Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General

I move, That a respectful Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor-General commending to His Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2013/14 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the appropriations and information for the 2014/15 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. These organisations are important bodies that are funded through the public vote but are able to provide independent assurance to all of those who have an interest in the areas in which they are active.

The Office of the Ombudsmen is currently represented by two Ombudsmen: Dame Beverley Wakem and Professor Ron Paterson. They were appointed in 2005 and 2013 respectively, and they continue an office that since 1962 has acted as an independent authority to help the community in its dealings with Government agencies. The Ombudsmen’s department, or operation, handles a range of roles that go toward protecting the public’s rights in monitoring places of contention as well as other activities of a Government.

There will be those who say that there has been such a significant increase in the activities of those offices over the last few years that perhaps there is some pressure on their funding. What I would say is that much of that work comes from Opposition parties asking the Ombudsmen to look into activities of the Government, which of itself is probably a demonstration of failure on their part as an Opposition to use the formal means of Parliament to be able to dig into these things, and I think, perhaps, public support for those parties indicates the degree of futility that might be involved in some of those requests.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, was sworn in as a commissioner in March 2007. She was reappointed for a second term in 2012. That office looks at a range of matters that relate to the environment, quite independently, and reports its findings. I think that over the years the commissioner has shown herself to have a high degree of independence, not always putting herself in a position where public support is readily forthcoming. I would point to the courageous conclusions that she made in respect of 1080 and how it is effective in New Zealand. A lot of people would think that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment might have found a different result. Although there are, at times, decisions that come from the commissioner that challenge everybody, I think it is important that that independence is exercised in the way in which Dr Wright does.

The Auditor-General’s office, the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, is an extremely important body. Currently, the Auditor-General is Lyn Provost. She was appointed in very recent times to that role. The office plays a big role in the assessment—the audit, effectively—of all public accounts. It advises select committees in what they should be asking when it comes to either the estimates inquiries or the appropriations inquiries in front of Ministers, and it is also available for other inquiries where public money is involved. It has in recent years been involved in uncovering some very, very difficult circumstances that have existed, and I can think of the case of the Rodney District Council in particular.

Although the Auditor-General’s office has to come up with conclusions that are not necessarily easy for anyone to deal with, it is appropriate that you have an independent body that is so highly focused, so very tightly focused, on public probity in all of these issues. Each of these votes represents value for money, and I am sure that today, notwithstanding the debate that I now expect to ensue, Parliament will be supportive of this motion.

I can reassure the Leader of the House that we will, of course, be supporting this motion, given the incredibly important work undertaken by the three offices in question: the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. On this side of the House we want to recognise the excellent work of all three of those offices, which play a very important part in our democratic process. Despite what the Leader of the House might think, in actual fact, the use of the Office of the Ombudsmen and increasing use of the Office of the Ombudsmen is, in fact, a sign of a Government in trouble—a sign of a Government that does not want to release information, that wants to cover up information, and that wants to make sure that New Zealanders cannot get resolution to their problems, particularly if you live in Christchurch. My colleagues Clayton Cosgrove and Ruth Dyson will both speak about that in the course of this debate. That is the reason why the Office of the Ombudsmen is getting so much more use.

On this side of the House we will continue to make requests of the Office of the Ombudsmen, because it is this Government that is refusing to release information. It is this Government that is pushing out the release of information so that the public has to fight tooth and nail just to find out what this Government is up to. If this Government actually had even a small proactive strategy in terms of the release of information, it would decrease the number of complaints going to the Ombudsman. There is no doubt the increase in complaints to the Ombudsman is a direct result of this Government’s failure to release information and its desire for Ministers to systematically avoid answering questions, avoid releasing information, and avoid transparency. That is the record of this Government. It is arrogant, it does not want people to know what it is up to, and it is out of touch with the concerns of New Zealanders. The one thing that it can do in the face of the Official Information Act is withhold and avoid. We know the old story from the previous National Government, where Tony Ryall had a big drawer in his office full of Official Information Act requests—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Full of what?

