State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill

This is debate on clauses 3 to 57C and schedule 1.

I rise to take a large number of calls on this detailed and very important bill, the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill, and to confirm that Labour supports this bill with certain reservations and it will be supporting a number of the Supplementary Order Papers, despite the late timing in which they have been brought to the Committee.

It would be remiss of me to continue with this debate before adding a quick personal comment about the proceeding. May I enter into the record my deep, deep concern about the removal of access to justice and the tightening of the legal aid provisions. That is a huge backward step for this country.

Labour supports this bill with reservations. We were opposed to it at the first reading, and it is not often that an Opposition that opposes a bill changes its vote to support the bill at the second reading and at the Committee stage. This, for those watching, is a rarity, and it has occurred for the following reason. The bill as introduced had a fundamentally damaging effect on the rights of civil servants. It made it much, much more difficult for them to transfer between agencies while retaining their existing rights to redundancy provisions. It trampled all over the negotiation rights in wage bargaining that civil servants have under the law. There were a number of other provisions that were at odds with the existing standing of public sector rights and good practice.

I am very pleased to be able to offer compliments to the Minister of State Services, the Hon Jonathan Coleman, to officials who worked very hard on the bill, and to members opposite who, chaired by the Hon Todd McClay, entered into a good-faith process of negotiation by which the core intent of the bill was preserved. Its good effects in terms of introducing more flexibility and teamwork across the public sector will be achieved, but the offending provisions that had an undesirable effect on the rights of public sector workers have been changed. They have been changed so dramatically that I am able to enter into the record the support of the State sector unions, not only for the changes but for the position that our party is taking in supporting the bill. That is a significant turn-round, given the state of the bill as introduced.

I would like to address some of the specific provisions in Part 1 of the bill, which covers the amendments to the State Sector Act. We understand that the Government will move to split the bill into a number of bills that affect different underlying core legislation. Part 1 of the bill was, in fact, the most contentious. Mr Chairman, I hope that you will allow the Minister to take a number of calls to underline the Government’s thinking on the bill as introduced, and on the changes that it has made. Mr Chairman, I hope that given the importance of this part of the bill that you will allow members on this side of the Chamber to debate its provisions in some detail. Several of the issues that we will wish to canvass in our comments today include, firstly, that the redundancy provisions have been improved so that State sector employees retain their entitlements, unless accepting a position that is “no less favourable” than the position that they currently have in terms of terms and conditions.

You know, sometimes there is an argument in lawmaking about one word. I think it was Oscar Wilde, the writer and poet, who said a long time ago: “I spent all morning putting the comma in [to the sentence], and all afternoon taking it out again.” He might have said it with a slightly different accent, of course. We spent the best part of a day arguing about whether we were going to put the word “overall” into clause 49, which says the terms and conditions had to be no less favourable, and we ended up taking it out again. The reason that we were able to take it out by agreement—and we appreciate the work of officials on that matter—was that it was agreed common ground that the existing case law in fact allows a court to look at a package of terms and conditions, and no change was needed. From this side of the Chamber, we would want to underline the fact that the core principle that is being given effect to remains that the terms and conditions must be no less favourable, and in seeking to address this as a package, a court must not sell short the key provisions of the existing—[Bell rung]

Reminded by the bell, let me move on to the transitional provisions in Part 1. These have been improved so that collective and individual agreements are sunsetted equally 3 years after the bill takes effect. There was a considerable debate about this issue, too. It was of concern, quite rightly, to the Public Service Association, to the Council of Trade Unions, and to a number of individual submitters that the bill as introduced would have given individual employment agreements—individual contracts—longer life under the provisions of bills than some collective agreements, which would have expired before the individual agreements. By a process of discussion and mutual agreement in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, the 3-year sunset clause, clause 49, was introduced to ensure that collective agreements did not expire before individual agreements and, therefore, that the results of collective bargaining by State sector employees were not undermined.

I have to recognise members opposite who were members of the select committee. It was a good-faith discussion, ably assisted by officials. As with a number of bills that Parliament has been debating today, it was an example for the public of where Parliament can, through select committees, actually do its job of changing the detail of legislation to iron out, in this case, some pretty fundamental kinks and creases, so that we have ended up with a bill that in our view does achieve the intent of the Government—the Government would be pleased about that—and also removes at least the most part of the issues that would have been at odds with worker rights and social justice.

Another example of that was the Government Workforce Policy Orders, as introduced. This would have been a problem legally, because an order would have been potentially construed as legally binding upon the chief executives of Government agencies and Crown entities, so that they could not enter into or sponsor employment discussions that, for example, might end up in a wage settlement at a higher level than the order prescribed. In so doing, our advice was that that could undermine the existing rights to good-faith bargaining that State sector employees enjoy. It is, therefore, gratifying to be able to record in this Committee stage of the debate that, by a process of good-faith discussion, amendments have been made not only to change the word “order” to “statement” to better reflect its actual status as providing guidance rather than as a binding proclamation but also to ensure that clauses were introduced into the bill that actually enshrine in very specific terms the existing legal rights of State sector employees to good-faith bargaining.

There are a number of other clauses that attracted the attention of the select committee, which we will have the opportunity to go through as this Committee stage works through the different parts of the bill. I would like to mention just a few of them. The conflict of interest provisions have been strengthened, there is enhanced governance for delegated powers, and there are strengthened accountability requirements, which we will detail later, about public sector financial reporting.

We have worked very hard to ensure, and we will come on to this, that the proper constitutional cascade—that line of moral authority—of the voice of the people vested in the balance of Parliament, which is in turn vested in Ministers of the Crown, and is then reflected in the ability of Ministers to direct their departments, is not lost in seeking to streamline the Public Service. Crucially, the key accountability instruments, such as the statement of intent, which is a binding contract between the Minister of the day and the chief executive of the day—in seeking to make that more flexible and on a multi-year basis, we have preserved the rights of Ministers to amend and update the “SOI”, as the statement of intent is known, each and every year, and placed an obligation on their Civil Service advisers to inform the Minister of those rights.

Speaking personally, I would be very keen to ensure that the accountability contract between Ministers and civil servants remains effective and remains in place, because ultimately that is the moral authority upon which departments of State must operate. In these days—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman.

You can have only two consecutive calls, unless some other member takes a call, and I see Dr David Clark is anxious to take a call.

I am very, very pleased to take a call, Mr Chair, and thank you for the opportunity. The State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill is one the Labour Party will be supporting, albeit with some reservations. We opposed the bill at its first reading, and those present here in the debate will remember that, but ultimately changes that were forced at the Finance and Expenditure Committee by Labour and the State sector unions have averted disaster for Government workers who were set to lose their redundancy entitlements and employment rights. I guess I want to thank the members opposite who engaged in those negotiations in good faith, because it has become a better bill, and one that, hopefully, will stand the test of time. These public sector bills are important for their longevity, for the fact that they survive various Governments and provide some kind of certainty for future planning for the good of all New Zealand. So I do thank members opposite who were involved in that process, as well as the unions—the Public Service Association and the Council of Trade Unions—and the Labour members of the committee, who fought hard to ensure that that disaster was averted for Government workers who would otherwise have lost redundancy entitlements and employment rights.

The bill, as I said, was heavily amended in the committee, in response to the strong submissions from State sector employees themselves, and from their representatives. Tough negotiations at the committee have produced this better bill, and these employees’ rights are now better protected than they otherwise would have been. The redundancy provisions that were improved mean that employees retain their entitlements, unless they are accepting a position that is “no less favourable” than their existing package.

💬 David Bennett: Put a bit of meaning into it. Give it a bit of feeling.

Mr Bennett opposite, I can see, is bursting to make his contribution too, but, Mr Bennett, I will look forward to your contribution in due course. In the meantime, I am just outlaying the important provisions that are now in the bill. The transitional arrangements have been improved too, in our view, so that collective agreements and individual agreements are now sunsetted equally. That is important, and that will take effect. The Government Workforce Policy Statements have been revised to ensure that all existing legal and bargaining rights have been protected, and there are conflict of interest protections in there, as well. Although Labour has some concerns with some aspects of the bill, with the support of the unions significant change was brokered, and that means that Labour will support this passage of the bill.

Overall, the bill is an omnibus bill that amends the three principal statutes governing the management of the State sector and the public finances in New Zealand, so it is not be underestimated just how important this bill is to the future of our country. It will not be one of the sexiest bills to be debated in this Parliament, if I can put it that way, but it is an extremely important bill. The powers that it will give to chief executives and to Ministers in terms of reporting requirements, in terms of the way that happens, and in terms of the way in which they can work with appropriations, will have long-term effects. They will make some things more efficient, and hopefully the right balance has been struck in terms of providing accountability to go with these measures.

In Part 1 of the bill, the main changes it makes involve strengthening the role of the State Services Commissioner—that is the first one that should be noted—to make sure that the role of the State Services Commissioner, in leading the State services and ensuring that agencies work together collaboratively as a system, is strengthened. It is set out for the first time ever in legislation—the commissioner’s role. That is a very significant step, but an important step. The commissioner’s functions will be broadened to include the ability to transfer chief executives within the Public Service when a vacancy arises, and to draft Government policy on workforce and employment matters from the perspective of the State sector system as a whole. This power would not extend, of course, to determining pay or conditions. Extending the responsibilities of chief executives to their Ministers, to include matters relating to the collective interests of the Government, and stewardship of the interests of the Crown and departments in the medium and long term, is another significant change that is being proposed. Chief executives will have the power to delegate statutory functions and powers between agencies and, subject to certain safeguards, to non-government service providers.

The proof will be in the pudding with these particular amendments. How these interests are played out, the kinds of delegated statutory functions that we are asking—and I speak collectively—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

When I was rudely interrupted by the dinner bell, I was discussing the strengthened role of the State Services Commissioner and the effects of the changes to the amendments to the State Sector Act 1988. I was about to introduce a person as an example of why this is important policy. These new powers will give a formalisation to the role of the commissioner. It will also mean that he or she has the ability to transfer chief executives within the Public Service as a vacancy arises. It gives them the ability and responsibility for Ministers and chief executives to have a greater interest in the stewardship of the interests of the Crown and departments in the medium and long term.

An example of this might be if a future Government, for example, had a priority to change the way in which the electricity system worked. As it happens, currently, the Prime Minister has said that he thinks that Kiwis are paying about the fair amount for power prices. Most New Zealanders—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: What? He didn’t say that!

No, he did say that. Most New Zealanders think that power prices are far too high, but the Prime Minister thinks that they are about right. Labour sides with most New Zealanders in thinking we should have a fair price for power—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

I am coming to a point here—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes. Well, you are meant to be.

—which is that if we wish to change the policy, it would very much involve implementation by the public sector, by people who are tasked with implementing changes, whether you agreed with the policy—not meaning you, Mr Chair—if changes need to be made. This flows on to the responsibility of Ministers and agencies concerned, and these additional powers should ease the ability to change policies. So where one party has decided that capitalising the value of free water is not the fair way to build a system, where you think the cost of electricity should not rise at double the rate of inflation for the last 15 years, and where you wish to implement a new policy that says instead of the long-run marginal cost, you would look at a model that looked at a fair return on capital and paid only the marginal cost for new generation, you could implement that—I do not mean you, Mr Chair. But the Government of the day could implement that change through the powers of the State Services Commissioner filling a vacancy in a relevant department and/or having the sanctions and rewards necessary—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: As long as it wasn’t privatised.

—as long as that department had not been privatised, as my colleague alludes to. Subject to the normal powers, there is a wider range of abilities, or a strengthened range of abilities, for the State Services Commissioner to effect change. That, at least in theory, is partly how this legislation could play out, and we in Labour think that is a good thing, and that is why we will be supporting this bill. The Government thinks it is a good thing also. It should enable the Government to achieve its objectives more easily, if it has any that are clear and in the interests of New Zealand.

There is no accounting for bad policy. If the Government has bad policy or no policy or no idea or no plan about how it is going to get ahead—and we have argued often on this side of the House that this Government seems to have no direction and no plan—then that cannot be accounted for by this legislation. This legislation really is about implementing the plan. If the Government does have a plan, how will it be implemented? What is the role of the State Services Commissioner? That will be spelt out more clearly. How does that flow on to chief executives in the Public Service? What are the implications for their workloads and the way that their responsibilities are set up? That flows into the State sector system as a whole. So if, as is done by members on this side of the House, good policies are put forward and the party has the opportunity in Government to implement them, this State Sector Act amendment bill will allow for those policies to actually take effect and actually make a difference for real New Zealanders.

So that is why we will be supporting the bill. We are satisfied with what has been achieved in terms of protecting the arrangements for State sector workers, the redundancy provisions that have been approved, as opposed to what was originally proposed, the transitional arrangements, and the conflict of interests protections—all of those things that were negotiated in the select committee and fought for strongly by the Labour Party, along with the New Zealand Public Service Association and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.

