State Sector Management Bill

It is crystal clear to all New Zealanders that after 9 years of a wasteful Labour Government we need to rebalance our economy. We also need to redesign and have a first-class State services sector.

The State Sector Management Bill achieves all of those goals. It provides for the formation of a new Ministry of Science and Innovation, it harmonises the National Library and Archives New Zealand under the Department of Internal Affairs, and, very importantly, it preserves the constitutional independence of the Chief Archivist. On that basis, it gives me pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

One has to wonder where that member, Colin King, was a decade ago, if he thinks this issue is all peace and light. Labour will definitely be opposing the State Sector Management Bill.

There is an element of this bill that we do not have a problem with at all, and that is in respect of the amalgamation of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology to form the new Ministry of Science and Innovation. We think that is great. That is fine, and I think we will wait with great interest to see what will emerge from the new Ministry of Science and Innovation, especially with Minister Mapp at the helm. Great things are obviously—

💬 Sue Moroney: Anything could happen.

Anything could happen, at all.

But the aspect of this bill that we are very opposed to, for very serious reasons, is the proposed merger of Archives New Zealand and the National Library with the Department of Internal Affairs. These institutions are a key part of our democracy—absolutely key. They are about keeping Government departments transparent and the information held in those departments protected. When the Minister of State Services gave his opening speech on this bill, it was the most limp speech that I have ever heard. It was quietly given, in a measured way, and it looked as though it would not panic the punters. But, actually, this measure shows the determination of National to continue an unrelenting attack on public servants, whom they see as just being bureaucrats and bean counters, not as people who value their jobs, do their jobs with passion and pride, and take with great seriousness the roles and the functions of their jobs. The Minister saw this merger in his speech as being simply a little merger that tucks Archives New Zealand and the National Library—including the iconic Alexander Turnbull Library—into the Department of Internal Affairs. National’s position is that we should not worry, because it has sorted out everything about the roles and functions of the National Librarian and of the Chief Archivist. It says we should trust it to know what it is doing.

This merger looks to be all very simple and sort of logical, but, actually, behind it there is an insidious and unrelenting lack of respect for public servants who have done their job.

I found it interesting that Colin King stood up and gave a silly little speech, just reading the opening paragraph of the commentary on the bill—National members have been told to speak just for about 10 seconds on every bill, so that they will be out of here by about midday. Mr King was not around a decade ago. A decade ago there was a failed experiment in which Archives New Zealand was put under the Department of Internal Affairs. What goes around comes around; now we are doing it again. Relationships were so bad between the Department of Internal Affairs and Archives New Zealand that they went to court, 10 years ago. So what a waste of time and money this merger is.

The Minister could only come up with the justification that this great merger, all in the name of increased efficiency, better services for the public, better accountability, and great improvements in the quality of service provision from the so-called bureaucrats—who are wonderful, respected professionals in their jobs—will save only $165,000. Archives New Zealand and the National Library have always had an absolutely clean audit from the Audit Office—no problems; nothing that needed to be tidied up. They do their job professionally as stand-alone entities, so why in the name of efficiency would one merge them into the Department of Internal Affairs, for the sake of saving the princely sum of $165,000, and risk that grievances will arise again in the future? The roles of the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian will be third-tier positions, and they will not even have face-to-face meetings on a weekly basis with the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. I think that is an absolute insult.

If Chris Finlayson, who does know about the functions of the National Library and Archives New Zealand and about the importance of the material that they preserve, had been a little more aware of what was being proposed by stealth by Tony Ryall, if he had been a bit more aware and read his Cabinet papers in time, he would have jumped up and said this was a foolish move. An absolutely flawed move like this took us to court a decade ago. As a lawyer, Minister Finlayson knows that. He knows about the risks if the public record is not kept transparent and people are not held accountable for it. Minister Finlayson knows about the risks, but he failed to challenge Nathan Guy and Tony Ryall, so this cute little merger, this cute little amalgamation, went through. Members can look at the resulting effect: 15 jobs are lost. Mr Ryall would say “Only 15—what’s that? That’s great. It’s all in the name of efficiency.” These are not just jobs. These are people who are held accountable for, and who know how to manage, the public record of both libraries, and who know how to look after the body of historical archival material held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. These libraries are not something that can be merged with the Department of Internal Affairs quite easily, even though National says the merger does not affect their roles because it has sorted those out in the bill.