—full of Official Information Act requests—which he would leave in there until someone complained the third, fourth, and the fifth time, and then finally they would get released. That is the approach of this Government. Under this term of the National-led Government we have had Government departments investigated because of their failure to perform their functions under the Official Information Act. There is no respect for that Act within the current Government. Having been a staff member in a previous Government, I know that sometimes Ministers are a bit reluctant about releasing information, but they obey the law, and they obey the spirit of the law. This Government has consistently failed to obey the spirit of the Official Information Act. So at the moment, the Office of the Ombudsmen, in the last year, received about 13,684 complaints. That is a 29 percent increase in the number of complaints.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: How much money has she got?

There has been an increase in funding in this Budget, which is why we are voting for this motion. But that comes after years of underfunding from this Government. The Chief Ombudsman has had to go cap in hand, as she had to do to a previous committee, and say: “Please, I cannot meet the requests that are coming into my office. Staff are under extreme stress, and staff are resigning because of the stress.” Finally the Government gets around to increasing a little bit of money. It is welcome, and I am sure it will be welcomed very much in the Office of the Ombudsmen, but it does not make up for the underfunding that has happened over the last 5 years of this National-led Government.

We support the Office of the Ombudsmen in its work. We want it to be able to respond quickly to complaints. It has not been able to under this Government. Finally it gets a little relief out of this particular motion that we are passing in the House today.

I also want to talk about the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. I want to put on the record of this House the appreciation of the Labour Party for the work of Dr Jan Wright. She is a true Officer of Parliament. She will make her view known on environmental issues without fear or favour. It does not matter whether it is a Labour Government or a National Government; she will ensure that her role as Parliament’s representative on the environment is upheld. Her office is one that fully deserves the increase in funding that it will receive out of this motion being passed—again, having suffered under a lack of increases in recent years.

What I call on the Government to do is actually listen to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It is all very well to say, as Gerry Brownlee did, that, yes, the Government respects Jan Wright and that there is a funding increase here today. But it is time for the Government to listen. I just want to cover a couple of areas where that is the case. The first of these comes from, in fact, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment yesterday. Although welcoming the intent of the Environmental Reporting Bill, which has been introduced by the Government, she has said that she is very concerned with it and wants significant changes to it. Here are a couple of the areas where she wants changes, which I think the House might want to reflect on. A clause in the Environmental Reporting Bill allows Government Ministers to decide what is and what is not reported upon. So that is the Government not listening to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and not asking whether she is the best person to give it this kind of advice but, instead, deciding itself what indicators it thinks might make it look a bit better. That is not something that we on this side of the House think should go without some kind of challenge.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says: “This undermines the independence that is vital for public trust.” That is the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. She is totally within her rights to say that. It is time for the Government to listen to her and to rethink the Environmental Reporting Bill so that it becomes something that is truly of use to New Zealanders in terms of the protection of the environment.

During the past year the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has made a number of representations around issues to do with water. It is quite clear that her view is that the Government’s response on issues of water allocation and resource allocation generally has not been adequate. She has criticised the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011 and she has criticised the lack of action in terms of addressing the run-off of nitrate within the framework that has now been put forward by the Government for the management of water. It is time that this Government takes seriously the issue of allocation of water, and that it looks not just to its mates. For once, it is time that it governs not just in the interests of the few that it knows but in the interests of all New Zealanders when it comes to water. This National-led Government might have decided to give away for free the rights to water to the privatised energy companies, but the overall management of water is one of the biggest issues in the environment in New Zealand, and this Government is ignoring the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment when she says that the Government’s approach has not been adequate.

