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 2012/13 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the appropriations and information for the 2013/14 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. These three officers are, in fact, Officers of Parliament and do have some high degree of—or, in fact, total—statutory independence. The Controller and Auditor-General is the position currently held by Lyn Provost. She has held that position since October 2009. It is the Public Audit Act 2001 that gives that person the authority to effectively be the public’s person looking at the probity of all public expenditure—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Put some heart behind it.

—in New Zealand, and that includes local government expenditure as well. Members are extolling me to be a little more excited in my speech this afternoon. I would be—I would be—but when it comes to the Auditor-General, there is a degree of dignity about that office that does need to be respected, and I am not going to fall into the trap posed for me this afternoon by the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who has a great deal of respect for the Office of the Auditor-General, and, for that matter, Mr Grant Robertson, on the other side, who is only just now learning what that office is.

One of the other groups here is the Ombudsman. Currently there are a number of people holding that office, and have done so on behalf of the people of New Zealand since 1962. They continue to do good work, making sure that the Government of the day or other agencies of Government are able to be accessible to New Zealanders.

Finally, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, has been in that position since 5 March 2007. She was reappointed for a second term in 2012, and continues to be a watchdog for the people of New Zealand when it comes to environmental matters. Some of her work, although at times controversial and at times challenging to some people, is absolutely necessary, and she does a great job.

There are two changes to Vote Audit: a $35,000 increase in the permanent legislative authority baseline, arising from a determination by the Remuneration Authority; and a decrease of $181,000, resulting from an updated forecast for the revenue-dependent appropriation of audit and assurance services. In the cases of the other officers, there are small alterations that I do not think are necessary to mention this afternoon. There are both increases and some decreases, as well. All of those, by and large, come from Remuneration Authority determinations. I commend the motion to the House.

I am pleased to take a call on this motion on the 2012-13 alterations to appropriations and the 2013-14 appropriations for Officers of Parliament. As a member of the Officers of Parliament Committee, I have become more personally acquainted with the fine calibre of people we have in the Office of the Ombudsmen, the Office of the Auditor-General, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. During the consideration of this report, all of the committee members were in accord about the excellent work done by these officers and we agreed, particularly in the case of the Office of the Ombudsmen and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, that the offices should not be expected to continue without additional appropriations. So Labour supports the recommendations in the report from the Officers of Parliament Committee, but we still have some reservations about the level of funding, particularly for the Office of the Ombudsmen.

Last year the Chief Ombudsman, Beverley Wakem, warned that the office was in crisis, saying it was under considerable pressure in terms of staffing and funding, and had been for the previous 3 years. She told the Government Administration Committee that the office’s baseline funding had been established on the basis that it would be actively working on 800 to 1,000 cases at any one time, but in fact it had been dealing with about double that. There were outstanding cases because of a lack of staffing to do the work, and the workload had been increased by complaints from the Christchurch earthquake victims’ dealings with the Earthquake Commission and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. This was causing lengthy delays for people trying to hold the Government to account, get answers, or have their cases resolved. In addition, Labour has seen Government Ministers systematically avoiding questions and refusing to reply to Official Information Act requests, and therefore, we believe, loading the Ombudsmen with more and more work.

We do believe that there is now a culture of secrecy and suspicion within the Public Service, and that has been encouraged by the National Government, and that has to stop. The decision by the Chief Ombudsman in December 2012 to review Public Service processes for handling official information requests was very timely. After all, there have been a lot of botch-ups by National in the recent past, and we do not believe that the Government has the right to shut down the flow of information to avoid public scrutiny. In a democracy the general public are entitled to know what their Government is up to. Under National New Zealanders are being denied access to the information that will allow them to make informed decisions about the Government’s performance. The National Government cannot conceal its mistakes or incompetence by hiding information from the public.

When Chief Ombudsman, Beverley Wakem, appeared before the Officers of Parliament Committee she told us that, in addition to the extra workload, existing staff were underpaid and attracting new staff was a challenge. In some cases, she said, staff had literally been worked to death by exceeding their maximum tolerable workloads. It was clear to the committee that funding needed to be increased to keep pace with the workload and the pressure on the office and its staff, or it would be unable to achieve its performance targets for resolving complaints and meeting the expectations as a watchdog for the public—and, as the old saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied. So the committee agreed unanimously that the Office of the Ombudsmen would be funded by an increase of $960,000 for 2013-14 and in out-years, and it would be able to employ six additional investigative staff in order to perform their statutory duties. The Ombudsmen asked us for funding to employ eight staff and Treasury recommended four. Labour believes that six was a better-than-nothing compromise, even though, clearly, it would have been better to meet the Chief Ombudsman’s request for the resources she believed were needed not only to deal with the huge backlog facing the office but also to deal promptly and effectively with the growing number of complaints.

