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 2014/15 financial year in respect of Vote Ombudsmen and the appropriations and information for the 2015/16 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment be adopted. This motion endorses the appropriations recommended by the Officers of Parliament Committee for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and commends those appropriations to the Governor-General for inclusion as votes in upcoming supplementary and main appropriation bills.

The Offices of Parliament are important bodies that play a critical role in supporting the work of this House and the general public. In order to maintain their independence, the Officers of Parliament are subject to a special process for the pre-Budget approval of the appropriations for their offices. It is the Officers of Parliament Committee, chaired, of course, by you, Mr Speaker, that is responsible for this process. The Officers of Parliament Committee in its report to the House recommended modest alterations to the 2014/15 appropriations.

For the 2015/16 appropriations the Officers of Parliament Committee has recommended a number of changes. For Vote Audit the committee’s recommendations include additional funding of $400,000 to improve the delivery of the Auditor-General’s inquiry function and additional funding of $180,000 to provide enhanced analysis capability. Inquiries carried out by the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General can have a high degree of complexity. The Auditor-General intends to make better use of information from its regular public sector audits through improved analysis for its inquiries and to report on a more timely basis.

For Vote Ombudsmen the committee’s recommendations include capital injections and additional funding for 2015-16 and out-years of $166,000 for proactive advice, training, and guidance; $390,000 to enhance investigative capacity for inspections and monitoring under the Crimes of Torture Act and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; $360,000 to provide the corporate services necessary to ensure the efficient running of the Ombudsmen’s investigation and monitoring role; $113,000 to improve the security of the office’s staff and information; and $340,000 to provide additional investigative capability and address complaints and improve responsiveness.

For Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the committee makes no recommendations for additional funding. It does, however, note in its report that it intends to review the commissioner’s baseline funding next year. This follows increases last year to cover the commissioner’s new review and commentary responsibilities under the Environmental Reporting Bill.

I endorse, and hope this House will too, the recommendations of the Officers of Parliament Committee for appropriations set out in its report to the House, and commend them to the Governor-General for inclusion as votes in appropriation bills.

It is a great pleasure to speak on this particular topic. I certainly want to endorse the additional funding that is being provided for the Office of the Auditor-General and for the Office of the Ombudsmen. We certainly see the important constitutional role that those bodies play. Of course, we see the important role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment as well, although there is no additional funding in this particular allocation going to that body.

I want to talk particularly about the additional funding for the Office of the Ombudsmen, and I want to express some concern about the pressure that that office has been under and the fact that the additional appropriation being granted to it today is not going to deal with that issue. It is significantly less, I understand, than it asked for, and it is going to continue to fall further behind. Page 14 of the report of the Officers of Parliament Committee indicates that an additional $340,000 has been allocated to the Ombudsman for its complaints and investigations. That simply is not enough. There are months and months and months’ worth of delays for the investigation of complaints by the Ombudsman. A large chunk of those relate to the application of the Official Information Act. There is a significant body of complaints regarding the situation in Christchurch following the earthquakes. These complaints all deserve to be thoroughly investigated, and they will not be thoroughly investigated unless the appropriation for the Office of the Ombudsmen is increased significantly more than this particular recommendation.

The Ombudsman’s role is so important. It is the watchdog for public accountability in New Zealand, and if it is not adequately resourced to do that job, then there really is nowhere else to turn. The Official Information Act in New Zealand is a constitutional instrument. It is at the very heart of the notion of open government, and it is the Office of the Ombudsmen that can investigate the flouting of legislation.

It is no wonder, given the massive backlog of complaints regarding the Official Information Act that the Office of the Ombudsmen is currently dealing with, that there are Ministers in the Government, including the Prime Minister, who simply openly admit they do not comply with the law; they do not comply with the Official Information Act. One of the reasons they are so happy to openly admit that is that they know there is no way they are going to be held to account for it. The Ombudsman simply does not have the resources at its disposal to adequately investigate all of the complaints. By the time those complaints are investigated, months if not years may have gone by, and there is simply no scope for justice to be done.

