Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well the night is yet young. I want to just start by framing what I'm about to say that there is a layer—or multiple layers—of irony with which we approach this bill. I wanted to just pick up some of the points that the Hon David Seymour made in his speech. He did spend quite a lot of time talking about the proposed new ministry of regulation or deregulation—or whatever it's going to be called—which is of course how he intends to spend the money that he's saving from the disestablishment of the Productivity Commission.But the debate tonight isn't about whether or not we should have a ministry of regulation or deregulation and whether or not that's a good thing. The debate tonight is about the disestablishment of the Productivity Commission and so we should look at that entirely on its merits and whether or not that's a good idea. We can have a debate subsequently about whether it's a good idea to establish a new ministry but the two things are actually distinct apart from the financial flow from one to the other.Now I note that the Green Party opposed the establishment of the Productivity Commission in the first place because we thought that it would be a neo-liberal anti-regulation stalking horse which would shape future Government policy. I did say that this was going to be a speech laden with irony! So having now had the experience of working with the Productivity Commission in Opposition and in Government I just wanted to look at some of its advantages and some of its disadvantages.It has as the Hon David Seymour said actually done some really good work. Some of that we disagreed with in terms of the slant of it; some of it we agreed with strongly. I wanted to mention in particular the fair chance for all" report—we think it was superb. It also did a very substantial piece of work under Steven Joyce called "towards a net-zero economy for New Zealand" which actually provided a lot of the basis for what became the zero carbon Act the Climate Change Commission and amongst its many recommendations suggested a feebate scheme for electric vehicles which became the Clean Car Discount. So one of the ironies of course is that the Clean Car Discount was established by a Labour-Green Government on the recommendation of a neo-liberal stalking horse set up by the ACT Party. And of course that Clean Car Discount is also being disestablished by the parties who established the commission that recommended it in the first place. So it is kind of Kafkaesque how we're entering here today.One of the big disadvantages of the way that the Productivity Commission was designed of course was that there's no requirement upon the Government to respond to its reports. It did some very very good work but because its findings were very inconvenient to the Government of the day—and it was largely ignored by both left and right Governments for many many years and there was no requirement for those Governments to respond—a lot of the time that good work just fell on deaf ears.When you set up an establishment which says "How do you improve productivity in the country?" and we kind of know what the answer to that is but the answer is very inconvenient to the kind of cheap imported labour and record untaxed housing speculation - based economy that we have—then the Government of the day is not necessarily going to be interested in doing what the Productivity Commission says because that would be against the vested interests that support the Government in the first place.So that is one of the disadvantages of the way that it was established. But on balance now that we've seen the work that they've done over the years we actually think that it would be a shame to disestablish the commission because it does mean that there will be less research and informed debate on complex issues facing the country. In our mind if you were just to look at it on its actual merits we would suggest that there would be improvements to the legislation governing the Productivity Commission such as a requirement on the Government to have to respond to its recommendations and to require Government agencies to respond to its recommendations.So in conclusion the Green Party will be supporting the continued existence of the Productivity Commission—despite the fact that we opposed its establishment in the first place—because it wants to do all of the things that the people who established it don't want to do. Thank you very much."