She has also raised concerns about conservation land, and I want to credit my colleague Ruth Dyson for this issue as well, which she has consistently raised. That concerns the status of so-called stewardship land within our conservation areas. Stewardship land sits, as if in some kind of abyss, in a place where it in fact often has higher conservation value than land that is within the conservation estate, but remains unprotected. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has called upon the Government to clarify the status of stewardship land and to stop leaving it alone. But once again, the Government ignores the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

The final area that I want to address in terms of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is around the Resource Management Act. There was a lot of talk at the weekend that we would see the Government’s reforms to the Resource Management Act back before the House this week. Well, they are not. They are not coming back this week, and that is because the Government cannot get the numbers to pass them. John Banks knows; he is nodding. It cannot get the numbers to pass them. That is why the reforms are not back. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said that that is because they are some of the most radical changes ever proposed to the Resource Management Act. That is why John Banks supports them—because they are destroying the Resource Management Act, which is the ACT Party’s policy. So that is consistency from Mr Banks; I will give him that. It is not consistency from the National Party. It actually passed the Resource Management Act, and here it is, gutting it—gutting it, turning it into a developers’ charter, and forgetting about its purpose in terms of managing our natural environment in a sustainable way.

That proposal, the former Resource Management Reform Bill, if it ever makes it back here—if someone in this House turns on their previous position and the Government finds a way of getting it through—will gut and undermine the Resource Management Act and undermine our environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is very, very right to ensure that she continues to advocate on that issue. So, on this side of the House we strongly support the funding for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and her work.

We also strongly support the work of the Office of the Auditor-General. It continues to provide a good service to this Parliament and, indeed, to New Zealand as a whole. Once again, the Government has ignored reports it has made, particularly around the Skycity issue, where some serious allegations were made around the involvement of John Key and other Ministers in that decision—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, it didn’t.

Yes, it did, Mr Brownlee. Mr Brownlee is actually the only Minister who comes off all right in that report, so he should probably endorse it. Other Ministers did not come off all right. They interfered in the process. We need a strong Auditor-General to be able to raise those concerns, but what we truly need is a Government that will listen to the advice of these Offices of Parliament. This Government is out of touch and arrogant and has stopped listening. A Labour Government will listen to these Offices of Parliament and will strongly support them, as we will do by voting for this motion today.

I am pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the alterations to the 2013-14 appropriations and the draft budget for 2014-15 for the three Offices of Parliament: the Office of the Ombudsmen, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Office of the Auditor-General.

I endorse some of the comments my colleague Grant Robertson made. In relation to the Ombudsman, Mr Robertson pointed out that there had been a 29 percent increase in complaints. But if you look at complaints around the Official Information Act and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, there has been a 92 percent increase in complaints in relation to those pieces of legislation, so the Ombudsman now has the highest ever number of complaints about the failure to release official information in a timely manner—some 2,374 complaints. And, as the Ombudsman noted in its annual report, there has been a significant increase in complaints about delay, because the Government’s strategy to make sure the public does not get timely access to information is just to delay and delay and delay and then, when information is released, to release the minimum. We have seen a very worrying trend too that requests for official information made directly to departments and ministries are routed through the relevant Minister’s office quite routinely, so you get political interference in those decisions about whether to grant access to information. So we need greater resources than this budget is providing for the Office of the Ombudsmen, given the major increase in requests for reviews of decisions not to release information.

We would also like to focus on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. That office was established in 1986 and its role is to investigate environmental issues, processes, and public agencies. It has got a critical role in providing independent advice to Parliament on matters that affect the quality of our environment. Its advice helps improve the quality of decisions about both law and policy. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, has noted, as environmental issues become ever more complex, the work of her office becomes even more complicated because there are no easy answers. We owe her and her office a significant debt of gratitude. She appears often in front of the Local Government and Environment Committee to make submissions on legislation and to brief us on her reports, such as the one on land use and water quality. I would like to repeat the call that we have heard from others and that I made in the appropriations debate earlier this year that the Government open its ears and listen to the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and act on her advice.

One of the major recommendations was a submission released yesterday on the Government’s Environmental Reporting Bill. That submission identifies significant flaws in the bill, and one of the most serious flaws is the way in which the bill purports to restrict access to information on which the state of the environment reports are to be based. It overrides the Official Information Act and would fetter the special powers that the Offices of Parliament, such as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, have, under their legislation, to obtain information. The bill as drafted would fetter the ability of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to hold decision makers to account, so that clause really needs to be changed. It is deeply troubling because of the importance of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Ombudsman, and the Auditor-General in promoting transparency and accountability in our parliamentary democracy.

