Offices of Parliament—Address to Governor-General

on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move, That a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General commending to Her Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2005-06 financial year in respect of Vote Audit and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the appropriations and information for the 2006-07 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Offices of Parliament.

The need for this motion arises from the special arrangements that Parliament has for dealing with the budgets of Offices of Parliament under the Public Finance Act 1989. Section 26E of that Act provides that before an appropriation in a vote administered by an Office of Parliament may be included in an appropriation bill for a financial year, information must be submitted to the House on estimates of expenses, capital expenditure, and other matters. This procedure for presentation of an Address to the Governor-General reflects the relationship of Officers of Parliament as statutory persons, separate from the executive, to the legislature.

I will not take very long in speaking to this motion. I want to raise just two points that were the subject of much discussion in the preparation of the report by the Officers of Parliament Committee. The first issue is the increase in remuneration for Vote Audit. The second is the baseline flexibility request.

Treasury spoke against the increase in remuneration that was sought, but the main issue the Officers of Parliament Committee considered was the pressure on the Audit Office to maintain competitive remuneration. The office assured us that the majority of its staff were aligned with the average public sector market median. However, it saw a risk of losing its current capability. The work of the office is, of course, highly specialised and requires highly trained staff. So the position of the parliamentarians was that if the office were unable to maintain a capable and competent staff then we would face the risk of losing services. The Audit Office reported that it had delivered 15 of the 17 performance audits required under the 2004-05 Budget and that it planned to meet the requirement of 19 performance audits in 2005-06.

We considered the service the office provides to Parliament with these performance audits an extremely important function. As a result, we agreed to the remuneration increases. However, as will be seen in the report, we specified that we felt as if we were operating in the dark a little in that we did not have adequate information on the current market rates. We have given the office 6 months to bring that information back to us, to show us the movements in the market place, and to align them with its own rates. It was pleasing to note that staff turnover was around 8 percent, which shows that staff turnover is not a huge issue. But of course we want to maintain a highly specialised staff.

The second issue is the request by the Audit Office for what was termed baseline flexibility. In fact, the office was asking for a buffer of $500,000 because it had difficulty in forecasting its audit fee increases and remuneration. One of the issues around the audit fee increases concerns me as an electorate MP. I am sure many of my colleagues—certainly my colleagues around the committee table—know that local authorities have expressed considerable concern, particularly around the long-term council community plans, about the amount they have to pay out in audit fees. In fact, representatives of the Wairoa District Council met with me recently and complained that they were up for $70,000 in audit fees—an enormous amount of money for a small council to find. Fortunately that is not required every year. As a representative in Parliament I need to be assured, as there is no contestability regime around the Audit Office, that the workings of the Audit Office and the way it sets its fees are done in a reasonable manner, and that the fees that are charged to organisations are reasonable. The fees charged is one issue that we looked at as contributing to the need for the buffer.

The second issue concerned the long-term council community plans themselves. It is all very well for us to pass legislation in this House, but it has a huge effect on people throughout the country, and the long-term council community plans have required a whole new separate audit regime. Again I go back to my own electorate, and dealing with four different councils and four mayors. The overall cost to ratepayers of the long-term council community plans—let alone the audit fees—is enormous. Smaller poor communities like Wairoa, Ōpōtiki, and a number of others around the country are really struggling with the requirements of the long-term council community plans. This also puts enormous pressure on the Audit Office to find good-quality staff on a temporary basis to complete these audits. In fact, during the discussion we were told that the Audit Office had had to import from the UK, on a temporary basis, about 30 staff to work on the long-term council community plans. I hasten to assure members that those staff are only temporary. Because this is a cyclical process the Audit Office does not want to take on permanent staff.

So the committee agreed to the request from the Audit Office for this recognition of baseline flexibility. But, again, we have directed the Audit Office to work with Treasury for the next year, so that they are not to take it as read that this increase will remain. We are yet to be convinced that ways in which they could better forecast their needs cannot be found. We have asked that the work be done and brought back to the committee by, I think, October this year, and we will consider it for the 2006-07 year. I have to say that this was a very amicable committee, and I commend the work performed by the Audit Office, the Ombudsman, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. National will support this motion.

I do not want to take a long call, by any means. [Interruption] I thank my friend for saying that that was an excellent contribution! The member who has just resumed her seat spoke in quite some detail about how the Officers of Parliament Committee operated. But I would like to read the conclusion of the committee’s report, which I think should be put on the Hansard record. It states: “We acknowledge the high quality of the work done by the Officers of Parliament and the dedication and professionalism of their offices. The ‘parliamentary watchdog’ role is a vital one for a healthy democracy and we wish to see the officers appropriately resourced for their responsibilities.” Speaking on behalf of New Zealand First, at least—but I think I am speaking for the whole Parliament—I say that we value the efforts of these people and we think they have done a darned good job over a long period of time. We would like to put that on the parliamentary record.