When the Prime Minister stands up and says “Well, we release information under the OIA when it’s convenient to us.”, that may be a year after someone has asked for it. If the Office of the Ombudsmen does not have the power to step in and do something about that—well, it does have the power to step in and do something about it, but if it does not have the resources to step in and do something about it, then there is never going to be any accountability. The Government will never be held to account for that abuse of power, and that is an abuse of the powerful position it holds.

We have an Official Information Act and an Office of the Ombudsmen to prevent the abuse of ministerial power, and if one is not being applied and the other is not being resourced, then we may as well not have them. I am certainly not advocating that we not have them; I think they are very important. I want to give some examples of what this means in context. This Government has simply locked down the flow of all information when it comes to Government activity. We have a variety of ways, as members of Parliament, to seek information. We can seek information through the parliamentary process, through written questions.

I will give an example of an issue that I have just recently encountered. I asked for information in a written question. The Minister replied to the written question saying that the answer is on some website somewhere. I went to that website, and there was information that was similar but it was not the information I had asked for. The only course of action I have once I have exhausted the ability to go through the parliamentary process is to lodge an Official Information Act request.

The reality of that under this Government is that we are looking at 6 months to a year before I even get a decent reply to it. So I get a reply back from the Government, a reply that probably does not answer the question, I then complain to the Ombudsman, and the Ombudsman then rings up and says: “It’s in the pile, and we’ll get to it when we possibly can.” But the reality is that it simply does not have the resources to do that. It could be months if not years before it finally does. Then, at the end of all that, if it upholds my request and says that, yes, I should have been given that information under the Official Information Act in the first place, quite often—more often than not—it is too late. The issue has well passed, and the information is nowhere near as useful as it would have been. That is why resourcing the Ombudsman is so vitally important.

I say to the members opposite that what goes around comes around. Labour members have sat over there on the Government side, and many of those Government members have sat over here and been on the receiving end of it. I have to say that one day—and I hope it will be in 2017—what goes around will come around, and they will find themselves here. If the Ombudsman has not been adequately resourced, they will encounter the same issues. It is not good for the democratic process. It is simply not good for the democratic process for the Government to be so locked down and so withholding of information that it does not allow the effective functioning of the democratic process and the accountability that the Government should be subject to. The Office of the Ombudsmen is being choked. The watchdog is being choked, and our democratic system is in peril because of that. This may sound all very lofty and worthy and so on, but it is important. It is vitally important.

Let me give you a very specific and practical example. In the case of Hutt Valley High School, almost every education agency that investigated it failed to address what was a significant bullying issue amongst the student population there. It was when parents complained to the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman investigated that something finally happened and something was finally done. It took the Ombudsman, who is not in any way connected to the education system, to investigate the matter, to bring it out in the open, and to finally get it dealt with. It was an absolute scandal, but it has been dealt with. The Ombudsman deserves an absolute pat on the back for that, because it was a vitally important service.

Let us take, for example, the issue of charter schools. We debated that when the bill promoting charter schools was before the House. Charter schools are specifically excluded from the coverage of the Ombudsman, but the one thing the Ombudsman can do is ensure that the information held by the Government on the operation of those charter schools is being released. It can ensure that there is at least some public accountability, by ensuring that the Official Information Act is being adhered to. The reality is that it is not. The Government knows that it can simply sit on that information and not release it, and it knows there is not going to be a sanction, because by the time the Ombudsman gets around to it—because of lack of resourcing—any issues will have passed.

We have got a situation with one charter school, and I referred to it in question time today. The school has been in operation for nearly a year and a half now—we are well through term 2—and there are massive concerns about it. Yet reports that the Minister has received on it are not being released under the Official Information Act despite the fact that people have asked for them. The Government is wilfully flouting the law. There is no accountability. There is no ability to hold the Government to account for the decisions it has made, and there is no sanction, because the Ombudsman does not have the resourcing to cover that.

