Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's really timely to have this debate particularly today since the Finance and Expenditure Committee had the Governor of the Reserve Bank in on the Monetary Policy Statement from yesterday which ties in quite well to this report.The long-term fiscal position and the long-term insights reports have been prepared. Treasury prepare those documents and they report to the Minister of Finance and it's quite interesting actually that the Auditor-General has recommended that Treasury consider whether those two reports should be put together as they are or not. It also made some recommendations about how they could more effectively incorporate public feedback in the preparation of those documents. They also wanted to test the sensitivity and reliability of their models and the assumptions used in the models to inform those reports and also wanted to better reflect the impact of the superannuation fund assets in the calculation of debt. I think that's a really important point. One thing that we know with accounting is the way you represent numbers can influence how people think about the comfort they feel with debt or not and I think that was really a sound recommendation from the Auditor-General.It was interesting in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic and I think one of the things we have to remember when we're thinking about the pandemic is that it's not so much the virus itself but how we reacted to it that caused the fiscal issues for New Zealand that we're now living with still today—and taking your advice about not getting overly political I'll leave it at that point. But I just want to point out that the way that the lockdowns affected retail trade and accommodation sectors was quite disproportionate to other sectors. Farming for example was able to continue on. They were able to work and go about their business. Supermarkets were able to remain open and trade whilst their competitors—butchers and fruit and vegetable shops—weren't able to stay open. So there were quite disproportionate effects on that group in society. As well as that there was a disproportionate effect on young people. We're seeing that now in the outcome in education and attendance at school—Māori Pacific peoples and women. So that is borne out in all the statistics.Also debt is a problem and that's because of the large-scale asset purchase programme that the Reserve Bank undertook in that period. They vastly expanded their balance sheet and in fact the Crown underwrote any losses that they would incur from that purchase. All of those things are not related to the virus but how we reacted to them and I think they will have long-term financial implications for New Zealand. What's happening today will impact on New Zealand—not all the way out to 40 years perhaps but certainly a long time into the future.There was a lot of talk in the report about debt which actually nicely ties into our discussion today with the Reserve Bank. The papers suggest that New Zealand's debt should be around 50 to 60 percent of GDP with a buffer of 20 percent at least. So we're looking at 30 to 40 percent and in fact what the Minister of Finance has said is that she's aiming for a debt range to GDP of 20 to 40 percent. That gives us a huge buffer—not a huge buffer but an adequate buffer for the shocks that we experience such as the likes of COVID-19 although I hope that we have learnt a lot of lessons from the way we reacted to that and don't go for lockdowns that have far-reaching impacts. So I think these debates are very worthy and I commend it to the House.