Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour): What a sad indictment on this Government that the very first piece of legislation they bring to the House is not to look forward to take the country forward; it is to take away a focus on jobs by one of the most important actors in the New Zealand economy. It stands in stark contrast to what happened in the first hundred days of the Government in 2017 where we passed legislation to increase access to paid parental leave where we passed legislation to create the winter energy payment and the Best Start payment where we moved to make sure that there was legislation so that New Zealanders who lived in rentals lived in healthy rentals. That's what you do when you've got a bold progressive plan of action.But what you do when you've got no ideas whatsoever is that you fall back to some kind of Milton Friedman - style dream that actually we're living back in the 1980s. Well we're not—we're not. We're living in the 21st century where we need monetary policy and a Reserve Bank that has the tools and the apparatus to be able to do a job that is equivalent to the times.We were told numerous times by the Prime Minister and others that this would be a Government who would present to the House and to the New Zealand public evidence-based policy. Yet at every turn over the course of the last many hours that we have been in this House debating this legislation no evidence has been presented that this piece of legislation is necessary. Because at every turn when the Minister of Finance was asked to provide that evidence to show that the Reserve Bank had somehow or other taken their eye off the ball of inflation because they had a dual mandate she declined that. She talked about how it could happen or it might be possible but it didn't. The Reserve Bank Governor himself told us that—that that is not what occurred and in fact the focus on inflation was resolute in a global inflation crisis.So that is also where this piece of legislation falls down because on the logic of the Government inflation should have been higher in countries with a dual-mandate central bank and lower in countries with a single-mandate central bank during the recent global inflation crisis but that wasn't true. In New Zealand and Australia both of which have central banks with dual mandates inflation peaked at—we have a prop—7.2 percent and 7.8 percent respectively. But in the United Kingdom a central bank with a single price stability mandate inflation peaked at 11.1 percent. Or in the Eurozone where you have a central bank with a primary price stability mandate it peaked at 10.6 percent. So no evidence there that there actually was a relationship. Actually it was a global inflation crisis.Equally no relationship between the speed at which central banks responded depending on their mandate. The New Zealand central bank the Reserve Bank was one of the fastest and quickest to respond in the face of this crisis. Also no evidence provided that the Reserve Bank didn't understand that there were trade-offs to be made if in the future those two ideals conflicted with each other.It is worth noting at this point the complete misunderstanding of the Government of what maximum sustainable employment actually is. It's written for the benefit of members opposite in the Reserve Bank's monetary policy framework. As defined by the Reserve Bank maximum sustainable employment is the highest utilisation of labour resources that can be maintained … without generating an acceleration in inflation". So it's already built in to the definition of maximum sustainable employment that it shouldn't undermine the work that the Reserve Bank is doing to control inflation. So no evidence presented to this House that actually there's any contradiction whatsoever. The only conclusion you can draw from that is that the Government doesn't care about people being in jobs and it doesn't care about their wages rising and it would rather prioritise a narrow ideology from the 1980s than actually support working people.It also ignores the virtue of having a dual mandate. It was covered a number of times during the debate that there has been an example in New Zealand's recent history where having a single mandate arguably caused the Reserve Bank Governor to take actions that in fact would increase unemployment. So even though we had inflation running at about 1.5 percent the then Reserve Bank Governor in 2014 Graeme Wheeler decided that this was a good time to start a monetary policy tightening cycle. Unemployment was at 5.6 percent. And that's the risk—that we put ourselves back in that position where a Reserve Bank Governor myopically focused on one objective misses the rest of it.It's always been about making sure that prices are stable but what we did was modernise the legislation so it actually spoke to the higher and wider purpose of monetary policy. I note that the Government didn't change the purpose section which we put in in 2021 which continues to say that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act should have as its purpose the wellbeing and the sustainability of the New Zealand economy. So we've set that higher purpose. They haven't changed it but they've come along and changed the objectives the things that you do in order to achieve the purpose and narrowed them down. So you've now got an inconsistency there but beyond that inconsistency you've lost the opportunity for the Reserve Bank to be given that role of making sure we're talking about maximum sustainable employment we're talking about jobs and keeping people in jobs.The thing that's got New Zealand through the recent global cost of living pressures and the spikes in inflation and the increases in interest rates that followed from that is because people have been in work. That's what's got us through this. If we hadn't have had the low levels of unemployment that we've had in New Zealand in the last few years we would have seen waves of mortgagee sales. We would have seen a far deeper impact.So keeping the eye on the ball on inflation? Critical. And the Reserve Bank did it. Keeping the eye on the ball of keeping people in work and making sure they've got money to be able to put kai on the table—that matters too. Every single part of the economic apparatus of Government should be playing its role in that. And today the Government decides Kiwis' jobs don't matter. That's what they've decided with the change that has been made today.The other claim without evidence throughout this debate has been that this change will magically improve the cost of living situation for New Zealanders. We even had members opposite in the debate in the first and the second reading saying "pass by Christmas and the cost of living for New Zealanders will improve". Absolutely no evidence presented on that. In fact some very big claims from the Minister of Finance. Just latterly one of those was that she was going to eliminate inflation entirely. Good luck with that. But secondly in the House yesterday the Minister claimed that inflation would go down quicker under her Government as a result of this legislation than had been previously projected. Well we will be holding the Minister to account for that claim. Inflation is indeed forecast to be coming down as we would expect and as we would hope when the Reserve Bank is doing its job. But nothing in this legislation is going to make that happen quicker. The members opposite are selling New Zealanders an untruth here because they are claiming in this House that they are passing legislation that will reduce the cost of living by Christmas according to some of those members opposite and that simply is not going to happen.So this first piece of legislation in the journey backwards that has been taken at rapid rate by this Government sets a very unfortunate precedent. The next bit of legislation attacks the wages of the lowest-income people. The bit of legislation immediately after that attacks the climate action programme. And this piece of legislation says that this is a Government who have got their priorities wrong. They are deciding actively to undermine efforts to make sure that we focus on jobs—the things that New Zealanders value so much. It is a depressing start from a depressing Government who only want to take us backwards. This is a bill that the Labour Party strongly opposes."