Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It gives me pleasure to speak to He Puna Hao Pātiki 2018 Investment Statement: Investing for Wellbeing. Despite what we've heard I think everybody agrees that this is a very good document. This is the second time this has been done in four years and it actually paints a very strong and positive picture.The total Government assets of $314 billion against liabilities of $197 billion mean that our total net value is $117 billion in Government assets and the Superannuation Fund and that's around $24000 a person. And actually that is a very good result. For a public sector and for a public entity and for a Government set of books that's a really good result and that is a 97 percent increase in assets since 2009. In a time when we went through the global financial crisis (GFC) the massive Christchurch earthquakes and even the Kaikōura earthquakes the increase in that value of those assets is significant. I do want to take a little bit of time to talk about the New Zealand Superannuation Fund which the Minister of Finance commented on—how good it is that contributions are now being made. The simple reason that contributions were stopped was because of the GFC and the pressure on the Government's books brought about by the Christchurch earthquakes some hard calls had to be made—calls that any business in New Zealand would make. We're now through that process. The books are looking incredibly good thanks to nine years of a National Government and there is some money to invest. However if you look at the net worth of GDP—so the value of these assets is about 30 percent of the net worth of GDP—there were some interesting comments made by Treasury and I want to flesh this out further. When we questioned how this related to international comparisons they said simply We're in a good space." but that was their instinct not their knowledge and I actually think as we go forward we need to get better and we need to transfer to measurable results against other countries to know how we stand.In this document and in the Treasury briefing they talked about stress testing—stress testing the financial resources and capability of our balance sheets in New Zealand to deal with shocks like the GFC and like the Canterbury earthquakes. But in this case they've measured against a Wellington earthquake foot-and-mouth and another GFC. We questioned some of the assumptions about that in Finance and Expenditure committee and actually I'm left with thinking that more work needs to be done. We have the ability to manage one of those shocks at a time but Treasury clearly told us that if more than one occurred that would really stress us. So in the new fiscal testing theory that they are using and the regimes they're using most of the financial investment decisions will now be measured with a fiscal stress test in them. They will measure them against what the likely shocks are in the next five to 10 years and that'll be part of a new tool.I do listen to the other side with some interest when they talk about what happened to debt what has happened to property and how it was being looked after and I do question whether if they were in the same position over the last nine years going through the global financial crisis and the Christchurch earthquakes they would have actually made any real different decisions. You see the housing stock in New Zealand has over 25000 houses that are over 50 years old 38 percent of schools are over 50 years—they weren't decisions that were made in the last nine years. Successive Governments have allowed an under-investment in long-term thinking.I come from a background in local government where in 2002 the Government introduced legislation for local government to look at long-term asset management. I actually think this paper and this document and the thinking will lead the Government—no matter what political party—to go down a similar path. As we try to make New Zealand more resilient I actually think this is a very good second effort and with refinement in four years' time I think we'll have a far better long-term understanding of where we're placed."