Goldsmith Paul: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goldsmith Paul: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7952. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak on the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill and to follow the former Minister. I was pleased to hear that Labour continues to support this bill. This bill allows for the Government to meet its obligations as a member of the world’s financial institutions including the IMF. This Government believes that it is important to be an active participant in the international system whether it is being a member of international organisations such as the UN regional groups such as the Pacific Island forums or economic organisations such as the IMF. 
New Zealand is a small isolated economy in the middle of the Pacific all on our own. We do not have the heft the numbers and the size to boss the rest of the world around. We benefit enormously from effective international agreements and organisations as a global trading nation. We have the most to lose if those understandings begin to unravel. 
Of course it has been very concerning over the last few months and years when we have had a lot of concern about currency manipulation by various countries or the way that has been going. That is a very topical issue today and has been over the past few months. I am pleased that Labour is basically maintaining an orthodox stance when it comes to the IMF and our role there. 
 I am a little bit more concerned about where Labour is heading on some of the monetary policy side of things. I still do not quite understand what the leader—Mr Shearer I think his name is—Mr Shearer was talking about when he was going on about the change in monetary policy and about how he was going to change monetary policy which is what he said in this conference last year to target the exchange rates. I am not quite sure what he means by that. Does that mean that we are going to move away entirely from focusing on long-run price stability which just about every economist in the world signs up to as the thing that reserve banks can do? Or is he going to somehow shift the goalposts entirely and undermine the independence of the Reserve Bank and start to put political pressure on the Reserve Bank? If that is the direction that Labour is going I am concerned on that score but on this bill that we are talking about today at least we are maintaining a measure of bipartisanship and a measure of general economic orthodoxy. 
Just in one or two little details this bill here changes the articles of agreement in relation to the integral parts of the overall package as has been heard reflecting the changing relative economic weight in the global economy and that is no great source for depression. It is a source of optimism and excitement that over the past decade we have had this magnificent flowering particularly of the Chinese and Indian economies—rebalancing that. I am pleased that the IMF is responding to that and this bill gives the Government the flexibility to be part of a system that effectively recognises the shifts in the global economy. On that basis I commend this bill to the Committee. Thank you.