Another flaw in the legislation that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment identified is the way in which the bill undermines the independence of state of the environment reporting by having Ministers being able to choose the topics on which reporting should occur or not occur. We need the public to have faith in any system of state of the environment reporting. If we have Ministers choosing the topics, we risk the same sort of political interference we had with the last state of the environment report, in 2007, where the Government suppressed the final chapter and it was only the Green Party, through using the Official Information Act, that got that chapter released.

It is very pleasing that this budget provides for a $450,000 increase in the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s budget for the next financial year. That is to provide for its role in reviewing and providing an independent commentary on the state of the environment reports. It will allow it to boost the number of staff in its office by just over four, as well as provide some funding for expert consultants and overheads. That is really important because the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment operates on a really tiny budget of $2.4 million. Our understanding in the Green Party is that the budget will be reviewed in subsequent years to ensure that this increase is actually adequate to cope with the increased responsibilities in analysing the state of the environment reports and providing some commentary on them.

Another issue where the Government needs to listen to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations, given the large amount of research and the independent advice that are in those reports, which are tabled in this House, is on the issue of stewardship land. Stewardship land makes up at least a third of the land that the Department of Conservation manages, and it has got the weakest form of statutory protection, despite it having high ecological, landscape, and, often, recreational values. A very comprehensive report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment highlighted that the original intention when the Department of Conservation was established in 1987 was that the protective status of this land be reviewed, yet successive Governments have failed to do that. That has meant that the land has never been reclassified and given the appropriate protective status that its values merit. The forests of South Westland are stewardship land when they deserve to be a national park. So the Government is losing the opportunity to create quite significant additions to our national parks and to give proper protection to stewardship land. It needs to act with urgency on that report and the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

We have seen better progress in relation to her report on long-finned eels, with the panel set up to review the technical information on their threat status, but we need more action because of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s conclusion that the long-finned eel is on a pathway to extinction.

Finally, just commenting on the third of Parliament’s offices, the Office of the Auditor-General, I record our thanks for the major work that the office and Lyn Provost do. There was a very complex and comprehensive investigation and report late last year into the Kaipara District Council and the major failures in governance and decision making in relation to the wastewater scheme for Mangawhai. The report highlighted a lot of lessons for councils in the detail with which it examined that issue. There have been a lot of letters and emails to members from the Mangawhai community in relation to the way the council performed. Reading through that report is a good lesson for a lot of local authorities.

We need to increase the budgets. There has been a small increase in the budget for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We hope that it is adequate; we suspect that it may not be. We thank and endorse the thanks that other speakers have given for the work of the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Office of the Auditor-General, and the Office of the Ombudsmen. They strengthen our democracy. It would be further strengthened if the Government listened to and took seriously their recommendations. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and take a call on this Government motion, which covers the 2013-14 alterations to appropriations for Offices of Parliament and the appropriations and information for the 2014-15 financial year. New Zealand First gives its support to this motion. We acknowledge the importance of these roles and agencies, the services they provide to Parliament, and how vital it is that they be resourced properly in order to fulfil their functions adequately. These roles play a crucial part in the institutional structure of our democracy. I will outline just a few instances of the valuable work these roles and agencies have performed.

In February 2013 the Office of the Auditor-General made an inquiry into the Government’s decision to negotiate with Skycity Entertainment Group Ltd for an international convention centre. The report considered the adequacy of the negotiation process and whether anything substantively wrong took place. The Auditor-General found a range of deficiencies in the advice that the Ministry of Economic Development provided and in the steps that officials and Ministers took leading up to that decision. This fell very far short of what should have been expected from the lead Government agency on commercial and procurement matters.

In November 2013 the Office of the Auditor-General made an inquiry into the management of the Mangawhai community wastewater scheme—a situation that my colleague Andrew Williams and New Zealand First have taken a particular interest in, going there on many occasions to support that community and to actually listen to their concerns, as opposed to ramrodding through legislation to approve past errors. And the Office of the Auditor-General found that the Kaipara District Council had failed to attend to its fundamental legal and accountability obligations through poor record-keeping, decision-making, governance, and management arrangements.

