Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Mr Speaker it's been interesting to me in the last few days—as I've moved about my home in Titirangi as I've come down here to Parliament as I've been out and about—the place feels pretty much like usual: cars on the roads people in the cafes retail functioning people at work. In fact were it not for the closed borders things would feel pretty much the same in New Zealand.Why is that? It is because this Government put the health response first. And that to me is a metaphor for what's going on with this amendment to the Public Finance Act. It's a wellbeing amendment and what it does is it says that wellbeing matters that measuring it matters that if we put that front and foremost in our minds we will get the rest of it right too because contra the previous speaker Paul Goldsmith we are not the servants of the economy; the economy is the servant of us and it's the servant of our wellbeing. That's what this bill sets out to achieve: that as well as having all the fiscal measures in the Budget as well as focusing on economic measures we will also—not instead of but also—have a look at wellbeing measures. And that is actually going to be tricky to do.I want to remind the Opposition and people listening at home that when GDP was first introduced our gross domestic product it was a controversial measure and it was disputed for many decades as to what exactly should be included in GDP—that at present some things that we value that have enormous value to us never make it into GDP. Famously Marilyn Waring has pointed out that women's work doesn't get counted in GDP that GDP has some extraordinary difficulties in it in terms of things like—the production of milk powder counts for GDP but breastfeeding a baby doesn't. So it's interesting what we do and we don't value. What we are trying to do with our wellbeing bill—it will take time to correct those things—is to add measures of wellbeing to what gets measured for the purposes of assessing the economy. I think that's a really important thing to do in terms of our Budget. So what is important to New Zealanders? What are we trying to measure through wellbeing? Well we'll work that out over time. We have got the starting place of the Living Standards Framework. We've got the starting place of Stats New Zealand indicators. They will get us under way. So that's a really important thing. Now I just sort of want to say here that—there is a quote I want to put out here in terms of thinking about what actually matters to New Zealand. So Richard Easterlin the recognised founder of wellbeing economics—he was just quoted by the previous speaker—says If you look at what has been done"—this is a really interesting quote and it really focuses on wellbeing—"If you look at the concerns that are most important for people's wellbeing it's three things: their job family circumstances and their health. The New Zealand approach involved a composite of attention to health and a job. So [what we did with] the wage subsidy income support for the people that did leave their jobs … meant that people did not suffer nearly as much as they otherwise would have." Again it was a focus of our Government's approach that was around wellbeing—and that's terribly important to us as we face the COVID threat.This is revolutionary work in a small and incremental way. Politics is a conversation. Economics is a conversation. The conversation over what wellbeing is—and how it should be measured and what we should focus on—will go on for years and years and years as it should as it should. But above all we'll be guided by the basics. And for those basics I want to refer to something that a great Labour Prime Minister said—Norman Kirk—and we quote it often because it is dear to our values: New Zealanders don't want much. What they want is someone to love somewhere to live somewhere to work and something to hope for. That is why I endorse this Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill."