Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Well it's that time of day on a Thursday afternoon and it's good to have some invigorated speech from across the House. Thank you to the member Andrew Bayly. However—Dr Deborah Russell: I thought you meant Paul Goldsmith.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Oh well Paul—sure yeah. However it's just quite interesting you know to hear speech after speech after speech from the Opposition lamenting on about how any changes to this Act—which was of course crafted and drafted and thought up at a time where I think I was barely born; some of their members weren't even born—because we are looked at with broad support across the world must result in doom and gloom. And I was having a think sitting here going you know I think that's what a lot of New Zealanders got pretty tired with at the last election with these guys—that they just think that the status quo is OK and that that's enough and that's as aspirational as the vision gets for our country. Well I'm sitting at the moment behind the Hon Minister Little who is making some radical transformations in the justice sector—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Come back to the bill please.Alastair Scott: She doesn't know what the bill is about.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Yes we do. We debated this for—Alastair Scott: Come on start talking about the bill.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Thank you. No I actually really enjoyed debating this bill with your colleagues many of whom are in this House and we had some exceptional submissions over the course of time and we received great information. But what I do want to note though is that I think it's important to look at the amendments that are being made in this bill in the context of what this Government is doing across the board and that is really focusing on some—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): We will report back what was said at select committee. We will not traverse outside of that bound. The second reading speech is about reporting back—KIRITAPU ALLAN: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): —so thank you. Could you put that within that context thank you.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I appreciate the direction. What is happening here—look and you'll know from yes the discussions that we had in select committee and much of the debate that's come out this afternoon—is there are two key amendments that we are changing in this bill. There's first of course the dual mandate and we've heard immense discussion about that from across the House and of course the second is establishing the monetary policy committee. But I'd be remiss if I didn't refer to the remarks that have come consistently from the Opposition that these changes that the Hon Grant Robertson is proposing to make to the Reserve Bank monetary policy are in some way devoid of any thought or aspiration. The dual mandate is nothing new. Globally it's nothing new. I don't know why members opposite are struggling so hard to grapple with the fact that you have got an exceptionally competent group of people at the Reserve Bank and exceptionally competent people that will be appointed to the monetary policy committee that can actually make these determinations keeping in consideration both maximum sustainable employment and price stability. This isn't rocket science and this is stuff that happens all the time. What we're doing is providing regulatory amendments that expressly state what in some ways is already occurring. I'm struggling with the rationale from across the House this afternoon.We've heard a whole range of debate too about the role that a non-voting Treasury member will have when they sit in on the monetary policy committee discussions. Well that just seems to be pragmatic and to ensure that there's consistency between the Reserve Bank and Treasury making sure that they're getting the best information at the right time to be able to provide that to the relevant ministries. I don't understand why you would want to prohibit or encourage silo thinking. It seems redundant. It seems of the last century which was when this Act was developed.So I don't have a lot to contribute to this debate. Minister Robertson has set out the key amendments and my colleague Michael Wood spoke to some of the nuance but I would just encourage those opposite to just get a little bit more chirpy. The stuff that we're doing over here has been pretty well received.