Williams PotoHon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Madam Speaker. It might surprise you to know but I have been waiting for 30 years for this piece of legislation for the changes that this brings out. In all my years in working in the community sector and all the conversations that we have had one of the biggest I guess handbrakes on our ability as a sector to fully effect our ability to work with the people who come to us and to work with the causes that we hold most dear has been the Public Finance Act. Why I say that is for a couple of reasons.When somebody comes through your door as an NGO and they bring with them the myriad of issues that come with them and you have access to a dollar of health and a dollar of justice and a dollar of education funding to support this person but in front of you they have all the complexities of a modern person. There may be issues of income there may be issues of housing but the ability to actually cater to that person's needs in relation to your Government contracts has seriously hampered your ability to deal with the person that's in front of you. You have not been able to deal with the important needs that they have and actually effect good outcomes. So in many ways we have been totally missing the mark with our Government funding in terms of supporting the community sector.So we are now better able to see that person and actually acknowledge the issues that they present and actually work much more closely to their needs because we are thinking about their wellbeing and because we are thinking about outcomes as opposed to accounting for those dollars from the pūtea that they have come from. We've created an ability to work across Government organisations. We've created the ability to work across ministries and actually see the need in our community. And it is about wellbeing. It is about wanting to move people into a different space. It is about wanting our communities to thrive and to survive. And the important thing here is we've set this up using two frameworks.So in Treasury they've got the Living Standards Framework which looks at all of those wellbeings—social wellbeing they look at human wellbeing financial wellbeing and natural wellbeing—and match those against all the other current wellbeings that we look at which are things like civic engagement cultural identity environment for example and actually move us into a space of resilience. So Treasury has invested in these wellbeings. We overlaid that with the five priorities for the Wellbeing Budget which are about taking mental health seriously improving child wellbeing supporting Māori and Pacific aspirations building a productive nation and transforming the economy. Together Treasury and Government have created a framework with which we can look at our wellbeings and address the issues that are presented to us in the community sector. It is a really important day for us to be celebrating this. My desire around the community sector and our engagement with civil society as a Government is that they could become much more an equal partner and be able to drive Government policy. The only way to do that really is to allow them some power in this relationship; allow them equality and actually be able to talk to us about what they see on the ground because what people in the community sector see on the ground is an accurate reflection of what we as a Government should be putting our resources into if we're wanting our nation to thrive and survive. So I see this as a really important first step. There is much more to be done and I know that the Minister of Finance signalled that in his speech earlier in this debate. I for one am looking forward to seeing those other pieces in the wellbeing puzzle come together to give us an absolute clear pathway forward so that our communities are engaged with their Government are driving Government policy and we can fully deliver on what we know is the best for our nation. Thank you Madam Speaker.