Appointments — Ombudsman

on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move, That, pursuant to sections 3 and 8 of the Ombudsmen Act 1975, this House recommend to the Governor-General that Leo Michael Donnelly be appointed as an Ombudsman for a term of 1 year, commencing on 1 August 2016. Today I rise to move a motion that recommends the appointment of Leo Michael Donnelly as an Ombudsman for a term of 1 year, commencing on 1 August 2016. Mr Donnelly has held the position of Deputy Ombudsman since its establishment in September 2004 and therefore has significant experience in the role and familiarity with the services of the Office of the Ombudsmen that the Ombudsman provides. Mr Donnelly joined the Office of the Ombudsmen in 1985 as an investigating officer and has held various positions since then. In his role as Deputy Ombudsman, Investigations and Inspections, Mr Donnelly has assisted the New Zealand Ombudsmen in carrying out their statutory investigation and review functions. I would like to recognise Mr Donnelly’s substantial contribution to the Office of the Ombudsmen for more than 30 years.

The Office of the Ombudsmen is an organisation that is able to conduct, free of charge, examinations into all manner of requests from the public that relate to the activities of governance in this country. The organisation, therefore, has to have people of the highest standard and highest integrity working within its office.

Section 8(1) of the Ombudsmen Act 1975 provides for the Governor-General to appoint a temporary Ombudsman “… at any time during the illness or absence of any Ombudsman, or for any other temporary purpose whatsoever,…” if the Chief Ombudsman considers such an appointment necessary. The Officers of Parliament Committee considered the Chief Ombudsman’s proposal and unanimously supported the considered appointment of Mr Donnelly as a temporary Ombudsman for 12 months. I wish Mr Donnelly all the best for his term as Ombudsman.

I want to just speak briefly in support of the appointment motion to say that, in my opinion, the Officers of Parliament Committee has worked well on this appointment and on other appointments. It is a committee that is very well chaired and the chair is excellent at building consensus around the group.

This proposal is one of the Chief Ombudsman’s and I think it is worth placing on record the fact that a new approach was indicated. Without going into details of what the applicant said, in the Chief Ombudsman’s application during the interviews we had a course of action set out to us. This is being actioned now. There is a very definite indication from the Chief Ombudsman that he wants to get into the backlog, and he is using a pile of technology that has been available since the 1980s but not used within the office before now, in order to speed up processes—things like electronic files and even sending things to Ministers and complainants by email, something that was not the previous practice—so there is a very real attempt to shorten time frames and to reduce the backlog.

The use of Mr Donnelly, whose adjudication skills on these matters are well renowned—this is an area of his expertise, and if he can focus on that and on the backlog I am sure we will make some progress. It will not necessarily be comfortable for the Government while that occurs, but I think the thing that we know about Mr Donnelly is that it does not matter who is in Government, he does not mind making people’s lives uncomfortable.

The Green Party is pleased to be able to give its support to the Government motion appointing Leo Donnelly as Ombudsman, and we give our thanks and gratitude to departing Ombudsman Ron Paterson as well. We wish to commend Mr Donnelly for his long service in the office and to congratulate him on the new appointment.

The role of the Ombudsman is a crucial one in ensuring that our democracy functions appropriately and that the public can have confidence in the honest workings of the executive and the Public Service. One of the crucial roles of the Ombudsman is oversight of the Official Information Act (OIA) and, as my colleagues and I have noted many times, we remain concerned about the potential impact of underfunding on the Ombudsmen’s ability to cope with the portfolio of work. We have observed a growing and, indeed, quite concerning trend in which the executive and a number of Government departments are failing to comply with OIA requests, undermining the crucial function of that Act. It is of vital importance that the Ombudsmen’s office receives adequate resources to carry out its watchdog role, and we encourage the Chief Ombudsman to consider what steps could be taken to ensure that their office is properly supported. The creep of non-accountability is something that should concern every party. We wish Mr Donnelly well in his efforts to hold those in power to account for their actions.

I would like to join, on behalf of the ACT Party, with other members who are commending Mr Donnelly’s appointment in supporting this motion. A free society requires an open Government, which, in turn, requires an honest broker sometimes to adjudicate between the competing prerogatives of an efficient operation of Government—between the public interest and the privacy of the many people who interact with Government. I would like to offer our warm wishes to Mr Donnelly as he embarks on this year doing this all-important job that we know he is very well-qualified to do. Thank you.

New Zealand First wishes to congratulate Leo Donnelly on his temporary appointment as an Ombudsman for 1 year, given the early departure of Professor Ron Paterson.

This party supports the Office of the Ombudsmen as a bulwark against big government, and none are bigger than this National Government, which is increasingly secretive and devious. With 10 outstanding complaints still with the Ombudsmen—one dating back to May 2014—there are several examples showing how a casual corruption is creeping in under this Government. Since the arrival of the Hon Judith Collins, the statutory duty of the police to answer Official Information Act requests, which end up going to the Ombudsmen, has seriously been ignored. When the police do not uphold the law, that is a concern. When that corresponds with a certain Minister’s appointment, it is a cause for serious alarm. This creeps into how questions of officialdom are being answered, or, rather, not answered.

Take Capital and Coast District Health Board. A very senior manager has told staff to give any number in an answer, from a mistaken belief that they do not have to provide information because no one would be any the wiser—I repeat, they do not provide information because no one will be any the wiser. We have a witness to the Ministry of Social Development staffers openly belittling the Official Information Act and the Social Services Committee in this Parliament. These attitudes do not come from the bottom up. They come from the top down. That is why the Ombudsmen need more resources to tackle some in officialdom who view the public and this Parliament with contempt—the same contempt that saw the UK Brexit referendum showing that the public in Western society is no longer prepared to take that any more.

Take the appointment of JacksonStone and Partners to recruit the new Controller and Auditor-General, which could, in circumstances, be questioning through the Ombudsman. We would like to ask why, but we cannot because that is beyond the purview of the Ombudsman. JacksonStone and Partners stand to make $99,000 in commission for this one appointment, assuming that it is charging at the low end of its 18 to 23 percent commission scale, since the State Services Commission says that that role had a salary of $550,000 in 2014. We would rather see Parliamentary Service do some of these recruitments, with the $99,000 commission put towards bolstering the Office of the Ombudsmen or keeping the gallery and Chamber team, who have been serving this place for a long time and whom some of us as MPs, on this side of the House anyway, seriously appreciate. We do not want them to lose their jobs while we have a whole lot of people gorging themselves on the taxpayers’ funds. We have tried to get questions answered on how much these recruitment consultants make, and we have been denied, but the sunlight of transparency will win out.

New Zealand First is sick of troughers, plutocrats, and highly paid consultants creaming it. Millions and millions and millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars—we cannot get to the bottom of it. We cannot find out how much they are being paid. They are creaming it, while the quality and standards of the Public Service continue to slide. Our message to the Public Service out there is that at least one party is on your side, and you know who it is: New Zealand First.

Motion agreed to.