The Office of the Auditor-General performs a very similar role and, from what I understand, is being resourced sufficiently to do the job it is asked to. The Office of the Auditor-General looks particularly at the expenditure of public funding. I think it is an indictment on us that we ensure that an office is sufficiently resourced when it is dealing with money while the Office of the Ombudsman, dealing with people, is not sufficiently resourced. We should place just as much emphasis on the roles of the Ombudsmen, who deal predominantly with people and the actions of people and Government entities, as we do when it comes to the role of the Office of the Auditor-General and holding the Government to account for the expenditure of taxpayer funding.

So those are, I think, very important issues that I would like to see this House address. They are not going to be addressed in this appropriation. We do, as I said, welcome the additional funding that is being allocated, but we will be pushing over the next year to ensure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is well resourced so that when National members find themselves sitting over here in 2017 they actually have an Office of the Ombudsmen that can perform its role in a democratic society, as it should. It cannot at the moment, and the fact that the current Government is content to let that situation rest is an indictment on the level to which it has become comfortable with the power that it currently holds and the level of arrogance, quite frankly, that it has in not allowing the Office of the Ombudsmen to do its job properly.

These guys over there think that they are entitled to be there and that they should not have to answer to anybody for the decisions they make. They should. That is what democracy is about. They are absolutely, I guess, flipping the bird to the democratic process when they ensure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is so starved of resources that it cannot do its job properly.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the alterations to the 2014-15 appropriations for the three Offices of Parliament and the budgets for 2015-16. Similarly to the previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, I would like to comment on the Office of the Ombudsmen and, in particular, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. I pay tribute to the extraordinary work of the Chief Ombudsman, Dame Beverley Wakem, and the work that she has done in defending our democracy and in defending open government in very trying circumstances, given the ongoing under-resourcing of the Office of the Ombudsmen. It is that office, which is a defence against the excessive use of executive power, and, as the Chief Ombudsman herself has said, it is the last line of defence against costly maladministration in the State sector and potentially corrupt practices. It has been recognised by the courts as having constitutional importance, and it is important because it is a check on the power of the executive.

Mr Hipkins has explained some of the frustrations that Opposition members experience in trying to get information out of the Government. I have always found that when the Office of the Ombudsmen is asked to review a complaint, we get regular reporting on the progress of the investigation. Office staff try their utmost to get the information out in a timely manner. It is Government agencies and Ministers, in particular, that stall and undermine our democracy and open government. The Office of the Ombudsmen asked for significantly more funding, and it is very disappointing that the Officers of Parliament Committee and the Government did not agree to make that available, because in March the office had 107 complaints for investigation that it could not yet allocate, and it advised that it was not keeping up with complaints, despite a very considerable effort to reduce the backlog and to keep current complaints moving.

Certainly, there have been improvements there, but when you have a Government that goes ahead with policies that ignore public opinion, you create waves of applications for official information. We are seeing that in decisions like the Minister of Education’s decisions to close Christchurch schools. The most recent one is Redcliffs School, where the school community wants to go back to their site, where they are ready to go back, where it can be saved, and yet the Minister is ignoring that. So we then get a raft of Official Information Act requests. David Fisher, in a very seminal article in the New Zealand Herald, highlighted the change over the last two decades or so, the blocks that Ministers now put on the release of information, and the difficulty in getting public servants just to answer simple questions on the end of the phone—the fact that requests are pushed out to the maximum 20-working-day period before any information is provided, and it is often months after that. There should have been more funding provided. The importance of the Office of the Ombudsmen and the need for it to have good resources to actually provide one of the foundations of our democracy and open government should be recognised.

I would also like to comment on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—the public’s and Parliament’s independent environmental watchdog. It does an amazing amount of work, in terms of the substantial investigations that it undertakes and the reports that it provides to Parliament—the update reports, one of which was tabled today. They are very high-quality investigations. They provide good quality independent advice on a range of matters that affect the quality of the environment. The major problem there is that the Government is not listening to a lot of the recommendations because, of course, the office does not have the power to command the implementation of its recommendations; it leaves that up to Ministers and agencies to take those on board.

