Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): I want to rise and take a short call on this bill as well because the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill at its third reading is an important one. And I'd say my colleagues I think have made it very very clear as to why we're opposing this bill over several readings of this legislation that's been coming through. I guess we have concerns around several things and the first is the changes that this reform makes. Unfortunately the fact is that all of our amendments that we were talking about that could have addressed our concerns have not been supported at the committee of the whole House stage. I guess there's sort of four big concerns. The first is really that reforms of this nature—to one of our most significant economic institutions—shouldn't really be taken lightly. It is National's view that the Government could have worked in a much more consensus cross-party manner in putting these changes forward. The bill is as you all know the second of three bills that the Minister of Finance is trying to take through the House to reform the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act and that is the first time in fact that our legislation for this critical institution has been reviewed in over 30 years. Therefore I do think it is important that we look at these reforms that we make sure they are enduring that they last. It is therefore regrettable that cross-party consensus hasn't been taken because ultimately what we do not want happening is we do not want every time a new Government comes to power that we go and upend and open up and recreate a whole bunch of new legislation around the Reserve Bank. That's not good for New Zealand and it's certainly not good for the Reserve Bank. We were as we've talked about over several readings now quite comfortable with big parts of the bill but we do have serious concerns in several areas and I think the first was that the bank's traditional objective that it is efficient has been omitted here. And we really believe that efficiency should be part of the core charter of what the Reserve Bank is about. I think also the New Zealand Bankers' Association in their submission said as much as well. Efficiency is a really important objective for a prudential regulator there's no doubt about that. We see that all around the world. We believe it is equally important that the bank pursues a financial system that's both stable and efficient and that's important because trying to get the balance right between efficiency but also having enough dynamism and innovation in the system such that we can see innovation from the regulated financial sector is a very important thing. I think the other big concern that we've had and colleagues have spoken about in some detail is that one of the bill's more significant changes is in fact to the Reserve Bank's governance arrangements. The bill creates an executive board responsible for all the financial policy decisions of the bank and it vests all those functions and all those powers of the bank in the bank other than those with the monetary policy committee which has been how we've historically managed it and which are currently invested in the governor and will be vested in the new board. National fundamentally believes that if you're going to have an executive board responsible for all financial policy decisions of the bank there should be some basic technical competencies that each of those members of the governance board or directors should have. That includes some basics around understanding of financial stability understanding of prudential regulation macro-prudential policy and certainly crisis management and resolution. We believe the Parliament should be given more oversight over changes to the bank's monetary policy remit. I guess the other big concern that we have is that we believe there should be a much better mechanism to allow the Minister of Finance to manage the risk of the Reserve Bank activities that could negatively impact the Crown's financial position. We would have required I think the Minister of Finance and the Reserve Bank to agree between themselves a capital and a financial risk management framework and that would have been to ensure that the Crown isn't just picking up a position that the Reserve Bank takes. So Madam Speaker in our minds we think it's a real shame that there's an enduring piece of legislation here that is setting the Reserve Bank up for the future and it should have been done in a cross-party consensus way. We do think efficiency as a measure of the purpose of the bank is important to have had in it and we also believe that the governance arrangements and the changes to those mean that we need to make sure that people who are put on those governance boards have a set of skills. Finally we think that there's a risk framework that needed to be created between Minister of Finance and Reserve Bank to manage that. So it is disappointing that National's very very constructive amendments were defeated and we regret that we must oppose this bill.