I rise to take a call on the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill. I just wanted to pick up on a couple of things. I want to pay tribute to the previous chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Todd McClay, who shepherded this piece of legislation through the committee stage—

💬 Hon David Parker: Through the Committee stage? Through the select committee?

—through the select committee stage, with the full cooperation and good work of the members on both sides of the House, in particular David Cunliffe, who was very thorough and detailed in his examination of the particular issues and, in fact, was indefatigable in the way that he worked through the issues.

I think we have landed in a good space here, looking at the amendments suggested here in Part 1 relating to the purpose of the State Sector Act and the definition of ministerial staff and the independence of chief executives. We have made some amendments concerning their ability to delegate functions of powers. There are amendments relating to the restriction of redundancy payments, which has been discussed at length on the other side of the Chamber. Finally, there is a part that makes further recommendations in relation to the protection from liability for Public Service chief executive employees. We had a lot of debate about that issue in relation to whether indemnity was a better approach. The Law Commission was strong in its views on that, but I think that after due consideration we have come down on the right side of that argument. All in all, this piece of legislation is part of the broader Government approach in terms of delivering better public services to New Zealanders.

I do think we have to pay tribute to the Public Service generally in this country. We have had 5 years now where there have been relatively few increases in terms of resources. It has been tight. It has been a tough period, when the Public Service in general has been asked to deliver productivity gains and less with more, as every other business in the country has been dealing with. We do have to pay tribute to the work that aspects of the Public Service have done in many different parts. This bill is about trying to give better tools to the leaders in the public sector so that they can have some clarity around what they do and so that they can work together more effectively. On that basis, I recommend this bill to the Committee.

Can I begin by thanking the officials. We see a range of officials, and they are generally very good at the select committee, but it is refreshing when we see officials who are so on top of their understanding of complex issues that they are able to engage with the select committee, and not just hold a line in defence of what is proposed but engage in discussions that both educate the committee and show some movement on the part of officials at times when, perhaps, the policy intent is clear but there are details that need to be addressed. We found the officials—or I found the officials—advising the Finance and Expenditure Committee and providing advice to be of the highest calibre, so thank you.

There are a couple of issues that I want to address in this contribution. The first relates to why it was necessary to change provisions relating to Government Workforce Policy Orders. That is the language that was used in the form of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill when it came to select committee. The new provisions in Part 5 of the Act, as inserted by clause 42 of the bill—to insert new section 55A into the Act, more precisely—provide for Government Workforce Policy Statements. These workforce policy statements are very broad in their ambit. They were described as orders, and the Governor-General could by Order in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister, approve a Government workforce policy as a Government Workforce Policy Order, as if it were something akin to a Government regulation of some kind. But then it went on to say that those orders were not a regulation for the purposes of the Regulations (Disallowance) Act or the Acts and Regulations Publication Act 1989.

Labour members of the select committee were concerned that the ambit of these regulations was so wide as to allow the Government to effectively issue a directive that was akin to an order by the executive, which would have enormous power across the whole of the State services, but it did not need to come to Parliament in respect of it, and there was no ability for people to challenge it under the Regulations (Disallowance) Act 1989. That was wrong.

On the Labour side we were aware, of course, that the Government that was the most egregious in its use of statutory regulations in the past was another National Government, under Mr Muldoon, who gave himself hugely broad regulation-making powers under the Economic Stabilisation Act, which allowed him by Government regulation to impose a wage freeze, and he did. Incredible though it now seems, he did that by way of statutory regulation. We on the Labour side thought that the subsequent Lange Government, with Geoffrey Palmer’s assistance in this regard, cleaned up a lot of that silly, overly broad regulation-making power, and tried to make sure that the big decisions for New Zealand were taken by Parliament and not by Ministers using executive powers.

We were concerned that this proposed provision allowing Government Workforce Policy Orders to be made was so broad as to allow the Government to effectively say that there will be a wage freeze across the public sector. We asked officials whether that was the case, and they said that was not the intention, but it did appear to be that that was the effect of the words, or at least that was a concern that I had. The select committee agreed across both party sides that that was inappropriate, and that the power of the executive, the power of the Government to make workforce policy orders, should not be that broad. Indeed, it would be absurd to be giving the executive powers that broad.

So the select committee has recommended to the Committee that we amend the provisions in respect of Government Workforce Policy Orders, and that we start to call them Government Workforce Policy Statements rather than orders. So already you can see that they are not sounding as legislation-like as the original language proposed. They still are a statement. They still are not a regulation for the purposes of the Regulations (Disallowance) Act, but there is a statement at the proposed new section 55D that says that, notwithstanding that “A department must give effect to a Government Workforce Policy Statement.”, the policy statement cannot “create, alter, or remove employment or other legal rights or obligations;”. So if there is an existing employment right, that cannot be taken away by a workplace order. If there are existing legal rights or obligations on the employer—for example, to embark upon good-faith bargaining—then this provision could not be used to cut across those obligations and impose a wage freeze. The Labour Party is pleased that that was picked up by submitters and that this change has been made.

I want to raise another issue, which I have spoken of previously, and which is raised in our minority view. The Labour Party is still not convinced that it is right in principle that the Public Service is immune from liability as opposed to being indemnified for the consequences of its actions. In the Labour Party we do believe that public servants who are acting in good faith, no matter how negligent they are, should be protected from the consequences of civil liability for their actions. But that does not mean to say, in our view, that they should be immune from prosecution—sorry, immune from suit is a better way to put it, or immune from prosecution of the suit, if I was trying to cover my own language there, which was rather loose.

We had submissions from the Legislation Advisory Committee that said that it is wrong in principle that the Public Service is immune from liability in civil proceedings. The committee thought the Public Service should be indemnified in its duties rather than have an immunity from prosecution. There are a couple of reasons behind that. Firstly, it says: “Do we really want to live in a society that a public servant who acts egregiously”—egregiously—“cannot be brought before a court and suffer the embarrassment in a civil proceeding of being involved in the proceeding?”. The Legislation Advisory Committee—or was it the Law Commission? I forget which. I might have that the wrong way round. One of those two august bodies—

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Law Commission.

The Law Commission. Thank you, David Cunliffe. It was the Law Commission that came to us and said that what we risk doing is actually creating a faceless bureaucracy, and that there should be some accountability for conduct. So if conduct is egregious, why in the public sector would you not be required to appear in court in civil proceeding as a party and suffer the consequences of that process, as opposed to the consequence of the award of damages that might flow from the end, and why is it that indemnity is not enough? If you look at the comparison—and I know the comparison is not perfect, but there is some truth in it—where someone was in the private sector, and you were acting in the course of your employment for a private employer and you made a mistake, then you could be sued in your own name, probably, in some situations. You certainly would not have immunity from prosecution. You would at most have a right of indemnity.

And in the case of the injured party in society who has had harm caused to them by an arm of the State through this public servant doing something wrong—and it could have been deliberately wrong, even if it was not maliciously wrong—why is it that there is some question as to whether the private citizen who suffers that injury has got a right of action against the individual? One of my concerns in this, and it was something that we explored with the Law Commission, is that there is a difference between the liabilities of the Crown, which is vicariously liable for the actions of its employees, which are sometimes not as broad as one might think. I can see I am running out of time here.

I want to start my contribution by thanking the staff who have been involved in the process, during the Finance and Expenditure Committee examination of this bill, to bring this State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill to the Committee. I also want to acknowledge both the Labour Party and the National Party members who worked together very closely and very diligently to bring, effectively, a new bill to the Committee—a bill that has been softened from the original—and I particularly want to pay tribute to David Cunliffe for the work that he put into that. The Green Party position, however, is that at the end of the day workers in the State sector will be worse off as a result of this bill’s passing.

I have checked with the Public Service Association tonight, which also says that it does not give unqualified support to this bill. However, it does acknowledge the work—particularly, the work of the Labour Party and the members from that party—in softening and in making amendments to the bill, and it says that that strategy has meant, and will mean, that the workers are not as badly off as they may have been when the original bill was before the House in the first reading.

I acknowledge that the amendments that have been softened include the restrictions around redundancy. The redundancy provisions have been loosened since the first reading. However, it is still a restriction.

I have put forward Supplementary Order Paper 265 for discussion and consideration tonight. It talks about actually restoring one of the provisions that was lost from the original 1988 State Sector Act, and that is the provision that relates to the transfer of employees, to the transfer of functions and duties to new agencies, and to giving the workers the right to apply for those jobs. This bill actually contains an amendment that gives chief executives that right, but that right has been taken away from public servants.

This is a really important amendment, if you consider that last week the first reading of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill was before the House. One large part of that bill was about the provisions whereby workers and health inspectors who are currently employed by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment can transfer to a new agency that is being created through that legislation, which is before the House. That has to go into legislation for every piece of new legislation that is developed that creates a new entity or a new agency, and that is because it is being taken out of the State Sector Act. We will have to do that, time and time again, every time a new agency is formed, and there may be times when they are.

We will also not be supporting this bill because of the things that have been left out—not just the transferral arrangements but other things, including in the purpose statement the equal employment opportunities mentioned in the first part of the Act, which is around the purpose. Equal employment opportunities are not stated explicitly elsewhere in the bill, and you can combine that with another change from the original Act, which is again in the purpose statement, for State sector employers to be good employers. It has been changed to “meets good-employer obligations;”, which is a slight tweaking but also a weakening. So when you put the loss of the specific mention of equal employment opportunities together with that, we are starting to look at some weakening of some of the overarching principles of the Act, which works against workers. It does not work in their favour.

I think we have to remember that we do need equal employment opportunities—we need equal employment opportunities—and that is because the State sector, the Public Service, is female-dominated a lot of the time. Yet, for all that, women in the State sector are still earning sometimes 8 percent, sometimes 10 percent, or sometimes 12 percent less than their male counterparts. Before 2009 this Government was actually exploring and investigating what was happening to pay rates between male and female employees in the public sector, and that was an investigation that was being undertaken with the Government’s support. However, the Government pulled that support in around February 2009, and the reason it gave at the time was that the Minister at the time, Tony Ryall, said that we could not afford to increase levels of remuneration.

We have had equal pay legislation in this country for over 30 years, and we still have an average weekly income for women that is 23 percent less than the average male weekly income. When you consider that the Public Service has been the bastion of good employment practices and it has been a leader in setting decent standards for workers—standards that the private sector frequently follows—then we must fight very strongly to maintain the provisions in the bill that will protect those workers.

Again, I do acknowledge the work that has happened, particularly the Labour Party’s efforts to soften the bill and make a heck of a lot of amendments to it. However, we will not be supporting the bill.

I rise to speak in the Committee stage of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill. It came through my select committee, the Finance and Expenditure Committee, so I sat through the submissions and the animated discussions that ensued within the committee ranks. It is a bill, of course, that was sponsored by the Minister of State Services, the Hon Jonathan Coleman.

This is, as others have pointed out, an omnibus bill. It amends the State Sector Act, the Public Finance Act, and the Crown Entities Act to provide the legislative grunt, really, to deliver Better Public Services. There have been some proposed changes, which I will briefly outline to you tonight, to the State Sector Act 1988. Effectively, the bill is about strengthening, extending, and improving the management of the State sector and public finances.

When it comes to the strengthening provisions, it strengthens the State Services Commissioner’s role in leading the State services. It extends the chief executive’s responsibilities, to consider the collective interests of the Government and the longer term sustainability, rather than being focused on individual departments and a shorter-term view, which has to be good. Also, it improves governance across the system, which is part of the overall thrust of this National, John Key - led Government to improve the sector. When we look at some of the new provisions within the bill, it does put in a new organisational arrangement, called the departmental agencies. That is going to really provide more for the options available for delivering public services.

Among the more contentious aspects that were considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and certainly exercised the attention of a lot of the submitters, was around that issue of redundancy, which other speakers have spoken of. As a result of the discussions, some changes were made. But it is important to note that the key provision of the bill relates to civil servants who have been made redundant but have a new State sector job to go to, and therefore they will not receive a redundancy. You are not going to receive a redundancy—and these are the provisions that were argued through—if, for example, you start your employment the next working day or, indeed, perhaps even before your term is up. You will also not be paid a redundancy if you are taking on a job that is treated as undertaking continuous service and that is within the body of the State Service itself.

You also have to have had duties and responsibilities that are comparable to the current job. You cannot really have been someone who works here in Parliament and then suddenly be expected to go out and man the roads somewhere. There has to be a comparable set of skills, and they have to be matched. Perhaps some might argue that there is a match of skills in that, but there is not enough time in a debate of this kind to go into that. But having a collective package of terms and conditions that are no less favourable than those that apply to the current position has been spelt out. Also, you cannot be expected to travel very long distances for the job that you are doing. These are the kinds of provisions that the submitters who came to us were very keen to have, but I think really it is important to note that not every single aspect of every element of their conditions has to be exactly the same, for the redundancy to not apply.