Recently, in March 2014 the Auditor-General carried out an inquiry into the property investments by Delta Utility Services Ltd, a council-controlled trading organisation of Dunedin City Council. The Mayor of Dunedin had asked for the inquiry after some Dunedin taxpayers alleged impropriety around the property investments at Luggate, near Wānaka, in mid-2008, and at Jacks Point, near Queenstown, in mid-2009. The Auditor-General found no evidence of impropriety or of poorly managed conflicts of interest in relation to either investment. However, the Auditor-General did find some breaches of the Local Government Act 2002 and the Companies Act 1993 and instances of Delta Utility Services using artificial business structures to avoid public accountability.

These are the types of reports that are essential to holding the Government and State sector agencies accountable to the New Zealand public. The Office of the Ombudsmen has also done excellent work. It is thanks to New Zealand First that the parents of children in charter schools still have the protection of the Office of the Ombudsmen should these schools choose to try to shuttle their children out the back door.

In December 2013 the Chief Ombudsman released her joint report with the Privacy Commissioner on the Earthquake Commission’s compliance with its obligations under the Official Information Act and the Privacy Act when responding to requests for information from its Canterbury customers. It was found that the Earthquake Commission failed to fulfil its obligations to provide information to requesters due to an overcomplicated and risk-averse approach to responding to information requests and a tendency to be reactive rather than proactive in the dissemination of claim-related information. Accordingly, the Ombudsman was able to make a number of recommendations to the Earthquake Commission on how to improve its systems and processes.

New Zealand First welcomes legislation for regular environmental reporting under the new Environmental Reporting Bill, but we share the concerns recently expressed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. There is a concern that this bill will compromise the ability of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and other Officers of Parliament to ensure the accountability of Government officials. Another clause in the bill allows Government Ministers to decide what is and what is not to be reported on. It is not necessary to be a rocket scientist to see that if you do not want an embarrassing answer about a Government policy, then you do not ask a question. It is our view that this undermines the independence that is vital for public trust. However, New Zealand First believes that it is of the utmost importance that we protect the integrity of all Officers of Parliament, and accordingly New Zealand First supports this motion. Kia ora.

Like other Opposition members, I support this report in respect of the Ombudsman, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Auditor-General. But can I start by echoing some of the concerns that other members have raised. If I start with the Auditor-General, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Auditor-General and her officials for the work they do, particularly in relation to something close to a number of our hearts—at least on this side of the House—and that is Solid Energy. There would not have been an inquiry, had it not been for the Auditor-General. After 12 months of waste, mismanagement, and lack of governance; after a number of years of lack of oversight by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises and his shareholding Minister, the Minister of Finance; after the Government turned down the request for a ministerial inquiry or an independent inquiry; and after the Government’s toadies and lackeys on the Commerce Committee blocked at every attempt a request for an inquiry, it was the Auditor-General who agreed to an inquiry, after I wrote to her after the banking issues had been settled, after we had lost $400 million and 800 jobs to date. It was only the independent Office of the Auditor-General who agreed to hold a limited inquiry—and I accept that—into what happened in terms of Solid Energy. To date, that is all we have got.

She made inquiries into the governance and management and decisions that were made between the previous board, the previous chief executive, and the previous management group. She looked at communication flows. She did not believe it was appropriate—and I think, to be fair to her, she is legally precluded, or at least did not believe it was appropriate—to look at ministerial accountability. Although the Auditor-General did a superb job within the office and within the mandate she had, even after that inquiry we are still no further ahead in finding out which individuals are accountable for the biggest collapse of a State-owned enterprise in our history. Eight hundred jobs are gone, and $400 million has gone down the gurgler. There was mismanagement, bonuses, extravagant expenditure, and a chief executive who ended up going on gardening leave. We had to pry the truth out of Solid Energy through the instrument of a financial review, unsupported by the Government, unsupported by Ministers who today just simply do not want to know.

