White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Mr Speaker. I am really pleased to take a call on this bill because I was on the Finance and Expenditure Committee as it was going through and it was something that I learnt a lot about and I really enjoyed learning about because it was really a story of great success and security for the country and it started with Sir Michael Cullen setting up this fund. I want to end where my friend and colleague the Hon Deborah Russell ended which is with the people who this will impact on the people who work really hard and get worn out.But I want to start at the beginning because it is important that the fund wasn't set up with this particular mechanism in it because there was a cautiousness about the situation. Those Guardians have done a good job of being independent to making prudent choices and they've built up a fund. They've basically frankly run out of things to invest in in lots of ways without being able to move to a controlling interest. Now there's some really good things that happen when you have a controlling interest with regard to other investors. That's one thing I learnt in the process of looking at this bill was that other investors will come alongside if the Guardians throw their weight behind and invest in something. That makes sense. The Guardians do due diligence they come in they're a very stable investor and so other investors will be attracted to things that we need in this country—infrastructure etc. So I do think there's an element of double duty going on here when other investors can come along and invest behind the super fund investing in something and we can have investment in our own needs in this country while growing the wealth of the country.Now that kind of long-term view of the super fund is something that I do need to set in a context because it's not always been like that. This particular fund has not been treated as as valuable as it should have been at certain times. After the global financial crisis there was a freezing up of investment by the Government in the super fund. Now if we had kept investing there would have been $20 billion more in this fund today. We would have been so much better off as a country as a result—$20 billion. The fund is about $70 billion now. So $20 billion is a fair whack if we had kept investing at that time. I hope that the lessons have been learnt. It's not a case of blame really; it's a case of really understanding that this is a very important fund and we need to treat it with respect. We never need to do that again because we've got an ageing population and we have a fund here that is a taonga and we need to protect it and look after it.So I'm comfortable having been on the committee with the changes that are being made and the cautiousness. I take the comments that were made about how we should not be standing in this House and deciding what the fund invests in. But I'm also confident that the Guardians have taken a really long-term view of those investments and a responsible one and that the approach that they've taken—I'm heartened by the comments of Matt Whineray in 2017. I'd just like to remind the House of those. He said at that point when they were divesting out of fossil fuels when they stopped doing that he said we think climate change represents a material risk that is not being properly priced into the marketThat means that the people and the Guardians in the fund have priced in that risk. They have thought about it they are thinking in the future and I wonder whether from that we could do well as a Government as a Parliament to learn the lesson here. These investments that we make in fossil fuel—when we restart things like oil and gas—we are taking a dreadful toll on our communities because these are risky investments. They're not sound. I doubt very much that the independent guardians will be investing in any such investments; they will be making sound judgments. I'd love to see them do things like a dry dock which would help the Auckland Harbour get cleaner and it would help the Whangārei community. I'd love to see them get behind. But it will be their decision and they will make a prudent decision. I'm very happy to commend this bill to the House.