I also note the Chief Ombudsman’s request for more funding to address the remuneration issues for staff, given that they are disadvantaged compared with others in comparable positions in other agencies. We were told that retaining or attracting high-calibre staff at current salaries would be an ongoing challenge, and Labour believes that this issue must be addressed in future Budgets.

I want to acknowledge here the work of the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General. Members will note that there have been adjustments for remuneration determinations. We were told that the principal pressures on the budget of the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General over the past year has come from the inquiries it conducts into matters of public concern. Generally, the office undertakes two inquiries a year, but over the past year the office received an unprecedented number of requests regarding important issues, and undertook six major inquiries. Recent inquiries of the office include the Government’s decision to negotiate with Skycity Entertainment Group for an international convention centre, also aspects of ACC’s board-level governance, and, going back a bit further, Pansy Wong and her husband’s use of parliamentary travel entitlements. If this expectation or demand continues, the office told the committee that it would have to look at options such as taking longer to complete inquiries or potentially declining to take them on. This is something that Parliament needs to seriously consider. If we want this kind of scrutiny sustained in future years, there will be issues of workload and funding that must be considered.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment presented a strong case to the committee for an increase in her budget, especially as the operating baseline of the commissioner had not increased for the past 6 years. Again, the committee was unanimous in its appreciation of the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s office but noted that it managed with a very small staff of just 17 people. The office has a very wide-ranging role of inquiry and reporting on any matter where, in the opinion of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the environment may have or has been adversely affected. The committee accepts the cost increases and pressures that have been absorbed in operating efficiencies achieved over that time—and it was clear to us that there was really no fat left to squeeze out of this office. Again we heard of recruitment and retention difficulties: a loyal and hard-working staff who have managed in a climate of cost cutting and expectations on them that simply cannot be humanly coped with. So the committee agreed to fund a modest increase of $100,000 in the appropriation for Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for 2013-14 and out-years. Labour supports this increase, but again warns that the expectations that we have of this office, with its small staff and budget, are unsustainable in the longer term.

So, to conclude, Labour supports this motion. However, we note concern at the ongoing financial constraints that the Officers of Parliament are facing. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak in support of this motion. I think it is right that this should go to the Governor-General. We should see these appropriations and draft budgets be agreed to by His Excellency. It is important that the budgets of the three offices we are talking about, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, and the Office of the Ombudsmen, are not set by this Parliament and are set by the Government through the annual Budget. It is important there is independence.

I would like to acknowledge the chairmanship of the Officers of Parliament Committee of the Speaker and all the members, and I would like to thank the staff and the office holders for all the work they do for our country.

I would like to thank the Auditor-General, Lyn Provost; the Ombudsmen, Dame Beverley Wakem, Professor Ron Paterson, and the outgoing David McGee; and, of course, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, and I thank their staff. I guess tonight that no doubt the staff of all those three office holders are huddled around televisions in their offices watching this motion being debated in the House. I guess for them it might be disappointing, or even galling, that although those office holders are getting automatic remuneration increases through the permanent legislative authority, we are not necessarily seeing that for the staff, and I do not believe we are. So I would like to acknowledge the hard-working staff who have been working very well in a difficult and constrained fiscal environment.

First up on the Vote Audit budget is the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General. There is no change in the appropriation, because obviously it can collect fees. There is an increase in the permanent legislative authority. We would like to point out the important role it does within the constrained environment it operates in. As we heard from the member Darien Fenton, it has traditionally done two inquiries. However, over the last year we have seen six major inquiries into the likes of the Mangawhai waste-water issue, Bill Liu, former Minister Pansy Wong, and the Auckland convention centre. These issues are, I believe, vitally important. It is important that we get good financial scrutiny of the Government, of Ministers, and of State-owned enterprises. Given that we have got such a shambles at the moment at Solid Energy, I think it is vitally important that this budget reflects the importance this Parliament places on financial prudence and transparency.

