Jones Shane: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Jones Shane: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16353. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora anotatou Mr Chair. Such is the importance attached to the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill that it requires attention that is likely to take us into Sunday which will still be Thursday. This modest contribution is to reward the hard-working members on this side of the Chamber and to alert the members on the other side of the Chamber that when they play loose and fast with the rules of the House they can expect to suffer. 
I direct members’ attention to clause 3 “Purpose” which states that “The purpose of this Act is to—(a) establish the Commission as a Crown entity for the purposes of section 7 of the Crown Entities Act 2004;”. A number of commissioners will be created under the Crown Entities Act 2004. My colleague Grant Robertson has already drawn the Committee’s attention to the fact that one of the favoured sons of the failed ideologues of the 1980s and 1990s has already been appointed to lead what runs the risk of turning into a discredited organisation in very much the same way as Don Brash’s exercises with Dr Bryce Wilkinson and others have brought a great deal of opprobrium to those who are associated with trying to sensibly and credibly boost productivity and lessen the gap between us and our Australian cousins. 
The Productivity Commission derives its powers from the Crown Entities Act and it is evident from a cursory glance at that Act that commissioners are able to secure additional assistance—that is through associate commissioners—or secure resources to undertake studies or examinations that might be called for from time to time. When we think about the purpose of the Act we need to think about the people who will be there to give life meaning and form to the purpose. Under the current administration it is evident that the narrow cast of ideological activists that it will draw from makes us doubt whether this organisation will achieve very much at all. At the end of the day productivity is about people and to date there has been a huge degree of disinterest on that side of the House in actually investing in people. 
We have seen cuts—I mean hypothetical—but I ask whether productivity can be increased at the same time as starving the most vulnerable group of New Zealanders—that is the future workforce and their families—of the resources to ensure that they are suitably educated. How can we advance productivity whilst at the same time squeezing and starving resources from those avenues of the State’s resource base that are directed towards giving very good literacy and numeracy skills civic skills and social relations skills? All of that is actually being deprecated at the moment. It is a joke to think that we can create the Productivity Commission whilst at the same time not focusing on the building blocks of what is the greatest asset our country has. There is no productivity unless we invest in people. 
The nature of our people is changing. The school-age population is getting browner with more Pasifika tangata whenua Maori kids and Kiwis of Maori descent. There are also more children of Asian descent and more children from other ethnic minorities. I only hope that when the Minister moves forward with the Productivity Commission—fortunately it will be for a mercifully short period of time; the results of the next election will rescue us from this narrow-mindedness—he will take into account in terms of the qualities of the appointees such things as ethnicity and the experience of working at different levels of the economy not just at the big end of town. It is the big end of town—characters who thought they were masters of the universe especially in the financial community—that has brought us to our knees. When I hear the media raging about the most recent lapse of judgment in our world the Maori world I like to remind them that the last time I checked the $7 billion worth of wealth meltdown I did not see any runanga or hapu involved in that. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Did anyone say sorry? 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: No. Well they are unlikely to utter that because that requires a level of humility and modesty that we do not ordinarily associate with that end of town. 
Anyway I come back to isolating the point that when we establish a commission we have to focus on the quality and the range of skills that those people have. We need those who know about the emergence of entrepreneurialism and how to feed the culture of entrepreneurialism. We need those who are skilled in capital formation but most of all we need those who are skilled in what enables people to find a reservoir of enthusiasm eagerness and tenacity to continue to learn. 
When we look at some firms and companies—because we will need to take a micro look not a macro look—we will see that productivity-related matters will go down and we will have to consider the culture that exists between the owners of the firm and the providers of the capital. When we have a set of toxic labour relations and a set of rules that are squeezing further and further and increasing the pain on the labour force whilst not focusing on the obligations and the duties of the owners of the capital or the directors of firms we cannot perpetually make more miserable the providers of labour and imagine that we are to grow wealthier. 
We have seen a level of belligerence and hostility towards the leaders of the labour movement in New Zealand. We have seen it recently in terms of the treatment dished out to Helen Kelly in the recent episode to do with the give-away to the Hollywood billionaires. It is a timely reminder that a Productivity Commission will only be as good as the spread of people who occupy the positions. They must command respect in the eyes of the Ministers of the future. 
It would appear that the Savings Working Group comprising a number of notable New Zealanders has already lost a fair degree of confidence in the Minister of Finance the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers of the current Government because issues that it ought to be looking at—that is notions of compulsion types of obligations etc. in savings—have already been written out of the script. This suggests that this Government hears sees and senses something that does not immediately fit with its plan—and of course we all know that there is no plan. 
The Prime Minister I acknowledge was a successful currency trader and a pragmatist. So there is no coherent plan; there is just a haphazard set of disconnected events where the Government takes a position closes out and rapidly moves on to the next position. Unfortunately exercising stewardship over the economy as Mr Mallard and other members more senior than me will point out requires an overarching vision a strategy a narrative and whether or not we like it a plan. 
This commission will not advance any plan because we already know that the types of things it will look at come from a very narrow ideological straightjacket—that is that the State is bad and it must be shrunk. How do we shrink the State? We know that the Productivity Commission will be charged at looking at whether the State should be shrunk by shrinking revenue. Then once revenue in a macro sense is decreased the State has fewer options to take an activist role where the economy might be suffering from market failure inject a degree of public investment or ensure that the public interest is addressed. 
If the people who come into this organisation are disconnected from the way the vast bulk of small to medium sized firms operate and the way the vast bulk of New Zealand families live then we can rest assured that it will be a continual story of a narrow range of ideas being forced upon us and our families and that will just not do. 
In relation to what defines a productivity-related matter the Productivity Commission will look at private sector productivity issues public sector productivity issues and the economy as a whole. Well the economy as a whole cannot be understood by focusing just on economic rationalism because people are not just economic utility-maximising rats. At the same time they are social creatures so it is important when we look at productivity—and this will depend on the quality of the people coming forward—to take account not only of human capital but of natural capital. 
Part 1 agreed to.