Urgent Debates Declined — Child Poverty—Expert Advisory Group Report

I have received a letter from Andrew Little seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the report commissioned by the Privacy Commissioner and the ACC’s board, Independent Review of ACC’s Privacy and Security of Information, and the report by the Controller and Auditor-General, Inquiry into aspects of ACC’s Board-level governance, their findings, and the Government’s response to them. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. The big hurdle to get over in applications for urgent debates is whether the matter has reached the stage where the business of the House ought to be set aside. Although the release of a report may warrant an urgent debate, this must be exceptional, especially where working through a report’s recommendations may take some time. An urgent debate on the release by ACC of private details of ACC clients was held on 20 March this year. The member in his application has not authenticated any response yet from the Government to those reports. In these circumstances, I am not persuaded that the setting aside of the business of the House for an urgent debate can be justified today.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just two points on your ruling. The debate on 20 June related to the rapid departure of a number of members of the board of ACC. That raised an obvious question about the governance that was left to look after that corporation, given its importance. But, also, particularly the report from the Privacy Commissioner and Malcolm Crompton, who was the external, independent adviser to that review, has laid out a timetable for implementation of the recommendations that spans 2 years. With all due respect, I submit that it would be unreasonable for us to have to wait that length of time before we can debate what are very, very important recommendations, at a very important time, over very serious events, for a very important public body.

I think the member has highlighted why, perhaps, the matter does not meet the bar for an urgent debate today. The member has acknowledged that in the case referred to earlier, a significant proportion of the board of ACC resigned. If that had happened in response to this report, then I think the matter would have met the requirement for an urgent debate. But, as the member himself has pointed out, the time frame for responding to or implementing the proposals is up to 2 years. There will be many opportunities over that time to hold the Government to account on how it is responding, if that is, in fact, the time frame. That is why the application was therefore declined.

I have also received a letter from Brendan Horan seeking to debate the state of New Zealand’s rail network following issues revealed in the Infrastructure and Engineering Business Plan 2012-2015 report by KiwiRail. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. However, as I have already indicated, the release of a report on its own is not necessarily sufficient to justify the setting aside of the business of the House for an urgent debate. In recent times there have been a number of questions about the performance of KiwiRail, and the House has other specific procedures for examining the performance and current operations of State enterprises. Again, I am not convinced that the setting aside of the business of the House for an urgent debate today is warranted. This application is therefore also declined.

I have received a third application, from Jacinda Ardern, seeking to debate the Children’s Commissioner’s expert advisory group’s issues and options paper. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. However, it is an issues and options report, and working through it may well take some time. The urgent debate procedure is a means of holding the Government accountable for its actions. The time for such a debate may be when the Government response is known. The application is therefore also declined.