Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): When we look at this document the 2018 Investment Statement on the face of it it looks somewhat tedious—just like a set of accounts a set of numbers a set of perhaps decisions to be made. But it's the subtitle of this document that carries the real interest—the subtitle of this document that tells us what we are really about here in Government and that is Investing for Wellbeing. I find this an absolutely fascinating document because it so clearly links the numbers the figures the assets and the liabilities with our real purpose here which is to invest for the well-being of our nation and of our citizens.What I want to talk about is why this matters—why it is important that we talk about well-being; why it's not just a word. You know I was listening to our colleague Mr James Shaw before and he talked about how I think in the late 1990s he was working at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London and they were starting to work on how to measure some of these aspects of well-being. I found that very interesting because at the same time as Mr Shaw was doing that in London I was studying philosophy here in New Zealand and then again in my doctoral work.In that study of philosophy I read in particular Aristotle and the Stoics and many of the ancient accounts of the good life. There was an account of the good life there with a word that they used to sort of talk about what the good life might be. It was a life of Eudaimonia—a Greek word. As a Greek word it can be translated into English. Sometimes it gets translated as happiness" but that doesn't quite capture it. Sometimes it gets translated as "flourishing"—the flourishing life the life well-lived the life where potentials are explored the life where people have the capacity to engage in the world.Now look the ancients often had an inwardly focused account of the good life. It's really only in the later Stoics—people like Marcus Aurelius—that they started to have a focus on what it might be for a society to be a flourishing society. I think we can use both those ways of look at looking at the good life both for individuals and for society.What is it to have the eudaimonic life the flourishing life? Again the ancients had an answer that I didn't quite like some of the time. They said the good life was the life of philosophical contemplation. I always thought that was nice for someone who had someone else to do the dishes for them. I always wondered who was going to do the work.But there is a broader account of it and again this one particularly comes from Aristotle that the good life is the life lived by the autonomous man—man—living in his home with his wife his children his servants. Secure with a place to live an income and activities that he was engaged in and being part of a community—that was the good life and the flourishing life. For Aristotle people who could do that—men who had those resources—were citizens of a society and of course that explains why women were excluded from citizenship.In the 21st century we think we are all citizens and we look to make sure that each and every one of us can lead the flourishing life can lead the good life can lead the happy life of engagement. The way we do this is by making sure that each of us as citizens has the resources—the assets the liabilities the income—and the social structures around us of the health system the education system and the welfare system in order to be secure and to live the life of well-being to live the good life. Once we can do that we can choose so many different ways to live. This is why I want especially my colleagues in the National Party to listen to this because a person who is leading the flourishing life is a person who is free to make choices to choose how they'll live their lives. Whether they like living alone or living in a community whether they like playing sport or playing the piano whether they prefer watching Jane Austen adaptations on BBC or Dancing with the Stars—and for the record Mr Assistant Speaker I do both—those are choices that a person who is free who is flourishing can make.This ancient account of flourishing was somewhat lost and in particular in the 20th century in ethics and in political theory there was very much a utilitarian turn a cost-benefit analysis a weighing up of one for one. Frankly if we just looked at the words "Investment Statement" that is quite a utilitarian statement very much focused on just the sort of straightforward cost-benefit analysis. But towards the end of the century we started again to have that focus on well-being that focus on what life could and should be like and so we turned from that row on row of figures into the rather more thinking about how we can live the good life. That's why it is so important to link resources with the outcomes.I think this document is absolutely fascinating because it so clearly and explicitly sets out to link the resources we have with living a good life with living that life of well-being. On page 5 of this Investment Statement we have an attempt at saying what well-being consists of for us. It says "Wellbeing comprises tangible and intangible aspects of life experience including housing income employment community engagement enjoyment of environmental amenity education and health and security." Aristotle would have been proud to see those words in a Government document in the 21st century.They are really important aspects of how we live our lives. Now this is not new work for Treasury but what I find really fascinating about this is that Treasury was already engaged in its work when it started talking about the four capitals—the four ways that we might think about our resources. Again here they are sitting on page 72 of this excellent document. We talk about natural capital human capital social capital and physical and financial capital. The work in this document expands and starts the work of expanding on those capitals until we get into a real sense of what well-being might be.So the question we have to ask ourselves is: do we have the resources to create the flourishing life for everyone? And this of course is where the numbers become important because what do the numbers tell us? Well in supplementary questions that the Finance and Expenditure Committee asked of Treasury we found that some of the numbers are telling us that we're doing really fantastically well. So for example when we compare our net worth compared to our GDP New Zealand does very very well compared to lots of other countries. So our net worth in terms of a percentage of GDP is something like about 38 percent. That's pretty impressive when Australia's is negative 19 percent Canada's is negative 31 percent and France is negative 130 percent. We're actually doing well in that regard.But the numbers do tell us some other stories as well—that we're not doing so well in some other respects—and in particular the social assets are a problem for us. We know that our social assets are run down. We know that those social assets that we rely on to provide us with well-being the social assets that matter to us in terms of whether we have housing and education and health—we know that there is a real problem in that social portfolio.But the housing portfolio—and this is on page 48 of the report—has aged with approximately 40 percent of assets older than 50 years old. The district health boards are reporting that their assets are run down or in poor condition and 38 percent of school buildings are 50 years old or more.We have run down the resources we need to ensure that each of our citizens has the capacity to flourish and that's one of the critical things that this statement tells us. So that's why it is really important for us to focus us on rebuilding our asset base in those social assets to ensure that each and every one of us—every child and every adult no matter where they live in this country—can live the flourishing life so that they can lead the life of well-being. I am so looking forward to seeing the future work that Treasury does on well-being—how to measure it; what it consists of—and I am looking to seeing those numbers linked to our physical assets our resources to ensure that we as the Government of New Zealand make it possible for each and every New Zealander to flourish."