Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. I move, That the Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The purpose of this bill is to uphold public confidence in the role of the parliamentary Ombudsmen. The Ombudsmen hold a unique constitutional role in Aotearoa New Zealand. As Officers of Parliament, they are statutorily independent and provide accessible and impartial review of complaints. They uphold the rights of individuals to have grievances against the executive, both local and national, independently examined and concluded.

I believe it is important to ensure that this significant role is not undermined by confusion over which entities are using the name “ombudsman” in New Zealand. The use of the name “ombudsman” is currently protected under the Ombudsmen Act 1975 but not absolutely prohibited. Entities wishing to use the name “ombudsman” can seek the permission of the Chief Ombudsman. Currently, it also includes a savings provision in respect of the private sector entity Financial Services Complaints Ltd. If the application that Financial Services Complaints Ltd has made under the current Act is approved by the Chief Ombudsman, it will also be able to use the name “ombudsman” in accordance with that permission. There is precedent elsewhere for protecting the use of certain words and names, such as “Anzac”, in order to maintain public confidence and trust in what the word attaches to.

The amendments we are proposing in this bill will help signify the uniqueness of the Office of the parliamentary Ombudsmen. In turn, this will uphold public confidence in an understanding of their role. Prohibition of use of the name “ombudsman” is necessary to prevent the risk of proliferation of the name by other disputes resolution bodies, while preserving clarity and protecting the integrity and value of the parliamentary Ombudsmen.

Public inquiries to the Office of the Ombudsmen indicate that the current use of the name by both the parliamentary Ombudsmen and private sector bodies has already led to confusion about the status and role of an ombudsman. This bill will protect the use of the name “ombudsman” by restricting its use to a parliamentary Ombudsman appointed under the Ombudsmen Act 1975, or a person appointed to a position established by the Chief Ombudsman, such as that of Assistant Ombudsman or Deputy Ombudsman or any public sector department or organisation approved by the Minister of Justice.

The bill includes a savings provision, which I have already mentioned, which currently has permission from the Chief Ombudsman to use the name “ombudsman.”

At the appropriate time, I will move that the bill be referred to the Governance and Administration Committee. The select committee process is very important. I encourage members of the public to have their say on the bill when the committee calls for submissions. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider this bill. It is with great pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.

I call Chris Penk.

Thank you very much—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, I beg your pardon. The question is, That the motion be agreed to.

Thank you again, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s one of those situations that if you hear a word repeated enough times, it just sounds ridiculous. I wasn’t counting the number of times that the Minister Peeni Henare said the word “ombudsman”, but he said the word “ombudsman” a large number of times, to the point where the word “ombudsman” sounded ridiculous. Then I realised that, actually, it was the whole concept of this being an amendment bill brought in front of the Parliament in its own right that was ridiculous. It’s not the kind of bill that you would clear a jam in the photocopier in the office for, get it out the other side and understand what its effect would be on the New Zealand Parliament and this wonderful nation of ours, and, indeed, wonder how on earth we could have survived without it.

There’s not much to this bill. We’ve heard a pretty valiant effort by the Minister to explain its meaning and effect, and he did well, I think, to squeeze out a few minutes on that. But, actually, in my contribution I would like to highlight that while it doesn’t do much, what little it does is not particularly helpful.

The Minister started by talking about the role of the parliamentary Ombudsman, and I think he used the phrase “Officer of Parliament”. He might equally have used “creature of Parliament”—meaning, of course, that the role of Ombudsman is created by Parliament. That’s all perfectly accurate and fine as far as it goes, but the effect of this bill, if anything, is to give a power to the Minister to safeguard the name “Ombudsman”. Now, the Minister is by definition a member of the executive branch, so he or she is actually not the appropriate guardian to hold the reputation and the import of this name safe for the New Zealand people. So, really, it sort of seems to me “quite bizarre, ridiculous, and redundant” is about the best thing that we can say for it.

It’s difficult for us on this side of the House to support a bill that is pretty well devoid of meaning, but that meaning which it has is hard to support. I think, particularly, we might ask ourselves what problem it’s intended to solve, and what we are left with is an analysis where we’ve got a low risk of something that would have very low effects even if it were to occur. I don’t know what kind of analysis the Government parties have received to convince themselves that this is worth concerning themselves with, or whether there’s been a recent outbreak of people calling themselves Ombudsmen—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: There has.

—for example, and in a way that actually causes genuine confusion. I note that Dr Duncan “Ombudsman” Webb over there is chiming in.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Proper names, please.

I beg your pardon. I’m sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, I’ve proved his point, if anything: it’s just so easy to have the word or the name “Ombudsman” slip out and to cause real confusion and heartache accordingly.

For these reasons, I think that we can all very much look forward to the remaining stages of this bill, if it should pass through, and some pretty meaty submissions to the select committee. I just hope that it doesn’t, in fact—no doubt it will go to the Justice Committee, as is being proposed. That’s a committee on which I often—

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Government and admin.

—substitute, but hopefully not—oh, Government and administration. Thank you. The Hon Maggie Barry points out that it will be the Governance and Administration Committee, which is one that I don’t often substitute on, thank goodness, and neither does she, so that’s possibly the motivation for her looking into that aspect. Anyway, with no further ado, I think we’ve probably said enough about this for ever, but certainly for my contribution. I’ll probably stretch the truth, at the risk of misleading Parliament, and say I look forward to further contributions on this bill. Thank you.

Very briefly, thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Mr Penk should know that the word “ombudsman” comes from the Swedish constitution of 1899, and there it roughly translates as “the guardian of the citizens”. It’s a very important word, and it comes from Government. I was reading a good article, in fact, in the Penn State Law Review only yesterday on this matter—I recommend it to Mr Penk.

