Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour): Point of order first Mr Chair. I'm very well aware having sat in the chair that the Minister is now in that one of the issues in the debates on the committee of the whole House is the question of new material and non-repetition. When a Minister fails to answer a direct question twice—in the case that's just occurred—Hon Nicola Willis: How many times you did that to me!CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The point of order will be heard in silence.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I want to be assured that coming back to material that the Minister has failed to answer is not considered by you as a presiding officer as repetition because the changes that were made to the Standing Orders to change this whole process of the committee of the whole House—our Government worked extremely hard on actually answering questions and I'd like some assurance that that is going to occur now. CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Thank you. I'll treat that as a point of order; however that is something for the Chair to decide. If the Minister in the chair does choose not to direct or respond to the questions that may well be something that we take into account were we to receive a closure motion.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Having asked the Minister twice now whether or not she received advice that when the dual mandate was actually in place that took the Reserve Bank focus away from inflation and her not to have answered that question twice it is clear that what we all know in this House is what the Reserve Bank Governor has said publicly which is that it didn't. They knew that their job right now with inflation spiking all over the world was to bring it down and it did not impact on them.When the Minister spoke before she used the words could" and "would be possible that it might happen". That's not Mr Chair with respect what I asked. What I asked was whether or not the Minister had been advised that there had been some kind of impact and the answer is no. And that's the fallacy that this part of the bill is built upon. I'll give the Minister a chance now to answer another question and that is whether or not she believes the Reserve Bank in doing their job on monetary policy should give consideration to the impact of monetary policy on employment.Earlier in the debate Chlöe Swarbrick said that she thought that the Minister had said that she thought employment should be part of the consideration; I'm not sure I actually heard that so I would like a clarification from the Minister as to whether or not she believes that there should be any consideration whatsoever of employment. We get the fact that the Minister doesn't want maximum sustainable employment to be one of the objectives. She's provided no evidence as to why that's a problem. In fact she's refused to answer the question twice now of whether or not there is any evidence that it was a problem. So we can take from that that there is no evidence to back it up.So then let's move to the next stage of this which is whether or not employment should be considered at all. Now I have to say that it would be a radical departure from monetary policy pretty much anywhere in the world to not consider employment at all. I get it; some people have this within their objective like the Federal Reserve like the Reserve Bank of Australia. Others have to refer to it: the Bank of Canada the Bank of England. They don't have it directly in there but they still think about employment and we are moving into very very dangerous territory if the position of the Minister is that employment and the consideration of employment has no role whatsoever because that then will take us to the example that I gave in the second reading debate of when in 2013 and 2014 we had a Reserve Bank Governor with the single mandate who simply believed that it was time for him to start lifting the official cash rate even though unemployment was up over 5 percent at the time.So I invite the Minister again in light of the ruling the from the Chair to answer the question of whether or not there is any actual evidence to back this bill up. It's not a "could" it's not a "possible"; it's whether or not it did do anything to way the Reserve Bank worked on inflation.Then secondly I'd like to know whether the Minister believes the Reserve Bank should be taking account of matters to do with employment unemployment or maximum sustainable employment when it is making its decisions.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The committee will resume at 9 a.m. tomorrow.Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)"