Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): Thank you Mr Speaker and always a pleasure to follow the New Zealand First member Mark Patterson. I listened intently in the hope that I might find out what wellbeing actually means.I want to start by saying that at a time of absolute economic crisis at a time of absolute Government incompetency this House is in urgency adjusting the Public Finance Act and putting in this notion of wellbeing. Throughout the committee stages Opposition members asked the Minister Grant Robertson on many occasions what is meant by wellbeing. And the Minister himself is unable to tell this House what is meant by wellbeing. He did say Treasury's working on it and I actually feel very sorry for Treasury having to have this imposition put on it and I want to talk later about the potential to politicise Treasury through this very piece of legislation.Let's start by dealing with the current crisis this Government finds itself in. It campaigned strongly three years ago to deliver three flagship policies. One was light rail in Auckland the other was KiwiRail—and what has happened to light rail?SPEAKER: Order! I'm just reminding the member we're on the third reading of the bill.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: We are indeed Mr Speaker. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. What I'm attempting to do Mr Speaker is explain that while we're dealing with this legislation which defines wellbeing into future Budgets I'm talking about the lack of performance on the Budgets already set by this Government.SPEAKER: And the member is out of order. We are discussing the bill as it has come out of the select committee; we're not having a Budget debate.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Mr Speaker I will accept your ruling obviously.With regards to the bill Part 1 talks about the wellbeing objectives. We would expect the Government members then to be able to define the wellbeing objectives. So I've referred to Google: Wellbeing is the experience of health happiness and prosperity. It includes having good mental health high life satisfaction a sense of meaning or purpose and the ability to manage stress. More generally wellbeing is just feeling well." Well if Mr Speaker is any the wiser now on what wellbeing means—and what Part 1 of this legislation "Wellbeing objectives" means—then he's a better man than I am. Whilst we note the definition of wellbeing then refers to having good mental health that does give me the opportunity to refer to Budget 2019 and Grant Robertson used this as an example of the first ever Wellbeing Budget the $1.94 billion being directed by the Government last year to mental health. So the question was asked then in the committee stages of how much of that money in the very first Wellbeing Budget had ever been spent and the answer was around $24 million.What we've got is wellbeing objectives being incorporated into the Public Finance Act so that future Budgets presented by Governments must take into account this nebulous concept of wellbeing. We just cannot find a definition to wellbeing and even the Minister himself in Part 2 of the bill points out that it will become a responsibility of the Minister to present the report to the House at least every four years—at least every four years—but that it's the Treasury's responsibility to write the report with the concept of wellbeing being incorporated from the Living Standards Framework.One of the questions I asked of the Minister is if this is such world-leading legislation the first Budget ever to be incorporating wellbeing what other countries are following. And he said "Well there's numerous other countries." Well I can't find another country anywhere in the world that's now delivered a Wellbeing Budget. He spoke about Canada. So I had a look at Canada and no they haven't produced a Wellbeing Budget; what apparently the connection the Minister has with Canada is he received a phone call once from a junior Minister in the Canadian Government and that Minister was interested in the fact that New Zealand was putting wellbeing into Budgets and wellbeing into the Public Finance Act. That doesn't suggest to me for one minute that other countries are rushing to follow the New Zealand example.If it was so important to put it into Budget 2019 where was the mention of wellbeing in Budget 2020? So is the Minister going to argue the reason it wasn't in Budget 2020 was that he hadn't had time to pass the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill? Well he managed to put it into Budget 2019 without the legislation so why couldn't he put this wellbeing concept into Budget 2020? The answer is he could have if it was important enough so what we're seeing is an absolute incompetence here in the House today. He pushed the House into urgency to pass this piece of legislation which at best can be described as fluffy nonsense. He pushed the House into urgency today to do this legislation when there are far more important issues that are facing the Government.I want to conclude by saying that I have sat through many Budgets being presented by both Labour-led Government and National-led Governments. There would not be any of those Budgets presented to this House that didn't focus on what the particular Government of the day would deliver in terms of outcomes for New Zealanders that were appropriate. And while wellbeing according to the definition suggests that people should be happy with the Budget that's presented no Government will ever and has ever presented a Budget that makes everybody happy. That's not the role of the Government; the Government's job is to present a Budget that it thinks will deliver the best outcomes to New Zealanders—nothing about the fluffy nonsense of wellbeing.So I say that Treasury has been handed something that will be difficult for them with this legislation. They have the responsibility now of developing the criteria around the definition of wellbeing. The Minister himself can't give it to us; none of the Government members who have spoken in the debate so far have told us what wellbeing means. It hands the responsibility to Treasury which I say is a respected organisation responsible for delivering independent fiscal and economic advice to the Government of the day. But what this potentially does is it will require that Treasury officials effectively start commenting on Government policy. I know that that was a concern raised throughout the select committee process as this legislation went through the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I think it'll be a sad day indeed if this legislation passes today and the effect of the passing of that legislation is then to put Treasury in a position where it becomes politicised and I think that is a very grave danger with this legislation.So I want to conclude by saying that at a time of crisis at a time of total incompetency at a time of complete unhappiness on the other side of the House at their own performance here we are in urgency ramming through legislation that I don't think will be able to deliver what the Minister suggests it will."