Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair. This bill is one of those bills that I gently describe as providing a warm glow of incompetence, because I’m not quite sure what this bill is seeking to achieve in terms of trying to drive better outcomes. Now, I know it talks about wellbeing, and I know it deals with the issue of the wellbeing framework, but, as I’ve said in this House before, when we have heard representations from experts on the notion of wellbeing and how it’s going to be framed up, and what are the key drivers behind it, and what are the specific drivers behind it that we should be trying to achieve as a result of a wellbeing Budget, that’s where the concept, whilst it sounds great in principle, starts to fall apart.

I know the Government’s very keen to introduce this as they have in other parts of the legislation, but the reality is, apart from sounding nice, the big issue that we have is that we do not understand exactly what it will achieve and what its purpose is and what the specific, key result areas are. Now, when we were in Government—and I talk about the National Party—we had a focus on goals, and they were very specific. Mr Steven Joyce was someone who was famous for pursuing those goals to make sure that they were measured and we were accountable for them. Unfortunately in this, this talks about an intent, but it doesn’t actually give the level of specifics that we need to see coming through so we can actually measure outcomes.

I think the most concerning thing has been the move by the current Government to actually remove a lot of targets, and measurable targets particularly—we’ve seen that in the health sector, but in a range of other areas where we’ve actually moved away from measuring. Yet we’ve got a bill here in front of us that talks about introducing the wellbeing notion into legislation. There, I think, we’ve got a disconnect in the discourse around intent and, actually, what should be happening on the ground.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I too was kind of expecting that the Minister was going to take a call so I did hesitate there for a moment. My questions are more in terms of the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill, just asking some questions around specificity of why the objectives themselves haven’t been included and specified in any detail. We’ve seen in this term of Government the child poverty legislation, which clearly states targets in legislation, so it’s not that it couldn’t be achieved. I’m interested to know why that level of detail isn’t included in this part of the bill, what the considerations were, and why they’ve been excluded, and, if they’ve been excluded, how it is that the Government intends to be able to measure the very wellbeing they speak of.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, look, here we are and we’re sort of making comments around the wellbeing bill, and everybody sort of talks about the focus of wellbeing. Of course, the most essential indicator, if you follow the wellbeing economics, is a job and health. When we’ve seen, over the last week, the difficulties that we’re having on the border and the management of the border, which is causing great concern around the health of New Zealand but also delaying the opportunity for us to reopen our economy, and the impact that that’s having on jobs—and just overnight, we had statistics coming through from—

💬 Michael Wood: Is this Part 1? Which clause is in Part 1 is this from?

Well, I’m coming to that. So we just had, overnight, statistics from the IMF showing that New Zealand’s economy will be slowing at a faster rate than Australia—the equivalent of about $4,500 per household.

So we can have fine words in Part 1 of this bill about wellbeing—fine words—but what I think New Zealanders are seeing, and what I’d like to hear from the Minister, is how he can assure us that this won’t be another example of fine words and fine intentions and a description of an intention to improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders, when the reality is just more of the same incompetence in delivery and a lack of attention to the reality of how you improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders, which is about providing jobs and opportunities. So what I’d like to hear from the Minister this morning is what’s different—what will be different after this bill comes through in terms of actually making a difference for the wellbeing of New Zealanders.

I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. Thank you. I was just seeking some clarification. We are working under the new sessional order. The understanding of this side of the Chamber is we are taking shorter calls, asking questions for the Minister to answer. Are we now saying the Minister won’t answer questions?

No. For the benefit of the committee and people watching, of course, we are under the new regime. We did finish the previous bill earlier than perhaps was expected, and the Minister responsible for this bill was then called urgently to the House. He’s now arrived. In defence of the previous Minister, he was just the duty Minister in the House, I think, and took the chair. So I will allow repetition of the questions from the members if they want to put those questions again to the Minister who has now joined us in the committee.

Speaking to that point of order, I was just wondering whether it would be helpful for the committee if the Government was better prepared and got their Ministers down on time.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Point of order.

💬 Michael Wood: Speaking to the point of order—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Speaking to the point of order—

No, no, no, no, no. Everybody sit down. Thank you. I don’t need any help. That’s not a point of order. I have explained the situation, and I am allowing repetition from the members of the Opposition if they wish to repeat their questions to the appropriate Minister.