I think this situation is an absolute disgrace. The Chief Archivist and the National Librarian must have statutory independence, and their independence is limited if they become part of the Department of Internal Affairs. What happened a decade ago when this happened? It was logical: they struggled to find a voice. If they are put into the third-tier level of management in a huge department, a burgeoning, huge department, then how will they have a voice? How will they have their independence? How can the National Librarian and Chief Archivist go and meet their Minister? That will not happen. They will be swallowed up in the department, and will struggle to have a voice to advocate for the record that they manage. This is an absolutely stupid move. It is a flawed move. It has already caused great distress in the library and the archive sector of New Zealand. Those who work in the sector are not fuddy-duddy bureaucrats who feel threatened by the loss of a job; they are there to preserve the function of their job, and it has been shown that they have an excellent record. For the sake of $165,000 a year and the loss of 15 jobs, National thinks this is a great little cute move, but it is not.

In conclusion, I say the merger is not necessary at all. It will not generate better public services; it is driven purely by an ideological desire to reduce the number of Government agencies. This is flawed logic. The Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage failed to represent and advocate for Archives New Zealand and the National Library as being very important functions of a creative country, in a sector that has a great sense of history. The merger will fail, and I ask members to watch to see what will happen with the next audit report. We will argue against this merger in more depth when we get into the Committee stage of this bill.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker Barker. Kia ora, everybody. Ngā mihi nui a koutou. Kia ora. This is my first day back in Parliament after 3 weeks on parental leave. It is great to be here on a Saturday. Three weeks ago my wife gave birth to a healthy little baby, Zoe Elizabeth Hughes. I wonder what impact the State Sector Management Bill will have on the records and archives we are producing now in Parliament and around our communities. What access will she have when she is 18 and when she is 30? That is the key question we are asking today with this bill.

I was privileged to join the other members on the Education and Science Committee hearing the submissions. I heard one clear message from all of the submitters. There was a clear message that the merging, or the takeover, as it was described, of the National Library and Archives New Zealand will be bad. It will be bad for Archives New Zealand, it will be bad for the National Library, and it will be bad for Kiwis accessing those services.

I was fortunate enough to have a tour of Archives New Zealand with some of the staff. Boy, what a fantastic institution it is. I got to see maps of New Zealand from the 1950s with potential nuclear strikes. I got to see handwritten deeds of sale signed with moko. Truly, they are national taonga deserving of our utmost respect and utmost care, and the risk with this bill we are debating today under urgency on a Saturday is a lack of care, and a lack of due diligence and prudence. There is a lack of reasons why we are even addressing these issues today.

I will briefly touch on some of the impacts of this bill, because there will be some, and touch on some of the reasons—or slogans, as I put it—given for why this bill has been introduced, and reasons why I am opposed to it. To begin with, the submitters to the select committee presented a great number of risks and reasons why we should not proceed with this bill. We heard that the National Library of New Zealand and Archives New Zealand have different roles: one is a library and one is responsible for archiving. We heard that their independence is at risk. We are putting the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian within a bureaucracy and down three or four tiers from their current position, which will reduce their impact and their access to Ministers. It will reduce their ability to have mana to proactively argue and to actually hold the chief executives of Government departments to account and tell them when they are doing a bad job when it comes to archiving.

We heard that it will impact their budgets, although one good thing that I will give to the Government is that separate votes will continue. But we will see budget pressures faced and the risk is that the Department of Internal Affairs, one financial year, will say that we will just have fewer books that year. We also heard from submitters that this change is impacting on the morale of the staff. These guys do fantastic work day in, day out for the country’s sake to protect these taonga, and having 15 staff at risk is damaging morale.

We also heard on the select committee why we are doing this. The reasons that I heard and that I read in the Cabinet papers simply amount to slogans. We heard slogans: future-proofing, financial savings, efficiencies, and digitisation. These are simply slogans without argument or solid facts to back them up. Throughout the select committee process there were no facts and figures, and no robust arguments were presented. In that case, there remains simply slogans.