When we look at the Office of the Ombudsmen, again, we would like to thank the staff. We would like to acknowledge the incoming Ombudsman, Professor Ron Paterson. We think he will do a good job and we welcome him into his role. I guess it is good news, because for years the office has struggled with no baseline funding increases, and what we are seeing with this motion and appropriation is just under $1 million for six new investigative staff. Six new investigators is a 12 percent increase for the Office of the Ombudsmen. Although we know that the office has been described as being in crisis in past financial reviews and that the number of complaints has literally skyrocketed over the last 10 years, we hope the six new investigative staff will make a difference, because the issues they are dealing with are important.

In 1962, I think it was, Sir Guy Powles, the first Ombudsman, said he was Parliament’s person, put there for the protection of the individual. It is still the case, but I guess we would expand that to say that the Ombudsman is actually the people’s person. He is New Zealanders’ person, and I guess, with the incoming Ombudsman, we could have a discussion around what the nature is of this office in 2013 and the coming decades. Let us have a discussion around how we get adequate funding so that those complaints can be dealt with in an acceptable time frame, because what we are seeing is that complaints are taking an awful long to time to be dealt with. People are not getting satisfaction. I believe that if we had a mechanism in place whereby Ministers had some sort of financial penalty for dealing with complaints, the Office of the Ombudsmen might be another area for a funding increase. It might help it to do the important work. So let us have a discussion around the question: what does the Ombudsman look like in the coming decades? Do we even call it an Ombudsman? I do not know whether a Scandinavian term is the correct term to help engage New Zealanders with the office and the important role it plays.

Lastly, for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, there is a permanent legislative authority increase of $10,000—an increase of $100,000 in the baseline, which had not been increased for 6 years. The report notes, appropriately, that this is because of “cost pressures”. We note the quality of the commissioner’s reports. Obviously, we in the Green Party do not agree with all of them, but we do note all the hard work that the commissioner’s team puts behind it. We know that there are some increasingly important environmental issues facing our country that merit the commissioner’s oversight and investigation.

I guess the last point I would like to leave on is that it has been widely signalled by the Government that the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is likely to have increased environmental monitoring roles into the future. I think it is right that the baseline increases reflect that so that her office can gear up and get ready for it, because we are in a catch-22 situation at the moment where the increased responsibilities have been widely signalled but the legislation has not been introduced, so obviously there has not been an increase in appropriations. It is a catch-22 situation. If we value environmental monitoring, if we want to get it right—and I believe we do, because it is the basis of our economy, of our prosperity—I think we should have a discussion on that in future years.

The Green Party supports this motion. We would like to thank those office holders, those staff, and the other parties in this Parliament. Kia ora.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First, and also on behalf of my colleague Barbara Stewart, to take a very short call on this Government motion, the 2012-13 alterations to appropriations for Officers of Parliament, and the 2013-14 appropriations for Officers of Parliament. New Zealand First gives its full support to the appropriations for the Officers of Parliament. We acknowledge the importance of these roles and agencies, the services they provide to Parliament, and how crucial it is that they be resourced in order to fulfil their functions adequately. With regard to the Office of the Auditor-General, this is a critical office of Parliament that we wholeheartedly support. We would like to highlight three of the Auditor-General’s recent reports, to illustrate the important work that the office does.

Firstly is the report entitled, Ministry for Primary Industries: Preparing for and responding to biosecurity incursions. This report alerted the Government that the Ministry for Primary Industries was underprepared for future biosecurity incursions. The report showed that responding to incursions took precedence over preparing for the potential arrival of other pests and diseases. The report revealed that there is still a lot of work to do to ensure that New Zealand is protected from biosecurity incursions. With New Zealand’s biosecurity breach in recent years involving Psa bacteria, clearly there are absolutely no grounds for complacency.

The second report I wish to mention in this debate is the inquiry into the Government’s decision to negotiate with Skycity Entertainment Group Ltd for an international convention centre. This report found a range of significant deficiencies in the advice that officials provided to the Government in relation to the new Auckland convention centre. The report also found that the quality of support provided to the Government fell well short of what we expect from the lead Government agency on commercial and procurement matters.

The Office of the Auditor-General also produced a very comprehensive report entitled the New Zealand Defence Force: The civilianisation project. The report revealed that overall the civilianisation project obtained only limited success. These are the types of reports that are essential to holding the Government and State sector agencies accountable to the New Zealand public.