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: We need an effective Opposition.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That’s not helpful either.

So let’s go into Groundhog Day. It is urgency, but we’re going backwards not forwards, which is reasonably interesting. In a bill that the Government professes to have as such a priority, given it speaks about wellbeing, I think it’s more of the same. It’s all about talk and not about delivery.

So in terms of going back to my questions, my questions were very clearly in terms of Part 1 of the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill. There is no dispute that any party in this House is here to serve the people of New Zealand and their wellbeing. What is at dispute is how simply inserting the words “and wellbeing” into the Public Finance Act actually does anything, because at the end of the day, if it’s the people we are serving in our communities, have they got a job? Have they got an income to put food on the table? Are their kids well enough to go to school? Have they been immunised? Are they safe in their own home? What’s happening in terms of crime? These are all very specific things. I’m curious as to why, when the Government talks about wellbeing, they’ve actually not put anything in detail in the legislation. They talk about objectives, but then actually don’t state anything—don’t state anything in terms of how it’s going to be measured, when very clearly the previous Government had better Public Service targets that were reported on publicly. And all of those elements that could be considered as elements of wellbeing were publicly reported on.

So in terms of this particular piece of legislation, it looks like another of these examples where wellbeing is a great word, but, actually, the New Zealand public wants of their Government delivery. They want results. They want to ensure that the fundamentals of wellbeing—i.e., being able to earn an income—are being taken care of. So my question, and I’m repeating it, given that the Minister—

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: You can’t say that.

Not allowed to say that, but it’s actually on the record anyway, because the Chair of the committee has put that on the record. At the end of the day, why was an approach to the child poverty legislation not taken in here where the targets and the measures are specifically included in the bill?

Firstly, just to extend my apologies to the committee, I wasn’t aware that the National Party had decided not to take calls or play its role as the Opposition, and so I was engaged in a media phone call which I concluded as soon as I could, to make sure I could get down here and answer those questions.

For the benefit of the member Louise Upston, it’s worth just taking a step back and thinking about what the Public Finance Act is and the role that it plays in terms, particularly, of determining what happens at Budget time. So the specific reference in Part 1 is to the contents of the Fiscal Strategy Report. A number of the matters that the member raised as to what New Zealanders would be concerned about—you mentioned about safety in their own home. Arguably, at the moment, the Fiscal Strategy Report, which is the core element of the Budget for which the Government of the day is responsible, does not provide for talking about that very issue, and that’s the reason for expanding out what is required of a Government—to be able to reflect a wider set of objectives beyond a narrow fiscal set. And what the Government has said all along as we’ve gone through this process is that of course we’ll continue to report on those core fiscal objectives, and you will see that from Budget 2019 and Budget 2020, but that in addition to that, we want to broaden out the range of things a Government should be reporting back to the people of New Zealand to the very matters that the member is raising in her contribution.

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Why did you scrap them all?

We didn’t scrap them all; we’re including them in the Budget. The Public Service targets—and if the member really wants to get into the Better Public Service targets, firstly, the previous Government didn’t put any reference to that within the Public Finance Act, so therefore there was no accountability in reality on that, which is why the previous Government kept changing those targets when they couldn’t meet them. So they’d change—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Making them harder because we achieved them.

No, not making them harder; changing them because they couldn’t meet them. This provision in this bill which we’re debating here, as opposed to anything else, makes sure that every Government, no matter who that Government is, has a responsibility to report on wellbeing objectives.

To answer the second part of the member’s question as to why those objectives aren’t then prescriptively defined, it is because we want this to work for each Government. Now, we can, and in this Government we have said we have wellbeing objectives. They’re based on Treasury’s Living Standards Framework. We have accountabilities within that. We have a dashboard, and you can see how it works—we have chosen to use something called a wellbeing outlook to be able to measure ourselves against what is in that Living Standards Framework and the dashboard that is created of indicators for that. Another Government may choose to do that a different way, and what the Public Finance Act is now providing for is that you have to do it, but the way a Government chooses to do it has flexibility. So, to me, it’s the best of both worlds. We get a wider set of measures of success, but individual Governments get to decide how they want to do it.