I commend this bill to the Committee because it is part of what we are doing as a Government to reform the State sector, to ensure it delivers better public services to New Zealanders. Thank you.

It is my pleasure to support the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill, and it is worth noting that it is not the initial position that the Labour Opposition adopted. I have to applaud the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, on both sides, but particularly the Government side, for actually listening to what the Opposition was saying on this occasion. That is not a common occurrence, regrettably, but when it happens, the select committee—

💬 John Hayes: Oh, I don’t know.

Mr Hayes, on a good day, will listen to what the Opposition spokespeople say at the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, as you well know, Mr Chairman Hayes. It happens from time to time. But looking at this bill, it was a rare occasion on which members on both sides of the select committee were prepared to listen to the evidence, particularly the evidence from the stakeholders before the select committee, and to act on the evidence. I have to also acknowledge that the Minister of State Services, Jonathan Coleman, was prepared to listen to the select committee.

In a perfect democracy—and, regrettably, we fall well short of that—that would happen in a commonplace way. However, we have seen with the Family Court legislation and the legal assistance legislation that we debated before this bill that this is, unfortunately, using tonight as an example, a rare occasion. But it is good on this occasion because I think all sides of the House have a vested interest that the legislation that relates to the State sector should have as much continuity as possible between Governments, rather than being used as a political football that goes one way and then the other way when there is inevitably a change of Government. So I want to welcome the role of the select committee and I want to welcome the readiness in this instance of the Minister to take on board the advice that the select committee gave him. As a result, we end up with a better piece of legislation. That is most important, but, equally important, we end up with substantial support across the House for this legislation, which therefore makes it stronger legislation.

There were three changes that were made that I think were very positive changes and which allow Labour to support the legislation. The first was in relation to redundancies. It is a really important principle that when a person loses his or her job through no fault of their own, they are protected with the compensation that a redundancy payment gives. They are not being sacked because of wrongful behaviour; they are losing a job because of structural change. What Labour was able to achieve on the select committee was a protection of those redundancy provisions. The one exception is that if a person goes to another job that is no less favourable than the existing one, within the public sector—they are not losing anything, and there are various provisions, including, you know, that it needs to be reasonably convenient in terms of travel and so on—then that is fair enough. It is an equivalent job with no less favourable pay and conditions, and we would not expect redundancy in that situation. But in other situations the redundancy provisions are protected, and that is the right and proper thing to do. I am glad—again unusually from the National Party on industrial relations—that the Government was prepared to do the right and proper thing. The second change that was achieved was a better transition, so that the existing agreements are covered for 3 years. There is a sunset provision for 3 years. It means that those on collective agreements will not be disadvantaged in relation to those on individual contracts of employment. The third change that was made was to change Government Workforce Policy Orders, which in the original bill would have had the effect of being Orders in Council, into statements, so that when a policy was being pronounced, it was a statement rather than having a legally binding effect. That ensures that existing legal and bargaining rights have been protected. Each one of those changes was important, and those changes justify the decision by Labour to support this legislation rather than oppose it, as it did on the first reading.

There is a lot about this bill in terms of what its objectives are that I think all sides of the House could support. We support a framework that encourages an innovative, flexible, efficient Public Service. I think everybody should be in favour of those things. And we also support a joined-together Public Service where there is cross-sector collaboration, and those are positive changes. When I look at the purpose clause, new section 1A, inserted by clause 5, the purposes of the bill are purposes that generally should get the support of the Committee. We want a State sector system that “(a) is imbued with the spirit of service to the community; and (b) operates in the collective interests of government; and (c) maintains appropriate standards of integrity and conduct; and (d) maintains political neutrality; and (e) is supported by effective workforce and personnel arrangements; and (f) meets good-employer obligations; and (g) is driven by a culture of excellence and efficiency; and (h) fosters a culture of stewardship.”

I want to say a little bit about what those purpose statements mean, because it is all very well having a purpose clause in the bill that talks about good-employer obligations on the State sector, but, regrettably, we have seen in recent times a practice that is quite different from the theory that is being proposed here. I think, for a start, of the changes that were made in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, where people had their working conditions unilaterally stripped away from them and were given inferior conditions, particularly security of employment, where people lost pay—for example, those people transferring overseas together with their partners. There is no point in having legislation before this House that states that there should be good-employer obligations if the Government is not going to carry that through in practice.

I want to use another example of this, and it is pertinent to the Minister of State Services because he is also Minister of Defence. You know, I have talked before about the need for redundancy provisions, but it is also about how you go about it and whether this bill will translate into a change of practice. I want to read this to the Committee. This is a standard letter from the Defence Force, in this case to employees in the army: “You are in the New Zealand Army, which is a rank from which the army was directed to release a number of military personnel.” That means that it was going to cut costs, and people were going to be made redundant. “When considering you against the army business rules for future potential, you were assessed as having Low Potential, given that your future employability was limited to a small number of employment streams, your medical grading is permanently downgraded, you are unable to attempt the minimum required fitness standard.” This is a case of a letter—there were hundreds of them sent out to each of the services—that told people who were the victims of restructuring that they were to blame for the loss of their jobs. Everybody in this Committee knows that loyal members of the Defence Force who had served this country for 20 or 25 years were being made redundant. So why send out a letter that insults and degrades the personnel who were being made redundant? That was an absolute disgrace.

Yes, the Defence Force has now said that it is sorry and that it should not have happened, but I want to know how it happened, and I want a guarantee from the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Courts, that this legislation, which sets good-employer obligations, would not allow that sort of thing to happen again. What we saw through that process of civilianisation was a high level of attrition—21 percent. Every year, one in five of the Defence Force was turning over. We saw the lowest morale in the history of the surveys, and we saw a lower capability of the Defence Force. Hopefully, this legislation, in setting an important condition like good-employer obligations, would not allow that to happen. Why did that happen? It happened because the Defence Force handled it badly but also because it was instructed by the Government to save $400 million a year, and that meant laying off—you know, the Defence Force is down a thousand people. So let us not waste our time debating legislation that is theoretical legislation, unless we have a Government and a State sector that are prepared—

The last speaker, the Hon Phil Goff, who was jumping up and down and thumping the table, needs to realise a couple of things. First of all, when you train a body of men to go and kill people and defend our country, you are not training them to write letters—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. Order! Whatever the member says must be related to the content of the bill. I will ask the member to come back to it. He can comment on what the previous speaker has said, but it must be in relation to the State Sector Act amendments in Part 1, which we are talking about.

This bill is about delivering better public services to New Zealand and that is one of our priorities. If we were able to develop and ensure that better services were being delivered, as this bill proposes, then we would not find ourselves in the situation that we inherited from the last Government, where we had a military that was trained to kill people, not to write letters. The amendments in this bill create a range of public sector management tools to foster an innovative, efficient public sector that will, I think, deliver far better identified results for New Zealanders. I think the last speaker would realise and understand, and has been around this House for long enough to know, that all the legislation in the world, no matter how carefully constructed, does not force management to write letters of a particular sort. So I think we have to have some latitude in these bills that we are considering here tonight.

I particularly support those comments made by colleagues in the Labour Party and also in the Green Party who talked about our working together in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, because certainly that was the case in preparing this legislation that is now before us this evening.

One of the important things, I think, in the legislation is that it will strengthen the State Services Commissioner’s role in leading the State sector. That is really, really important. I think it is also important in this legislation that it will extend chief executives’ responsibilities to consider the collective interest of Government, and long-term sustainability, rather than operating in silos, as happened under Mr Goff’s tenure as a Minister of the Crown. What we are trying to do is, rather than focus on a single department, encourage much less of a silo mentality and a much more inclusive Public Service.

We also want to provide for a new organisational arrangement—departmental agencies—so that options are available for delivering better public services. These operational agencies will be set up within a department to carry out specific functions, and the chief executives of these organisational arrangements will report direct to the Minister—a much more inclusive system, which I think will improve governance across the system. I feel that this is a good piece of legislation. I think it will ensure that the State sector is modern, is flexible, is fit for purpose, and will deliver far better outcomes for all New Zealanders. Thank you.

I thank the member John Hayes, who has just resumed his seat, for contextualising the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill in the Better Public Services programme. The Better Public Services Advisory Group has indeed been one of those groups that has fed into the early design of this bill, seeking to establish a framework to support and encourage innovative, flexible delivery of public services. Unfortunately for the Government, the Better Public Services targets look like they are not going to be met in at least five out of the 10 key priority areas. So nervous was the Minister of Finance on that subject when he recently testified before the Finance and Expenditure Committee that he would not confirm how many targets were on track and how many were off track. We look forward with great interest to the release—we hope this very month—of the Government’s interim report on the achievement or otherwise of its Better Public Services goals.

Strengthening the role of the State Services Commissioner is one of the core parts of the amendments to the State Sector Act that are contained in Part 1 of this bill. We share the Government’s aims to come up with a set of legislative amendments here that provide a framework that will endure across party lines and across terms of Government, to ensure that the public sector will be flexible and will be responsive, that Government agencies will work together to solve problems, and that they will pool resources to create innovative approaches, but that the use of those resources will remain trackable and accountable to the people through the parliamentary process.

We think that having a State Services Commissioner as the lead manager of the managers, who can ensure that Government agencies work collaboratively as a system for the first time, is a good thing, and we commend its inclusion in the bill. We commend broadening the commissioner’s functions to include the ability to transfer chief executives within the Public Service when a vacancy arises. One can think of—and I will not dwell on it now—a number of occasions either where underperforming chief executives might be transferred out of an agency as part of a rescue plan or where particularly able ones might be transferred in. Of course, Peter Hughes, currently the Secretary for Education, springs to mind as an incredibly able public servant who has been deployed to assist an agency that is clearly having trouble with even the basics of pay and rations with the Novopay system.

The bill also seeks to extend the responsibilities of chief executives to their Ministers, which is a good thing, to include matters relating to the collective interests of the Government, not just the individual interests of the department. I think that that is a useful innovation. What it shows is that we are as a system becoming more focused on the outcomes, and a little less silo-driven about how the outputs contribute to those outcomes, to use the jargon of the State Sector Act. That is about putting the horse in front of the cart, and that is sensible in anybody’s book.

The risk, of course, is that if too much focus is taken off the output measures, because we speak only in generalities about the aims and outcomes, there will be a blurring of accountabilities. It is for that reason that, when the Finance and Expenditure Committee wrestled with the detail of this bill, we were very, very concerned to maintain the trackability of expenditure and the rigour of accountability on an output class by output class, programme by programme basis. And where the new innovation that is included in the bill, of a multi-category expenditure class, is employed, the bill now, following amendments made in the select committee, makes it mandatory that in the budget reporting of that expenditure and in the estimates process it is fully trackable from the preceding years, when things may have been individually accounted, to how they fall into the multi-category appropriation, or MCA. That is a very important discipline because, otherwise, one could imagine, in certain circumstances, a department trying to hide an underexpenditure or an overexpenditure might simply change the structure of the output classes so it was impossible to follow the money, honey.

It is important to give chief executives the power to delegate statutory functions and powers between agencies, but the select committee also wrestled with the issue of whether the safeguards were sufficient. So the language in the bill has been tightened up to ensure that where power is delegated—not just an activity but a decision-making power—very clear responsibility and accountabilities follow that delegation, so that the delegated decision maker remains accountable upwards through the chain, to, ultimately, the Minister and to Parliament. So we agree with the objective. We thought the bill as introduced was a little loose in the way those accountabilities were written. As other speakers have said, we think that the committee worked very well together and was well served by our highly capable professionals to improve that accountability.

Part 1 also creates a new organisational arrangement called a departmental agency. This is not a Crown entity in terms of being a separate body. It is not a department. It is a separate, stand-alone agency that operates within the overall structure of a department, and it regularises what has been experimented on with mixed success. I think one example that has been largely successful is NZAID, a semi-autonomous body within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That has brought a renewed focus on poverty alleviation and aid-driven principles of delivery. And another is the Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit, which has existed with perhaps a little less success within Treasury—less success possibly because it has been one step removed from key Treasury decision-making, possibly because it has been a little subscale relative to the heft of some of its State-owned enterprise and Crown entity clients.

💬 Hon David Parker: Solid Energy.

Solid Energy, as my colleague David Parker has said, being the classic example where a runaway train developed. Solid Energy was investing like there was no tomorrow, at precisely the same time that the bottom was falling out of the coal market. Common industry understanding is that when the market is in a down cycle, you tighten your belt. Unfortunately, that did not happen. And what is worse, the monitoring unit appears to have had some lags in terms of getting on top of it. The structure of the entity that is provided for in this bill is not going to solve every problem of foresight or every problem of management, but what it does do is it provides a coherent legislative framework within which best practice can be followed. So we hope that that makes a useful and positive contribution.