The Office of the Ombudsmen has done excellent work over the past year. As an example, the Ombudsmen commenced an investigation into the school closure and merger process. The office is now asking anyone who has information relevant to the investigation to contact the office. When the Associate Minister of Education refused to release the advice relating to the development of the partnership schools policy, the office gave its opinion and recommendations on this decision. The Chief Ombudsman also raised serious concerns that charter schools are to be excluded from the provisions of the Official Information Act.

In regard to the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, the Office of the Ombudsmen also released its report on the investigation into complaints received about a disciplinary levy, continuing professional development, licensing conditions, and the refusal of licensing for non-payment of fees. In the last year the Office of the Ombudsmen also reported on the Minister for Economic Development’s refusal for access to official information regarding the production of The Hobbit and film production generally in New Zealand.

Lastly, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment produced a range of useful and timely reports that contribute valuable input to environmental information and debate in New Zealand, notably evaluating the environmental impacts of fracking in New Zealand—an interim report. New Zealand First supports this appropriation. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak to this Government motion concerning the 2012-13 alterations to appropriations for Officers of Parliament and the 2013-14 appropriations for those same bodies. These three offices—the Office of the Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—are three of the checks and balances against the ultimate power of the executive. They are three of the things that continue to make New Zealand one of the most transparent democracies in the world. They are three of the reasons that we continue to feature very highly in Transparency International’s assessment of transparency and accountability mechanisms in developed democracies—or in any democracy, because those countries that do not have democracy or any of democracy’s apparatus are always ranked at the very bottom of Transparency International’s ledger.

This motion from the Government today is important for a number of reasons. It focuses on the fact that these offices account to Parliament. They do not account to Ministers; they are not the creatures of ministerial portfolios—they are offices of Parliament and they report back to Parliament. So the Government does not own them; Parliament decides on the appropriation for them, and the offices’ appropriations are determined by a multiparty committee in this House.

It might be appropriate for us to reflect on why the appropriations have needed increasing in this next round, the 2013-14 appropriation. There are two possible reasons. One is that our citizens have become more actively engaged with the processes to which they are subjected. And why do people become more actively engaged in the processes that affect them? Well, this brings me to my second point. If the processes are seen to be unfair, are felt to be unfair, or are felt to have been inadequately addressed or inappropriately executed, then these offices provide—particularly the Office of the Ombudsmen—a venue, some recourse, that an ordinary citizen might have to get those complaints or differences addressed. The Office of the Auditor-General is critically important for being there as a check against the behaviour of a whole range of bodies, including local authorities.

The Office of the Ombudsmen is there for particular purposes, especially in relation to the enactment of regulations and legislation. The Office of the Ombudsmen is often the last port of call for a citizen who has a dispute over just how a regulation has been implemented. The previous speaker, Richard Prosser, referred to plumbers and gasfitters as a prime example, and so they are. The fact that the office’s work has been increasing could lead us to conclude that there have been more infringements of regulations and legislation that has been implemented in recent times, or there has been a greater disregard of citizens’ rights in the carrying out of current legislation and regulation. So I am pleased that there is an increase of staffing for the Office of the Ombudsmen.

I want to turn particularly to the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. This office was set up under the Environment Act 1986. Its roots lie in the 1980s reforms of this country’s environmental administration following an OECD report of 1981 called Environmental Policies in New Zealand. This report recommended changes, including strengthening the environmental advice to the Government and establishing an environmental body with separate audit and oversight functions. Those functions of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have included reviewing the system of agencies and processes set up by the Government to manage the country’s resources and report to the House of Representatives. Again, I state my previous point—the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment reports to Parliament; he or she does not report to the Government. The Government has its own agenda, and that is cutting a swathe through environmental legislation as we speak. However, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment stands independent of any Government’s programme.

My point here is that with the increase for the funding of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—that is, an additional $100,000 in the annual appropriation and subsequent years, largely to accommodate the cost pressures on the office’s operating budget, which is a very good thing—it also needs to be borne in mind that the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is increasing. And why is it increasing? Again, there are two reasons. We have a more engaged citizenry who care about the environment and want independent advice, not simply party lines about how well we are doing in the environment or how poorly we are doing with our environment and our natural resources. So we have engagement of people of all ages up and down this country on issues of environmental resources, and they require more information.

