Seymour DavidHon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Finance): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. In a rare burst of honesty we just heard a Green member finish her speech by saying this is a waste of time. I completely agree with her and that was a good description of the speech she gave.We heard from Grant Robertson and the most interesting thing in his speech was that he said he made it to seventh form—not something I would have guessed—but I think we can be pretty sure that he didn't do maths or economics because he tried to argue that because Australia has a dual mandate and England doesn't and England had higher inflation than Australia at one point the argument of removing the dual mandate is wrong. Now no one that's thought for a moment about these things would say that there's a correlation from two data points. But I assume that Grant Robertson spent his seventh form doing art history and other things that didn't equip him for being the Minister of Finance.Back here in the real world we know the history of monetary policy. In fact we know it a long way back. Some people say that men spend too much time thinking about the Roman Empire. I don't know anything about that but what I do know is that the Roman Empire collapsed in part because of hyperinflation and debasement of its currency.We know that some of the most horrific events of the 20th century were in part precipitated by hyperinflation across Europe. We know that when the Governments around the world went overboard with hyperinflation or at least excessive money printing after the global financial crisis (GFC) we saw political instability. We know that when Governments printed too much money and created stagflation in the 1970s we had economic and political instability that led to the reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s.What we know on this side of the House is that Government has one simple job when it comes to monetary policy and that is to maintain price stability. It's to give the people reassurance that a dollar in your pocket this year will be worth a dollar next year. And as soon as you take away that certainty people realise that their efforts don't make a difference that some people who are asset-rich get wealthy as the Reserve Bank prints too much money. They realise that their savings aren't worth as much as they used to be that their wages aren't worth as much as they used to be as the thief in their pocket called inflation erodes the value of their savings and ensures that their efforts to earn their money don't buy them as much at the end of the week.The latest episode in that long historical story of Governments neglecting currency from the denarius and the Roman Empire leading to its collapse to the GFC and the problems that we've had over the last decade with political instability and populist movements around the world—well they've had a more recent episode right here in New Zealand. Grant Robertson he of the seventh form art history but no mathematics—he is the guy who was responsible for printing far too much money under the monetary policy that said Hey Reserve Bank you don't have to maintain price stability. You can do it kind of in the medium term. You can kind of print more money. If you do something with employment or maybe house prices then that's all OK." The Reserve Bank took the initiative and they printed dollar after dollar. In fact pretty soon they were printing billions.What New Zealanders saw all up and down the country was they saw the value of their savings and their wages eroding. They saw people getting stupendously wealthy with a massive increase in house prices through the COVID period. And all of a sudden people realised that if the Government couldn't look after the value of a dollar in their pocket it couldn't do much else.That Madam Speaker is why the people of New Zealand have put the empty rhetoric of the Chlöe Swarbricks and the Grant Robertsons over there and put the Government over here. That's why the Government now in urgency is sending a very clear message that we know the lessons of history that we know the value of a dollar to the hard-working people who earned it. We're going to preserve the value of that dollar by making very clear that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has one job one job above all others and that is to make sure that the value of a dollar in your pocket today is worth a dollar this time next year or very very close to it so people can have trust in the State trust in New Zealand and trust that their own efforts make a difference.That's what it's about. Isn't it great this country's under new management that gets the basics right. Thank you Madam Speaker."