Minister Tony Ryall will go down in history as the worst, most negligent, and most incompetent Minister for State Owned Enterprises that we have had to date in New Zealand’s history—likewise, so will Bill English. There are piles, feet, and metres of paper and warnings from Treasury and from UBS, the consultants who were, ironically, sent in to scope Solid Energy for sale. There were warning signs, including the ability to just open the newspaper and work out that the coal price had blown apart and that international markets such as China were reducing their volumes purchased. Ministers knew that but they did not sack anyone. Mr Ryall, of course, was fond of trying to portray that board members resigning was a result of him. No one got sacked, except 800 workers, who paid with their jobs to try to keep the show on the road. No one in the executive team or the board got sacked. There was no intervention to change the statement of corporate intent by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises. Absolutely nothing happened. It was total and utter incompetence—worse than incompetence. Every avenue of inquiry was blocked, every attempt to provide answers for taxpayers was blocked, and every attempt to find the person or the group of people who were accountable was blocked. Of course, the Minister would never say it was him. He washed his hands of it. Had it not been for the Auditor-General finally agreeing to hold a limited inquiry, we would not even have the answers we have today. So I thank the Auditor-General for her response and for again showing the value that she adds to our little democracy.

I also want to come to the Ombudsman. Dame Beverley Wakem, like the Auditor-General and her officers and officials, does an outstanding job. We have already heard from Grant Robertson how for years—I would argue deliberately—this Government has starved that office of resources. We have already heard that that office was funded for around 1,000 to 1,200 complaints per year under action and open at any given time, yet if you glance at the annual report, you see that it indicates that the office received 13,684 complaints, an increase of 29 percent for the 2011-12 year.

And then we get to the earthquake complaints. Of course, Mr Brownlee got up. He has presided over a Government agency that has broken the law in terms of the Official Information Act for months—for nigh on a year. Mr Brownlee presided over an agency that has simply thumbed its nose at the Official Information Act requests put in by earthquake victims. Mr Brownlee got up and said that the only reason these complaints have increased is the Opposition members of Parliament. Well, that is partly true, because our job—why we get the Queen’s shilling—is to try to prise information and the truth and some facts out of that mob over there. But that does not actually explain the hundreds and hundreds of Official Information Act requests that earthquake victims have made. You have got to ask yourself—and Mr Brownlee does not seem to sort of quite get it—why people, ordinary folk, in deep difficulty in terms of navigating their personal arrangements with the Earthquake Commission and trying to get their lives and houses back would go to the extent of using the Official Information Act.

Well, it is quite simple. If you look at the litany of incompetence in respect of the Earthquake Commission, you see that the Official Information Act is the only avenue those people have. It is the only avenue, and the Ombudsman, in her report to the Government Administration Committee, I believe it was, cited that fact absolutely. People have run out of gas. They write to the Minister; they get nowhere. They, for instance, ring the Earthquake Commission, as at least one case has, and five different phone calls to the commission in one day get five different answers. Commitments to give information and commitments to give scope of works materialise in nothing. So maybe they write to the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission, and they get nowhere there. They come to members of Parliament like ourselves on this side, we write to the Minister, and we get nowhere. So the last opportunity they have, apart from going to court—and, sadly, most of them do not have a lot of dough to do that—is to use the Official Information Act.

We know that Gerry Brownlee knowingly as a Minister, even though he blames his department—I tell you, I say they will put a silver plaque up in this Chamber in tribute to Gerry Brownlee on the day he comes out and says: “I take responsibility for the stuff-ups in my agency, the Earthquake Commission.” I say to you that they will erect it—because, of course, Gerry Brownlee is the apologist for the insurance industry, the big end of town—on the day that Gerry Brownlee actually says “I take responsibility.”, not “I’m disappointed with my chief executive.”, or “I’m disappointed with the Earthquake Commission.”, or “They didn’t tell me.”, or “I didn’t read the briefing paper—woe is me.” No, one day he may get up and say: “I take responsibility for my department and I am going in to see Ian Simpson, and, by hell, I am going to sort it out.” That will be a red-letter, historic day in this Parliament for that Minister.