The bill also increases the flexibility of provisions relating to the appointment of chief executives and senior leaders. Some flexibility is good; too much is bad. We want to put on record that we do not want to go to the extent of a Prime Minister ringing up an old school friend—

💬 David Bennett: Oh, come on.

—and overriding this. No, do not laugh, Mr Bennett. One day, history will judge that as a low point for this administration. There can be no more important appointments to be politically neutral than, for example, the Commissioner of Police, the head of the SIS, and the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau. If those most sensitive positions are not only not politically neutral and independent but also are seen to be so, then public trust in the institutions of the State will be fatally eroded.

I do not think, Mr Bennett, that it is any laughing matter that a Prime Minister rejected all of the nominees shortlisted by the State Services Commission, rang up his old mate, invited him out for breakfast, briefed him on the job, got him the job, and is now, having done that, playing catch up—as former religious studies lecturer Jim Veitch so appallingly said on the radio today—waiting for the law to catch up with practice. Actually, ladies and gentlemen, the rule of law is the other way round: practice is subject to the law. That applies to the intelligence community and to the Prime Minister in the same way it does to everyone else, or the people whose memories are enshrined on the walls of this Chamber did not get remembered as they should have been.

History will judge these matters as fundamental to the corrosion of public trust in John Key and the Government that he, for now, leads—for now leads, because this Government is on a slippery slope to electoral defeat. It is on a slippery slope to electoral defeat because the public of New Zealand, when they realise—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order!

—what is being done to their hard-won freedoms, will not tolerate it. Mr Chair, you are right, it is time to return to the substance of the bill. There is much in this bill that is good, there is much in this bill that is better, and we will be supporting it.

The State Sector Act, which this State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill amends, is a 1988 Act.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Yeah, who sat on that select committee?

Well, the Minister who was in charge of that legislation before it became an Act was the Hon Stan Rodger.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: A good man for technical amendments.

Exactly. That is the very point I was going to make. It is still famous within the Labour caucus, some two decades later, that the Hon Stan Rodger was said to have said in respect of the State Sector Act, which made some very fundamental changes to the arrangements of the time, that it was a minor technical amendment. It went through caucus and it was duly passed by this Parliament. I think Stan Rodger, for a period, was stripped of his life membership of the Public Service Association, which was later to be reinstated.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: A part-of-life membership, really.

Yes, that is right, a part-of-life membership rather than a life membership, as it proved to be. The Hon Stan Rodger is still alive and well. I met him again the other day, actually. I think he can be proud that his legislation from 1988, that minor technical amendment that slipped through the Labour caucus, has really lasted close to three decades before being substantially amended.

I want to make reference to an amendment made by clause 6 of the bill in respect of ministerial staff who are on time-limited contracts. This provision is intended to refer to the people who are, largely, in quite political roles within Ministers’ offices, whose entitlements are not the same as those of normal long-term ministry appointments, because they are very political in terms of their duties and their fortunes and services are tied to the Government of the day or the Minister of the day.

To show that this legislation is intended to have effect across more than one administration, the example that the Finance and Expenditure Committee or the officials inserted was of “The Hon Honour Able’s ministerial staff”—a description that probably applies more to Ministers of other administrations than this one. What the provision says is that “employees ... who are employed on events-based employment agreements—(a) by the department that is responsible for the employment of ministerial staff across all Ministers’ offices; and (b) to work directly for a Minister in a Minister’s office rather than in a department” are covered by these unusual provisions. That amendment was made at the select committee to make it clear that we are not talking about the secondees who come from a ministry, work inside the Minister’s office and assist the Minister but remain a departmental official and are not party political, and to defend the principles of the Public Service, which are politically neutral.

The problem with the prior legislation was that this distinction was not made. Despite the fact that some of the people who are under the old definitions “ministerial staff” and were theoretically covered by codes of conduct that require political neutrality, some of these staff who were really very political and clear in their political agencies—and it is proper that they are—were caught up in the provisions of the Act that require political neutrality. That is fixed by the amendments we agreed at the select committee.

Another issue that was raised by submitters, which I do not think we have properly addressed in this bill—although it is not so serious a flaw as to mean that the Labour Party is going to vote against it—is that we have, in a description sense, weakened the provisions relating to equal opportunity. The provisions that are in the existing Act relating to equal opportunity are still there in some way in the replacement legislation, but they are not as up there in lights as they were. Given that there remain substantial disparities in the remuneration of women, there are also substantial income gaps—[Bell rung] Mr—

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: Mr Chair, I move that the question be now put.

No, I had actually indicated to the Hon David Parker. And the member must call. You do not just state what you want to do; you must call “Mr Chairman”, so that it gets my attention. All right? You must do that. I am giving the call to the Hon David Parker.

💬 Hon DAVID PARKER: It is a new point, and it is notable in respect of the contribution of the last member, the Hon David Cunliffe, that there has been no repetition; we are actually all covering new points, because there are many of them to make. The—now I have lost my train of thought.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: I’m sorry about that.

💬 Hon DAVID PARKER: That is all right. One of the other amendments made by this legislation, to which we agree in principle, is the broadening of objectives across the State sector. I do not want to give this too much elevation, because what is now being given statutory effect to, in terms of the way in which appropriations can be voted across departments, should be able to be achieved through cooperation between departments now.

It has always been the case that certain complex initiatives reach beyond one department. An instance that I personally was involved in was, of course, trying to get down New Zealand’s emissions growth rate in respect of climate change emissions. The ministries that touch the parts of the economy that interact with emitting industries include, to name but some: the Ministry for Primary Industries; obviously, the energy division of the former Ministry of Economic Development, now part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; the Ministry of Transport; and the Ministry for the Environment.

In respect of the need to change our direction across departmental efforts, that was achieved under the existing legislation. Although the Government claims that the changes that are proposed by this legislation will ensure that you can get more cooperation across departments, I think it is somewhat of a slight to the Government departments of the past to suggest that that cannot be achieved if there is a political will to do so. The key to that lies, more often than not, in the personnel, the forcefulness of Ministers, the clarity of direction from Cabinet, and the capability of the different parts of the Public Service that need to cooperate in respect of achieving complex change.

The area that I did not finish talking about in my previous contribution was this issue as to indemnity compared with immunity from prosecution. The area that I—and I am a lawyer—felt that we did not quite get to the bottom of was whether we are creating a lacuna, or a gap in the rights of an injured party where the public servant, acting in good faith but in a way that is against an express instruction of their employer because they have made a terrible mistake and they did not read the instructions or do whatever they were told by their employer, might do something that causes harm to a citizen that might give rise to a right of civil action against the public servant but not against the Crown because the actions of the public servant are so wrong as to not fall within the vicarious responsibilities of the Crown as the employer.

By granting immunity from civil suit, we risk leaving the injured New Zealander without remedy. It is a very narrow set of circumstances, but it is, I think, possible, and I was not satisfied that through this legislation we are not—because we are taking the immunity route rather than the indemnity route. We are giving immunity from civil suit, rather than indemnifying the public servant against the consequences of civil suit. I think there is a possibility that an injured party can have no right of civil redress because they have not got a right to include the public servant in a civil proceeding and they have got no right of claim against the Crown itself. So I thought the Law Commission advice in that regard was correct and that we should not be trying to fix it in this legislation. We should await the review that the Law Commission has under way into that serious point of law. The other point I was going to make will have to wait for a later contribution.

I have had some experience working in this area as the Minister of State Services for 6 years, and I was one of the lucky people who sat for many hours through the night in 1987-88, when the original legislation was passed. I think, by way of introductory comment on Part 1 of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill, it became my concern as a Minister that in fact the original legislation set up silos to too great an extent. As a result of that, there were a number of areas of whole-of-Government action that could not be implemented, because the priorities of the chief executives were to their specific responsibilities rather than to the Government as a whole or New Zealand as a whole. So I certainly do support the policy intent behind Part 1 of the bill, which is really around reducing or removing barriers to closer cooperation and alignment of agencies within the State sector. I think there has been a bit of loose talk in this debate, especially from members opposite, and a little bit of a lesson about the Public Service and the State sector is something that is worth some focusing on as far as members are concerned.

Members also need to understand the different position of Crown entities and the relationship of Ministers to them, and the relationship of the State Services Commissioner to those different organisations. There are some areas where he has some quite direct responsibility, including the appointment and the reporting function for the chief executives as far as their performance is concerned, and there are others where he or she has an advisory role. It is important, I think, that we do not get that mixed up, and there has been a tendency to do that. Again, there cannot be much argument about the primary focus here—about the need to deliver value for money from taxpayers’ funds. To do that there needs to be properly coordinated leadership across the Public Service in particular, and this bill, especially in Part 1, does go towards that, to some extent.

I think there are questions, though, that need to be asked about the term—about whether we are talking about value for money in the short term, whether we are talking about this year’s Budget, or whether we are talking about value for money in investment over a period of time and the building up of a Public Service that works in the medium and longer term, and the investment that is required to do that. It is more in the next part, but there is some relationship here around the Public Finance Act and the multi-category appropriations, which I am sure we will get back to.

I do want to say, having reviewed the bill when it was first introduced and when it came out of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, that I think the select committee did a very good job. There are some significant improvements in the bill. What I am not sure of—and I am sure one of my colleagues will be able to, by way of interjection, let me know—is who was chairing the select committee at the time.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Todd McClay.

Was it Todd McClay? Oh, well, I was going to be complimentary, but seeing that the man wants to line dogs up and kill them for drug dealers, I will not be as complimentary as I would otherwise be. But maybe there are some talents—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: He wants to do what?

Well, it is only right at the edge of this, but I think it is fair to say that it does go to the question of policy advice, and the question of which Ministers are run by departments and which of them have their own opinions, and the balance here. It is clear that Todd McClay showed some independence as the chair of the committee in order to get a bill around which, if not full consensus, then a large consensus could be built. But, apparently, now that he is a Minister he has fallen straight into the arms of the bureaucracy, and he wants to kill dogs so that drug dealers can have bigger profits. Normally, it takes 4 or 5 weeks for a Minister to fall into the arms of the department and to stop showing any independence—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: He ran.

Well, he ran and he jumped. He ran and he jumped, straight into the arms of the department. It smothered him, and any sensible opinion went with it. But I think we will be talking about that more as time goes on. The idea of sacrificing dogs so that drug dealers can have bigger profits is something that I just cannot believe. I just cannot believe any Minister would accept any such advice that came from a department that was set up under the legislation that we are currently amending.

As I indicated, there are some reservations that we are concerned about. Some areas have been strengthened. Conflict of interest provisions have been strengthened where the delegation of powers is proposed from any State sector entity, and the application of the Ombudsmen Act has been clarified. That, especially the clarification, is useful. I think there are still some discussions to be had, as we go on, as to the question of the delegation of powers and the appropriateness of that.

There is one area where I want to take issue with both the decision of the select committee and maybe even some of my own colleagues, and that is around the statements of intent and their usefulness as actual planning documents. I have been around long enough to see a whole pile of different contractual arrangements between Ministers and their departments, and I think there is some overrating of the statement of intent process, as to whether or not they are actually useful. It does depend very much on the Minister and the department.

As we look particularly at clause 49, which replaces sections 61A and 61B, and areas around that part of the bill, I think we will end up finding that in respect of redundancy and the advice in that area there will be different opinions and different approaches that are appropriate.

I am certainly of the view—and I think I share it with my Labour colleagues—that the delegation of powers from the core State sector to non-State partners and implementing agencies is constructed too broadly. I think it is fair to say that we will be watching very carefully how these delegations occur, and what use is made of them. In a funny way, it does not matter whether they are used—if they are used not at all, well, then they are useless, and if they are used too much, then there is a problem. It might well be that there is an overlap between the two.

My colleague David Parker has spoken on the question of immunity and indemnity. That is a technical legal area that I am sure pointy-head QCs will be—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Probably Jonathan Hayes.

No. Pointy-head QCs will be having some discussions about going forward. No doubt when David Parker is the Attorney-General, he will be involved in some of that as well.

It is my view that on balance this bill is something that is now worth supporting. [Interruption] Sorry? Well, actually, Mr Bennett will never ever be in a position where he has any chance of being directly involved in the State Sector Act as a Minister. He is someone who has been leaped over by talented colleague after talented colleague. He has been left behind. The sort of inane interjections that we are hearing from David Bennett on this bill are just an indication—and even his colleagues are looking embarrassed. He is going red, and his colleagues are rolling their eyes because they know that David Bennett just does not understand this area at all.

