Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Can I firstly just start by congratulating James Shaw on having this bill pulled from the ballot and also Dr Graham on his bill. It is a good feeling and I want to acknowledge the hard work. It is pretty obvious from reading the prefatory notes to the bill and the explanatory note that a lot of work has gone in over a long period of time. I know that it makes reference to the Sarkozy Commission" which was a while ago although he had another tilt recently—it did not work out that well. But I just want to acknowledge the hard work.Let me start at the outset of this speech responding with the first speech for the Government by saying that I agree that GDP is a flawed measurement of a country's progress. I think that is broadly acknowledged now—Ron Mark: Stop using it then.CHRIS BISHOP: —and actually Mr Shaw made mention of lots of different—Mr Tabuteau "the Professor" says: "Well stop using it then." I am about to come to why—Ron Mark: No he didn't. I did.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh sorry it was that noted economic scholar Ron Mark. I am about to come to why we continue to use it. I think that is broadly acknowledged. Mr Shaw made mention of The Economist magazine and lots of other august international institutions and actually the New Zealand Government itself recognises that. Treasury for the last few years has been developing the Living Standards Framework which the boffins and people involved in that area get very excited about. I think it is sort of Economics 101 for the reasons that Mr Shaw said. You know if there is an earthquake in a town and you rebuild the town like what happened in Christchurch GDP goes up but have you actually improved the quality of life? Well obviously not because you have had a town destroyed and you have to rebuild it. At least when you look at the numbers it looks like things are getting better but obviously you are just replacing lost wealth. You are replacing lost stock and lost GDP.The reason we keep using GDP is that it is hard to find alternatives that encapsulate as much as GDP does. You can admit that GDP is a flawed mechanism but you can also accept that it is something that has use and has value and that is why as a Government—that is why Governments around the world continue to use GDP.Let me advance three reasons why I think this bill should fail tonight and I want to advise the House that the National Party will be voting against it. Firstly I think it is arguably unnecessary and Mr Shaw actually made reference to a few reasons in his own speech as to why you could say that the bill is unnecessary. The Government actually already measures a lot of the things that Mr Shaw wants to measure. So if you look at schedule 1 which inserts new schedule 8 "National Sustainable Development Indicators"—there are seven indicators and then I think 38 across the seven sub-indicators—a lot of the stuff is already measured. We have been having a debate in the last few weeks about water and there is a whole section which is clause 4 of new schedule 8 about water indicators. Actually the Government is strengthening the regime around water-quality testing and water indicators.There are air and atmosphere indicators biodiversity indicators and energy use indicators for example in clause 6 of new schedule 8. The Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment—the former Ministry of Economic Development and before that the Ministry of Energy which has long departed—has regularly published statistics about the total primary energy supply per capita energy intensity of the economy and renewable energy as a proportion of total energy supply. That is well measured and has been for a large number of years. It is published in the New Zealand Energy Quarterly each quarter and it is published in the annual publication put out by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.That is before you even start to talk about the Environmental Reporting Act which Parliament passed in 2015. It came into force last year. It is a very very robust form of environmental reporting with the measurements worked out by the Government Statistician and then audited by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Actually that filled a gap in New Zealand's statistics regime because New Zealand was the only country I think in the OECD to not have a robust independent separate environmental reporting regime. We had a bit of debate in the House around how robust it was and whether the Government Statistician should be involved and things like that. Some members have different views but I think broadly there was consensus that we came to about the right space on that—that it fills a need and that we have done it. We have got the OECD report card as well which came out I think just a couple of days ago—or certainly this week—which measures a lot of the different things that the Green Party and James Shaw want to advise.The first point is that a lot of this material is captured already and it is published. Transparency is important sunlight is the best disinfectant and all those clichés. It is published. Mr Shaw made mention—he actually admitted all of this but he said that we need to import it into the Public Finance Act. I have got to say that his reasons for why we need to import it into the Public Finance Act I found less than convincing. So I guess in one sense it puts it all in one space and I suppose there are some advantages to having it all in one spot so that you can literally pick up a document and say "Here it all is in one space." rather than going from website to website and things like that. But that seems a reasonably flimsy reason to do something I have got to say. So I think this is unnecessary.The second reason I want to advance is that I do think some of what is being proposed to be included in the Public Finance Act is inappropriate and I say that for two reasons. One is that there are too many. There are seven indicators with 38 or 39 sub-indicators and then there are five or six—sorry 10 principles. That is new schedule 9 inserted by schedule 2 and these are the "National Principles of Sustainable Development". That is a lot to report on. I know that might sound like a trivial complaint but actually I think when it comes to things like the framework that our public accounts system relies on the framework by which the Government reports to the Parliament and seeks the appropriation of public money to run the Government it is important that you keep those things as simple and as clear as possible and there is just a lot of material. I think it would result in hopelessly confused reports. So that is the first reason about why it is inappropriate.The second reason is that in some ways some of these indicators are really important but some are by comparison trivial. I am not saying that they are unimportant; they are all important. Greenhouse gas intensity native land cover lake water quality—those are important but some are more important than others but they are all treated the same in the bill and they would all be treated the same in the Act. So for example is it really true that packaging waste recycling which is clause 7 of the sustainable development indicators—Simon O'Connor: Which clause?CHRIS BISHOP: Clause 7(3): "Packaging waste recycling." So it is measuring on an annual basis the amount of packaging waste that is recycled. It is important but is it really true to say that it is as important as for example lake water quality or groundwater quality? I think you could legitimately have a debate about that but the point is that the bill proposes that they are essentially of the same value. I think that in some ways the bill proposes things that are really important and things that are trivial by comparison and that is why I say that it is therefore inappropriate to have these things in the Public Finance Act.The third thing that I would say is that I think it does in some ways undermine the purposes of the Public Finance Act. There are some highly political statements in these principles particularly in the principles—highly political statements that both sides of the House I think would contest. And you only need to look at for example principle 4 in schedule 9 which is about precaution. There is this quite strange phrase here. I want to read it out: "Rejection of a lack of full scientific certainty as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the environmental degradation or restoration of ecosystems …" Quite apart from using about three negatives in the one phrase the concept of the precautionary principle is one that is contested.What this is actually saying is that we should not be too scared about a lack of scientific certainty as a reason for not doing things. Actually usually it is the Green Party that advances the precautionary principle as a reason for not doing things. It says that the science is not clear on genetic modification for example even though we had an entire royal commission back in 2000 set up by the Clark administration to look into that and it concluded that it was safe with safeguards. But the Greens say that we cannot do it—we cannot let GE into the environment. It says fracking is not safe even though we had the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment do a full investigation. Steffan Browning has turned up and we have Steffan who says that homeopathy is something that we should do as a cure for Ebola and things like that. So the Greens do not have a great record when it comes to science as a basis for rational public policy.James Shaw: Oh yes we do.CHRIS BISHOP: I have just named three examples: fracking genetic modification and homeopathy. So I think it is highly contested the idea of precaution which is in principle 4. For those three reasons the Government will not be voting for this bill."