The Ombudsman said that in terms of processing Official Information Act requests where the commission has broken the law—broken the law time and again by breaching the deadline—one of the problems is the sort of hierarchy and mishmash of approvals that basic Official Information Act requests have to go through. It is really interesting when you look at the questions in respect of the Earthquake Commission, because it was basically asked how many Official Information Act requests from Opposition members and Opposition research units go through the Minister’s office for approval. It was 96 percent—that is, 96 percent go up to Mr Brownlee’s office where they are sat on for a period of time until he deems it appropriate that they be released.

The other interesting thing is that, for instance, it took 72 days for my office to actually get a copy of the Earthquake Commission’s internal structure, which should have been on its website anyway. It took 72 days using an Official Information Act request to get the basic Earthquake Commission structure. It took 200-plus days for me to get, on behalf of the group Wider Earthquake Communities Action Network, which is helping and advocating for earthquake victims, a basic Official Information Act response that you would think after 200 days would measure several metres high. But it was about two reams of paper. It took 200-plus days even after the commission had said to the Wider Earthquake Communities Action Network, which had put the original Official Information Act request in: “We’ll accept it, but we want $24,000 from a community group to process it.” So I took it over, and the commission dare not charge a member of Parliament because that becomes a big issue. It can pull the wool and try it. It accepted it and its first salvo to me was: “We’ll consider whether we accept it.”

There is a culture in that place right up to the office of the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission that thumbs it nose at the Ombudsman—thumbs its nose at the Ombudsman. That Minister is quite happy for his agency to continue to break the law and not provide people with the information they require. Mr Brownlee has made a rod for his own back.

I recognise the Hon Ruth Dyson.

I am very pleased that you recognise me. I would be very disappointed if you did not, after all the time that we have been in this House together. I am very pleased to speak in support of the motion that is before the House at the moment. But, like others, I want to raise some concerns that certainly the Leader of the House, in his opening remarks, did not even acknowledge, let alone address. That, in itself, is a bit of a reflection on how this Government treats all matters of public interest, all matters of concern that are raised by Opposition members, and matters of concern that are, I guess, in a way, more important, raised directly with the Government by members of the public.

Government members personify arrogance. They are so out of touch with what ordinary New Zealanders are thinking and feeling, and they are adding to the frustration of many ordinary New Zealanders, particularly members of the public in Canterbury, by refusing to engage in grown-up conversation. They think they are above it. They think that it is belittling for them to listen to, and talk with, ordinary members of the public. I find that immensely frustrating, and I know that the Office of the Ombudsmen, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the Office of the Auditor-General—although, of course, given their roles, they cannot directly say that—understand that people use their services and access their services more because people are driven away from ordinary conversation by the arrogance of John Key and his Ministers in this Government.

We have just heard from my friend and colleague and fellow Cantabrian MP Clayton Cosgrove about the way that the Earthquake Commission, as an organisation, is talking to people, is treating people, and about how the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission has made that significantly worse by his deliberate, considered politicisation of the commission, and how that then is reflected in the frustration and despair that our constituents in Canterbury feel. Not long ago my colleagues and I went with David Cunliffe, our leader, to the home of Dorothy Boyd—Dot Boyd—who was told months and months and months ago that she should pack up her home because any minute now the Earthquake Commission was going to send into her home some builders to repair her damaged home. She was very happy that she was going to be able to move out and have some repairs done. Then the commission said: “Oh, look, we’ve changed our mind. We might have to rebuild your home, so we’ll have to demolish your home and rebuild it.” She was accepting of that, although pretty distressed, given that she has lived there her entire married life. Months and months and months later this elderly woman was living in her home surrounded by packed-up contents. She had packed up all her belongings in boxes, because that what she was told to do by the Earthquake Commission people, and she had no idea what was happening. That is a small example of the frustration that people are feeling. When we raised that matter with the Minister, he did nothing. He did not care enough to get his officials into the room and say: “Get some action on this case.” So we went to the media and, oh, suddenly it became quite important. The only thing that seems to trigger Minister Gerry Brownlee’s engagement with the public is media exposure. Well, I do not think that that is good enough. That is so arrogant and out of touch.

