—many of whom I certainly like as people—turning themselves inside out to find reasons to vote against motherhood apple pie and the environment. This bill is quite frankly beyond argument common sense. Not only is it common sense but it actually represents what National members say they believe in. They say they are liberal conservatives. They say they have the environment at heart. They say they want to bring the environment and the economy closer together. Well here is a bill that actually does that.I commend the member who has introduced it—more on that in a second. Here is a bill that uses the Crown accounts financial analysis and objective data collection not to pick winners and not to prescribe policy but simply to provide a common data set that is fact-based. Who actually but Donald Trump could object to such a thing?Distinguished members opposite have clearly been given very interesting riding instructions: Please don't dump too hard on the bill because the Bluegreens will be upset. Make it sound like you like it but then refuse to send it even as far as to a select committee because we wouldn't want you to actually engage in the substance lest some of it sneaks through." It was actually Mr Foss—Craig Foss bless him—who displayed the kind of honesty that has become his hallmark to his detriment. He came to the punchline: "We do not want to get in the way of financial imperatives. We don't want environmental indicators going anywhere near the Crown financial accounts." That is the truth of it. It is the "Labour-lite" approach of giving half a loaf like they did on paid parental leave or the head in the sand defence which is that if you do not measure it it will not matter—like child poverty. Neither of those work in this case.In this case we are at the nub of the argument: why would you want environmental indicators sitting alongside GDP? "We won't do away with GDP; we've made that clear." It is because if you think about GDP it does not tell you the whole story. The single biggest boost to New Zealand's GDP in the last century was what—can members opposite say? The single biggest boost was not tourism it was not dairy; it was the Christchurch earthquakes. There was a $30 billion GDP injection but it is just that hundreds of people lost their lives and our second-biggest city was flattened. It was a disaster but it was a huge GDP uptick. A war is a great GDP uptick but it is nonsense to suggest that a war or an earthquake represents what is best in our lives. We need to balance raw GDP which is simply a measure of turnover with things that talk about quality and sustainability and that integrate the long term and the short term.With a little sense of déjà vu if I can say to the member when I was in my first term I negotiated a member's bill called the Triple Bottom Line Reporting Bill. I was negotiating with the then Minister of Finance—the good member and Assistant Speaker the Hon Trevor Mallard was an Associate Minister of Finance—Dr Michael Cullen who said: "Look rather than put a complex member's bill in front of the House let's as a matter of policy instruct Treasury to start working on these." It has been pleasing to see a number of those pieces of work flow through to what has been listed in the bill as current products of Treasury and the department of statistics.How bizarre it was to hear members opposite list amongst their reasons for paying lip-service to the bill—but not even supporting it to select committee—was that they did not think Treasury and the department of statistics were the right places to keep statistics. I beg your pardon? Motherhood apple pie and the environment and members opposite pirouetting on the head of a pin to find reasons that sound nice but actually do harm which is to vote against the environment and to vote against our children and our grandchildren who will inherit the mess that members opposite wittingly or unwittingly are making worse. They are not using price mechanisms they are not using objective data they are not—to use the jargon of economics—internalising the externalities in the Crown accounts and they are not living up to their own highest ideals of rational economic thought.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member's time has expired."