O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm very pleased to follow on from my colleague the Hon Dr Deborah Russell the previous speaker who pointed to the past and the direction of travel for this not back on track" but backtrack Government. The Minister spoke of economic orthodoxy or monetary orthodoxy and on the same day that we've been in lockstep with the Canadians and the Australians on a humanitarian crisis we seem to be moving apart when it comes to monetary policy. Because if we have a look at what Australia had proposed of course it had talked about a triple mandate. The recommendations that had come back on that review said no it should go back to a dual mandate that included a secondary objective which was of course employment. If we have a look at Canada the Bank of Canada is now required to actively seek a level of maximum sustainable employment. It's simply sensible logical and progressive to include more than a single mandate for monetary policy. That was the doctrine of the 1990s that did result in the kinds of manipulation of employment rates to keep inflation down and we do not want to go back to that.The points I made—and I appreciate I got ahead of myself a little bit on Part 1 but Part 2 is around ensuring that we have more than a single objective. Because people are in this House in Parliament and should be in Government even in a coalition Government that might be a muddle—they should be here for people for the multiple purposes that people exist and work in New Zealand not for the purpose of a low-inflation economy that is supposed to automatically deliver benefits for each and every New Zealander.Because the reality is if the Reserve Bank is to manipulate things to ensure that unemployment rises to stop any labour inflationary pressures—and that's an economic logical argument. That's the reality of course. And there'll be people who say that you know if we have full employment—and the coalition Government is saying that: if employment is part of this then in fact we may have pressure from the labour market upward that flows through to inflation. That indeed is a reality but so too is the opportunity to increase profits if you're in a part of the economy that has a monopolistic position where they can push up prices just because of the benefit of scale or lack of competition.Nothing is referenced in this piece of legislation to address some of the other pressures on inflation. All this coalition Government is attempting to do is to take away the focus of full employment as an objective for monetary policy.Well I would like to—and I heard on the hustings from many people across the other side of the House that we want as many people working as possible and 100000 people who should be working who are not working should get off their backsides and go and work. That's what I heard. And yet this Government has come in and one of the first pieces of legislation—in fact the first piece of legislation—is to remove the objective in the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act to try and get that to happen. That is to make sure that monetary policy a core framework for our country has as part of its objective employment as well as low inflation.This is a backtrack piece of legislation and I am horrified that we're running counter to economic orthodoxy not buying into it when countries like even the US but in particular Canada and Australia have more than a single mandate because they understand that monetary policy must work for their people. And it should work for the people of New Zealand not just work for the economy. What is the economy? What's it here for? It's for the people the people the people.This piece of legislation is a backtrack one and I wish to see my amendment supported by members on the other side of the House."