It is a very important word. It speaks of an officer of State, of Parliament—a guardian of the citizens. There has been creep. We’ve got an Insurance Ombudsman and a Banking Ombudsman—they’re private. We’ve got to be very careful we don’t get any more. That’s why this is here. It’s a very important bill. It’s protecting a parliamentary office, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

May I commend the previous speaker, Duncan Webb, on the brevity of his contribution. The Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill is a ghastly piece of work, I’d have to say. It is a problem that doesn’t need to be solved. It is an extraordinary waste of Parliament’s time. I don’t really want to talk about it for any length of time. We oppose the bill. I did note that the member had googled or Wikipedia’d “ombudsman”. It is indeed Swedish, but my Google search had it defined as “a grievance person” to investigate complaints against Government agencies.

I can’t recall a time when the popular talkback and social media was flooded with horror stories of the word “ombudsman” being misapplied to inappropriate people all the time. Perhaps I’m not listening to the right talkback shows. At a time when we have some hugely challenging issues in New Zealand around mental health—we have the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary. There are any number of important pieces of legislation that we could be spending House time on, and yet we have this piece of work.

We know that there is no real problem. We know that the penalty for the improper use of the name “ombudsman” doesn’t even change through this bill; it’s just kind of raising a flag. I think it is, in fact, in my eight years in this place, the most useless piece of legislation that I’ve come across.

I note, with some interest—

💬 Hon Member: Year of delivery.

—the year of non-delivery—that this is only the fourth all-new bill to be introduced to this House in the justice space, following on from the waka-jumping bill, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill. When we look across the House we see a Government that is not doing very much at all. They’re still building on our legislation, the select committee workload has ground to a halt, there’s very little that we can do or need to do because this Government has just not generated any legislation. Working groups—now, that’s another story. Naturally, there has been a proliferation of those, none of them called “ombudsman”. Anyway, the select committee work that we will have to put into this on the Governance and Administration Committee which, thankfully, I don’t sit on—sorry about that Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi; I’m sure it’s chaired well and deals with a number of fantastic issues that are important but—

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: We have to suffer for it.

—actually—they have to what?

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: We have to suffer for it.

You have to suffer for it; the member will have to suffer for this. No doubt the member will take a call on this not-at-all-important issue a little bit later on.

Rushing it through, why would you do this? I would urge the Government to spend its time developing legislation that will improve the lot of the vulnerable, that will make New Zealand a better place to live in, will grow the economy, grow the jobs, do the things that matter to New Zealand. This piece of work will not matter a jot to anyone in New Zealand, except, perhaps, a couple of Ombudsmen and they have full protection anyway. So I do not commend this bill to the House nor do I support it in any way, and I hope that the Government get on with doing some substantial work one of these days. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just felt a wave of depression come off my shoulders as the last member sat down; we’ve just had a little bit of elevation of positivity. Look, “ombudsman” is one of those words. I think I’ll start by saying it sort of captivates your imagination. It’s like “bibliography” and “ointment” and “tenacity”. But I have to say “discombobulated” is the word that reminds me of the last summary of what was just put through from the member across the House.

Look, it may not seem very important to some of those members on that side, but wasted money is being put in from the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand to try and stop the legal approach from many people that want to use the name “ombudsman” in their approach for their businesses or their course of action. We are finding ourselves, on a semi-regular basis, defending the term “ombudsman” from being overused and misappropriately used. Then, when they have been given notice that they can’t use the word, they take the Ombudsmen to court to try and get them to make a precedent so that they can use it.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Who does that? Elucidate please.

If you’re aware of what’s going on in Australia—Ms Maggie Barry you’ve had your turn, you might just want to try and listen—you have seen that the word “ombudsman” has been completely used out of context. They’ve got a beekeepers ombudsman, for goodness sake. We don’t want to see this very strong, independent office to be downplayed or downsized in the hearts and the minds of New Zealanders. It needs to be held in high esteem and, therefore, protecting that, giving them the power to do that, it’s—

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Protect the integrity of it.

It’s all about integrity, you’re dead right there Mr Peeni Henare. So we’d like to see this bill go through. We’re not going to take a huge amount of time taking calls this evening, but we see it as something that’s very, very important.

There are already a number of good examples where—for example, banking has an ombudsman, the insurance brokers have an ombudsman, and the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman exists. If the courts decide that there is an axe to grind with a company which is looking for the Financial Services Complaints Ltd, they will also have the ability to apply for this title, and it is the place where people can go to where they get an unsatisfactory outcome, where they can get a completely autonomous independent review of what has been done. So it’s very, very important.

The Officers of Parliament are completely independent—three separate entities work within that scope which are outside of any controls of this House and that is the Ombudsman, that is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and that’s the Auditor-General. Those three officers need to be protected—their brand, their name, what they stand for—because that’s what this Government is all about. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand in opposition to this very important bill—as the members from the Government said—the Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill. I did not hear any logical point from any of the speakers, and this bill, as it was portrayed, will be the fourth bill in the justice sector after the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill, the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill—which we were debating before this bill—and the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. This bill, which is supposed to be a bill of the justice sector, is being given to the Governance and Administration Committee, not even to the Justice Committee. That shows the importance and seriousness of this Government passing this bill on to us. It is a total waste of time of the House—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, sit down then.

—there are—yes, it is. You—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the Leader of the House—should consider what is important for New Zealanders.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, sit down and stop wasting time.

You are wasting time, because you are wasting time in the House by bringing the bill. [Interruption] Stop laughing about it—think about the Kiwis. There are more important things which are required to be done in this House, rather than protecting the name of the Ombudsmen. This bill is total wastage, and I stand in opposition to this. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.