Today we tabled in the House an update to a substantial report on the future of conservation, in particular of stewardship land. That has been a much-neglected problem in the Department of Conservation since it was established, which successive Governments have failed to respond to adequately. Of course, stewardship land makes up a third of the Department of Conservation estate. It has got the weakest form of legal protection, and the Parliamentary Commissioner recommended that it be reviewed. Certainly, the Minister has set in train a review, but there has been very little progress in actually changing the status of stewardship land—only one area, a small area of 12,000 hectares on Great Barrier. So we have stupid situations arising like the dinosaur proposal for a Haast-Hollyford road in South Westland. That area is part of the South West New Zealand World Heritage Area. It has been recognised internationally as having outstanding biological, ecological, geological, and evolutionary value, and yet it is only stewardship land. The Haast-Hollyford road proposal threatens to become a formal proposal because the status of the land has not been reviewed. Part of it deserves to be national park, and yet the Government has not taken any significant action to have the New Zealand Conservation Authority undertake a national park investigation there.

Another one of the significant investigations that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is doing is around sea-level rise. There will be a report later this year—and this appropriation will help fund the work for that—looking at the potential extent of sea-level rise. It is ridiculous that an office like that of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, with a staff of only 20 and a budget of only $3.2 million—the smallest of the Offices of Parliament—is having to do the first nationwide mapping of the potential extent of sea-level rise. We have got a Ministry for the Environment that has failed, since 2008, to update its advice to local authorities on sea-level rise. So the small office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is having to do the work that the ministry should be doing.

One of the other major investigations that the office has done is into land use and water quality, to try to get MPs, the Parliament, and the public to understand better the science of land use and water quality and the impacts of nutrient losses. What is the Government doing? That report showed that no matter how good the management practice was, in terms of land use, we would have significantly declining water quality because of the scale of intensification. The Government has certainly responded with a national policy statement, but that is too weak to make a difference. When Federated Farmers in the Waikato called for a moratorium on intensification, that was just poo-pooed by the Minister.

If we have Offices of Parliament that take all of this time to do these substantive investigations and that come out with cogent recommendations, then the Government needs to listen. It is the same with long-finned eel. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s investigation there highlighted that long-fins were on a slow pathway to extinction. There is now only 20 percent of the breeding population of long-fins that there was in the 1930s. International best practice is that as a breeding population there should be at least 30 percent of the original biomass. Yet has the Minister implemented the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendation to impose a moratorium on commercial fishing? No. The recommendations in the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s reports need to be listened to and read with a lot more thoroughness than they have been to date.

Finally, just on the Office of the Auditor-General, we thank it for its work—for its commentaries and analysis of the estimates and of the annual reviews that the select committees do, which provides very much-appreciated assistance. Its reviews of public sector agencies, like local councils, its identification of potential challenges—like the big infrastructure gap that it has identified in local authorities, with the difference between what local authorities’ budgets are providing for the renewal of Three Waters infrastructure and roading infrastructure, and the gap that potentially exists there—assist in providing the baseline information for some of these major funding challenges to be addressed.

We are grateful that the select committee has decided to increase the funding for the Office of the Auditor-General and for the small increase for the Office of the Ombudsmen, but if we are going to have a strong democracy, our Office of the Ombudsmen needs to have many more resources so that it can follow up on those Official Information Act investigations. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to endorse the good work done by these officers. The country is particularly well served by the quality of the individuals who are involved in these offices and we are pleased to see, and endorse, the increase in funding for the Office of the Auditor-General. Every one of us who sits on a select committee will recognise the incredibly valuable work that the Office of the Auditor-General does by making sure that all members of this Parliament are well informed and are given reasonable, logical recommendations. It also highlights areas for us that we should concentrate on when we go through checking the many different facets of the Government departments, Crown research institutes, and so forth that serve the New Zealand public, with their money. New Zealand First certainly has nothing but the highest regard for these officers.

