White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to take up the debate about the concern that we haven't really fleshed out the ideas behind the decisions that have been made and that there is a rejection—as I understand it—of the amendments which try to do that and try to lock in some of the value systems.I recall the Minister talking about orthodoxy" and I wanted to ask some questions around that; what she meant by "orthodoxy". Because orthodoxy can mean many things. My understanding is that economic policy is a social science in some ways: it's a strong belief system that sits behind economic views and so there is more than one economic pathway that is rightly called part of the science of an economist. One of those would reject the idea that employment is important at all and it would go with austerity for example. And I can see the tail of Graeme Wheeler fitting into that where the tool was used crudely and caused a lot of harm.And I also am reading at the moment Mariana Mazzucato's works and I've just read The Value of Everything. And it's incredibly powerful because it's important to consider new ways of thinking in economics. If this was being discussed in select committee those economists and those economic views would probably have come forward and they would have been part of this debate—and we would have talked about the pros and cons of each. But I'm concerned that that debate hasn't been had and in fact words like "orthodoxy" tend to cover words like "austerity" which actually do terrible harm in our society and in fact increase the gap between rich and poor and devastate groups of our society which are already alienated; already under pressure. So I want to know really what the Minister thinks—and I'd like to say I've been remiss in not congratulating the Minister publicly on her position either and I congratulate you for it. But it's a great responsibility the role of Minister of Finance and it's really important that we know what the Minister thinks when she says something like "We are just adopting orthodoxy." What does she mean by that—and is that inconsistent with new economic thinking which is after all based on the lessons that we have learnt in economics since the 1980s? These are thoughts that are not right-wing or left-wing in particular—they're based on the experience that we've had and the greater economic divide which is of concern to us all I think. It's based on the commitment to representing those hard-working people we've all said we care about so much; so there's a very very important link between work and economic wellbeing. I believe very strongly in that link and I would love for the Minister to talk about what she means when she talks about orthodoxy—but also why she seems to be rejecting these very important amendments which seek to commit to something which I think is a value we should universally hold: the balance of making sure that when we make these big monetary moves in the Reserve Bank we're not forgetting the harm that they can cause. I also was interested in a comment that the Minister made about what the role of monetary policy was versus the role of fiscal policy. I reject what she's suggesting there: that monetary policy somehow is divorced from affecting the plight of working people. In fact the whole point of it is that it is for making sure that there is a wellbeing of working people—and employment is a large part of that so it must clearly be an important factor and so I want to know where it fits. Fiscal policy certainly has been very effective as a contributor but monetary policy cannot be rejected as a major contributor. So I would ask the Minister to answer that question."