Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour): Mr Chair thank you very much for another call on this part which is an important part—the title and commencement. I want to focus this call on a different matter that I haven't raised before and that is the question of Royal assent. So just to be absolutely clear here the bill will come into force according to clause 2 on the day after Royal assent has been granted. Now the process of Royal assent in New Zealand is long established—it's one that most members of the House will be aware of. And when the Governor-General who would be giving Royal assent in their role—on behalf of the King—comes to consider this piece of legislation they will be asking themselves the questions that we on this side of the House have been asking and that is: is it appropriate to sign off a piece of legislation that has come forward and at no point in the debate on the legislation has there been any evidence provided as to its necessity?Now the Sovereign will obviously—or the Sovereign's representative—take very seriously the fact that this Parliament has debated the matter. But there are actually debates in Parliament in the past that have covered this question around whether or not there is an automatic requirement essentially that Royal assent has to be granted.Well I would suggest that in this particular case we've got a very good example of where a bill has not had any evidence to back it up. It hasn't gone well.Hon Members: Aww!Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well no. Members opposite argue and interject in my speech—adding to the need for it—that perhaps evidence has been provided. On every occasion in the earlier parts of this bill when we asked was there evidence that the Reserve Bank had taken their eye off the ball of focusing on inflation because it had a dual mandate—every time we asked for that we didn't get an answer. We got it could" "it might" "it's possible"—we never heard evidence. So the actual purpose and reasoning of the bill is not supported with a commencement date as currently listed in clause 2. The other matter that I believe would be given serious consideration as to whether Royal assent should be granted is the fact that this bill has gone through under urgency.Now I accept that bills go through under urgency on a regular basis in this House. There are a variety of reasons for that but there are particular types of legislation that one would want to be very careful about putting through under urgency and therefore if one were in the position to be granting Royal assent under clause 2 of the bill one would want to consider. And in particular this legislation—the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 2021—is at the heart of the way the economy is managed in New Zealand. It's arguably of constitutional importance because the Reserve Bank is an independent institution and when Parliament comes to make decisions about changing aspects of it serious consideration needs to be given to the views of the public and the transparency. So when one is making a decision about when this bill should commence—and we have options on the table amendments that are there that can be taken up by the Government to give some space and time in the absence of that select committee process.When the changes were made in 2019 to move to this position we took this piece of legislation out on the road in draft form for people to understand—actually it was before the draft but we took the concepts out on the road for people to understand. There were many submissions and a lot of discussion. A bill was then drafted and then it went to select committee and public submissions were taken on it. So if we're thinking about when a bill should commence it should commence after all of that has occurred and that is what is being offered there: the amendments on the Table that suggest either going to 1 December 2026 or taking an extra 18 months—or indeed having an independent expert panel come in. Those options must be the ones that the House takes up because actually we owe it to New Zealanders for a matter of this seriousness that it does get a matter of proper public scrutiny it does have some transparency associated with it we do hear from experts in the field—otherwise we are placing the person who has to give Royal assent under clause 2 of this bill in an extremely difficult position. There are alternatives to commencing this in the haste that the Government is and I urge them to take those alternatives up."