McClay Todd: Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Amending Primary Function of Bank) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
McClay Todd: Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Amending Primary Function of Bank) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5950. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 The last speaker in the debate right now David Cunliffe said a reasonable person when presented with new information would change his mind. It reminded me of seeing Mr Cunliffe on television last night. You know who it was who said that? It was his leader David Shearer. But would Mr Cunliffe on TV3 news last night stand up and back his leader and say that he supported him and agreed with him? Not at all. When presented with new information he did not change his mind. He scurried back to the same place that all those plotting against the leader on the Labour side scurry to. 
You see the problem we have—and I rise to oppose this legislation the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Amending Primary Function of Bank) Amendment Bill—is that whilst Labour the Greens and New Zealand First are trying to talk down our economy and promote money printing and more taxes this National Government is getting on with the job of responsibly managing the country’s finances and helping build a more competitive economy and a more productive economy. 
Mr Cunliffe said investment growth and jobs—that is what they are all about. Well guess what? The economy grew by 2.6 percent over the last year. It is one of the fastest rates of growth in the OECD in that period of time. That is growth. Labour would love to get rid of that. The Opposition parties do not like hearing this but the simple facts are 2.6 percent growth and interest rates and inflation are the lowest they have been for some time. A family with a $200000 mortgage is now saving $200 a week in interest costs alone compared with 2008 when we came into Government. 
The Opposition parties want to sweep that aside and have got all sorts of new ideas about how we can fix some of these problems. Mr Parker said earlier that 30 years of policy to keep inflation low has been working. Now he wants to chuck it out so inflation rates will go up again. He liked it for 30 years but now in Opposition he has changed his mind and does not want it any more. 
We heard about growth in jobs. Well here are the cold hard facts. New jobs are being created in New Zealand. Almost 60000 more New Zealanders have jobs now than 2 years ago and our manufacturing sector is actually growing. What did we see last weekend? We saw a rushed summit of political parties from the Opposition—some of their friends in the union movement came in to fill a few seats. There were more seats empty than there were full at that meeting—a crisis we had in manufacturing. We have not heard anything about it this week have we after that? Not one question in the House. In fact the first question in the House about jobs and growth in jobs came from the Government to our Minister. 
Our public finances are improving. The deficit has halved over the past year so we can return to surplus sooner. This is something that the Opposition the Labour Party has all of a sudden adopted. Yes it wants to get back to a surplus now as well. The bill before us would put these things at rest. It would send inflation and interest rates soaring and there is absolutely no reason for it. 
As for the latest idea from our opponents the Greens who seem to be leading the Opposition on the other side of the House printing money can only be described as wacky. What would this mean? Let us think about a year or two from now if New Zealanders were unfortunate enough to have a change of Government. We would see the Greens printing money Labour spending money and Winston denying any knowledge of it—and good on him for that. If I were him I would keep well away from that other lot as well. You see if printing money was a way to fix problems in the economy I say to the Greens photocopying carbon credits is going to fix climate change as well. It is absolutely wacky. 
Our economy is not in crisis. Mr Parker raised the example of a couple of countries in the world. Let us look at those. Let us look at a couple of these examples—Japan and Switzerland. The Reserve Bank published a paper earlier this year that looked at intervention by the banks of Japan and Switzerland and the relevance of that to New Zealand. It noted that the currency intervention in 2008 has largely resulted in financial losses for both the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan and they have been ineffective at lowering their currencies. Since 2008 the Swiss franc has actually appreciated by 27 percent against the euro and by 15 percent against the US dollar. Since 2008 the Japanese yen has appreciated 29 percent against the US dollar and 37 percent against the European currency. 
Thank goodness we have a National Government that is focusing on what is important. Thank goodness we are working hard under disciplined conditions to get this economy back on track. And thank goodness we are not supporting this legislation because the cost to New Zealanders of inflation that would run away in higher interest rates would be devastating. Thank you.