Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Mr Chair thank you very much. So as you've indicated this is the part that deals with financial and accountability measures. The first part of it is the requirement upon the Minister of Finance to issue a financial policy remit. This is an important part of the bill in terms of matching the monetary policy remit process with the financial policy remit. This is about making sure that there is a remit containing matters that the Minister considers desirable for the bank to have regard to in relation to achieving the financial stability objectives; essentially looking in particular at the way it furthers the purposes of the prudential legislation and the bank's prudential functions. It is important to note that the earlier reference that was made in the debate—and I can refer back to Part 4 just briefly—to the independence clause Mr Woodhouse's view that we were talking about a particular person or a particular Act is quite relevant in the case of this financial policy remit because part of that would be preventing for example a Minister of the day wanting to target a particular bank for the way in which they were doing their work. That would not be possible via the financial policy remit but rather that it would be around how to achieve the financial stability objectives that are contained—and the prudential functions of the bank. I regard this as a very important step forward in the way this legislation works. We need to mirror the monetary policy remit with a financial policy remit. That's the evolution of the Reserve Bank Act. Since 1989 more functions have been taken on by the Reserve Bank within the financial stability space within the prudential supervision and standards space and it is appropriate to have an agreement between the Minister and the bank around the way in which they go about that work and the bill provides the process for the contents of the process for its creation.We also cover under this part of the bill the funding agreement issue and I know that members have had some discussion about this and the way in which a funding agreement works. The bill provides that process for finalising that agreement giving the bank a long period in which it has certainty of its funding—five consecutive years as it's laid out in clause 206(2) is important. The bank can get on with its job of doing what it should do without having to unnecessarily move through the process of a funding agreement. But there is obviously the ability for that to be understood and reviewed and those agreements have to be published and presented to this House under clause 208 of the bill. I don't believe there's been any change there in terms of the determination of an annual dividend from the bank which is again the Minister determining that on the basis of discussions with the bank. That continues as we are now. Then there are the various accountability documents that are covered through this part: the statement of intent in particular which is familiar to those who've been Ministers or who are Ministers now and that process is laid out somewhat exhaustively through the bill; the statement of performance expectations—again familiar to all those who deal with Government agencies and Crown entities; an annual report and the provision of that annual report and its provision through to indeed this House. I should also mention subpart 4 which was the question around financial risk management and the importance of a statement of that; a statement of prudential policy which is also provided here as well. So these are all important accountability measures that the bank has always had. They are tweaked and enhanced in this part as well as the role around financial policy and the accountability for that.