Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm intending to make a few contributions around Best Start today but some of my questions at the outset—I just want to understand the proposals a little bit better. Before I ask these questions of the Minister of Finance I just want to state categorically upfront that every MP no doubt in this House wants to make sure that all families in New Zealand are in a position to look after their children in the best manner they can. So with that in mind I'd like to understand a little bit more about these Best Start provisions and particularly around the figure of $3120 and why the amount has been set aside in clause 22(MG 2).I think the issue—I referred to it last night and I actually asked the Minister last night about why that figure was adopted in the bill. He rather—if I may say with all due respect—glibly referred to a couple of reports that he underpinned the assumption to adopt $3120 namely the Children's Commissioner report and also the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study which no doubt shows a lot of information around the benefits of supporting children at an early age. I don't think there's any dispute about that.But that wasn't the question—that wasn't the question. The question is not whether young children should be supported; the question is: why $3120? Why not $3000? Why not $5000 or whatever? So the question is: what was the evidence? What was the basis or rationale for that figure? Bear in mind that this Best Start package is worth $1.4 billion over the next 4 years or in other terms 25 percent of this total Families Package that the Labour coalition Government's putting forward. The first thing is: is the $3120 consistent with the Labour policy the Greens policy and the New Zealand First policy? Where's the rationale for all this? Is this a figure that's just suddenly being plucked out of the air?But the other thing and I did refer to this last night is that when you look around the world for other examples of where these types of proposals are being put in place of course Australia being our near neighbour is a classic example. As I noted last night when the scheme was initially put in place in Australia it started at $3000 and then it was progressively increased to $5000 before it was scrapped by the Labor Government in Australia in 2013-14. One of the issues that led to that scrapping of that scheme after just a few years was that the mechanism—and I'm going to ask another question about that separately but the issue was that the actual assessed cost of having children undertaken by the renowned Henry tax review showed that the cost was substantially less than what was in the scheme. That led to one of the reasons why the Labor Government scrapped that scheme as I said and reverted to the more traditional families package they have although it's termed slightly different in Australia.So here we are in New Zealand. We've got a Labour Government adopting this Families Package which we know failed in Australia but underpinning it we do not know the basis of the $3120. It's easy. I've looked on Google and I've looked at a number of cases in New Zealand and overseas about the costs of raising children and of course it varies quite substantially. Particularly in New Zealand it showed quite a large difference between those on a low income and what they're prepared to and have to spend on their children and what it does for wealthy families. Again that'll raise another question we'll talk about later.But one of the most common things the most agreed thing when you look at the cost of raising children the single conclusion that you can draw is that the cost of successive children reduces over time. So I am absolutely keen to understand what analysis underpinned the Minister of Finance's reasoning to pay the $3120.