As the Committee knows, the purpose of the Committee stage—if David Bennett wants to cease his inane interjections across the Chamber, I will continue—of a bill is to get the Minister in the chair to answer questions about what the bill will actually do. We had a series of very laid-back Ministers in the chair, and this one, the Minister for Courts, is no exception. I would like to see the Minister take the call, because I think there are a lot of serious questions about this bill that need answers.

In particular, Minister, I want to ask you about the utility of this bill in achieving the objectives of Better Public Services. The Minister in the report-back stage of the bill, the second reading, said: “The changes are designed to enable the delivery of Better Public Services and more effective and efficient achievement of results.” He went on to say that the Better Public Services programme was one of the four key priorities of the Government. Well, I have in my hand a document that I have received under the Official Information Act. It is the Ernst and Young report, and it is entitled: FINAL DRAFT: Better Public Services Programme: Independent Quality Assurance. It is dated December last year. It is 6 months old. The summary of Ernst and Young—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Is this another leak?

Well, it is officially leaked, this one, because the Government had to give it out when it was requested.

This is a document that is designed to see whether the Public Service, the State sector, is delivering better public services and the Government is achieving the goal of its programme. What does it say? I want to quote this one sentence: “Our assessment is that the programme has yet to develop critical elements that are fundamental and necessary to achieve its aims …”. You know what that means: it means that the Better Public Services programme, Minister—one of the flagships of the National Government—has so far failed. It gives the reasons for this. I want to summarise the reasons—there are three. It lacks ownership, leadership, formal accountability, and prioritisation. Well, that is a responsibility, surely, Minister, of the Minister of State Services and his chief executive.

Secondly, it says: “The programme does not yet have an explicit and widely agreed model or strategy for achieving change.” You have got a key goal of a Government department and there is no strategy to achieve it. This is what the Government pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ernst and Young to tell it. Well, Minister, why is it that you do not have a strategy to achieve it, and will this bill actually help to deliver that outcome?

The third thing—the third thing is important too—is that it says that the programme does not have sufficient resources allocated. Well, that is a budgetary function of Government. So we have an official analysis of the Better Public Services that the Minister said this bill is designed to achieve, and the Government is committed to achieving, and it is not achieving them, because it lacks leadership, it lacks strategy, and it lacks resources.

I would like the Minister to tell the Committee how this bill will turn that round. This is a key goal of the Government. It is not being achieved. That is what the report says. I am happy to give the Minister a copy. I will table it for you, if you like, Minister. I presume you have read it. It says that you are not succeeding on those goals. Firstly, how are you going to turn round those factors? I do not believe that the legislation before us addresses any of those factors in terms of making sure that we achieve the Better Public Services goals that the Government uses rhetoric about but fails to deliver on in terms of leadership, strategy, or resources.

I want to look at the amendments to the State Sector Act that we are examining right now. The first change says that it will strengthen the role of the State Services Commissioner in leading the State services. I would like to ask the Minister whether strengthening the role of the State Services Commissioner will help overcome what the ministerial inquiry into the Novopay debacle found. What did the inquiry find? It found, first of all, that it was a debacle, that teachers were not getting their salaries paid correctly 6 months after it was introduced. It said that the cost of the programme had doubled—another $23 million. It said that all of this was avoidable, and it said that the Government had ignored the lessons of the past. In 1996 the education payroll had similar difficulties. Here, 16 years later, we have got the same thing again.

The INCIS experience, which cost $100 million of money put into the police, was a parallel case. Steven Joyce said that this was the result of failure of leadership of the State Services Commission. I would like to ask the Minister how the provisions put in this bill might have turned round the Novopay debacle. Could that have been prevented with the provisions in this bill; if not, what is the Government doing to make sure that we do have an efficient Public Service, and not one that results in a debacle such as we saw with Novopay? Secondly, of the changes made, the bill said “Broadening the Commissioner’s functions to include the ability to transfer chief executives”.

Well, Minister, I want to stay with education and use another example and ask you how the Act would have applied in this case. Lesley Longstone left after a year in the job of chief executive officer, at the expense of $425,000 in costs to the taxpayer, and she left, essentially, if you read between the lines, because she could not get on with her Minister. So would that have been the case under this bill, if this bill had been enacted before that event? Hekia Parata is apparently a very hard Minister to work for. Nobody was saying that Lesley Longstone was incompetent in the job. In fact, the Minister of State Services refused to say that. Would you be able, when you have an incompetent Minister who is hard to work with, to transfer the chief executive to another department so that the taxpayer is not paying over $400,000 to get rid of somebody whom you have just put in the job?

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: We have done that in the past.

Well, it has been done in the past but this gives an explicit power to the chief executive to transfer.

The next one is extending the responsibilities of chief executives to their Ministers. That is what the bill says. It is the third change. If there is a responsibility on the part of the chief executive to the Minister—I hope you are listening, Minister—is there a counter-responsibility of the Minister to the chief executive? As long as I was a Minister, there was always a strong convention that Ministers did not go out and bag their chief executives, and yet we saw Murray McCully bag John Allen. We know that Murray McCully was behind the change programme. It got unpopular, so he bagged John Allen and said “You got it wrong.”, even though John Allen was carrying out all of his responsibilities.

So if this bill creates a responsibility of the chief executive to the Minister, what responsibility does it create of the Minister back to the chief executive? Is it permissible, under this bill, for a Minister to go out and bag his chief executive, who cannot reply, who is defenceless, and who can be slandered by his Minister and forced to take the responsibility? If that was an isolated example, I would feel more comfortable, Minister, but clearly it is not, because Nathan Guy—the Committee will recall—did exactly the same thing. Nathan Guy was responsible for meat exports sitting on the wharves in China for 3 weeks, at a loss of millions and millions of dollars, because the Government got it wrong. The Government restructured the Ministry for Primary Industries, it did away with the Food Safety Authority, which worked very effectively, and we jeopardised our trade in meat with China, which has doubled in the last year.

I want to know why it is that a Minister can go out again and bag his department but not take responsibility himself. So is this bill one-sided in creating a responsibility on the part of the chief executive to the Minister but taking away the responsibility of the Minister to the chief executive, or, in fact, is it taking away the responsibility of the Minister to be responsible and to actually earn the quarter of a million dollars that he or she earns each year by actually doing their job and not sitting back and waiting for the Civil Service to do it and then blaming them when they do not? So that is the third question, Minister, and if you are having trouble following these, they are all set out in the bill, one by one—the changes that are being made.

One of the other changes is about creating a new organisational arrangement called a departmental agency, as a way of providing public services. This sits in a host department and would administer the appropriations used by the departmental agency, but it would have its own chief executive. Can the Minister give the Committee—

Thank you very much, Mr Chair, I think, for allowing me the call.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: The police spokesperson will be back on the beat.

Yes, that is right. Oh, well—numbers are dwindling. Thank you very much for the chance to speak to Part 1 of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill. Every so often, John Hayes says something in this Chamber that needs to have some kind of rebuttal, and I was watching from my office the very brief contribution he gave to the bill, where he did say that this bill is about Better Public Services, and about the objective for the Government to try to make sure there are much more efficient and effective public services here in New Zealand. But as Mr Goff has pointed out, there are many examples that show—and he also cited an Ernst and Young report that says this—that the Government has failed in that respect.

I did want to point out another very apt example of where the Government has failed to deliver better public services, which has been highlighted by the Police Association in its latest Police News magazine, in July. This is a Government that says it wants better public services, and law and order is certainly one of those places where it trumpets its success. But in the latest Police News magazine out from the Police Association this week, it shows that what the Government is trying to achieve in terms of better public services with our police is failing dismally with the people who are trying to deliver that public service. A survey of nearly 4,000 members of the Police Association, just three shy of 4,000, has shown that only 6 percent of our Police Association members—of 4,000 members, I will point out again—more likely our front-line police officers, think there has been improved efficiency, effectiveness, or service to the public as part of the Government’s Better Public Services push within the police. So 6 percent of our front-line police staff think that the Government is doing a good job of restructuring and its push for Better Public Services—6 percent. Six out of 100 police staff think that this Government is doing a very good job of the services that they offer to the community to make sure that our communities are safer.

In that respect, Mr Hayes’ objective—this Government’s objective—in the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill is an absolute failure, and that is not just in the eyes of the public but also in the eyes of the people who are delivering the service: our front-line police officers. There are concerns within the ranks in terms of the Government’s objective of making things much more efficient and effective. Of those staff members who were surveyed, 61 percent said that staffing shortages were in the top three concerns that they had. That is 61 percent of those 4,000 people surveyed who said that staffing shortages within police in our communities is a concern. That is hardly achieving that goal of better public services. Of the 4,000 people surveyed in this Police Association survey, 45 percent said that resourcing shortages were one of their top three concerns—hardly this Government delivering better public services to our communities.

This is a very concerning message from our Police Association because we are talking about our public safety here, which is something that this Government over there is full of rhetoric about. But it is clear from the people who are delivering the services that the Government’s claim that it is delivering better public services via our police is not the actual reality. That side of the Chamber is full of plenty of rhetoric, but the reality and the message back from those people who are delivering the services is that this Government is doing a very bad job of delivering those better public services when it comes to police. As I said, just 6 percent of those 4,000 front-line police staff think this Government is doing a good job and is helping them deliver improved efficiency, effectiveness, and a good service to the public.

We also had some reservations around some redundancy provisions within this bill. I must commend some members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who are on this side of the Chamber who did manage to make some very big changes around the redundancy provisions. We did manage to make some amendments to the bill at the select committee consideration. Before we got to the select committee, things were awful, but due to the hard work of the Labour members on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, we managed to make some amendments to make sure things were much better for those within our public sector who were going to face redundancy.

Redundancy is also a very important word in terms of the police restructuring. Last year the Government announced that because of the effect of budget cuts to the police, somewhere between 150 and 170 back-office police staff were going to be made redundant. There was very little prospect of them being able to be shifted to different jobs within the police organisation, because things were so tight because this Government cut the police budget.

I did just want to point to clause 49 within Part 1, relating to a restriction of redundancy payments in certain situations, where people might be able to be moved to an alternative position. I just did want to quickly go through each of these situations where someone could not have a redundancy payment offered to them, because an alternative position was found. The select committee said on the insertion of sections 61A and 61B that someone who “begins before, on, or immediately after the date on which the employee’s current employment ends;” is not open to get any redundancy. Someone who is offered “a position with comparable duties and responsibilities to those of the employee’s”—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Comparable.

—comparable, or com-parable, Ruth Dyson—“current position;” probably would not be able to get redundancy. Someone who “is in substantially the same general locality or a locality within reasonable commuting distance;” would not necessarily be able to get this redundancy. And someone who “is on terms and conditions of employment ... that are no less favourable;” would not be able to get a redundancy payment. I am wondering right now whether those 170-odd people who used to work for the police about a year ago, and who no longer work for the police, would quite like those provisions within their termination agreements that they have with the police.

The changes that are made within this bill do certainly go to the heart of some of the changes that are happening in our police sector at the moment. It is clear from the Police Association survey that the police staff themselves are not happy, because of those changes, which really restrict their ability to be what the Government wants them to be—more efficient and more effective. And it is plain to see that they think the changes and the budget cuts that the Government is putting them through are not helping them deliver those better public services that Mr Hayes has pointed out. That is quite sad, and it is also very risky, in terms of our public safety, because I think everyone in this House would agree that we do want to have, in terms of our police, better public services. But when the Government is putting our police force under extreme budget pressure, which is leading to front-line staffing shortages and resourcing shortages, that could have a very damaging or very dangerous effect in our community if our police are not able to respond to or prevent crime, which we would like them to do.

If this Government were to be true to what Mr Hayes has pointed out—wanting to be delivering better public services for the safety of all of our communities—maybe it should not act with its intentions to cut the police budget, which, as I have said, has really damaged the confidence of our police staff through their ability to do their job and to be properly resourced for their job. I think, subsequently, when people read this, they will be upset or concerned that our police force is out there trying to do a job, trying to be effective, and this Government has said it is delivering better public services, but the reality and the rhetoric do not match up.

We are supporting this bill but we are doing it with reservations, and the reservation I pointed out in the police arena is certainly one where this Government should take heed.

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā tangata o te wa. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. I rise to speak, along with my colleagues, in support of this bill, the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill. We have, however, some reservations that we will be outlining throughout this.

It is probably clear to people, and I am sure the point has already been made, that we did oppose this bill at its first reading. But I am very proud of the fact that my Labour colleagues on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, along with the State sector unions, have averted disaster for Government workers, who were set to lose their redundancy entitlements and employment rights. Part 1 of the bill that we are talking about covers this quite comprehensively. The Labour members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee did fight long and hard to get some very important changes. I am aware that the unions that represent our public servants believe that those changes are sufficient.