We laud the fact that science is making more and more of an impact on policy decision-making, but it seems to me that in the area that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment oversees there will always be a need for more science as more and more issues come to the fore. A few years ago we would not have had a report on fracking. Now we have had one, and we are awaiting the second. We are awaiting the second because there have not been enough resources for the parliamentary commissioner to expedite that second report as quickly as she would like. She has produced reports on wild and scenic rivers. She has produced a report, as she does from time to time, on an endangered species. She has done a report on marine mammals, but the most recent report was on long-finned eels. She has produced reports on water quality and the marine environment. There is any number of reporting measures that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment undertakes on behalf of natural resources and our husbanding of natural resources in this country.

So Labour welcomes the fact that the baseline appropriation is to increase by $100,000 per annum, but I would suggest also—and I would like to say it on the record here—that we need to be constantly vigilant about what is going on outside of this parliamentary environment that requires additional resourcing to the Office of the Auditor-General; to the Office of the Ombudsmen, in addressing complaints; and to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. If we do not keep pace with the kind of funding they require, their ability to act independently of any party in this House will be eroded. I support and endorse the recommendations of this motion.

The Green Party supports Government motion No. 1 for alterations to the appropriations for the Offices of Parliament—the Office of the Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—and the appropriations for 2013-14. In my short call I would like to focus just on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The mission of the parliamentary commissioner, as the office has interpreted it under the Environment Act, is “To maintain or improve the quality of the environment by providing robust independent advice that influences decisions.” As Maryan Street has noted, the offices are reporting to this Parliament, but nevertheless they make a number of recommendations to Ministers.

I think the recommendation of the Officers of Parliament Committee to increase the funding for the parliamentary commissioner by $100,000 is something that we would certainly support. It is a very modest increase. The office has a staff of only 17. It works very thoroughly in doing its reports and it does quite a lot of analysis, yet its budget, with this modest increase of $100,000, has been brought up to only $2.726 million. So it is a very cost-effective office, and it has, as others have said, had to absorb quite numerous cost increases over the last 6 years when its budget has remained the same.

I would like to place on record the Green Party’s thanks for a lot of the work that the staff in the parliamentary commissioner’s office do. They have made some landmark reports. There was one on 1080 in 2011, which very carefully analysed the evidence and evaluated the use of 1080, and recommended that it should continue. In fact, the report there recommended that the use should be expanded, because, as the parliamentary commissioner noted, there is more Crown funding provided to the Animal Health Board to control TB, and to kill possums to achieve that, than there is provided to the Department of Conservation for it to spend on controlling possums, rats, and stoats over the entire conservation estate. That is why this Parliament and the executive need to listen more carefully to the recommendations of the parliamentary commissioner. It is robust and independent advice, and yet we have not seen an increase in Department of Conservation funding to enable it to do better pest control. Instead, that funding has been cut.

There have been a number of other landmark reports by the office. One of those was Hydroelectricity or wild rivers?, which was released in May last year. In it the office recommended that there should be much more proactive work done to protect rivers for their wild and scenic values and that water conservation orders should be strengthened, yet we have not seen that. In the Government’s proposals for water reform we have seen the opposite—a weakening of water conservation orders.

Again, with the long-finned eels report, the value of the work that the parliamentary commissioner has done there is to take a species that is not cute like the kiwi or comical like the kea, to use the parliamentary commissioner’s own words, and to very closely look at the threats to long-finned eels, and to come out with a reasoned recommendation that commercial fishing be suspended until it can be shown that the long-finned eel population has recovered. The Government needs to take that recommendation seriously.

The recommendations of the office are sometimes not popular, because, as its mission statement notes, it is about providing robust and independent advice. As a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee, I would like to record my thanks when the office makes submissions on legislation, as it has done on changes to the Resource Management Act, and as it has done on the Government’s discussion document on the Act. The parliamentary commissioner said then that these changes to the Resource Management Act, which would strip out some of the criteria in Part 2, would erode the environmental protections in the Resource Management Act and tilt it towards promoting economic development. When you have the parliamentary commissioner saying that, it needs to be taken seriously.

The office also has quite an important educative function. It produced a very useful report on water quality and on understanding the science of water quality, to help inform public debate. I hope that Ministers have read that report, because there are a number of issues in terms of nitrate and nitrogen pollution and sediment pollution, which it explains. In that regard, the current push towards expanding irrigation just seems not to have recognised that the more you expand irrigation and the more you intensify agriculture, the more nitrogen you have in waterways.

