Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I am very pleased to speak on behalf of the Green Party on the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker Rt Hon David Carter called it fluffy nonsense. I think that shows National's very narrow approach to economic matters. It's not really interested in economic policy that delivers a healthy environment. It's not interested in economic policy that provides for people's wellbeing. Economics 101 is that oil spills like the Rena in New Zealand and the Exxon Valdez they lead to an increase in GDP because of the economic activity around cleaning up the oil spill. But do they enhance the wellbeing of people or the wellbeing of nature? No. This is why this bill is important because it is going beyond the narrow gauge measure of GDP to look much more widely at how our economic policies benefit New Zealanders and benefit our cultural life and benefit the environment.The bill has a long history in ecological economics. I recognise the work of Kennedy Graham who when he was a member of this House drafted a member's bill the Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill that then passed him to the name of James Shaw was introduced pulled from the ballot in 2016. But the former National Government voted that bill down because it prefers just to rely on measures like GDP. It wasn't concerned that under its economic policy we saw the number of people who were homeless rise. We saw poverty amongst children rise. These are the sorts of measures that Treasury as the Minister of Finance has noted when it develops its report on indicators by 2022 can potentially include as measures of wellbeing.Kennedy Graham with the sustainable development indicators bill had talked about measures like land use indicators the amount of land being used for farming soil health nitrogen and phosphorus content on the soil levels of nutrient pollution in our waterways what our emissions are what this bill provides by grounding the whole Budget process on wellbeing indicators is enabling work that is done to measure the number of people who are homeless children who are living in families below the poverty line to measure the state of our environment through the work that the department of statistics or Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry for the Environment do in providing environmental reporting to look at how our economic policy delivers against those indicators. Is our economic and fiscal policy leading to an improvement in the wellbeing of New Zealanders?The economy is a subset; it's a tool for promoting human and environmental wellbeing. It is not having people in the service of the economy as National proposes with its dismissal of this legislation as being fluffy nonsense. It shows that National is only concerned with the narrow economic indicators. It is not concerned with people's wellbeing which is why this Government has to be re-elected because we care about New Zealanders. And because that has been the basis a wellbeing response to the COVID-19 pandemic ensuring that this Government's investment in businesses the economy and in nature delivers for all New Zealanders delivers for our economy and delivers for people. National would dismiss that. They just want to go back to the numbers and not looking at how the economy serves people and Papatūānuku. The Green Party supports this bill and I commend it to the House.