It is interesting to come into the Chamber to talk on this bill and this particular matter of the treatment of public servants, as, during the dinner break, I was at a meeting with people from Transparency International New Zealand, and they were talking about the Corruption Perceptions Index. One of the points they made was that the New Zealand public sector is perceived as the least corrupt in the world. That is pretty amazing. That is about the quality of our public servants, and it really says to me that how we treat our public servants—the working conditions, the rates of pay, obviously, but also the other conditions of employment—is actually very important. To maintain a corruption-free Public Service is critically important. It has a range of benefits, and we are looked up to internationally still for that.

I thought that that was quite amazing. Recognising the work of our public servants is something that often is not done. Quite often, people make cheap political points about bureaucrats. They make cheap political points about there being too many of these people who are not doing front-office functions—that they are actually a drain on the taxpayer. Well, actually, they perform vitally important roles.

We were concerned that the attempts in this bill that were around trying to have a more flexible, innovative, and efficient set of State services, and the ability to move people and to restrict entitlements to redundancy, and so on, were actually going to undermine public servants and treat them in a way that was not fair and reasonable. I am glad that the redundancy provisions have been improved, and that State sector employees—public servants—will retain their entitlements unless accepting a position that is no less favourable than their existing package. That was quite an important debate, as I understand it, because originally the wording had a qualifier—“overall” no less favourable. The interesting thing is that in law the debate about what that would look like certainly did not require the terms and conditions to be exactly the same. But we were satisfied with deleting the word “overall”, because we felt that that actually was likely to maintain protections for employees. We do note, though, that we have some reservations about this. There is a risk that courts could be too liberal in their view of interpreting what “no less favourable” means.

We are concerned also, along with the Public Service Association, that the right for Public Service workers to bargain their redundancy provisions has been removed, and a proper redeployment scheme has not been reconsidered. It is important in times of high unemployment, and when in fact there have been cuts throughout the Public Service, that we do consider things like redeployment, that we do consider people’s needs for job security. There are many public servants who have lost their jobs, and who are now in the situation of being unemployed. I think it is a shame that there was not greater consideration around those redeployment provisions. The transitional arrangements have also been approved so that collective agreements and individual agreements are “sunsetted” equally.

One of the other things that I think is interesting in this part of the bill is around the Government Workforce Policy Statement. There has been some revision there to ensure that current legal and bargaining rights have been protected. That is really important. Originally, there was a mechanism for a Government Workforce Policy Order, and the select committee has recommended renaming the Government Workforce Policy Order as a Government Workforce Policy Statement—so a statement, rather than an order—to clarify the provisions and to constrain them to their intended effect.

The important thing here is that the orders indicate a broad Government policy intention around how the State services should approach employment relations and workforce capability, to create a more transparent and consultative mechanism for developing formal workforce policy for the State services. These orders, though, were not intended to have legislative effect nor to override existing legal rights or obligations, including negotiated terms for pay and conditions in existing bargaining rights. That is really important, and, certainly, we on this side of the Chamber strongly support the rights of workers to negotiate their terms and conditions of employment, and to ensure the right to bargain and the right to protection of those negotiated terms and conditions of employment. We are very pleased that the amendments to these provisions make it clear that these statements do not have legal force and do not undermine existing bargaining rights. But, having said that, we have ongoing reservations that notwithstanding the clarity of these provisions the Government may try to use these instruments as a binding force. So, for the avoidance of doubt, Labour would like to reiterate that we and the committee, in its consideration of the bill, do not consider these statements to be legally binding.

It is worth noting, I think, as we are discussing these types of provisions, that, of course, we are in a situation in this country where workers’ rights are under attack. Since National was elected in 2008 we have seen the undermining of a whole number of provisions that affect workers—things that would, basically, reduce wages. The Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which is now before a select committee, is certainly in that category. So you can understand why, when looking at a bill like this, we might be concerned and might, along with the unions—the Public Service Association, the Council of Trade Unions, and others—be very concerned about these types of provisions around redundancy clauses and around workforce policy statements. This is a Government that does not respect workers’ rights to collectively bargain. It does not respect workers’ rights to be in unions, and certainly it has done nothing to see us move to the kind of high-wage, high-skill, highly productive economy that this country so desperately needs. In fact, wages have been flat-lining or reducing for many New Zealanders. We are a low-wage economy, and that will continue to hamper our ability to move forward economically.

So those are the sorts of, I guess, umbrella concerns that we had when we were looking at this legislation, and I think anybody listening to this and anybody who is aware of the record of the Government and its current intentions around the Employment Relations Amendment Bill would think it made absolute sense that we were very concerned about those provisions.

Again, I reiterate the fact that I am very proud of the work that was done by the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, particularly around the provisions of this part, Part 1, which involves amendments to the State Sector Act, to ensure that some of these concerns around redundancy and the possibility of these workforce policy statements undermining legal and bargaining rights have been significantly improved. I have outlined, however, that we retain some existing concerns, so that is why we are supporting this bill with reservations. I think that it is not surprising to see—

I call the honourable member the Hon Trevor Mallard.

Thank you, Mr Chairperson. It is something I like to be called. I want to start off with not entirely agreeing with Carol Beaumont, my colleague whom I am following, because I had a period as Minister of State Services and it is fair to say that for a period of time it was relatively frustrating. One of the frustrating things was the “siloisation” of the Public Service. You would have people who were doing exactly the same job from department to department, but their conditions were all different. They were all higgledy-piggledy. We used to, especially in areas of shortage—in those days we were not firing public servants. We were looking for good policy people and people who wanted to work hard in the implementation areas, and there was actually something of a shortage of skills. One of the problems that Dr Cullen used to complain about occasionally to me as the Minister of State Services was that there used to be interdepartmental bidding. You know, one department would bid for someone, and someone would bid more and they would go back. I think it is fair to say that over a period of time, salaries moved in a way that Dr Cullen was uncomfortable with as Minister of Finance.

The other point I would like to make to the member is that, unfortunately, because too many of the chief executives, especially in our early days, had been appointed in the times of Bill Birch and others, they were of the group who were much keener on having individual contracts and much less likely to want to bargain. In fact, we had this awful intransigence on the part of many employers, some of whom—the chief executives—actively resisted putting salary or wage levels into agreements. The problem was that under the law, as Ministers, we did not have the power to work towards a set of policies that were enforceable and could properly be implemented.

That is why I would say that I—and I am going to, sort of, maybe, admit that if this detail was carefully discussed within our caucus, I missed it. But I want to say to my colleagues that, in fact, actually having Governments that have policies rather than high-level statements, and policies that can be enforced in the hands of a good Government, is a good thing—in the hands of a good Government. But you then go to the question about whether Parliament should be designing legislation on the assumption that Governments that are going to be using it are always going to be bad. What I want to tell my colleague Carol Beaumont is that good Governments will do good stuff, and bad Governments will do bad stuff, no matter what the law is. Therefore, my view is that even from Opposition what we should be doing is developing the law in the format that we can use properly from November next year or at some point earlier, if John Key gets the pip and tosses in the towel.

So if members opposite can see division in the ranks over here, it is probably true. You know, there is a bit of difference of opinion as to approach. I would like to see more multi-employer arrangements within the Public Service, and, in fact, where there are employment categories, or employment classes, I would like to see common conditions.

While we are at it, I will really get the frustrations going in saying that I worked for about 18 months trying to get some common leave provisions across the Public Service.

💬 Carol Beaumont: How about in collective agreements?

I wanted to get them into collective agreements, yes. But, you know, some of the chief executives, at the very thought that a Minister might have an opinion about having particular sets of leave arrangements that are common and that it would not matter if you were working in the Ministry of Social Development or in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet—I will not mention Treasury, because it basically did not have any common conditions. There were no collective agreements within Treasury at all. But even the organisations that had collective agreements shuddered at the very thought that someone might have the same set of leave or sick pay provisions that were the same in one agency and in the one next door, where people were doing exactly the same work.

There are a number of areas as a Minister I failed in, and one of them that I failed miserably in was in my attempt to get a system going where common conditions could be developed for people who were doing very much the same work from agency to agency. The fiefdoms were absolute. The silos were not made of concrete; they were made of reinforced titanium, and people could not move. People could not move from one to another.

Actually, if you are looking at areas like redundancy and things like that, sometimes it is by far the best thing for the Public Service overall if a particular individual shifts from one agency to another—slightly better for them, but sometimes, because of the skills that are required, it is better for the Public Service for the individual to shift. But when the conditions are so tight that in shifting from one agency to another the individual loses a whole pile of long service leave arrangements or sick pay or holidays or a number of areas, it just does not happen, and the Public Service becomes inflexible and staid as a result. So I say to my colleagues that the idea of having more than just common statements, having policies that are actually implemented, is something that I think is desirable.

💬 Carol Beaumont: Not instead of collective bargaining, though.

Well, the member says not instead of collective bargaining. Actually, it should be the employer’s position for the collective bargaining. My view is that the best advocate for common positions across the Public Service is, in fact, the Public Service Association. In fact, it was the one with the most interest in having a Public Service that was relevant and flexible, and people were employed.

The problem with the approach that happened under Birch and is happening now—who is that cigar-smoking Minister? What is his name?

💬 Dr David Clark: Mr Coleman.

Coleman.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Jonathan.

The Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, or Dr the Hon—which way? He is the one who gets on so well in the corporate boxes. The problem is that there are a number of departments where people are leaving and coming back as contractors. They are getting sometimes quite a handsome redundancy arrangement and coming back weeks later, sometimes working only 3 days a week but for double the money. That is something that is outrageous, and it is something that we have to work against. [Interruption] Well, this bill does not address it properly, and it is a gap in the amendments that we are currently deliberating.

The other question that I would like to ask the Minister of State Services—and I am not going to refer to the absence of the Minister, but I will refer to the fact that the Minister of Labour, who is in the chair, might be familiar with the legislation, and I am sure he is capable of reading the briefing notes that come up. What I would like to ask is what the implications of this bill are for the State Services Commissioner if, in fact, the State Services Commissioner is going to be used as the recruiting agent by the Prime Minister for the new Commissioner of Police. Are there any changes as a result?

One of the early problems that we had when we were in Government was a man called Doone. There was a rapid appointment of a successor, but that also highlighted for a number of Ministers that the recruitment process was just completely undefined. It was just up in the air; there was nothing. I would like to know whether there is something here, because we have a very serious problem coming up. The heir presumptive for the position of the Commissioner of Police is someone who has very recently shown excessively bad judgment, someone who has told the—

Tēnā koe, te Tiamana.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Tēnā koe.

Tēnā koe. I te mea ko tēnei Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori me tuku au i taku kōrero i roto i te reo o ngā mātua o ngā tūpuna ki a tātau i tēnei pō, kia whai wāhi au ki te kōrero ki taku kupu whakahōunga, ka mutu, kia taea ai te whakamārama ake i te āhuatanga o tāku kupu whakahōunga. Āpōpō e eke ai ki te tuawhā o tēnei marama i te tau 1868 i eke mai ngā mema Pāremata e whā ki roto i ngā pakitara o tēnei Whare. Nō reira, me whakanui tātau i te ekenga mai o ngā Māori tuatahi ki roto i tēnei Whare āpōpō.

He aha i haramai ai rātau ki konei? Te tikanga ia kia whai wāhi Te Reo Māori i roto i ngā nekeneke o te Whare Pāremata, ka mutu, e ai ki tā tētahi o aua mema, e ai ki tā Tāreha Te Moananui, te mema Pāremata me kī, ki taku mōhio, mō Te Tai Rāwhiti, nāna tonu te Kāwanatanga i āki ki te hanga i ētahi ture pai mō te Māori me Te Ao Pākehā. Koinā tāna whakahōu i te wā i eke mai ia ki roto i te Whare Pāremata. Arā anō a Hone Paratene Tamanuiārangi mō Te Tai Tonga. A Takarangi Mete-Kīngi Te Rangipaetahi o Te Tai Hauāuru, ka mutu, ko Tāreha Te Moananui o Te Tai Rāwhiti, ko Frederick Russell nō roto o Te Tai Tokerau. Koirā rātau ngā mema. Nā rātau te kī me hanga te Kāwanatanga i ētahi ture pai mō Te Ao Pākehā, mō Te Ao Māori, mō tātau katoa. Nō reira, anei tātau e 145 tau i muri mai e pēnei anō te āhuatanga o ngā mahi kei mua i a tātau. Nō reira ā kāti.