I also rise to talk about Government motion No. 1, particularly regarding the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has done extraordinarily valuable work—enormously valuable work—in addressing some of the very significant ecological issues this country has to face and offering a number of very positive ways in which we can move forward in terms of addressing these significant challenges. Dr Morgan Williams is, I think, well known for the rigour of his work. His office produces work of a very, very high standard. It is highly regarded. This has meant that because of the nature of the office, it has produced some work that is highly challenging. Some of it takes quite a serious look at certain very significant alterations we have to make in our land-use practices—challenging reports, but works that, because of their rigour and high standard, cannot be dismissed as airy-fairy or lacking in substance. So I think the work that has come from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is enormously valuable for this country.

The first report I read was in relation to the involvement of tangata whenua in resource management decision-making. It is an extraordinarily useful work. Rather than retreating into generalities and superficialities, it looks in some detail at what the practice is in different local authorities, and has produced a resource that has very important lessons for local authorities all around the country.

Essentially, the main lesson I drew from it is that those councils that approach engaging with tangata whenua as a statutory requirement for which they have to tick off the box did not do it well, and as a result they did not get much value from the process. But some local authorities realised that engaging with tangata whenua was not a question of compliance but of the fact that they are people with a longstanding historical relationship with the place and who have knowledge of things that the decision makers did not have access to, and that, therefore, engaging with tangata whenua was about improving decision making by getting access to better information and working with local people. Councils that took that position actually got enormous value out of the process and did it very, very well. That was a useful thing to put out in the public domain, in the cogent way that it was put, so it could be read clearly.

Of course, there have been a number of important reports. Restoring the Rotorua Lakes: The Ultimate Endurance Challenge correctly identifies that the problems we are identifying now have been years in the making and are the result of long-established but no longer appropriate ways of doing things. It will take us many years to resolve those problems.

Working Together in Thames-Coromandel: Guidelines for Community Planning suggests improved ways for communities to solve their problems using cooperative processes of dialogue. Now, that is the kind of stuff that is valuable for this Parliament to understand and get our heads around, such as the issue of how we engage communities in decision making. Future Currents: Electricity Scenarios for New Zealand 2005-2050 serves a very useful role of characterising the different possible futures for New Zealand’s electricity supply, depending on what decisions we make in the very near future. Those are the decisions that will set the path for us for the next 45 years. Thinking as far ahead as this, and even further, is absolutely vital if we are to make the right decisions today—if we are to make the decisions we actually need to make.

The last report I will refer to, because it is such an enormous issue, is the Growing for Good report, which addresses the question of intensive farming: sustainability and what that really means in New Zealand’s environment. That is a key report identifying the impacts of New Zealand’s major land use on water quality, and the dependence of the sector on energy and fertiliser for its intensification. This is a very current issue. We are undergoing a massive intensification of dairy right now because of the enormous returns from milk solids. It is causing enormous issues on the Canterbury Plains. It is a massive demand on the water resource, and the issue of water allocation is now becoming extremely important.

We are seeing the impacts of intensification of dairying on waterways in the Taupō area. We have seen it in the Rotorua lakes. Right now Landcorp is retiring a massive area of forestry into intensive dairying, and drawing water from the Waikato. The effects on the river of drawing a very large amount of water from it and of the runoff that will go back into the waterways are massive issues, and the kinds of things addressed in this report are very important. The commissioner’s office coupled it with a roadshow, which went around the country to increase awareness and stimulate further discussion and action.

The report tackled some really hard issues. It suggests that we have to go about finding other ways of enhancing our wealth, rather than just pouring on more nutrients and using more energy to boost production. If we are to get serious in this country about creating a sustainable economy that means our children and our grandchildren have any kind of future at all, we have to start paying attention to this enormously valuable work that is coming from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

The Māori Party rises today to speak to the motion. The provisions earmarked within the 2004-05 appropriations for Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the associated draft budgets, reflect an important principle within the democratic process: the importance of independence.

We come to this financial review debate spurred on by the report of the United Nations special rapporteur. That report demonstrates the importance of independence, integrity, and capability—the capacity to stand outside and make an informed contribution. Mr Rodolfo Stavenhagen has confirmed in his report many of the issues raised by the Māori Party within the House and within the general public arena. They include issues relating to the Treaty settlements, to education, to the foreshore and seabed, to MMP and the entrenchment of the Māori seats, to human rights, and, of course, to the position of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in relation to our country’s constitution.