Thank you, Madam Chair—excellent choice. I’ve been looking at this Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill, and I looked for the definition of “wellbeing”, and I couldn’t find it very well. So I’ve looked up the dictionaries that I have on my phone—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Which one? Oxford or Collins?

Oxford. Collins is always the right choice, of course, but just occasionally I’ll move to the Oxford. In this particular case, “wellbeing” is “the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy”. And then I went through to another one here on how to define “wellbeing”, which is something called “Psychology Today”, which is probably appropriate, I would have thought. 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 ability to manage stress. More generally, wellbeing is just feeling well.” OK; I’m just not quite sure if the Government should be the ones telling us whether or not we’re feeling wellbeing. Certainly, I think Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s not feeling it this morning after the way he was thrown under the bus by David Clark.

I think that most people expect their Governments just to produce the results that they’ve promised to produce. So if I’m looking at the state of wellbeing and how this is going to be measured, I’m fascinated by this—how this is going to be measured—because, as has been stated in the House this morning already, the previous National-led Government brought in Public Service targets and those were changed. They were made harder. We certainly saw that in the justice sector—they were made harder. They were made harder in education, because, after every one was achieved, when there was achievement, then we gave ourselves a bigger test to come up to. And that is because we were not worrying about our own personal wellbeing. We were trying to produce outcomes for New Zealanders. So to have a Government go to all this trouble and cloak itself in this loving sort of feeling that we’re all going to be happy together and be, I don’t know, just generally happy—I just don’t think it’s the role of Treasury. I think Treasury needs to be very focused on fiscal matters and let people choose whether or not they think that is actually being dealt with properly.

I don’t understand why a Fiscal Strategy Report must, under Part 1 of this bill, explain how wellbeing objectives have guided the Government’s Budget decisions. I would have thought those were pretty obvious if you’re looking at the Budget decisions. KiwiBuild would be one of those Budget decisions you might want to think about. Light rail might be one of those Budget decisions you might want to think about, and what people might want to say in terms of making New Zealanders feel more well—a general state of feeling well—is probably not. They’re probably feeling angry. It’s more likely going to increase the anger and the sense of frustration at the total incompetence that they’re seeing from some Ministers in this Government.

What is it with this Government that they want to tell us that they’re going to measure how well we feel, how happy, comfortable, or healthy we feel? Why do they need to measure that for us? Isn’t that for us to do? Isn’t this going to the state of a Government that inherited an excellent fiscal record from a National-led Government then having to try and change the parameters, change what they do, just to show that they’re doing something? Right now, New Zealanders would like to see some competence from the Government. They’d like to have a Minister of Health who actually is the Minister of Health. They’d like to have a Minister of Transport who can make transport decisions. This is what they’d like to see. This would achieve some good wellbeing for New Zealanders. They don’t need to have Treasury telling them how they’re going on that. They just want the Government to do its job properly, and when they see that, the people of New Zealand will be happier, healthier, and they’d have good wellbeing.

Little difficult to divine the question out of that. I have two or three comments for the member, Judith Collins. It’s quite clear to me that it would be difficult for the National Party to have an understanding of the concept of happiness. It’s not a happy caucus, not a happy place, so I can understand the member’s point in that regard.

Second point, though: I would refer the member to the speech given by her new leader just a couple of Sundays ago, which actually extolled the virtues of a wellbeing approach and suggested that, in fact to what the member’s just said—that Treasury should just be thinking about fiscal matters and the Fiscal Strategy Report should just be about fiscal matters—National, he explicitly stated, would include wellbeing objectives within their Budgets and that they would dictate how the Budgets are working. So, unfortunately, once again, mixed messages from the Opposition.

My primary question for the Minister is: why should New Zealanders believe a Government will improve their wellbeing when this particular Government has made so many commitments and promises that it has abandoned already?

So to give you the two most dramatic examples—and I could give many more, but they promised 100,000 houses under KiwiBuild, and they’ve delivered—

💬 Hon Members: 380.

—380. Fewer houses than this Government has stopped by bungling the Ihumātao development. So they’ve stopped more houses being built than they’ve actually caused to be built with the $2 billion KiwiBuild project. So, having demonstrated that, why should New Zealanders believe that this Government will deliver anything for all their fine words on wellbeing?