We also want to compliment the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. One could certainly not say that this commissioner does not earn her keep when it comes to the amount of output that she provides for the New Zealand people and for this Parliament. We endorse many of the comments around the workload and the output of this very small agency, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The reports—although we may not agree with all of them—are well founded, well fleshed-out, and presented in a strong way. The commissioner always makes herself available—that is the other thing—to caucuses should they require her. She is more than happy to come and sit down, have a conversation about her reports, and go through any concerns that we might have.

So it is disappointing to see that with the amount of work that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment releases, she was unable to gain any more funding to support her and her team in this financial year. However, we acknowledge the comment by the Minister who opened, Simon Bridges, that there is an indication that it will possibly happen in the next Budget.

I would like to spend the majority of my contribution, though, concentrating on the Office of the Ombudsmen. The importance of this office has been reiterated again and again by other speakers. I think it is worthwhile noting that the workload for the Office of the Ombudsmen has doubled since this Government has come into office. I think that is a very telling thing. The workload has doubled over the majority of the last 10 years, which has been since this Government has been in place, and 11,000 complaints were received in the 2013-14 year. So it is good to see that its funding has been increased and it has been recognised that its workload has increased and it requires more operational money to be able to deliver what is a vital overview of our democracy.

It is unfortunate that all Opposition parties have to report that it is very, very difficult—and getting more difficult—to actually gain answers through the appropriate channels from the Government. It is very unfortunate that when a question is put down in writing—here is an example. Recently New Zealand First asked, quite appropriately, for a report from the Ministry of Education. A written response came from the Ministry of Education that said that it declined to release the report to New Zealand First because at some stage in the future it will be made public—at some stage in the future it will be made public.

💬 Todd Barclay: Fair enough.

Mr Barclay says: “Fair enough.” I ask the New Zealand public to just acknowledge that Mr Barclay believes that that is an appropriate answer. When members of this House, who are here to represent the New Zealand public, request information about things that are being done to, or are happening with, the New Zealand public at some stage in the future—Mr Barclay could well be dead by the time that the Ministry of Education then releases under the Minister’s instruction this report about things that are happening with New Zealanders’ money and to New Zealanders. But Mr Barclay thinks that that is appropriate. Well, there you go—just tick that one away.

The other thing too is I want to acknowledge Mr Hipkins’ contribution around charter schools, because I know that there was a lot of conversation. Mr Hipkins is correct. Charter schools are not open to the Official Information Act and, again, Mr Hipkins articulated that the reason given at that time was that Official Information Act requests could be sent to the ministry and therefore that information would be open, and then the Office of the Ombudsmen, if you could not get it that way, could go and follow up with the ministry. However, I do want to make sure that it is on the record that the Ombudsman’s workload increased when charter schools were opened, because at the select committee New Zealand First was able to put into that legislation the provision that, under the discipline processes in a charter school, the Ombudsman is still the final port of call.

I do not know how many members of the New Zealand public, or even how many members of this Parliament, understand that under the discipline processes in the Education Act 1989 charter schools are still open to the overview of the Ombudsman. So anybody who has been refused entry to a charter school, anybody who has been pushed out the back door of a charter school, anybody with a special need who has not been catered for in a charter school can, and should, complain to the Ombudsman, and the Ombudsman can then pursue that complaint with that charter school, with the sponsor of that charter school, directly.

So that legislation did create more work downstream, in one little piece of that legislation, for the Ombudsman. It would be interesting to get answers to those questions, if one could get answers to those questions, about the number of complaints that were actually put forward, but you might be waiting until Mr Barclay has passed away before you get that out of the Minister’s office.

The other reason that indicates how important the office is is that when the Chief Ombudsman actually identified how many complaints they were getting about certain Government departments and said that she was going to undertake a formal investigation, suddenly the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment undertook its own review of itself. It was particularly around the processing of temporary visa partnership applications by Immigration New Zealand. So rather than have the Ombudsman go and do a full investigation, the ministry decided to review itself, and the result of its internal review was that of 1,155 affected complainants and other potentially affected people, 258 had their applications approved, but 676 applications got a refund. So this is how important the Office of the Ombudsmen is and why its funding must continue and must be maintained at a level where the office can adequately do its work.

