Foss CraigHon CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki): First of all can I congratulate the member James Shaw on bringing the bill and using his experience in the private sector and perhaps his experience I think in the Young Nats along the way somewhere to try to apply some business-type prudent principles to his passions for things environmental. I do admire him for that and in fact the member—I am sure he does know there are many members on this side of the House who are of the centre-right relatively conservative who are also environmentalists. It is great to see the Greens finally trying to put up environmental-type proposals rather than some of the other stuff that actually turns so much of the public off and scares the bejabers out of them when most of us look to the Greens to come up with ideas in and around things environmental and to look after our wonderful environment. So well done to that member on that basis.I am very surprised that Labour is picking up on and supporting this because at the end of the day as discussed in the previous speech this is not a redefinition of GDP. GDP is simple. It is an economic measure of activity in an economy. What gets the attention is the change in GDP actually; not GDP itself—quarterly annually whatever it might be. It does not actually pretend to be anything else but it often gets misinterpreted as some kind of other index noting that there are so many other indices and metrics out there from NGOs from the OECD from the World Bank—the Happiness Index which someone mentioned earlier—as well as all the best places of doing business etc. So there are plenty of alternatives out there and even a New Zealand company or activity investing strongly in some environmental sustainable something or other actually gets picked up by that measure of GDP which does not pretend to be anything other than a black-and-white interpretation a binary interpretation of things that are going in the economy.And yes it has evolved over the years—that is quite true—as a couple of other members have alluded to but for example New Zealand is well down that track of recognising those other important criteria already. For example when I was in my previous role as Minister of Statistics we put in the Environmental Reporting Act. That should not be understated as to how important how independent and how transparent that is for reporting on the state of the key domains of the New Zealand environment.I also note—I think it is in the lead-in to the bill there—that in Cabinet paper after Cabinet paper after Cabinet paper if there are environmental issues or concerns the Ministry for the Environment and the Minister will make a strong representation about whatever those issues are. It does not actually matter whether it is a fiscally large spending paper or some other type of policy implementation or a choice that Cabinet has to make. Running through it there are Treasury reports there are Attorney-General reports if necessary and the Ministry for the Environment is already in there contributing to core legislation core Cabinet decision-making and therefore picking up things environmental.One other thing that we must note actually is where the Public Finance Act came from. It came from some somewhat dubious activities in the late 1980s and early 1990s—I cannot remember which Budget; was it the 1990 Budget—where the public accounts were let us say grossly inflated at the time. The Public Finance Act was amended to give transparency and accountability of this Parliament to the Government of the day whichever one it was and it is longstanding.So I am surprised particularly at Labour members—I know they have their environmental interests and concerns and I agree with those—trying to taint the Public Finance Act with other well-intended motivations. New Zealand needs to fund its way in the world as cheaply as possible. The moment the world sees us well-intended or not mucking around with the Public Finance Act which has served this country and its population so very well over so many years—that would have a lot of unintended consequences.So as my colleague Mr Bishop noted we are voting against this. I acknowledge again the intent and the work and the expertise of the member who is raising and sponsoring the bill here but we cannot vote for it at its first reading in its current form. Thank you.