One of the key issues to which my colleague Gareth Hughes alluded was state-of-the-environment reporting. It has been a promise of the Government since 2008 that there would be an environmental reporting Act, to require independent and 5-yearly state-of-the-environment reporting, and yet we have seen scant progress here. Last year the Government decided to stop producing consolidated, nationwide state-of-the-environment reports. We are one of the few countries in the OECD that do not have a legislative basis for national reporting on the state of the environment. The parliamentary commissioner has got a potential responsibility for this role, but her office needs to be resourced by an extra $1.3 million annually to carry out that role because she has estimated that it would take nine additional staff to do that reporting. If the work is to be done and a report were to be produced, that would have to start now.

So the recommendations in these reports need to be taken more seriously. The Government needs to listen, especially where there are recommendations to Ministers. But we thank all of the Officers of Parliament and congratulate them on their work. We appreciate the robust and independent advice that they provide. Thank you.

This motion, Government motion No. 1, as we have heard, is the process by which Parliament alters the appropriations for our Offices of Parliament. In speaking to the motion, I wish to address the increase in Vote Ombudsmen. Clearly, an increase is required—there is absolutely no question about that—but I want to speak about the reason why such a major increase is required.

As we heard from our member, Darien Fenton, who was on the Officers of Parliament Committee, which heard evidence on this particular matter, the request was for funding for an additional eight ombudsmen. The committee came down with a recommendation of six, I think, with Treasury being at the other end of the bargaining table, as it were, with an offer of only four. I think four would have been an insult to the requirements of the office, and I guess six is seen as a compromise.

Just to reflect on what Darien Fenton said, I think that she, amongst others, has felt that we really ought to be thinking very carefully about the pressure we are putting on the Office of the Ombudsmen. When we look at what the Chief Ombudsman actually said in her last report, we see that she described the financial restraints under which the office is operating and the pressures on its staff as acute. What that means is that the office will increasingly be unable to achieve its performance targets for resolving complaints. I think that that is an incredibly serious indictment.

We have the Office of the Ombudsmen for a very good reason. I think Maryan Street gave a very good summary of why New Zealand is held in good standing internationally—these independent Officers of Parliament, who are able to scrutinise on behalf of the people of New Zealand, ensure that the executive is held to account for the roles that it plays.

Vote Ombudsmen is funded on the basis of about 1,000 to 1,200 complaints being open and under action at any one time. However, it had over 1,700 open and active cases at the end of June last year and nearly 2,400 at the end of December. So within a 6-month period the over-representation of open complaints under action in the Office of the Ombudsmen doubled—it doubled in 6 months.

So a lack of staff meant that, of those complaints, 465 requests for assistance remained unallocated at 31 December 2012, and it is not surprising given the extent of the increase. But when one looks at, or drills into, those figures, what the Chief Ombudsman is saying is that the office is anticipating more than 14,000 requests for assistance this year—an increase of 36 percent since June 2002, and of about 65 percent over the 2 years since June 2011.

I think 2011 will have resonance with people in this House—certainly with those of us from Canterbury, because we know what happened in 2011, and we know why this massive increase in the number of complaints going to the Office of the Ombudsmen has occurred. I want to just put on record that this is a direct result of the failure of the Government to provide support to the people of Christchurch as they are forced to deal with the Earthquake Commission and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority under the provisions of the Official Information Act.

Instead of having a policy of complete transparency, and instead of just saying: “Yes, we’ll post that out to you. We will provide you with the information you want in a timely fashion.”—because, of course, the Earthquake Commission is not emailing stuff at the moment, for some reason—people are instructed to apply for information under the Official Information Act. This is what is clogging up the system. Instead of looking at the end of the problem, which is the amount of funding that has to go into the Office of the Ombudsmen, why, for heaven’s sake, will somebody not say to the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission and for Canterbury earthquake recovery: “Sort out the problem at the front end. Deal with the people of Christchurch in a reasonable and fair fashion.”?

Nobody is asking for special treatment. Nobody is asking for favours in Christchurch. All we are asking for is that people have access to the information that they need, so that they can make decisions about their own lives.

💬 Hon John Banks: Calm down, calm down.