The Green Party member Eugenie Sage mentioned that 176 cases were unable to be pursued because of the previous level of funding. It had been even worse than that. The Chief Ombudsman mentioned 300 cases that she had been seriously unable to investigate because she did not have the funding, she did not have the resources, to do so. All New Zealand First can say is that we, like the Labour Party and the Green Party, endorse the incredibly important work of the office. We are saddened that at this stage we have still not been able to put an appropriation in place at the level that the Chief Ombudsman says she requires to truly deliver in what we believe is an important role.

Before I sit down, I will give just another indication of the incredible workload of the Ombudsman and how it affects this Parliament. New Zealand First lodged a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsmen last year, and the last letter we received about that complaint from last year was dated 18 June 2014. We know that the Chief Ombudsman takes her role very seriously and her officers do not just let things lie, because there is no political value in that. They are there to make sure that we all do our jobs properly. So we can assume only that we have not received any further communication around this complaint because the office is overloaded.

Again, we certainly endorse the work done by the people and the officers that are there. We endorse the small increments that have been given to their funding, but we would implore the Government: rather than avoiding passing out information and creating more workload for the Office of the Ombudsmen, in order that the office would not need any more money to do the work, let us just answer questions, let us just try to be professional as we move forward, shall we? And then perhaps we would not need to fight for more funding next time. Kia ora.

It is also my pleasure to take a call in this debate and to endorse the additional funding that has been given to our Offices of Parliament. I would like to join with the previous speakers and acknowledge the very fine work and the very fine individuals who carry out these very important constitutional tasks within our Parliament. I would also like to echo some of the words of the previous speakers around how some of the appropriations are simply not enough. I too am going to refer to the Office of the Ombudsmen, and I want to specifically talk about the work that the Ombudsman has been doing in the case of Christchurch, because the Office of the Ombudsmen, and in particular the Chief Ombudsman, has been a very important voice in holding the Government to account in how it is that the recovery of Christchurch is being managed.

Just to give an indication of the kind of level of work that the Ombudsman has been doing in regard to, in particular, the Earthquake Commission and the payout that the individuals are getting through the Earthquake Commission, in 2012 the Ombudsman received 785 complaints regarding the Earthquake Commission. The year before that it received an additional 737. In all, by 2012 the Earthquake Commission had received more than 6,500 Official Information Act requests. This is how desperate people in Canterbury were to receive information about how their claim was progressing through the Earthquake Commission. When that did not go well the recourse that these people had was to go to the Ombudsman and say that they had not been well served. As I mentioned, the Chief Ombudsman, Dame Beverley Wakem, has been an incredibly important voice in joining with community leaders and joining with advocates in Christchurch and saying that the Earthquake Commission has to treat its customers better.

In terms of the stress—and the Human Rights Commissioner has addressed this—that has been put on people in not knowing what is happening with the repair of their house, which is something pretty fundamental about where they live, this has been a particularly difficult aspect of the rebuild, and it has been an incredibly important voice from Dame Beverley that has been voiced here, and I would like to acknowledge that. Just this year, in February, when an independent report found major failings in the way that the Earthquake Commission handled its customers, Dame Beverley strongly advised the Earthquake Commission to release that report publicly, expressed that she was very disappointed at the very low-key launch that was around that report, and urged the Earthquake Commission to do more. Because, of course, it was the Office of the Ombudsmen that produced a very important piece of work along with the Privacy Commissioner, back in November 2013, which was Information fault lines: Accessing EQC information in Canterbury. It found that Official Information Act requests and processes were overly complicated, risk-adverse, and adding to the stress that was there. As members of my party and this House have previously urged, we need to be adequately resourcing this officer of our Parliament.

