Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Madam Chair. So at the Finance and Expenditure Committee throughout these annual review processes we heard from—as has been well-elucidated by other speakers—the likes of the Reserve Bank and the Treasury and the Minister himself. For those who are at home paying attention to this debate in the Chamber today it makes a bit of sense to outline the difference between monetary and fiscal policy. So monetary policy is the stuff that the central bank does in New Zealand that is the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and when it comes to fiscal policy that is of course the responsibility of the Government of the day.Now all of this is important when we consider the annual review of 2020 because COVID-19 delivered us an annual review that was like no other. As the Minister himself has recognised it is a one-in-100-year kind of event. I want to recognise as in fact was put on the table throughout that annual review process with the Treasury and the Minister that the Government here did intervene the Government here did a number of things that we were told for so long by subsequent Governments were impossible economically or politically or otherwise in the form of housing the homeless or providing flexible working arrangements for parents or people with disabilities offering a rent freeze and also the likes of the wage subsidy. You also saw the Reserve Bank of New Zealand fulfilling its mandate as outlined in legislation to ensure financial sustainability and that secondary function—which was put into law by virtue of changes made by the last term of this Labour-led Government with the support of the Greens and then at that point in time New Zealand First—for maximum sustainable employment.I put it to the Governor of the Reserve Bank Adrian Orr whether he thought that he had achieved—and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand had achieved—those two aims. He outlined that they had. I then put to him that whilst going about achieving those aims by virtue of a policy known as unconventional monetary policy—that is to wash the market with as much cheap lending as possible—that had unintentionally led to an exacerbation of inequality. At the point in time that we were having these annual reviews we had Official Information Act documents coming in from the likes of Stuff's Thomas Coughlan which demonstrated that in fact this is something that the Reserve Bank and the Treasury was well aware could exacerbate wealth inequality and particularly in this country. Nowhere perhaps is that more prevalent than in the housing crisis. In fact as we ended up seeing played out throughout 2020 house prices increased by 25 percent.I guess the question that I have for the Minister—noting that subsequent to these annual reviews we have started to see some forms of intervention being announced most notably the suite of tax changes. But in the context of wealth inequality in Aotearoa New Zealand that sees the top 10 percent of this country owning 59 percent of the wealth and the bottom half owning just 2 percent of the wealth—and how we know that that wealth inequality can serve to compound itself but we have the added context that 2/3rds of wealth in this country is held in housing. We have now Labour Government Ministers formerly Opposition MPs on the record saying things such as and I quote or paraphrase that our economy was at that point in time—they saw A housing transaction with a few other bits tacked on the side". I ask the Minister whether there is any envisioned other forms of fiscal policy intervention that he sees as necessary to ensure that we move away from this continued entrenching and exacerbation of wealth inequality in this country.Again I want to acknowledge that there has been some movement on this but as the Minister I'm sure will be aware of—and his colleagues that I know are familiar with the works of the likes of Thomas Piketty the French economist—there is still so much to do. In terms of the rhetoric to build back better is the Minister not only considering obviously building those great projects but also contemplating how we can have greater distribution of wealth and particularly the wealth that is produced in this country?"