O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Ha ha! No. That could easily take up my 5 minutes but it is probably not the indulgent way to take this.I am opposing the bill tonight not because of the principles behind it but I am opposing it because I do not think that this is the right platform—nor in terms of what the last speaker Stuart Nash was saying around the use of select committees. I might touch on both those aspects. I do want to—as others have—acknowledge James Shaw for the work that he and I understand Kennedy Graham have put into this. I think actually what is being proposed here as a concept makes a lot of sense. I am sure if our former colleague Dr Cam Calder was here he would be agreeing. I know that at different party conferences he often spoke about the need to look at new indicators well beyond GDP. I do not profess to be an expert in this particular space but even I can understand there is a lot more that we can measure to better understand how we engage not only with one another but with the environment at large.I suppose my issue is I do not believe that the Public Finance Act is the place for this to occur. In some ways I think it is sort of a mismatch which will not actually do any good either to the public finance approaches that this and previous Governments have taken and I would argue future Governments will take and in some ways I do not think it will actually do any good for the environmental side either. The Public Finance Act—we have been given a little bit of history I think by Craig Foss a bit earlier on the reason the Act came about. It is fairly simple in so far as it is around transparency and importantly it is around fiscal policy. It is really in effect about taxing and spending and debt—that is what it is about the Act. It uses GDP—a crude model if you will—to try to explain those things but it is a crude model that is I think very sufficient for its purpose.Importantly too I think GDP as it stands the measures as they stand and the Act as it stands are well understood both within New Zealand and overseas and that gives us some surety. I think when we turn consequently to schedules 8 and 9—I have them here—we end up with a number of indicators and subclauses. I think there are about 36 subclauses in schedule 8 which really does complicate things. It ultimately takes away from the initial and intention of the Public Finance Act and if I want to be slightly conspiratorial I think it would actually harm that transparency as we all get a bit confused in and around numbers.We want just some clear indicators from Government regardless of whether it is the National Government now or the continuing National Government through 2017 to 2020 to know what is happening in that space. Environmentally I think what the member is suggesting could well sit in its own piece of legislation. I know this Government has made some changes in I think 2015 around environmental reporting. I think it was a really important step. I think it was the first Government to put such indicators in place. It is only a suggestion off the top of my head. I think what Mr Shaw is suggesting could well play into an Act like that.Hon David Cunliffe: It's unravelling.SIMON O'CONNOR: Ha! Oh dearie me—the last interjections from that member in the coming weeks. Ha! But use them while you can.I think there is real positivity in what is being suggested here to actually go into the Environmental Reporting Act. I think a lot of the elements we see are beneficial. I am conscious of the time though and I want to add that I think one of the risks we have with these sorts of series of principles is that they can always be added to—some member earlier used the term progressive". It will be no surprise to some that I am not a great fan of progressivism as a philosophical concept and the reason is that it picks winners and losers. I think there is a danger as we end up with schedules like this that we end up picking winning and losing concepts that make these de rigueur. I think that is unhelpful and we have heard some feedback tonight with people critiquing some of these 36 indicators and saying "Well that's not in and that shouldn't be in." and I think it ends up being quite wasteful.That probably takes me to my final point that As it is currently constructed in this bill asking that the Minister of Finance be the one responsible to report on these would put him or her in direct conflict with the likes of the Government Statistician and Treasury so I think there is a bit of a mismatch there.Finally—which is now my third final point—I will come back to one of the first ones. I do not feel it is the place of select committees to do a lot of that work.Hon David Cunliffe: Ha ha!The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!SIMON O'CONNOR: Select committees are the place where the ideas are already well articulated and we move from there and so I would disagree with some colleagues who are saying that here we float an idea and then select committees—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member's time has expired. The Hon David Cunliffe—again I am tempted not to call the member given those recent noises."