Scott AlastairALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you Mr Chair. I do have a couple of questions for the Minister as well.Rt Hon David Carter: Well I hope he answers them.ALASTAIR SCOTT: I'm sure Mr Carter that the Minister will stand—and I'm not going to go over the same questions but my question is: why employment? Alongside price stability and inflation target why employment as opposed to say GDP or GDP per capita which the Minister talks a lot about or where the level of currency is at at a particular time whether it's against the trade-weighted index or against the US dollar or against the Australian dollar or the renminbi for example—our trading partners—or whether it should be something else that is important to the livelihood or the well-being of New Zealanders?But the Minister has chosen employment and I know why he hasn't chosen GDP or GDP per capita or immigration or any of these other things and it's because the Reserve Bank Governor can't control those things directly or even slightly—indirectly—because those things are a consequence of a whole lot of other factors. They're a consequence of policy they're a consequence of business confidence and they're a consequence of global economy and global confidence.So my question is: why full employment when full employment—that factor that number—is a derivative like those others of a whole bunch of other stuff whether it's employment policy whether it's industrial relations or particularly whether it's the amount of immigration that we have coming into New Zealand? For example a loose immigration policy should see increasing unemployment and a lower employment rate. That hasn't been the case but one would expect that to be the case all things being equal.So my question is: why employment instead of all these other things when the Reserve Bank Governor cannot control the rate of employment? He cannot control what an employer is thinking when the employer takes on another employee because that is what affects the employment rate. The employment rate is only affected by—it has to be affected by—the employer. They're the only ones that can change the employment rate because they decide on whether to take someone on or not. As I say all those things that go through the employer's head before they take on an employee affect employment. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) and the setting of interest rates is only a sliver a very small fraction of what is in the employer's mind.So I think I can say that I've demonstrated that employment is not a good measure for the RBNZ to measure itself when and we've already talked about—even if it was this is not about the conflict that those two things might have. This is just about the fact that employment in my view is just an inappropriate measure when particularly we want incomes per capita to rise—put that in as a target.The second question is: what is full employment? It's already been touched on. David Carter talked about it. What is it and what happens when it gets to 72 percent? Is the economy necessarily too hot and do we need to raise interest rates because of that? But that would be a mistake. If imported inflation was higher and if deflation was occurring in the economy because of lower offshore prices that would be a mistake. So that demonstrates the conflict that the RBNZ Governor has when measuring those two factors and we still haven't heard which is more important. Is it price stability and targeted inflation or is it the employment rate? I'd be interested to hear from the Minister.