When it comes to the finance we are talking about maybe $165,000 a year. It seems crazy that we are doing this for literally $165,000 a year. It is as if the Government, looking for inspiration for its legislative programme for the year, went back and looked at the Shipley-Bolger playbook from the 1990s. When it comes to worker relations it has gone back to the Shipley-Bolger playbook, and when it comes to these wonderful Government departments, it has gone back to the Shipley-Bolger playbook. We have returned to the 1990s. In the select committee we once again heard that there were compelling reasons why these departments were separated by the Labour Government.

In summary, we oppose this bill for a considerable number of reasons. We have simply heard slogans as arguments for it, and it essentially amounts to an ideological solution in search of a problem. Kia ora.

ACT is happy to support the State Sector Management Bill, which amends a number of Acts in order to amalgamate several Government departments.

Mōrena. Mōrena tātou e hoa mā kua whakawhāiti mai ki roto i te Whare nei i tēnei ata. Ehara i te mea he nui ngā kōrero. Kua rongo i ngā kōrero a te mema mō te Kākāriki. Me mihi ki a ia me tana ekenga hai pāpā mō tētahi pēpi. Me mihi rā ki a koe e hoa, ka mutu, waiho tērā kōrero ki reira. Engari i tua atu o tērā, kua rongo au i ngā kōrero a te mema rā i te mea kei te āhua rite tonu ki a au i te mea, kua tae mai wētahi ki a au ki te whakatakoto i ērā momo kōrero ki mua i a mātou o te Pāti Māori, arā, ngā uauatanga ka tau mai ki runga i ngā kaimahi o roto i te National Archives me te Whare Pukapuka o te Motu. Kua rongo ake, engari i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa kāre au i te tino kite i te whakatinanatanga o ērā momo whakaaro i te mea, he tino tāonga e takoto nei ki roto i ngā whare nei. Hoi anō, ka whakarongo ki ngā kōrero e rere haere nei ā kō ake nei, ā te wāhanga Komiti, ā, kātahi ka whiriwhirihia hei taua wā. Nō reira, kia ora tātau.

[Good morning. Good morning to us all, colleagues assembled in the House this morning. It is not as though I have a lot to talk about. I heard what the member from the Greens had to say, and I must congratulate him on becoming a father. Well done, colleague. We cannot let that go by without acknowledging it. But park that there. Furthermore, I note what that member said, because it is much like that with me, as well. Some have brought that sort of thing, about difficulties being placed upon National Archives and National Library of New Zealand staff, before us, the Māori Party. I have heard about it in the negotiations, but have never seen those kinds of thoughts implemented, because there are treasures of real significance stored in those buildings. However, I will listen to the contributions flying about here, and then later perhaps, during the Committee stage, make a decision at that point. Thank you all.]

I am pleased to speak on the second reading of the State Sector Management Bill. This bill is a continuation of the Government’s drive for efficiency and effectiveness across the State services sector.

Rather than use the Government’s words to talk about one particular issue that the Opposition has raised, I thought I would give members the words of the Public Service Association national secretary, Brenda Pilott. She says: “We are happy to see that the bill retains the statutory roles of the National Librarian, Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library and the Chief Archivist,”. Finishing with those words, I am proud to support this bill.

The State Sector Management Bill is a drive, but it goes in no particular direction, it seems to me. It is a drive towards, basically, showing people that doing something is better than not doing something. But doing something for absolutely no real reason does not seem to be a particularly good use of our time here on a Saturday morning.

One thing that brings us together as parliamentarians on a Saturday morning is the feeling that we could have done this better, and that the Leader of the House could have organised this a bit better so that instead of being here in Parliament on a Saturday morning, we might have actually been spending our time with our constituents. As we all know, in our electorates there are many things we could be doing this morning. We do not have very much time before Christmas comes along.

Firstly I will touch on what has already been mentioned in terms of the Archives and the National Library. The Education and Science Committee sat through 31 submissions of evidence, and—Louise Upston will know this as well—every single one of them, without exception, opposed the bill. The submissions were some of the best I think I have ever heard while sitting on a select committee in my short career here in Parliament.