Koinei au e whakaara ake i taku kupu whakahōunga ki roto i te Whare Pāremata i te mea, e kore te Pāti Māori e tautoko i tēnei pire i tōna hanga i tēnei wā. Nāku nā te Pāti Māori tonu i kōkiri tētahi kupu whakahōunga ki te whakaara ake i tētahi tikanga kua roa e kōreroia ana e mātau, arā, kia whai wāhi Te Tiriti o Waitangi i roto i ngā nekeneke o te Whare Pāremata. He aha te take kua huri atu ki Te Tiriti o Waitangi? I te mea, nā Te Tiriti o Waitangi i whai wāhi te Kāwanatanga ki konei ki Aotearoa nei. Ka mutu, i roto i Te Tiriti o Waitangi ā-Pākehā nei ko te kupu “Kāwanatanga”. He aha te tikanga o tērā ki tēnei pire? Ā, ko ngā tari o te Kāwanatanga te whakatinanatanga o te kupu “Kāwanatanga”. Mā reira ka whai wāhi ahau ki te kōrero mō te whānuitanga o Te Tiriti o Waitangi i roto i tēnei pire.

E te Tiamana nāku tonu tētahi kupu i whakatakoto ki mua i te Whare Pāremata me taku whakamārama ki a koe, i tuhi reta mātau ki te Minita mō tēnei o ngā kaupapa ki te Hōnore Tākuta Jonathan Coleman ki te kī atu, me whai wāhi tētahi kupu kōrero mō Te Tiriti o Waitangi ki roto i tēnei pire ēngari, kāre i aro mai. Hāunga, kei konei te Whare Pāremata. Ka riro mā tātau tērā e whakatika. Kia pēnei tonu taku kōrero ki a koe, kāore tētahi kupu mō Te Tiriti o Waitangi i roto i tēnei pire. Ko tā mātau ko te kī atu, kei te hē rawa atu tērā. Mēnā ka whai wāhi tētahi rārangi kōrero mō Te Tiriti o Waitangi i roto i tēnei pire, ko te tino pūtake o tā mātau āki i tēnei take, ko te kī atu ki ngā tumuaki, ki ngā kaihautū o ngā tari Kāwanatanga, kia tuhia ki roto i wā rātau kupu whāinga, ngā tāhūhū kōrero, o tēnā tari, o tēnā tari, o tēnā tari o te Kāwanatanga, i ō rātau ake hiahia, ō rātau tūmanako, ka mutu, wā rātau whakatau mō ngā painga ka pā mai ki te iwi Māori, ka mutu, ko te hunga manene ka eke mai ki Aotearoa nei. Mā reira pea ka kitea mai ai he painga.

I ngā tau kua hipa ake, kua rongo nei tātau i ngā rārangi kōrero e hia kē nei e mea ana, kai raro Te Ao Māori e putu ana ā-mātauranga, ā-hauora, ā-whare karukaru nei. Kei reira tonu Te Ao Māori i ngā whare herehere nei. Mēnā ka taea e tātau te tuku i tētahi kupu kōrero mō Te Tiriti o Waitangi i roto i ngā kupu whāinga, mēnā ka taea e tātau te kī atu ki ngā tumuaki o ngā tari o te Kāwanatanga, me whakarite rātau i ētahi rārangi kōrero e hāngai tonu ana ki ngā hiahia o Te Ao Māori, mā reira pea ka kitea mai ai he painga.

Nō reira, kei roto i tēnei pire, ko tā mātau kua kī atu ko te State Sector Act, Crown Entities Act, Public Finance Act me whakarite i tētahi kupu ki a rātau ki te kī atu me whai i tēnei kaupapa. Mā reira ka taea e tātau te whakamātautau i a rātau, ka tahi, mēnā āe rānei, i eke ki tā rātau i kōrero ai, i whakatakoto ai, i tuhi ai, kāre rānei. Ki te kore, a panaia, panaia. Kāre wā rātau take. Ēngari i tēnei wā, kāre tētahi paku whakaritenga e pērā ana i roto i ngā nekeneke o ngā tari o te Kāwanatanga. Nō reira ko tā mātau i roto i tēnei rārangi, i tēnei wāhanga o te pire, he kupu kōrero mō te rara e 5, e āki ana i ngā tari o te Kāwanatanga kia pēnei tonu, kia āmine atu ki Te Tiriti o Waitangi, ka tahi. Ka rua, ka whai wāhi anō hoki i roto i wētahi atu o ngā wāhanga o te pire.

Nō reira waiho ake tērā ki reira. Kotahi pea, e rua pea ngā wā ka tū ake au ki te whakamārama i ngā hiahia o te Pāti Māori. Koinei te tino pūtake o tēnei pire ahakoa poto, inā kē te nui o ōna toronga, inā kē te nui o ōna whāinga, inā kē te nui o ōna painga mēnā ka whakaaetia mai e tēnei Komiti tāku kupu whakahōunga. Kei reira tonu, kei te rara e 162, he wāhi anō rā kai roto i tētahi wāhanga anō o te pire e kī ana, anei tētahi huarahi. Me whakatuwhera i te kuaha o te Kāwanatanga kia whai wāhi ki te tohutohu anō hoki i ngā tari o te Kāwanatanga, ki te whaiwhai haere i ētahi painga i tua atu o ngā mea e kitea nei e tātau i tēnei wā mō te iwi Māori, ā, ka mutu, mō ngā momo iwi katoa e noho mai nei i Aotearoa nei. Nō reira, me titiro tātau ki tērā 162. Ko tērā wāhanga tērā.

Ka mutu, ehara i te mea he nui ngā mea i tua atu o tērā ēngari, mā tēnei kaupapa ka whai wāhi tētahi akiakinga o te Kāhui Tikanga Tangata. I roto i wāna kōrero i ngā tau kua hipa ake, nānā tonu te kōrero ki te āta titiro ki te āhuatanga o te nohotahitanga o Te Ao Pākehā me Te Ao Māori, ka mutu, me āta rangahau, me āta arotake i ngā ture o roto i ngā whiriwhiringa o tēnei motu, kia whai wāhi ngā tikanga, ngā ahurea o Te Ao Māori i roto i ēnei āhuatanga katoa ēngari, mō tēnei pire, kāre mātau te Pāti Māori i te tino kite i tērā. Koinei mātau e whakatakoto nei i tēnei kaupapa, i tēnei kōrero ki mua i te aroaro o tēnei Whare Pāremata. Te tūmanako ia, anā ka āmine mai, ka tautoko mai tēnei Komiti i tēnei kupu whakahōunga ki mua ia i te Komiti, anā, mā reira pea ka eke ki te taumata e wawatatia ana e mātau o te Pāti Māori. Nō reira, tēnā koe kia ora tātau.

[Thank you. As this is Māori Language Week, I will deliver my speech tonight in the language of my ancestors so that I can speak to my Supplementary Order Paper and, furthermore, explain aspects of it. Tomorrow reaches the fourth of this month, when on this day in 1868 four members of Parliament entered the walls of this House. So we must celebrate the arrival of the first Māori members into this House tomorrow.

Why did they come here? It was to ensure that the Māori language was involved in House procedures. Eventually, and according to my understanding, one of those members—namely, Tāreha Te Moananui, member for the East Coast—urged the Government to create appropriate legislation for Māori and non-Māori people. That was the change he advocated at the time he came into Parliament House. There was Hone Paratene Tamanuiārangi of the south, Takarangi Mete-Kīngi Te Rangipaetahi of the west, Tāreha Te Moananui, of course, of the East Coast, and Frederick Russell of the north. Those were the members. They were the four who urged Government to make good legislation for Europeans, Māori, and all of us. And so here we are 145 years on and still addressing matters similar in nature in the business before us.

Hence this Supplementary Order Paper of mine, which I am raising in the House because the Māori Party will not support this bill as it stands at the moment. We the Māori Party drafted a Supplementary Order Paper to include the Treaty of Waitangi in Parliament procedures, which we have advocated for a long time. Why turn to the Treaty of Waitangi? It was the Treaty of Waitangi that gave the Government a place here in New Zealand. Furthermore, “Government” is referred to in the English version of the Treaty of Waitangi. In terms of this bill, what does that mean? Government departments are the manifestation of the word “Government”. That is the avenue that enables me to speak about the broad implications of the Treaty of Waitangi in this bill.

Mr Chairman, I raised a point of order before Parliament and explained to you that we wrote to the Minister the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman to implore him to include a reference to the Treaty of Waitangi in this bill, but he chose to ignore it. Nevertheless, Parliament is here. We can rectify that. There is no reference at all to the Treaty of Waitangi in this bill. Our assertion is that it is a major oversight. If there was a statement about the Treaty of Waitangi in this bill, then our main thrust in this matter would be to urge chief executives and general managers of Government departments to write their aspirations and hopes into the aims and mission statements for each Government department and, furthermore, their conclusions about the benefits that will accrue to the Māori people and, subsequently, migrants that settle here in New Zealand. Gains may be seen through that process.

Over the past years we have repeatedly heard statements made that in terms of education, health, and housing, Māori are in an abysmal state. As far as the rate of imprisonment for Māori is concerned, the situation is the same there. If we can make a statement about the Treaty of Waitangi in the objectives, say to the heads of the Government departments to consider making statements that relate specifically to the aspirations of the Māori people, then gains may be seen.

So in terms of this bill we advocate that in the State Sector Act, the Crown Entities Act, and the Public Finance Act we should consider a statement directing Government departments to follow this policy. In the first instance this would enable us to evaluate them and to determine whether they achieved what they stated, set down, and wrote, or whether they did not. If they do not achieve, then sack them, get rid of them. They are no good. But at this point in time there is not a single mechanism like that in the workings of Government departments. So for this part of the bill, our Supplementary Order Paper for clause 5 urges Government departments to follow this and agree to the Treaty of Waitangi in the first instance. Secondly, we urge that it be included in other parts of the bill.

So I leave that there. I will take another call or two later to explain what the Māori Party hopes to achieve. This is the real gist of this bill and although it is a short one, the implications, aims, and benefits of my Supplementary Order Paper, if agreed to by this Committee, will be huge. There is another place that is still there in the bill, in clause 162, which states that here is another way. We need to open the door of Government to find an opportunity to direct Government departments to follow up other benefits beyond those we see Māori getting at the moment, and subsequently all kinds of people living here in New Zealand are getting. And so we should consider clause 162. So that is that part.

Furthermore, there is not much else, but this Supplementary Order Paper will give traction to some of the urgings of the Human Rights Commission. In his addresses in past years, he has stated that we must examine the situation relating to how Māori and Europeans live with each other, and how laws of negotiations in this country need to be researched and evaluated thoroughly so that Māori customs and culture are taken into account in all these situations. But as far as this bill is concerned, we the Māori Party do not really see that. This is why we are placing this Supplementary Order Paper and making this address before this Parliament. The fervent desire is that this Committee agree and support this Supplementary Order Paper before it. Perhaps it might reach the level of desire that the Māori Party is striving for. So thank you and salutations to us collectively.]

[Interruption] Oh, gee. What am I bid? I call the honourable member Jacinda Ardern. Sorry, guys.

Thank you.

💬 Kris Faafoi: What a gentleman.

I smiled a lot. This is my first call on the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill. I am pleased to have—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: You only get four on this part.

—an opportunity to speak to Part 1. I am pleased also to know how many opportunities I have to speak on Part 1, because it is an extensive part, and I think probably that the points I have to make will take some time.

I want to start with some of the recommendations and comments that were made by the Finance and Expenditure Committee on Part 1, particularly around the purpose of the bill. From someone who obviously did not sit on this committee, some clarification from the Minister in the chair, Nikki Kaye, on some issues would be beneficial to me and, perhaps, to other members of the Committee—in particular, the recommendation around amending clause 5, new section 1A(e), of the bill. There was obviously some debate amongst members of the select committee around the wording in the objective. If I could flick to the purpose clause of the bill in new section 1A, it says: “The purpose of this Act is to promote and uphold a State sector system”, and then it goes on to list the things that are required by the bill that are upheld.

An important question, I think, though, is to what degree does upholding become defending? To what degree does upholding then transition into defending, when there is potential for the erosion of certain objectives for the State sector? I say that because when we come down to paragraph (e), where the wording has been changed from “provides for” to “is supported by effective workforce and personnel arrangements;”, there was obviously some debate by select committee members. As that currently stands on the face of it, it sounds like it is almost a passive role for the State sector actors in that regard, but, obviously, I come at it from looking at an area of the State sector like the Ministry of Social Development, and like those who are working in Child, Youth and Family as public sector servants. To what degree is this bill to defend the role that they have when they are no longer able to act as an effective workforce because of workplace issues, for instance?

What role is there for intervention in order to support that workforce? What do I mean by that? Well, we know that the Government has pursued what, at various times, it has called capping, it has called streamlining, it has called efficiencies, it has called various things. But let us cut to the chase of what that has meant. It has meant that in some of our departments, despite demand and workforce demands increasing for those departments, it has outstripped their ability as a workforce to grow and meet that demand. In the past several years alone for Child, Youth and Family, for instance, there has been a 33 percent increase in substantiated notifications, so notifications that require further action. Over that period we have had 16 new social workers per annum. One might be able to claim that it is very difficult for that workforce to be an effective workforce under those circumstances—to fulfil their requirement as public servants to act appropriately and according to their own Acts that they are required to fulfil and be governed by. So to what degree is this bill about just upholding a State Sector system, and to what degree is it one that is able to defend it when that position becomes untenable for them?

