Jones Shane: Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Morena Mr Chair. Without wanting to protract our deliberations the record of Parliament must show that this side of the Chamber supports the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Bill. Although it deals with a very technical area the underlying theme is common with what we said yesterday in relation to improving the quality of administration and the safeguards around the broader elements that comprise the commercial sector. For those reasons the Reserve Bank is viewed by us as being a very suitable location from which the prudential powers should be located and exercised. 
The difficulty as I recall hearing from Mr Garrett is that from time to time if insurance companies are not adequately supervised they will be like a host of other commercial institutions and be prone to whim fancy or whatever passes as the mood in the investment community—that which is enjoying vogue at that point in time. These are very important institutions and indeed a number of speakers earlier in the debate made reference to the fact that insurance companies are critical to their lives because they have a type of insurance that they are entitled to gain access to if they are without a job. I do not fit into that category because I never imagine that I will be without a job. The difficulty may be that I am not paid for the job that I end up with but such is the life associated with assuming a role outside the paid workforce. My relation Hone Harawira and I can speak at length about those matters. 
Of course the deeper problem that I have alluded to earlier in relation to this bill is that we are applying another responsibility to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act but we are not dealing with the underlying writ of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act which a number of my colleagues have referred to publicly. That is if we are to promote an export-led level of growth if we are to promote—[ 
Interruption 
]—perhaps a type of lashing is needed. My train of thought was disturbed not only by looking at Mr Foss but by the whips ringing Dr Blue. 
Craig Foss 
: You’re looking for guidance and expertise. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: No I can rest assured. I will repeat what I said yesterday. Out of  
The Wizard of Oz 
 comes the story of someone looking for a heart another person looking for a brain and another looking for courage. I will leave Mr Foss to determine which of those qualities he seeks in his political career. However let me come back to the deeper problem which is the ambit— 
Paul Quinn 
: Are you going to do that 58 times? There are 58 of us. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: I accept that Mr Quinn when he originally heard the story did not quite know what I was talking about but he did pick up on the reference to Gonzo the Muppet. However the broader challenge in terms of the responsibilities of the Reserve Bank concerns whether we have the right mix of focus in our current monetary policy over which the Reserve Bank has an exclusive level of authority. That largely is its writ. 
We look forward to actually engaging in a broader debate beyond the refinement of the prudential obligations that the insurance industry should observe which will be located in the Reserve Bank. But at a broader level if the current Government is good for its word and is interested in fostering an export-led economy I ask it what ideas and remedies it has to deal with the volatility and the current arc that our currency is going through. I want to know whether it is time for monetary policy which has been in place for 20 to 25 years to be opened up and debated in a very robust way to see whether it can play a more useful function in relation to advancing an export-led recovery. 
There is a real contrast between the type of sophistication that has been brought to the economic area by the current Government and that brought by the previous Labour Government. In changes of this nature broadly the current Government has built on what Labour did in its time in office. We were particularly interested to ensure that we laid down the broad architecture for those policies whether they were savings policies or measures to improve the institutions that really are the pillars of our commercial communities such as insurance and the administrators’ insurance. This Government over the last 18 months in the absence of any radical or sustainable ideas about how to grow the economy has ended up exhausting energy and time both on cutting taxes and on other issues.