Second example: the slow tram down Dominion Road. People might say that that’s unkind, so we’ll call it the light rail. But we’re not clear whether it was supposed to be a rapid transit system to the airport, or a community building tram, or was it to go to the airport, or was it to go to Māngere, or where was it to start, or when was it to finish? The thing that really irritates people is that rather than actually getting on with the job of building the roads that they had inherited, they’ve spent 2½ years with all the officials and all the money being spent trying to come up with a scheme that has been abandoned—so big promise, no delivery. So why should New Zealanders trust this Government to achieve anything on wellbeing?

Another example is the promises made about getting loans to small businesses in trouble and sharing the risk between the Government and Treasury. They promised and announced $6.5 billion of loans will go to help those businesses, and I think we’re up to $83 million—another complete failure—

💬 Andrew Bayly: 86.

Is it $86 million? Another example is that we were going to improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders by—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Yeah, OK. It’s all very well to mention the word “wellbeing”, but the member does really need to talk to Part 1.

I appreciate that point, Madam Chair, but the point is that this bill is pure fluff, and the fluff is the essence of the bill. So there is no substance to talk about, other than the fact that we’re talking about the word “wellbeing”. So that is the only substance of the bill. The entire point of the bill is fluff. So the primary point I’m asking is, given that, why should we believe that they’ll deliver even the fluff, because they’ve delivered nothing else. That’s the question that I have.

I wasn’t going to take a call, but I take exception to the intervention from the Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, when he says the National caucus is not a happy place. I went to procedures this morning, and I’ve never seen so many happy faces, as we had such a selection of questions before the House at 2 p.m. today, all of which are examining the incompetence of this Government, the absolute shambles of this Government. So I take exception to Mr Robertson’s comment. The National caucus is a very happy place.

But I’ll tell you the office that’s not a happy place this morning—I feel sorry for these people who work in the office of the Hon Dr David Clark, because we know that man is a dead man walking, and—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Actually, could you make me happy and—

I could definitely make you happy, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): —speak to Part 1 of the bill.

I can make you happy by talking about wellbeing and the Government’s focus on wellbeing of these people who work in that office. I do want to refer particularly to the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Please.

—and the commentary on the bill from the Finance and Expenditure Committee, because I now feel sorry for the wellbeing of Treasury. I want to quote from the report: the provision in this legislation will “require … Treasury to produce a description of the state of wellbeing in New Zealand. It is intended that the Treasury would use its best professional judgement in determining the best indicators to describe wellbeing. The bill does not [describe] what those indicators are.” So I want the Minister to take a call and simply answer this question: how can he expect Treasury to do its job when this legislation doesn’t describe what wellbeing is? No one knows what wellbeing is. How can Treasury be happy to have this legislation thrust on it by the Minister when even the Minister can’t stand—

💬 Michael Wood: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The specific clause that the member is speaking to is in Part 2 of the bill.

💬 Hon Member: Come on, be happy!

Yeah, there’s an example of the wellbeing of the Labour caucus at the moment.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I have got a point of order, and I am going to direct the member to Part 1. We are on Part 1; the indicators are in Part 2.

We’re talking about the public finance wellbeing and the wellbeing objectives, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): OK, that’s fine—that’s Part 1.

We’re talking about the wellbeing objectives, and in the commentary on the bill, we are saying we can’t as legislators define the objectives; we’re handing that to Treasury to do. So I’m asking the Minister to give the committee some assistance. Let him take a call and tell us what wellbeing means, because I don’t know; Treasury doesn’t know, as per the commentary; Michael Wood doesn’t have a clue what wellbeing objectives are, hence his pointless point of order. So let the Minister stand and tell us why we’re passing this legislation when no one knows what’s meant by wellbeing.

Madam Chair, you did ask the member who’s just resumed his seat, David Carter, to make you happy, and once again his performance has failed to find satisfaction, certainly from me, in this particular instance. In many ways, it’s not a surprise. It’s a track record of failure to provide satisfaction from that member on the other side of the House.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That is going too far.

Ha, ha! What the member was asking for I’ve already answered in my very first contribution that I made in this debate; that is, the fact that the wellbeing objectives of this Government are clear. They were provided in the last Wellbeing Budget. What this does is put into the Public Finance Act exactly what we did in Budget 2019. There is a wellbeing outlook; the member can go and take a look at it. He can see the way in which we’ve used the Living Standards Framework objectives and taken them and put them inside the Budget. It will be up to future Governments to decide whether they want to take that approach or another approach in dealing with wellbeing.