It is of no surprise that the Government has chosen to react to the report with hotheaded retorts that the committee should be abolished and replaced because of its “ill odour”, that the rapporteur is out of touch with New Zealand, that the report has been ghost-written, and that the people who have contributed to the report are a collection of “academic radicals”. It is, in fact, irrelevant that the Government chooses to deny the value of an external expert opinion. All that urging to make us believe the report is fundamentally wrong just consolidates even more the view of thinking New Zealanders that the Government has made some fatal errors in imposing the Foreshore and Seabed Act on this nation.

The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have the same responsibility that the special rapporteur has to demonstrate the importance of independence, of integrity, and of the capacity to stand outside and make an informed contribution. The Māori Affairs Committee had the opportunity to receive the assessment from the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General on Te Puni Kōkiri. The briefing we received from the office told us that Te Puni Kōkiri had received a “good” assessment from the office for its financial and service performance during the 2004-05 financial year. Like my colleague from the National Party Tau Henare, I question how the assessment can be “good”.

Te Puni Kōkiri appears to have moved its focus and resources away from its monitoring role. How can it be “good” that an agency does not take seriously its responsibilities under section 5 of the Ministry of Maori Development Act, and is instead downsizing its monitoring role? Section 5 of that Act states: “(1) The responsibilities of the Ministry of Maori Development include—(a) Promoting increases in the levels of achievement attained by Maori with respect to—(i) Education: (ii) Training and employment: (iii) Health: (iv) Economic resource development: (b) Monitoring, and liaising with, each department and agency that provides or has a responsibility to provide services to or for Maori for the purpose of ensuring the adequacy of those services.” The report that the special rapporteur has presented to this country cites “the underlying institutional and structural discrimination that Maori have long suffered.” How will the Government, and how will Parliament, ever be able to respond to that underlying discrimination unless Te Puni Kōkiri provides us with the information to be able to make an informed judgment on that?

The report from the special rapporteur recommends that the social delivery services, particularly in health and housing, must continue to be specifically targeted and tailored to the needs of Māori. He urges that there be more targeted research, evaluation, and statistical databases—exactly what the Māori Party has said from the beginning. That is the sort of criticism we would expect from the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General. On thinking about some of the knee-jerk reaction from Labour and National alike to the report, there was one thing I agreed with: the concern that we have had to wait for an independent outside expert to tell us about the disparities and discrimination that occur right underneath our noses here in Aotearoa.

In relation to the 2004-05 appropriation, I briefly refer—like my colleague here—to the work programme of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The baseline increase of $400,000 for 2005-06 to restore and maintain core capability is targeted to allow the office to expand its capacity to address citizens’ concerns relating to the Resource Management Act 1991 review functions.

The Māori Party wants to give particular emphasis to the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in constructing a genuine progress index. The Māori Party has advocated for a genuine progress index—“GPI”—as providing a measure of comprehensive, sustainable, and inclusive advancement. The genuine progress index distinguishes between positive contributions to progress, such as the building of schools, and negative activity, such as the building of prisons. It recognises voluntary and other activities that contribute to the expression of positive social and cultural values, including all of the kaupapa that guide our party. Within the genuine progress index, we see that time and resources given to family and whānau care are included in the positive outcomes. The same can be said for marae and other community activities that include whakawhanaungatanga and the expression of other values. Health promotion is positive. The use of time and resources for treating addictions, though necessary, is a negative.

The genuine progress index is an indicator of net advancement and progress. The Māori Party supports the development of genuine progress indices for use at national and community levels, including their use by whānau, hapū, iwi, and district and regional councils. In that respect, we are very interested in the advances of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in working with the New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics at Massey University. The centre is looking to develop a genuine progress index for New Zealand, as a more comprehensive indicator of progress towards sustainable development than GDP. We understand that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is contributing staff resources towards that project. We believe that the initiative by the commissioner is exactly the type of initiative and proactive direction that we would expect to see from an office that understands the importance of independence and integrity, and of the capacity to stand outside and make an informed contribution.

The Māori Party supports that project as being an excellent initiative to bring about a sea change—a transformation for the better. We believe that the shift to a genuine progress index will require a shift in perception and understanding on the part of many people and organisations in New Zealand today, and we support that work. We have a whakatauākī that I believe offers some inspiration in considering the issue of sustainable futures plainly: “Haere i mua mō haritaonga; waiho i muri titiro kau ana—go in front for a treasure load; leave those behind who would only look.”

Motion agreed to.

Address adopted.