I would also like to address another important role that is covered off in these reports on the Officers of Parliament, and that is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The commissioner has a very, very specific role within our Parliament, and that is to maintain and improve New Zealand’s environment by influencing decision-makers through well-reasoned and independent advice. I would like to acknowledge the work of Dr Jan Wright and her office—the high quality of work that is produced by that office—and the fact that we, as parliamentarians, all benefit from what is well-reasoned and independent advice. I think that the moniker that Dr Wright is often labelled with in the media, that of “the voice of reason”, is something that many of us within this Parliament would concur with, and many of us would see that Dr Wright’s contributions are of a high standard and beneficial to us.

One of the things that is incredibly important is resourcing. If we have a look at what it is that Dr Wright and her team have managed to produce just this year for the edification of not only the public but also us as parliamentarians, we see an impressive list of reports. There are reports on drilling for oil and gas in New Zealand and the environment oversight and regulation that is required for that; mining on conservation estates; hydroelectricity on wild rivers; climate change and rising seas; the long-finned eel; the first commentary on the 2015-year domain report, of course; and, just today, a report on stewardship land was tabled. So we see that a huge breadth and a huge complexity of areas are covered by Dr Wright and her team, whose reports I am sure that we, as members of this Parliament, all eagerly await the arrival of in our offices and devour when they do arrive.

Dr Wright not only produces reports, but she often submits on legislation. This is a very important submission when it arrives; it is always well-reasoned and contains a great deal of sense. Dr Wright is also moved to sometimes comment on various environmental reforms that are going through, and only just a month or so ago Dr Wright said the Resource Management Act was no place for us to be having balance between the environment and the economy and warned us that the Resource Management Act, in fact, is the legislation that is our fundamental environmental protection in this country, and needs to be respected thus. So we have very wise words.

But, of course, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and her office is about to receive a new statutory function, under the Environmental Reporting Bill, which is to be reported back to this House next week and undergo a further stage towards its passage. Under this bill the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will have a very important statutory function in terms of commentary. We saw the first of these commentaries coming out even before the bill was introduced, in the Air domain report, but there will actually be a requirement for the parliamentary commissioner and her team to produce these commentaries on the domain reports as they are produced. This increased function is obviously going to result in increased work for the office and for the commissioner and her team.

This is something that there is some discussion about in the report that we have before us today. It talks about the Environmental Reporting Bill proposing to establish a new system, and says that additional funding has been given. An increase of $450,000 was given to Dr Wright and her team to initially set up what is required in order to fulfil the statutory functions. This was given for the 2014-15 financial year, and for the following years an increase of $300,000 has been given—so $300,000 in the 2016-17 years. And in subsequent years that funding will be reassessed as required. What we did hear, when Dr Wright came to our select committee and we asked about this, was that further assessment and reassessment of the workload is required, and Dr Wright made it very clear the drop in funding could put a pressure on the office that could possibly result in staff lay-offs.

This very important constitutional function the Parliamentary Commissioner fulfils in keeping us and the public more informed on very complex, often very complicated and very technical topics is something that we simply cannot afford to lose as a Parliament. It is incredibly important that we have this level of independent and technical input, so that our decision making in important areas can be better. I would not like to see the decisions that we make in this House suffer because we are not getting the same standard of technical and independent advice that we have grown accustomed to from the Parliamentary Commissioner.

I would like to see the fact that this committee would look very closely at the future requirements of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and her team. We have seen that these Officers of Parliament are incredibly important for the proper functioning of our democracy. They are incredibly important for how we can do our jobs as parliamentarians. It is not good enough that we underfund these institutions and these officers. As my colleague Chris Hipkins said in his speech, this needs to be recognised by both sides of the House, because in 2017 members on the Government benches will be on this side of the House, and they will appreciate the oversight of the Office of the Ombudsmen and the Office of the Auditor-General, and the advice from the Parliamentary Commissioner in informing them as parliamentarians. Thank you.

I just want to endorse everything that has been said by Megan Woods. I just acknowledge those working for the Offices of Parliament. I think across the House we all agree that they do a very hard job and that they are stretched. The office in particular that I want to talk about, which we all know has been stretched really beyond capacity, is the Office of the Ombudsmen.