From our perspective, using Treasury’s Living Standards Framework as the core actually does what Louise Upston asked: to make sure that New Zealanders can see the full range of things that matter to them in a Budget. I think Budget 2019 was welcomed in that regard and I repeat what I said in my last contribution: the leader of the National Party said just two Sundays ago that this is exactly what he wants to do as well.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I want to say that I do declare that I am happy. I just want that on the record. They’re very unhappy over there, I can see that. Also, I think there’s a bit of personal responsibility about looking after your own wellbeing, but I do acknowledge it’s an important concept.

Clause 5 inserts new section 26KB, “Contents of fiscal strategy report: wellbeing objectives”, which states “The fiscal strategy report must—(a) explain how wellbeing objectives have guided the Government’s Budget decisions; and (b) if the wellbeing objectives that guided the Government’s Budget decisions differ from those indicated in the budget policy statement most recently prepared”. So the issue I’ve got—the Minister talked about this being a guiding framework, and it’s related back to this Living Standards Framework. So, actually, I went to the Wellbeing Budget, and this is the crux, right, because this is what you refer us to.

So the first thing here, in the Wellbeing Budget, the very first item: “A new frontline service for mental health with a $455m programme providing access for 325,000 people by 2023-24”. So the first thing I’ve got to say is that is a financial expression of a target about how much money we’re going to spend. In fact, if I go through all these targets, what it grandly promotes is how much money the Government is spending.

What it doesn’t talk about is what it’s trying to achieve. I know if I turn to my colleague here Mr Matt Doocey—who is a mental health expert, who I know has talked in this House about the so-called $1.9 billion that’s been allocated to mental health. We’ve spent $27 million so far as a Government—when I say “we”, I’m talking about the Government—a mere $27 million out of $1.9 billion. So here is a target that (a) is couched in financial terms—this is about how much money we can spend and “I can outspend you” as opposed to actually dealing with the issue of mental health and trying to give achieve a good outcome.

The next one I come to is around improving child wellbeing. So here we are. We’ve got the word “wellbeing” all through these, and what is the performance around improving the issue of child wellbeing in New Zealand? A critical issue—everyone in this House is absolutely focused on achieving it and making sure our kids are safer. If I talk to my esteemed colleague the Hon Louise Upston, and if she was to get up and start talking about the objectives—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Seven out of nine going backwards.

Seven out of nine performance indicators—but, again, what’s put in here? Again, “Specialist services as part of a $320m package to address family and sexual violence”—there’s one, right—but, actually, nothing about the key result area that you want to achieve.

These are all about Government spending money and making us sound like we’re great stuff, but we are more interested—and when I say “we”, I’m saying that this side, the Opposition National Party—in actually measuring and achieving outcomes, with key result areas. That’s missing from the Wellbeing Budget. That, if anything, describes why we’re so implacably opposed to this this bill, because it doesn’t actually achieve anything. It is nice to have. It’s a wonderful concept, but as I’ve said before, it provides a warm glow of incompetence.

Madam Chair, I am, as you noted at the outset, here to answer questions, and I’m trying really hard and listening very hard to find questions within what the Opposition members are raising. I would invite him—and I know the member is reading off his phone—just to turn a couple more pages over and we come back to this concept of the wellbeing outlook. He’ll actually see in there a number of areas drawn from Treasury’s Living Standards Framework dashboard, a number of indicators of people’s wellbeing, be it through mental health or be it indeed through reducing rates of child and family violence. So that is the first problem with the member’s assertion.

The second issue—and the page he was looking at is a summary within the Budget documents of how the Government arrived at its priorities for Budget 2019, and that is when you look at the part that the member mentioned, new section 26KB. The priorities that we created in Budget 2019 were drawn from the evidence within Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, and then tested against the Government’s network of science advisers and external experts on what will make the biggest difference to dealing with the issues that have drawn out of that Living Standards Framework. That’s why mental health was identified as a priority. Now, we can have an argument about the amount of money that was spent, or anything—that’s fine—but in terms of what this clause is about, it’s about how we identified those priorities using this framework.