The Minister can say that I should calm down, and I would like to calm down in respect of this particular matter, but the trouble is we have been arguing right from the very outset that people were going to require additional support. We have been arguing that they would need support to deal with the Earthquake Commission, and, more particularly, that they would need support to deal with their insurers. But to get to their insurers they have to get through the Earthquake Commission first, and when the commission says as its default position: “Apply under the Official Information Act.”, we end up with a snowball effect in the Office of the Ombudsmen. I do apologise if I sound like I am disappointed, but I am. I am very disappointed—

💬 Grant Robertson: Very genuine.

Well, we have actually been asking for some advocacy support for the people of Christchurch for, actually, years now—not just months and not just weeks. For years we have been asking the Government to actually respond to the needs of the people.

Instead of giving people the information they want, the Earthquake Commission says that they have to make an Official Information Act request. I just want to give you a little example. It concerns a friend of mine who actually thinks that the Project Management Office, which has got a contractor in to fix up her house, has charged the Earthquake Commission more than it should have had to pay. She thinks it has charged for things that it has not actually done. So she contacted the Project Management Office—Fletcher EQR they call it—and she sent them an email and said: “Could you just let me know whether they charged for a Portaloo, because I know they did not have one?”, and she asked whether they charged for x, y, and z, because she knows they did not do it. The response that she got was: “You will have to forward your request to EQC under the Official Information Act.” Look, she is trying to save them some money.

I have heard case after case after case—I am just using this as one example. There are cases throughout Christchurch where good, decent Christchurch residents are saying to the Earthquake Commission: “We think you’re being ripped off. We’d actually quite like to make sure that you’re not. We actually know that that’s good money that’s being spent on our behalf to get our homes repaired in a timely fashion.” They are offering to help, and what did they get in response? “You will have to make an application for that information under the Official Information Act.” Wake up—wake up, people! This is just so avoidable and preventable. Work with the people of Christchurch and they will work with you.

The Earthquake Commission has helpfully placed an Official Information Act request form on their on-line presence, but it has also had to say on there: “At present, your request may have a 3 to 4 month delay as EQC works through the significant demand for information of this type.” Hello! Again, wake up! The reason the public are asking for this information is that they now know that it is publicly available. They know that it can be provided to them in a reasonable fashion. It means that more and more complaints end up in the Ombudsmen’s office when they do not need to be there.

This is all because the Government has refused to meet the needs of Christchurch residents who are struggling with the complexity of the Earthquake Commission insurance interface and with the interface with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority as well. This could have been resolved if the Government had taken up our offer of a collaborative solution, a triage system, an advocacy service—and I know that lawyers in Christchurch have offered, on a pro bono basis, to take some of those very, very detailed cases to the court. The reason, I believe, that Mr Brownlee has scaled this back—and Mr Brownlee has scaled it back; an insurance advocacy service will be smaller than originally planned—is that apparently the need is no longer as great as it was. Well, it is still a month away. We know it is going to be much less than what people need, and that is why the people of Christchurch have responded by setting up something completely different, which they will announce.

Let us all work together and get a solution for this, because otherwise we will be back here asking for more resources for the Office of the Ombudsmen because ultimately that will be where the buck stops.

A functioning democracy requires functioning and well-resourced watchdogs. They are the organisations that provide the important checks and balances. They give the public confidence that the Government is being held to account, that there is transparency, and that the values—the important values—of independent scrutiny are being upheld.

In New Zealand, unfortunately, we have a shrinking media environment. We have under-resourced watchdogs, which is why we are standing here today having this discussion. Those watchdogs include the Office of the Ombudsmen, the Office of the Auditor-General, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. They also include the Privacy Commissioner, the Human Rights Commission, and many, many other important watchdogs. Alongside that there is an unrelenting move away from the notion of a public media to a commercial media in the broadcasting environment, which has eroded our ability—and public confidence—to uphold those important principles and values in our country.

So when we heard from the Office of the Ombudsmen in a media release on 27 September last year that the office had ended that financial year with 10,636 complaints and other contacts received, which was up 22 percent on the previous year, and that the number of cases had grown from 800 live cases to more than 1,700 at one time, shock waves went through the community about how this could have happened and what the impact was. “A crisis of democracy” was what was being said at that time. It is absolutely critical and important that we are here today discussing and agreeing on providing more resources to that particular office, but the other offices are also under pressure and we must not take our eye off the impact that that is having, as well.