Submissions were made by people who had worked under the 1990s regime and had seen the mess that occurred as a result of putting the Archives, in particular, inside the Department of Internal Affairs. They pleaded for us to keep it separate. They showed us that in almost every other country in the world, best practice was to keep archives outside the Department of Internal Affairs. From there, it could serve as an independent watchdog and a repository of information that benefited the whole of New Zealand—the whole of New Zealand.

Instead, we are burying both the Archives and the National Library inside the Department of Internal Affairs, which will make the heads of both of those departments third-tier positions. That means that they will not, despite what we were told in the select committee, have access to the responsible Minister. It seems like the Minister would not necessarily be doing anything even if they did have access to the Minister, so perhaps that is a pointless point to bring up.

This measure has been done under the auspices of making something more efficient and more effective. It saves about $160,000 a year. We could probably do an internal reshuffle and save more than that, if that were able to done.

💬 Hon Steve Chadwick: One day in Parliament in urgency.

We would probably save as much as that if we had a Leader of the House who actually organised himself. I have to say that 2 weeks ago we had made plans right through this weekend to get out in the electorate and do things before the Christmas break. Those plans seem to have been shot down.

Let us move to the research and science provisions in the bill, which present less of a problem to this side of the House. In fact, I congratulate Minister Mapp on coming up with a good name: the Ministry of Science and Innovation [Interruption] That is true. I was reflecting on what would have happened if Wayne Mapp by some remarkable feat had won the 1981 Mt Roskill selection and had come in as the member for Mt Roskill.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: As a Labour member?

As a Labour member for Mount Roskill—that is right. I was thinking about how he would have risen through the Labour Party as a result of being in Mt Roskill. It is an interesting thought; I did not spend too long thinking about it.

Dr Mapp came up with a great name: the Ministry of Science and Innovation. We may ask what is in a name. Well, the answer is not a whole lot. If we dig below the name, we see the same old, same old approach coming out yet again.

I will give members two examples. First of all, putting two departments together will not save any money for at least 7 years, according to the Auditor-General’s report. That report supposes that no extra people have been taken on board as a result of new things that the new ministry comes up with. It will be 7 years.

The other thing that was interesting when the select committee looked at this bill was that I expected, perhaps in the preamble, something slightly more inspirational about what this bill is trying to do. It is bringing together two pieces of Government bureaucracy. The officials said that they had not had time to think about that, and that they had been too busy trying to merge the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research, Science and Technology. In a sense, that says it all about this legislation. It starts off aspiring to be something that really tries to take us forward, but it does not. It falls at the first hurdle; it really does not move us forward any more.

I will give the House a second example, which is in respect of appointing the head of this new ministry. From the very beginning, I have had no issues or problems with the person who was chosen for this job.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Was it Christine Rankin?

No, in this case it was not Christine Rankin. But I ask members this: if we were going to start a brand new ministry that really looked to be inspirational and aspirational about what we want to do, as the Minister has spoken about in every speech he has come out with, what would we do? I will tell the House what I would do. I would advertise across the world and try to get the best person for the job, from perhaps the other side of the world, perhaps from Finland or Denmark, which the Minister keeps mentioning as the example of where we want to be in the world. Maybe we should go to Denmark and see whether we can attract anybody from Denmark to New Zealand who can show us what happened there. We could have looked at Sweden or Singapore.

What happened in this case? Again, this is no reflection on the person who was eventually appointed. What happened? We opened that recruitment process for 2½ weeks. I know from talking to a lot of people around town that the recruitment agency did not have the resources to go further abroad and make an international search. There is absolutely no way that we can say with our hand on our heart that we have trawled the world for the best possible person and got the best possible person. If we had done that and the current head of the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology had been selected, I would have said that it is fantastic to have a Kiwi, a New Zealander, who is able to do the job. But we have not.

This is another example that permeates right through the Government of where we have sold ourselves short. We have lacked the vision, we have lacked the plan, and we have lacked the aspiration, even though this is one of the main areas where the Government wants to pick up New Zealand’s economic performance. We have lacked the drive to drive this ministry forward to the place it should be.