Just a few moments ago I recalled a friend of mine who works in the media, and as we were having this discussion—I was listening to the other speakers—I was wondering whether or not he had finally had his Official Information Act request responded to. I just want to relay this person’s request for information. He made his Official Information Act request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in May 2012. The ministry asked for an extension, and then another, and then it stopped replying to that person’s emails. That person then complained to the Ombudsman in July 2012. Since then he has had a few letters of apology from the Ombudsman’s office, with regard to the time it has taken. The last letter was in December last year. It said that he would have regular progress updates. It is nearly May and he has not heard anything. The last letter said: “We sincerely regret the delays you have experienced, which have been a result of a high caseload and resourcing constraints.” Three years on and there is no response to an Official Information Act request. That should be of concern to all of us, particularly as I know what the Official Information Act request was for, and there are health and safety implications for citizens, with regard to it. This is the problem. It is not just about seeking information and a response; there are repercussions for citizens when we do not get the information that we seek. This is a real issue.

I want to note that there has been a slight increase in funding for the Office of the Ombudsmen, but there was considerable dispute in the Officers of Parliament Committee over the level of funding that should be given. Every single one of us here in Opposition has experienced difficulties with getting the information that we require. The office is under pressure because there has been a huge increase in Official Information Act requests. I want to say that, from our perspective, much of that is due to the fact that we are not getting responses to our written questions that we are putting through to the Ministers, or we are getting fobbed off by the Ministers when we put questions through. So when we do not get the information through a written question, then we have no choice but to seek that information through Official Information Act requests. It is time-consuming and it is resource-consuming. But we as the Opposition have a responsibility to hold the Government to account, as would National if it was in Opposition, and we need to live up to the expectations of the public in doing that.

Out of curiosity, I went through media reports from the last year to look at the extent of this problem, to see where there have been articles in the paper outlining the issues around getting official information under this National Government. I am going to read some of the headlines because it really paints a picture of the state that things are in at the moment. We have got: “EQC tries to conceal report on its failings.”, and “Health ministry under spotlight in ombudsman’s OIA review.” We have got an editorial about how information is critical and we are not receiving it. We have got from December 2014: “Information Act overdue for overhaul.” We have got from the New Zealand Herald from December 2014: “OIA review must get stuck in.” We have got: “PR staff numbers up despite promises.” We have got: “Heads should roll if information is withheld.” I think that is a really interesting headline—“Heads should roll if information is withheld.” I want to say that that Government is responsible—no one else but that Government.

We have got another headline here: “Abuse of OIA disgraceful.” We have got from The Daily Post: “Don’t you dare release anything.”, which is what its experience has been with that Government. We have even got a headline from the Bay of Plenty Times that says: “Slater got papers denied to reporters.” It just goes on and on. There are so many more here. It paints a picture about the fact that despite the fact that we are a democratic nation, we are not being given the information, or the transparency, or the access to information that we should be given in a democratic country. It is not just about us, in terms of being in Opposition, having access to that information; it is actually about members of the general public and any of the other agencies out there seeking information, like our journalists, all of whom are having difficulties with this.

I do want to note, because I do sit on the committee, that there actually has been a discussion—it is alluded to in the report—about there needing to be an external review of the Office of the Ombudsmen and what is required there in terms of resourcing. That is something we should all support. I think that is something that will be supported across the House, including by the National Government, because the number of complaints that are coming through have got to the point where it is just completely unmanageable. When you have got a journalist who puts through an Official Information Act request in 2012 and is still waiting 3 years later in 2015, when there are possible health and safety implications for citizens in respect of the information that he is after, then there are real concerns.

Over the past few years we note that there have been more resources put into the Office of the Ombudsmen, but the level of resourcing has not been adequate. That inquiry is going to be essential for finding out what level of resourcing is required and where we can do things better so that we do not have 3-year waiting periods for information from Official Information Act requests. I will leave it at that. Thank you.

Motion agreed to, and Address agreed to.