The second part that I want to speak to relates to chief executives’ ability to delegate functions or powers. This was obviously in clause 35, another area of contention and discussion for the select committee. In particular, I see that they have distinguished between Public Service chief executives being able to delegate functions or powers from, of course, the separate ability to contract out the delivery of services. I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair, though, as to what examples she may have of those distinctions between the contracting out of services, which happens daily within Government departments, and other forms of delegation that might occur by a chief executive, to just give a little flavour as to the kinds of circumstances we might be looking at. That would be important for us to consider, because I think it is right that we be concerned when we are delegating any powers to ensure it is done properly.

The reason I imagine the select committee said: “Look, contracting is distinct.” is that we assume transparency. We assume that through the contracting system—because it is tendered and because, to a certain degree, of course, the portals that the Government provides are meant to be a process that even the public who may not be engaging in those particular contract arrangements are at least able to see. My concern is that in recent times, perhaps our trust, even the select committee’s trust, that we can treat the contracting out—that form of delegation by a chief executive—to be sacrosanct and fine is something that we may need to question whether or not we still actually have that layer of transparency within that tendering process.

The reason I question that is because in recent times—very recently—for instance, we discussed at the Social Services Committee the welfare reform bill where, for the first time, significant parts of the Social Security Act were being delegated to external agencies. For the first time we were seeing the administration of welfare payments, particularly as they related to young people, taken out of the Social Security Act and delegated to contractors. We are now seeing a second stage of that. We are now delegating the important role of support mechanisms for the transitioning into work of mental health patients and the like to contracted authorities.

We have very little transparency about how that is working. We could not get it through the select committee process. I have requested tender documents and I have not seen them there. So in respect of the transparency in this bill that I think we assume through the delegation and contracting, I question whether or not that necessarily exists, particularly, as I have said, for this latest set of delegations, because it is a very new delegated power in that regard. It is one, given that it is such a core service, that I think we would be right to ensure we do have that transparency. So, as I say, I would be very interested to hear from the Minister in the chair about the delegated functions and the decision-making powers—the kinds of examples that may have been considered by the select committee. I would be very interested to hear what it may have considered and what it considers to be carefully defined circumstances.

I will throw up one other example. I query, for instance, the Work and Income board that the Ministry of Social Development has established recently under the leadership of the Minister. That Work and Income board is working directly with Treasury. In fact, we have the bizarre circumstance now where the Ministry of Social Development is being asked to account directly to Treasury on whether or not it is decreasing the actuarial valuation that has been done on the Ministry of Social Development around the overall cost of benefits. It is also having to report to a Work and Income board, which has delegated powers from the Minister, not from the chief executive. This is an important point. This is where things get very murky. In fact, there were questions on whether the chief executive departed from her role because those delegated powers came directly from the Minister, and there were questions as to the hierarchy of who actually held seniority in this case. Is the chief executive reporting to the Work and Income board? Or is the chief executive reporting to the Minister for Social Development, and vice versa? It became very murky.

I would like some clarity because, increasingly, we are seeing roles like that emerging. That is a significant amount of power that the Work and Income board has now. Paula Rebstock, by virtue of being appointed to this board, basically, could have delegated powers from almost every chief executive in the Public Service, the way that things are currently running. She is the one individual who seems to be delegated the power of everything. So I would be interested to hear from the Minister on those situations, because we lacked clarity for a very long period of time, and we just cannot afford to have that for a ministry as significant as the Ministry of Social Development.

I note that the bill expanded on the range of conditions and restrictions where they are using delegated powers. For instance, after any delegation, a chief executive would have to report on it in the annual report and comment on its effectiveness. That is an interesting point, but, again, how far does that extend? Just a little more. I do completely acknowledge that I was not on the select committee for this, so there actually may have been much more clarity on the select committee as to the circumstances where that would apply. I would love to see that kind of requirement exist for some of the delegated powers that we have seen in more recent times.

The restriction of redundancy payments in certain situations is another area that I think is extraordinarily interesting and worth a degree of clarification. Obviously, it is an area of much contention, and we have seen many times in the past couple of years where redundancy payments have caused some distress—

I will take the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill on two particular areas. One follows on from my colleague Jacinda Ardern on the issue of delegation, and the other one is on the protection of liability for Public Service chief executives.

If I could just refer to a recent situation—and I am glad the Minister for Food Safety is in the chair, because she can probably answer some of these questions—around meat getting into China. Clearly, there were delegated responsibilities to a public servant in China who had the responsibility for clearing large consignments of meat. Yesterday, in fact, we had an announcement from the Minister for Primary Industries that the Government is going to increase resources into China. I think, actually, the truth is that they are going to go from one person to three people up there. The question is whether the delegation was a responsible delegation that put with it the resource to do the job properly. We had a bizarre situation where, presumably, the Minister delegated to the chief executive and then to an employee powers, very important powers, for certifying and clearing the meat. As it turned out, the Minister criticised the chief executive and all the staff. So the question I have for the Minister in the chair is whether in that delegation the resources went with the delegation to ensure that the work was carried out properly and therefore the employee was responsible, back through the chief executive, or, indeed, whether the chief executive could have said that, actually, they did not have enough resource to be delegated the role, and that is why the inadequacies and, in fact, the lack of performance occurred.

The bill has got a whole lot of detail here, and I acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which has clearly gone through and looked at this very, very carefully and recommended that “… delegations must be in writing, and that functions or powers delegated to a chief executive by a Minister ... may not be delegated further without their prior written approval.” So the question is when you have such an important market in meat, such as China, where you have hundreds of millions of dollars going through, and we are told that there was one employee in China to deal with the certification for that huge meat trade, whose responsibility was it for the delegation? And when something went wrong, who should take responsibility for that problem? The Minister very quickly shunned it on to the ministry, so we assume that it is the chief executive’s responsibility. He or she could say: “Well, we didn’t have enough allocations through the Budget process, so we had to have only one person there.” In fact, we have found a bit more money for two other people. It is pleasing to hear that for that particular incident.

The issue of delegation that has been clarified, as to how the chief executive should delegate the powers and how the Minister delegates them to the chief executive, is all nice and dandy and all tidied up here in the bill. But the issue of accountability, I suggest, is something that also needs to be clarified. The age-old assumption—and my colleague Mr Mallard here would know this all too well—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I’m not that old.

Sorry, he has been around for a while.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Unlike the member.

I have not been the State services Minister, I have to say, like he has.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: And the member never will be, either.

No, that is probably true, and I do not want to be. Can I say that the issue of a Minister taking responsibility for the actions of his or her department is something that has been kind of accepted in politics for a while. But we had the very unusual situation with the Minister for Primary Industries dumping fairly and squarely on his ministry. That was a new situation. I am not sure whether that is perhaps an indication of the new approach that the Government is going to take, under these changes here, or whether it is the right approach or not. Did the select committee discuss it? That would be my question. Perhaps the Minister for Food Safety, who is in the chair, can answer that.

If I can move on to the second issue, which is in some way related to the incident I referred to, and that is protection from liability for Public Service chief executives and employees. The Prime Minister, who is also a Minister, indicated through that whole meat debacle that there was a possibility of compensation being paid. I guess that what we have here, of course, is clarity of the status quo—that is, that no single individual should be liable for such a mistake. Indeed, the chief executive should not be. A Minister, on behalf of the Government, then carries the can for liability—in fact, the taxpayer does. One of the questions that the taxpayer does raise quite often is whether bureaucrats should be made accountable, and why it should be that a Minister or we as the taxpayers carry the can for any compensation from what they would call a stuff-up or a mistake or a major logistical problem or clearly inadequate performance. What this bill does is confirm that the public servant, the civil servant, should not be liable if they have done something in good faith. When a Minister then turns round, as the Minister for Primary Industries did, and criticises the ministry for its lack of performance, then the question of liability being sheeted home in some way, maybe not in a monetary way, to an employee or, more appropriately, to the chief executive is a very fair question that each and every taxpayer should ask, because it is their money that is paying compensation.

In Part 1 here we have, as has been the accepted norm, removal from the chief executive or an individual employee any liability for mistakes. So the Prime Minister rides in on his white horse and says to the meat industry: “Well, there may be compensation payable.” And then the Minister, instead of saying: “My department got it wrong and therefore I should be liable.”, muddies the water by saying: “No, actually, the ministry, the department, didn’t perform here. It was at fault.” So the taxpayer, rightfully, might say: “Well, what, then, is the penalty that should be imposed upon the public servant or the individual who made the mistakes?”. In every other part of the law or, I guess, Government systems, there is general accountability. People should be held to account for their mistakes, but this bill is actually shifting it up the line, effectively, to the taxpayer. Is that the right thing? Maybe the Minister in the chair can take a call and answer that, because if the Government is going to change and alter these things, then it should look at the situation that arose quite recently. I am not saying that the Minister for Food Safety was just as liable as the Minister for Primary Industries, but I am not sure whether she would have dumped on her agency in the way the Minister for Primary Industries did.

The hard-working New Zealander out there who pays their taxes to run these Government agencies to carry out these crucial roles expects performance all the way down the line, and expects liability all the way down the line. So when, as has happened in the past, a Minister says: “I take full responsibility.”, if it is a big enough mistake, such as happened in Cave Creek or, indeed, at Pike River, then the appropriate Minister resigns. I think people see accountability in that way. But when the Minister does not resign but turns round and dumps on the chief executive, then the question should be whether this protection here provides adequate accountability for taxpayers’ money. So I leave it now to the Minister in the chair to maybe take a call and explain those things. It is a complex area of State sector accountability and responsibility. I can see her being really keen there.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Not really. There’s a lot of common sense involved. What does Peter Dunne think about it?

Well, there could be. I do not know, actually. We are not allowed to talk about the absence of any Minister, but I am sure that common sense could come into play here.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Well, he’s permanently absent as the Minister now.

Well, I think the party is, anyway. I am not sure about the member, but the party certainly is.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: No, no, he’s not a Minister any more.

Look, I must come back to the point here. I do not want to be distracted by my colleagues—

I am very pleased to take a call on this legislation. Can I start by acknowledging a previous speaker, actually—Ms Ardern—because I want to address some comments that she made previously, and just deal with that issue of delegations. As has already been canvassed, there is nothing in the bill that will change the Crown’s power to contract. That has always been there. So I want to just address Ms Arden’s comments in regard to that.

But what is really important is that the Finance and Expenditure Committee was quite clear—and I think it is a point that has been missed by Ms Ardern and Mr Damien O’Connor—that in terms of the extensive controls in this area, it requires the responsible Minister’s prior written consent in every case. It prevents any sub-delegations, it requires conflicts of interests to be avoided or managed, it requires delegates to comply with the State services code of conduct, it makes delegates subject to the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act, and it requires the delegation to be reported to Parliament. So what I will not accept is comments by speakers on that side of the Chamber trying to imply that this has not been thought through incredibly carefully in terms of delegations.

The second point that was made, by Ms Ardern in particular, was around Government workforce policy. This bill will establish a new, simple process for consulting on and distributing workforce policy to Public Service departments and Crown entities. That is very important, and I think it is important as well for members opposite. I know that they are not listening now because they do not want to hear what is actually within the legislation, which is that the bill ensures that the workforce policy statements will not be regulations and cannot override any legal rights or obligations, including any relating to good-faith bargaining.

So, in terms of answering, the final point that I just want to touch on, which was raised by Mr O’Connor, was around immunity in terms of public servants. Obviously, I do not intend to comment on some of the substance. I do not agree with a number of assertions that he has just made in the Committee. There is a review under way in terms of the recent situation in terms of meat, and he has made a number of assertions that I do not agree with. But what I would say is that what this bill does, and it is incredibly important—and if there is one thing that I have learnt in the last 4 months as a Minister, it is that we have some outstanding public servants in New Zealand. It is really important that this bill implements the original policy intent that public servants will have immunity from legal action for good-faith action taken in pursuit of their duties.

I am not going to comment specifically on the issues that the member has raised regarding the subject of meat, because he knows there is a review under way. But what I would say to him, and what I would say in relation to this bill, is that that member knows better than any other food producer in this country that when you are trading with 50 percent of your exports, there will always be food issues.

So what I would say to the member is that he knows that in this bill not only are there substantive provisions around the delegations—they are comprehensive—but also there is a clear immunity for public servants in this legislation. So I appreciate taking the call on this bill.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 262 in the name of the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 259 in the name of Te Ururoa Flavell to Part 1 be agreed to.