Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm actually still trying to get over the irony of the Hon Judith Collins accusing Michael Wood of coveting another job. I think there could be a pot and kettle in there. In fact I've actually inherited a job myself at the moment. I'm stepping in today for our fine finance spokesman Fletcher Tabuteau—The Professor" I believe he's called by many for his economics background. He certainly calls himself that; I'm not sure if anyone else does. But the purpose of this bill as we know is to modernise New Zealand's monetary policy and its framework. New Zealand First has been a really strong advocate for this over time. The Rt Hon Winston Peters—as was referenced in the previous contribution—has been a strong advocate of this over decades now and we have been actually admirers of the Singapore model that also would take into account elements like the exchange rate that is so important especially to our exporters in our regions. We would like to see that incorporated within that model. But of course this is a coalition Government and time and again we bring our ideas to the table we panel beat them out and we come out with a compromise solution. And I think here we've made just one of those policy positions and I think it's a very sound first step anyway at least from our perspective but we're quite comfortable where it's ended up.Of course there's a dual mandate now which means we have to take on board not only price stability and inflation but we have to take on board the effects of employment. That is important because this Government has shown time and again with its policy framework that we are about people. We are about actually helping people. I would argue that the current model that has been championed I guess across the House as being somehow not broken—that's not totally true because there have been instances in the past. And I recall when Dr Brash was the Governor of the Reserve Bank at one stage in the early 2000s he did tighten too quickly and he did force a downturn in the economy as such and that had to be reversed quite quickly. So there have been instances where the governor possibly could have looked through some short-term spikes to more moderately take into account a wider view rather than just that narrow view of inflation.Of course inflation has not been the issue that it once was. The previous contribution going back to the 1980s—economies now are vastly different. Technological change has in fact changed fundamentally how economies work and productivity. We've been absolute witness to that. After the global financial crisis and to this day there have been vast quantities of money printed—quantitative easing—and that has not resulted in inflation anywhere around the world. Economies are fundamentally different these days. So I think we can afford—very safely actually—to bring in employment as a factor that mandatorily has to be looked at by the Reserve Bank.As a farmer—just going back to my farming days and I think this would go for a lot of farmers—we took a lot of interest in this sort of thing. I was actually stunned to hear the Hon Grant Robertson say that not all people are into monetary policy—surely they are.Hon Member: He was just joking.MARK PATTERSON: He must have been just joking because I can assure you that farmers take this stuff very seriously. Of course it's a high debt low margin business so retail interest rates—which of course are driven by the official cash rate—are hugely important to our profitability at the end of the year. Of course their effect on exchange rates which I referred to earlier is where New Zealand First would like to see exchange rates as well. Farmers if you're buying in for example store cattle or store lambs you're actually not just farming that stock; you're actually playing the currency markets as well—such is the effect of the interest rates and the wider macroeconomic policy. And those are real-world examples of why this stuff is really important.Of course New Zealand is a highly indebted country. While this Government has got the books in pretty good shape and we've got that debt as a proportion of GDP down to under 20 percent—we're about four years early I think meeting that target—private sector debt is still incredibly high in this country. I think housing debt is somewhere up around $260 or $270 billion—over a quarter of a trillion dollars and farm debt—as we heard yesterday when the governor presented to the select committee that I had the privilege of sitting in on for a while—is about $60 billion too. So there's a lot of risk there in our indebtedness as a wider economy. So what happens with monetary policy is incredibly important.New Zealand First is pretty comfortable with the moves to a monetary policy committee. I think having the current set-up where the governor essentially has the sole responsibility—that's a massive responsibility given the effect of those decisions on the wider economy as we've just been talking about. So having one person solely mandated for that—although I think what we're doing is probably just formalising what's actually already happening. You'd be taking advice from a wider array of experts both within and outside of the Reserve Bank. So we're essentially just formalising that and I think Grant Robertson in his contribution did a good job of explaining how that process would work. It looks to be pretty fair and robust to us at New Zealand First. So we have no problem with that policy coming in as it has.There's also a lot of transparency and actually just going back to that contribution to the select committee from the governor yesterday and the booklet that he put out it was absolutely outstanding just to be able to read it so easily. It really summarised the state of the economy and the risks that we face.In conclusion New Zealand First is very pleased to support this bill through the second reading. As I say we would probably like to bring the exchange rate in as a factor at some point in the future but we are very comfortable with our coalition agreement around this. It was part of that agreement. We're pretty satisfied with where that's landed up and we think it will be a superior model. Of course as outlined earlier it is the international norm now. You've got the Federal Reserve the Reserve Bank of Australia the Bank of England etc.—this is just standard international practice so I don't see the scaremongering that's coming from across the other side of the aisle as being in any way relevant at all. So with that I have much pleasure in commending this bill further to the House. Thank you."