We did it because we wanted to do it. In the absence of this bill passing, future Governments will have no obligation to do that. So the issues that Mr Doocey thinks are important, or that Ms Upston thinks are important, won’t feature as a requirement of Governments to do it. So that’s what this bit of the bill is about. Getting into the specific elements of each individual area and each indicator will be up to each Government, but unless we have this change, there will be no obligation on Governments to do the very thing that members are asking us to do. That’s why new section 26KB is being put forward.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, the Minister said he was listening very carefully for questions to answer, and I gave him a very simple question, which he hasn’t answered yet, which is: why should New Zealanders believe a Government can deliver higher levels of wellbeing as a result of this piece of legislation when they haven’t delivered on all their other promises? And those promises were the KiwiBuild houses, the hundred thousand that haven’t turned up; there was light rail down Dominion Road, which is not rolling at all; and the promises made about the border, which haven’t been fulfilled.

Look, the greatest shock that I found, when sitting on the Epidemic Response Committee in the first week in lockdown, was when we had the Commissioner of Police, Mike Bush, come along on his final day. We’d heard all week the Prime Minister saying, very much focused on our wellbeing, that, rest assured, people coming in from overseas were going into self-isolation, but the police would visit them within three days—“You have no need to worry.” So we asked the Commissioner of Police, “Have you been and checked up on these people within three days?”, and the answer was “No, no we haven’t.”

So that gap between promise and delivery is something that Kiwis are getting more and more concerned about. So my simple question to the Minister is: why should Kiwis believe this Government will be focused effectively on wellbeing, when they have failed in so many other promises that they’ve made?

Again, I’m struggling to see the relevance to the bill and I’ve already answered the member’s question, which he’s obviously very focused on hearing! In answer to this question—in fact, I won’t bother.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Mr Chair—excellent decision. I’ve got a question for the Minister. Can he stand in the committee and just tell us which particular definition of wellbeing, in the objectives, we should be looking for or expecting when we see these wellbeings being measured?

Because I’ve been looking in the particular examples of what is wellbeing, and I’ve already listed a few of them, and I’ve found another set of definitions, which is it’s multidimensional, that it looks to physical wellbeing, which includes lifestyle choices that affect the functioning of our bodies—sounds dreadful, really, doesn’t it? What we eat and how active we are will affect our physical wellbeing. Emotional or psychological: that’s our ability to cope with everyday life. I guess that’s really resilience, isn’t it? Our social wellbeing: which is the extent to which we feel a sense of belonging and social inclusion; the way we communicate with others, our relationships and values; and beliefs, lifestyles and traditions. Then there’s the spiritual wellbeing. I shudder to think of Treasury worrying about the spiritual wellbeing of people, but, well, we never know. Then there’s the intellectual wellbeing, which is it’s important to gain and maintain intellectual wellness, to expand our knowledge and skills. And economic wellness: in short, it’s our ability to meet our basic needs and feel a sense of security.

So I’d like to know, are Treasury going to be reporting on all of those, or one of those, or a combination of those? Or is there something else that I’ve missed?

This goes over ground that has been traversed many times, both in this House and in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which have had briefings from Treasury on exactly these matters over the last couple of years, as well as my own appearances at that committee, as well as the Budgets that we’ve produced. Our wellbeing objectives are based on the four capitals of Treasury’s Living Standards Framework. That means the financial capital, that is the prosperity and the financial health and wellbeing of New Zealanders; natural capital, the promotion and the importance of the environment in what we do; it is also on social capital, which is about the strength of our communities; and natural capital, which is about our individual wellbeing, in terms of our health, our skills, our sense of safety, and so on. All of these are outlined within Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, there is a dashboard of indicators for each of those areas of wellbeing. I note that the member mentions the question of spiritual wellbeing. That is not part of Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, but I do note that it might be of interest to the member that we’ve had representations from the Pacific community to say that spiritual wellbeing should be included within it—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: And is it going to be?

No, it’s not. But this is to highlight to the member that I actually agree with her, and she can go back and check in a number of the speeches that I’ve given, that actually it is not the Government’s role or responsibility to determine an individual person’s wellbeing. It is, however, in the opinion of this House, and, it would appear, the leader, an important thing for the Government to set objectives around wellbeing and support our communities’ overall wellbeing. Mr Muller, obviously accepts that; we do; it seems other members of the National Party don’t.

I move, That the question be now put.