Here we are on a Saturday morning looking at a bill that puts the Archives and the National Library back into the Department of Internal Affairs, despite the best advice from just about everybody who has ever worked in both of those areas. In the research, science and technology area we could have made a real difference and really lived up to the great name that the Minister has come up with, but instead we have fallen sadly short.

It is good to speak on the State Sector Management Bill, the purpose of which is to amalgamate a number of existing agencies to achieve gains in terms of financial efficiencies, effectiveness, and future viability of agencies. These amalgamations will improve services within existing baselines, reducing cost in the short to medium term and future-proofing the long-term delivery of Government services. I commend this bill to the House.

If ever there was an example of Government legislation that is a triumph of ideology over common sense, then the State Sector Management Bill is that legislation. We are sitting on a Saturday morning under urgency because apparently the most important thing that this Government has to do before Christmas is merge Archives New Zealand and the National Library. God forbid that we should go into 2011 without having merged Archives New Zealand and the National Library! I hate to think what that would mean for the economy of this country and the people of New Zealand. I think that shows the priorities of this Government. It has the people of Aotearoa New Zealand at heart!

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: It was time for a change.

It was absolutely time for a change in the way we manage our National Library and our archives.

The merger of Archives New Zealand and the National Library absolutely defies belief. It was only 10 years ago that we separated them out because of all the problems they were having when they were administered by the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Education.

On the subject of Archives New Zealand, interestingly enough I think there is quite a lot of correlation between the National Government’s attempts to rewrite history and its desire to run down the role of Archives New Zealand. Archives New Zealand plays a key constitutional role in New Zealand. It ensures that the documents of Government are retained and are available for scrutiny by the people of New Zealand. Should we really be surprised that this National Government has shown no respect for the processes under the Official Information Act? When we put in our Official Information Act requests to the Government, the information comes back late. The Government refuses to release anything, but if it is forced to release anything, we get blank pages or words crossed out, because the Government does not want the people of New Zealand to know that the advice it has been getting from its officials shows that the path we are on is not good for our country. So I do not think we should be particularly surprised that the Government would like to undermine the role of Archives New Zealand, because that would make it a lot easier for John Key and his team to rewrite history, which they have tried to do many, many times already.

This bill will result in the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian being nothing more than third-tier managers in the Department of Internal Affairs. Those roles require independence. One has to ask how the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian can remain independent when they are beholden to a chief executive above them and to managers above them, and are far more beholden to a Minister than ever before.

Let us ask ourselves what the mischief is that the Government is trying to solve. Members across the House have sat on select committees that both these entities have come before for their financial reviews. Both of them are very, very well run. They are very efficiently run. They get very good reports from the Audit Office and from select committees. So they are not organisations that are in trouble in any way. They are not organisations that are underperforming. The cost savings that the Government has been trumpeting are simply not there.

One of the things Government Ministers have said is that if they bring these entities together, the big information and communication technology project to digitalise all of this information will be easier to do. Well, according to people who actually know about that digitisation, it is doomed to fail because of the complexity of this merger and the way that the new entities will be set up. In fact, that information and communication technology project is under threat from this merger.

So why is the Government doing it, other than out of blind ideology—blind ideology—and a feeling that it hates Government departments and nameless, faceless bureaucrats, despite the fact that they are preserving our history for future generations of New Zealanders? The Government has no plan for our economy, so instead it will say: “Aren’t we great? We fired a whole lot of people in the State sector. Aren’t we doing a really good job? Look at us managing public funds properly.”, even though there will be no savings from this merger, and even though it puts at risk very expensive projects that have been ongoing for a long time. More important, it undermines the very independence of these two constitutional roles, which this House should be protecting.

I will follow on from my colleague David Shearer and his comments about the other part of this legislation, which is the combining of the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. Labour members do not oppose that. I do not think it will make any great change, to be perfectly honest. In fact, when Dr Mapp came to the select committee for his first appropriation—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Was he awake?