You have to ask yourself why there has been such an explosion, and I know that other speakers have touched on this. The first explanation is that citizens are, rightly, becoming more demanding and more aware of the importance of transparency—there is no doubt about that—and technology has encouraged and allowed that to happen. But the second thing, which is the most disturbing thing, is that this Government is becoming more secretive. So on the one hand you have got the people wanting more transparency, and on the other hand you have got a Government that is becoming more secretive and making it harder for people to actually access information.

Our Offices of Parliament are swamped. There is no doubt about that. That is why we are having this discussion. These offices provide a valuable and important service to Parliament and the New Zealand public, and it is absolutely vital that they are sufficiently funded to be able to carry out their full and proper investigations.

I want to give you a couple of examples of just how difficult it is for the office to actually carry out investigations and of what is leading to that explosion in the number of complaints to the Office of the Ombudsmen, in particular. This motion applies only to the Offices of Parliament. However, as I have said, that under-resourcing and overburdening of those agencies is endemic under this Government.

Here is one example of what has happened in recent times. We have all heard now of the issues around Solid Energy—around the collapse of a State-owned enterprise through mismanagement and ministerial neglect. Soon after the company’s financial woes became public knowledge, it appeared before the Commerce Committee for a financial review. While before the committee the acting chief executive officer and the chair were, as one could say, economical with the truth about the availability of the recently departed chief executive to appear before that committee, they also declined to answer many of the committee’s questions as they were not present when the actual decisions were made that led to the demise of that company. Financial reviews are an essential part of Parliament. They do ensure that taxpayers receive value by holding Government departments and State-owned enterprises accountable. Government members of the committee have further blocked our ability to do this by objecting to a request for an inquiry.

As a last-ditch attempt to gain insight into Solid Energy’s circumstances, my colleague Clayton Cosgrove lodged an Official Information Act request from Solid Energy. It responded, asking that the 1-month deadline be extended by a further 6 weeks. Treasury also refused to provide a date for the release of relevant information on its website, declining an Official Information Act request because the information would soon be publicly available. Even journalists attempting to access background information were stymied by the Minister’s office with his refusal to release, even in part, a scoping document that brought to light the overwhelming size of Solid Energy’s debt. This was a complete disregard for public accountability and an excessive use of secrecy by the Government, which is leading to the unmanageable workload on our watchdog agencies. This is why these complaints are going to the Office of the Ombudsmen, and why it is being so swamped. When the Opposition has no mechanism by which to access information and hold public entities and their Government masters to account, it undermines democracy.

This is another example. As I am Labour’s broadcasting spokesperson, my office frequently makes Official Information Act requests of Television New Zealand (TVNZ) or the Minister of Broadcasting in relation to TVNZ. Recently I found it necessary to complain to the Ombudsman. Why? A request was made to the Minister’s office, and this was in mid-February, seeking copies of the quarterly reports provided to the Minister from TVNZ. It was not a difficult request. It was not a complicated request. In mid-March the Minister wrote back to me, seeking an extension of an additional 20 working days. He wrote again 2 days later, advising me that the request was now being transferred to TVNZ as it was more relevant to it. Finally, on 30 April, TVNZ declined the request in full. It deemed this necessary to protect its commercial interests.

Ultimately, what should have been a straightforward request for advice provided to a Minister by the State-owned broadcaster has taken over 2 months to be refused, and then for a reason that is now under investigation by the Ombudsman. We hope that the Ombudsman will review this decision. But these are just two examples of the length of time that it takes to get requests answered by Ministers and by ministries, and then the deferrals of those requests and then the obfuscation of the responses.

The Government is a significant influence in the day-to-day lives of many New Zealanders. People rightly expect that it should behave in a predictable, open, and transparent way where it can. In a democracy public confidence relies on citizens knowing what the Government is doing and why, and being able to take part in debates knowing that the Government is listening and responding. Greater public confidence in the Government through having more open government is one of the goals of the party on this side of the House.

One of the things that would result in a lesser workload for the Office of the Ombudsmen and provide confidence to public citizens that the principles of transparency are being upheld is the proactive release of information to establish—as is our policy—a default practice that Ministers and Government agencies release all Cabinet papers and other relevant papers on to a dedicated website in line with the Official Information Act once a decision is announced by the Government. Obviously, exceptions would apply, but the ultimate aim is to make information available and to be transparent. If we did that we would be killing two birds with one stone. We would be demonstrating transparency and we would be reducing the workload on one of our most important watchdogs.

Motion agreed to, and Address agreed to.