But then, although directing his officials to do something about it, the Minister came into this House and attacked Labour members of Parliament for raising that issue in the media and falsely accused us of not representing our constituents. He was wrong again. It showed not only his arrogance but also his laziness—that he actually took the incorrect information from the Earthquake Commission and used it to politicise the issues of Canterbury, which we have been at lengths to avoid doing. Well, we got an apology from Gerry Brownlee, not for politicising it but for providing incorrect information to the House. But we then got two subsequent apologies from the chair of the Earthquake Commission and also from the chief executive of the commission—apologising not just for the incorrect information but for inappropriately providing that information to the Minister. The Minister was wrong to ask for it. The chief executive and the chair of the board both say that the commission was wrong to provide it. So the Minister owes us another apology. He was wrong to ask for that information.

Instead of getting in touch with the issues in our region and doing something about them, as has been recognised by the Ombudsman, the Privacy Commissioner, and the Auditor-General—the organisations whose votes we are considering in this motion—he should get in touch with what they have been reflecting in their annual reports and start addressing the issues, rather than blame those who raise them.

I am in admiration of those Officers of Parliament who have had the confidence and the understanding of the issues that they are dealing with day in, day out to raise them directly with the Officers of Parliament Committee and make Parliament as a whole aware of them. I remember last year when the Chief Ombudsman came to our select committee and talked about the fact that the office was funded for 1,000 to 1,500 cases to be dealt with each year, but it had received over 13,000 cases. How is it possible for an organisation to deal with that? She talked about the stress that that was causing for staff, because, unlike the National Government, her staff care about people and are in touch and understand the concerns that are being raised. She said that it was causing physical and emotional damage to her staff to have to deal with the huge workload they had, understanding the dramatic concerns that some people felt and their need to have those concerns addressed in a timely fashion. The Ombudsman said that it was just not possible for the staff in that office to be able to deal with those concerns appropriately, given the resources they had. I remember one of the National MPs saying: “Well, you’ve raised a serious issue, but your office isn’t in crisis, is it?”, to which the Ombudsman said: “Yes, actually, the office is in crisis.”

I am very pleased that that situation has been responded to, but let me say from another perspective that it is really frustrating that the Government is prepared to put additional money into funding the increased workload for the Ombudsman, and so it should, but is doing nothing about what is causing the additional workload to the Ombudsman, and that is the incompetence of the Minister and the Government’s inability to see that its lack of engagement and responsiveness, particularly in Canterbury earthquake matters, is driving people to use the Ombudsman’s office. They use Official Information Act requests, they go to the Ombudsman, and they go to anyone who they think will listen, because they know that the Ministers in this Government are not listening to them at all.

In relation to the motion that we are dealing with, the other Officer of Parliament that I would like to comment on is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We have had some very high-quality reports produced by the commissioner, and I just want to put on record that Labour values very much the independence and the robustness of the reports that are issued from that office. It gives us a very good, politically neutral, high-quality basis on which to have the debates that are really some of the most critical facing our nation: the vulnerability of species; contentious issues like the use of 1080; the issues of clean water, fresh water; and the vulnerability of our rivers. There are a large number of reports that the Parliamentary Commissioner’s office has raised, and I think they give all of us in Parliament a very good basis for well-informed and robust debate.

The Parliamentary Commissioner just yesterday released her submission on the Environmental Reporting Bill and raised significant concerns. Again, I say that all members of Parliament, all political parties, should be listening. Those concerns are in two specific areas, but one really drives at the heart of many concerns that Labour has raised in the past, and that is one of political interference. It is very clear from the Environmental Reporting Bill that the Minister for the Environment wants to direct what is in that bill. That goes against every recognised standard for best practice for environmental reporting. The basis of environmental reporting, the robustness of it, has to be political independence. It cannot be for the Minister to say: “Those numbers aren’t looking too good. I don’t want them in the report, so I’ll direct whoever is doing the environmental reporting to take them out that year.” That is the intention of the current legislation. It is something the Parliamentary Commissioner has raised as a concern. It is something that Labour shares as well. Thank you.

Motion agreed to, and Address agreed to.