Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General

I move, That a respectful Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor-General commending to His Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2007/08 financial year in respect of Vote Ombudsmen and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the appropriations and information for the 2008/09 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Offices of Parliament.

Speaking very briefly, I note that this motion is moved every year by the Leader of the House because these people are, of course, Officers of Parliament. They are not members of executive departments, and therefore it is inappropriate for the Minister of Finance to deal directly with these offices in terms of their budgetary requests. The parliamentary select committee that deals with the Offices of Parliament goes through the budget request from those offices and makes recommendations to the House, and then those recommendations are fed into the Budget process. I thank the members of the Officers of Parliament Committee for the fact that they have always acted responsibly in that regard. Of course, it would be somewhat awkward if somebody suddenly decided to spend a vastly increased amount of money on the Offices of Parliament. I thank the members of the committee for their work on this matter. Once this motion is passed the remainder of the process will get under way, and the appropriations will appear in the Budget.

National supports the appropriations for Vote Ombudsmen and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and for the Auditor-General. It is quite interesting when we look through this and see just how extensive these roles actually are, and see, in particular, the good work that the Ombudsmen’s office is doing on the prisons, which is a big capital investment that the Ombudsmen’s office is working on, currently employing about 50 staff. We all know that New Zealanders now have the right to object to certain things that go on in the community, and the Ombudsmen’s office is the place where those people choose to take their complaints. Over time we have seen a big increase in complaints going through the Ombudsmen’s office, and it is of particular note that we mention what a good job those three are doing. There is, I think, currently a recruitment process going on in that office.

I also want to comment on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and what that office is up to in this allocation as well, and also on the Auditor-General. The important thing to realise is that the Offices of Parliament are made up of a collection from right across the Parliament, and that these roles are not beholden to a political party but to Parliament as a whole. National is supporting these appropriations.

The Māori Party is pleased to support the motion in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and Offices of Parliament. Our comments are focused on the alterations to the 2007-08 appropriations for Vote Ombudsmen.

We support the increases in the legislative authority of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to accommodate new remuneration rates. We support also the changes made to respond to the commissioner’s proposal to create a more collegial culture through the desire for an open-plan office arrangement. I was interested in the proposal to develop an open-plan environment, to use the space and resources more effectively, and to improve staff management and communications. Although we understand the intentions, we know that there are other factors that can emerge from an open-plan trend, such as distraction and lack of privacy from other employees, noise from office equipment, furniture and cubicle design that is not appropriate to the job, poor air quality, uncontrollable temperatures, and so on. We wonder, given that it is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who is putting forward this proposal, what thought has gone into the environmental advantages of an open-plan office. It would be interesting to know the scale of the costs and benefits attached to the open-plan arrangements, particularly when it comes to the impacts of employees being sick, dissatisfied, or distracted.

Another key set of recommendations from this motion is related to the budget report for audit and assurance services, which, again, was related to office relocation, salary and remuneration movements, as well as costs attributable to international financial reporting and accounting standards conversion audits, which, we were told, were larger than forecast. The explanation that these costs were unanticipated and that the office faced resource constraints is accepted.

The key focus of our interest in this motion is, however, related to the Office of the Ombudsmen, and in particular our support for its proposal to have an expanded role in prisons. The first item of importance in the budget report related to the review of the criminal justice sector, which was tabled in the House on 5 December last year. I want to spend some time refreshing our institutional memory about this review, as I believe it to be critically important in this election year as we consider the implications in the debate around law and order matters.

The Ombudsman Mel Smith distinguished between two prevailing ideologies, penal populism and soft liberalism. Smith suggested that penal populism is manipulated by political firebrands who will promote whatever hot issue is in the public arena to advance the cause of getting tough on crime. Gangs, P, child abuse, and violence all become fodder to the champions of penal populism, to bolster support for longer sentences—and more. Meanwhile, on the other hand, soft liberalism is supposedly favoured by criminal justice administrators and academics, and it puts the needs of the criminal as being paramount. Smith draws out trends in both these approaches as having influenced criminal justice sector legislation, and describes the changes in the sector over the past decade as being extraordinarily rapid.

In the debating chamber, which salivates over the way in which the numbers add up, it bears remembering that the numbers in the penal population rose in the last decade from 4,940 in December 1996 to 8,056 in November 2007. Are we really proud as a nation that we have experienced such a massive increase in the prison muster? Mel Smith provides the answer in no uncertain terms: “The increase in the prison muster is undesirable both in view of the impact of prison on offenders and their families, and in view of its demand for increased government expenditure on new prisons and their operations. Moreover it has been undesirable as there is little evidence that the changes have made us feel safer or increased our confidence in the criminal justice system.”

These three factors—the impact on families, the expenditure explosion, and the failure to restore public confidence—demonstrate to me the absolute value of an independent Ombudsman function. The Ombudsman’s report last December reinforced the need to promote the view that imprisonment is a last resort and should be used as a place only for those engaged in the most serious acts of crime. A burgeoning imprisonment rate placates those who subscribe to the penal populist cause, but it does little to increase and restore public confidence in the system. Probably the most extreme example of this is in the area of longstanding concern relating to the ridiculously high overrepresentation of Māori and Pasifika peoples in the criminal justice system. The Ombudsman recommended that more work needs to be done promptly to investigate the root causes of this, as well as to work with the appropriate specialist organisations that are working in the area of support, rehabilitation, reintegration, restorative justice, and other such programmes.

If we are looking for ways to restore public confidence in the justice system work programme, we will note that Mel Smith’s report is again disturbing when it describes the way in which the agencies worked, or did not, with Te Puni Kōkiri on addressing the overrepresentation of Māori. Mr Smith put it out there in black and white: “I have been advised of differences of view between the Ministry of Justice and Te Puni Kōkiri. I accept that the approaches of these departments may differ but it grieves me that these differences have been allowed to impede the formulation of plans to deal with one of the more unsatisfactory aspects of our criminal justice system. Some resolution of these differences would be a major step forward.”

The conclusions that the Ombudsman was able to present in his independent inquiry, particularly his concerns regarding the massive increase in prison muster and the issues that impact on justice sector capability, are issues we must respond to. Of course, many other concerns were raised, including the significant challenge that Greater Auckland poses in terms of the resource constraints and increasing demands placed upon quality justice services in my electorate.

The Ombudsman was able to present his views in a frank and candid manner—exactly the quality of advice that we would expect of this role. We need more such advice in this Parliament, and, what is more, we need to be doing something about the very serious concerns that are raised, not just in respect of the December report but consistently, and with particular value in terms of the Ombudsman’s role in prisons. The Māori Party will certainly support the motion. We believe it to be a thoroughly worthwhile investment.

Motion agreed to, and Address agreed to.