SpeechHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Mr Chair Part 3 of the bill takes us to the core functions of the Reserve Bank—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order. Mr Chair what does your most recent ruling mean?CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I think the member's been here long enough that questioning—Hon Gerry Brownlee: I'm not questioning it.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Can you let me actually make a ruling? You know the rules. I have made a ruling. By rights you know a member who is as experienced as yourself who then comments on that ruling is he knows out of order.Hon Gerry Brownlee14Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order Mr Chair. As you know rulings like that become part of the Standing Orders of the House so far as order is maintained and a debate is participated in by the members. Now in most cases we can go to Speakers' Rulings or to the Standing Orders and we have in those adequate opportunity to consider exactly what those printed and published orders and rulings mean. This will be a ruling that now features in the Speakers' Rulings 2021 but we don't get that until the beginning of 2022. It's not unreasonable for a member to stand up and say I accept that you have made a ruling. What does it mean?"CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I disagree with the member's characterisation of what's just happened. This is not a new situation. I have accepted the closure motion the vote has been put that's the end of the matter.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Part 3 of the bill today takes us to the core central bank functions of the Reserve Bank and outlines those in a way that is largely familiar to the legislation as it currently exists. It runs through the obligations of the Reserve Bank to formulate monetary policy. Obviously it now does that through the monetary policy committee. That was a change made in the first of the three pieces of legislation that make up the reforms of the Reserve Bank that the Government has been working through this term and last term. It covers off the remit for monetary policy. This was the process that in the last piece of legislation replaced the policy targets agreement which was formerly the way in which the arrangements between the Government and the Reserve Bank on monetary policy were set out. We now have a monetary policy remit for that purpose and clauses 118 through 120 go through the content of that.There was some debate on the question around whether or not a monetary policy remit or amending it requires an Order in Council. The advice and the advice that I accepted and that the Government accepted was that at the moment we have to have advice on the remit every five years regardless of whether it's been amended and essentially that the Order in Council process was disproportionate to the substance of the remit which doesn't change statutory economic objectives. It also would mean that the remit had a different legal form depending on whether it had been issued by the Governor-General before the previous agreement expired or by the Minister of Finance afterwards. So rather than create a situation where there were two different ways in which a remit could be created we've landed on the side of saying that the Order in Council process is not the best way to do that. There is a number of safeguards already built into the system such as the requirement for the Minister to consult with the bank before amending a monetary policy remit and obviously regular opportunities for Parliament and the Finance and Expenditure Committee in particular to review the processes of monetary policy. So our view is that that particular set of clauses 121 through 125 are appropriate there.The Act as it has always done obliges the bank to create a variety of reports on monetary policy. Then Subparts 3 and 4 and 5 are all the bread and butter day-to-day work of the bank as the controller of money in our system and so that covers foreign exchange currency and banknote handling machines. And then finally Subpart 6 of Part 3 is the obligation that the bank has to produce financial stability reports—that it has always had.This is a fairly functional part of the Act one that covers off what I think most people would think of when they think of what the bank does. One or two amendments have been made to it but by and large it covers off the material that we would expect to see in a Reserve Bank Act."