—yes, he was awake and he was enthusiastic about his new role—he quite eloquently laid out why the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology were separate. Committee members remember talking about the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. Dr Mapp very eloquently pointed out that the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology is the ministry that provides policy to the Government. He told us that it was Government-facing. Then he said that the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology was different because it was the funding arm for the area of science and research and development, so the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology faced out towards the science community. That, he explained, was why the two entities need to be separate: the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology served the Government, and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology served the science community, and those two roles were very, very different. He remembers saying that, because he is smiling now. So I wonder why, given how eloquently he professed at the select committee that the two entities needed to remain separate, all of a sudden we are combining them, for no apparent benefit. There will be no cost savings for at least 7 years.

I also note that this week the Minister of Housing announced exactly the opposite approach for the Housing New Zealand Corporation: the Government will take policy away from the operational arm of the Housing New Zealand Corporation because it needs to keep those two separate. So I am not sure why one thing works for the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Department of Building and Housing, and something completely different works for the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, but, kei te pai, that is all right. We do not think it will do a whole lot of damage. It is really just shuffling the deck chairs.

It does not answer the more important questions in the area of science and research and development, which are why the Government slashed the funding the previous Labour Government had put in place, and why it removed the research and development tax credit, which was unanimously supported by the sector as a tool it needed to lift private-sector investment in research and development, and replaced it with a bureaucratic grants system. If Labour had put that in place, members opposite would have been all over us about how bureaucratic it was, how inefficient it was, and why we had not introduced a tax credit. But they could not accept that a tax credit was a good idea, and it was Labour’s idea, when it came to research and development. Bill English has always had a funny thing about tax credits. He gets wound up about them.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: And scientists.

That is right.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: He’s against science.

He’s anti-science. The fact is the research and development tax credit was a good idea. It has been replaced by a very bureaucratic idea, which is far less efficient than Labour’s was. The Minister for Crown research institutes keeps going on about how great this Government has been for science. I want to know whether he would say that to my friends whom I went through university with—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: There are too many.

MOANA MACKEY:—that is right, there are far too many—whom I studied science with, who have been laid off from Crown research institutes under this Government, which is apparently the great Government of science, because of funding cuts.

Minister Tony Ryall is in charge of this legislation. Another thing he does not talk about is that a lot of the cuts in science funding have come through health cuts. A lot of scientific research is carried out under funding from the Ministry of Health. I know many people who have lost their jobs. They are highly qualified scientists. That is not to mention the science advisers that have also been fired and who have gone overseas—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Hey, in this Government even the science Minister will get laid off.

Quite possibly—who knows? This Government has not been good for science. Here we are merging the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. That is fine. I do not think it will do an awful lot. It will not result in cost savings or better outcomes for science, so one has to wonder why we are doing it. I have taken that view from the Minister of Research, Science and Technology himself, who absolutely convinced me at the select committee in 2009 that this merger was not something the Government should be doing, that the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology carry out two very different roles. I took that view from the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp.

I come back to the core part of this legislation, which is the absolute ridiculousness of merging Archives New Zealand and the National Library. Maybe we should not be surprised; this Government has shown absolutely no respect for libraries and librarians and the role they perform. It cut the school library service. People living in provincial New Zealand used to have access to someone at the National Library who could make sure that children growing up in the provinces got the same access to information as children growing up in the cities did. Well, that is gone. Guess what they were given? An 0800 number—as if that is the same thing! Provincial schools were up in arms about that because they used the service regularly. It meant that children in rural areas got the same access to information as kids in the cities did.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: What a lot of rubbish.

I tell Anne Tolley to visit some schools in her electorate; they will tell her. But they are not allowed to, because when she visits a school the staff are told that they are not allowed to discuss education with her. They are not allowed to discuss education. Because she is their local MP, they can talk about local issues only—although I note that she has started to visit schools now that we are coming into election year.

I rise to support the State Sector Management Bill. This bill amalgamates a number of existing agencies. What do we get from that? We achieve gains in terms of financial and operational efficiencies. It is about improving effectiveness through synergies within those departments. But the best thing this bill does is guarantee the future viability of these agencies. We have inherited a financial mess from the last Labour Government. The amalgamations will improve services within existing baselines and will reduce those costs in the short to medium term. On that basis I commend this bill to the House.