Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to talk about Part 1 clause 8(5). This is How movement in CPI determined". Now the reason I have some concerns about that is that the Consumers Price Index (CPI) is obviously a very important part of determining what happens with a whole lot of indices and where they go in dollar terms etc. But when I read this it says the number that "For the purposes of subsections"—blah blah blah—"a movement in New Zealand Consumers Price Index over a period is determined by comparing the following numbers:". What it does is it talks about the CPI for example "the number that when … started was the most recent quarterly index number of the New Zealand [Government] Price Index all groups …".But what it does is exclude cigarettes and other tobacco products. The thing I do not understand is that if we are going to have a CPI that excludes certain items then why would we actually just confine that to tobacco and cigarette products? I doubt it is because we have got a whole spate of robberies in South Auckland at the moment that are caused some say by tobacco and cigarette products. But if we look at various sectors of our economy then I would have thought that what you would also do in this if we do not want to queer the proverbial pitch—why would you not exclude house prices for example? House prices are all over the place. We have had house-price inflation that has been as high as 20 percent in some areas and now we are here—it is flattening out. You could argue that in the CPI calculation here that house prices do not actually mirror what is going on in the general economy in a way that even tobacco prices do.It may be—and I am not too sure why and the Minister in the chair Scott Simpson is a very intelligent man and he could probably elaborate on this because I am a little lost on this. Why would we exclude just cigarettes? It could be because Parliament actually has the ability to regulate at any point in time on cigarette prices. We have done this. I think the last time we had urgency or we actually went into—is it called "super urgency" the really high form of urgency?Chris Bishop: Extraordinary.STUART NASH: Extraordinary. Thank you very much Mr Bishop. It is where we just ram it through straight away because we know that if we do not there could be some gaming going on or some leveraging going on or arbitrage. So we knock it through before anyone knows what has happened.I wonder whether tobacco is excluded because Parliament has the ability to do that or I wonder whether it is excluded because the Government actually is thinking about doing this again and it knows that an increase in tobacco is not because of what is happening in the general economy it is actually because the Government has decided to push through legislation. It can do that of course when the economy is booming and the CPI is rising or when the economy is on a downer and CPI is dropping. But in fact what happens with tobacco is that it increases against all the trends. So I am not too sure whether that is the reason or not.But if that is the reason then I think what you could argue is that anything that the Government has the ability to regulate—i.e. increase prices on—you would exclude. We could do this with petrol pricing for example—petrol prices or alcohol is another one. There is a call at the moment from some quarters to increase excise tax on alcohol which being from Hawke's Bay—wine country—I would hate to see. But why would we not exclude something like alcohol? Why would we only exclude tobacco? It could be that that is a historic thing and it is there because way back in 1957 when Nordmeyer included the price of tobacco and alcohol they said: "OK. When we're doing the CPI in legislation we must exclude tobacco." I am not too sure but because it is in the legislation there will be a good reason and we know that. But I am just not too sure what it is. So perhaps the Minister could let us know why the Government has excluded tobacco and other products and whether it is simply because of that ability to legislate the price up and down and it usually is up. Or is it because we want to discourage people from buying tobacco and so a lot of programmes in place may in fact again distort the cost of tobacco from the CPI?I must admit it does seem strange. When we are talking about general indices through any legislation let alone this piece I cannot remember another time when we have actually excluded something as overtly as this. We often do have debates in the Finance and Expenditure Committee about whether house prices should be excluded because they do make up such a big part of CPI and household pay. The CPI is of course the Consumers Price Index. Housing can have quite a distortionary impact on the economy. But it is a good question that I would not mind having answered."