Foss Craig: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — First Reading 
Foss Craig: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:12634] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 First I acknowledge our coalition partners in the confidence and supply agreement which is where the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill originated in at least a legislative sense—I will touch on that in a minute. If I can be so bold it is great for our friends in ACT to be talking about their core business of lower taxation productivity and economic reform—perhaps more than some of the other issues we have been discussing recently. 
I had better make a couple of things clear. This bill is about not being afraid of debate. Traditionally some topics have supposedly been off the table. Well New Zealand actually needs to discuss some issues confront some issues and make some choices. For New Zealand to make those choices New Zealanders and various agencies have to be informed of the upside and the downside of the various decisions and priorities the Government—whoever the Government is at the time—is making. There is always a trade-off and those trade-offs tend to be the short term versus the medium to long term. Politicians often to fall into the short-term trap which is a mortgage and an expense in the long term. 
I will touch base on what the previous speaker Lianne Dalziel talked about. She talked about the origins of this bill. She may recall the report on the Inquiry into the future monetary policy framework that was done by the Finance and Expenditure Committee in 2007 and tabled here in September 2008. Charles Chauvel was chair and the majority was held by the Government of the time. The report covered much of what we are seeing in the debate today on this bill in terms of the inquiries for the Productivity Commission: inquiries into productivity-related matters one-off reviews for existing regulations reviews of the efficiency and effectiveness of regulatory agencies—that is risk and management—regulatory impact analysis on a number of proposed new regulations research into productivity-related matters to build up institutional knowledge within the organisation itself and promote public understanding of productivity-related issues. 
I will quote something from the conclusion of that very good report which the Finance and Expenditure Committee produced some time ago. This is why we need to look at productivity and at least put some of those decisions trade-offs and alternatives to the New Zealand public: “It is clear that increasing productivity in particular is critical to delivering non-inflationary economic growth. Such growth would boost the welfare of New Zealanders both directly by raising incomes and indirectly by providing resources for other welfare-enhancing activities. We consider that to the extent that it is consistent with the Government’s other objectives the Government should place a high priority on policy that supports the raising of New Zealand’s productivity performance. The weight given to these other objectives should also be considered in the light of any impacts they may have on productivity.” and it goes on. The conclusion is very important I think and members should keep it in mind as they are speaking: there is no silver bullet. 
New Zealand faces many issues and many challenges. For whatever reason we slid down to number 22 in the OECD. We cannot do much about changing where we were but we can change where we are going. As I said earlier some trade-offs from all sorts of sectors of our economy need to be looked at. 
I finally quote from the report: “There is no obvious ‘silver bullet’ that will ensure a substantial increase in productivity growth. We found that lifting New Zealand’s productivity performance will require us to get many different factors right.” As Minister English noted earlier this is but one of those dominoes that need to be lined up to be fixed to be addressed and to be debated with more information than we currently have. We need to strip out some of the political rhetoric and actually look to where we want New Zealand to go to and to how we can get there. I am sure that there will be a little bit of politics but I am confident that overall members will on the whole recognise some of the issues. The debate will probably end up in the political realm of how we get there and how quickly we get there and what political or economic trade-offs New Zealand has to make to start to regain its rightful place in the economic world. Thank you.