Public Service Legislation Bill

When the committee, after its urgency session this morning—we were to debate both the title and the commencement date for this important Public Service Legislation Bill. I would note, after three hours of debate on it, that not a single Government member has chosen to take a call on any single provision, which highlights just the lack of engagement in the parliamentary process of getting this legislation right.

Now, the commencement clause has three different timetables for the provisions of the Act coming into effect. One of the provisions is specifically related to the redundancy provisions. One is connected to an Order in Council in respect of when those parts would come into effect. The question I’d love the Minister to address is that there’s no requirement when you say that part of the Act will come into effect when the Cabinet agrees to an Order in Council by the Governor-General, no deadline. That could be deferred a year, it could be two years, it could be four years, it could be into ad infinitum. In fact, it’s actually surprising the number of laws that this Parliament has passed that the Cabinet has never passed the regulations for the Governor-General to actually bring those provisions into effect. So I think the committee needs an explanation from the Minister in his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) as to why we have these three different dates for different provisions of the bill.

One part of the commencement clause says that it will come into effect on the day it will get Royal assent, which, given the Government’s programme, I assume is next Monday. Another portion of the bill will come into effect six months after that, which would suggest in January next year. And a third portion of the bill would come into effect whenever there was an Order in Council passed.

Now, the provisions with respect to redundancy are actually quite significant for tens of thousands of public servants who are covered by this Public Service Legislation Bill. Whenever there’s a reorganisation of Government agencies and there’s a huge reorganisation the likes of what we’ve been debating with the issue of the polytechnic sector, or whether it be in terms of the massive reform proposed for district health boards—when a staff member moves from one agency to another, their entitlements in respect of redundancy are affected, and the way in which that commencement clause works has an impact on who will and who will not be eligible for the protections that are provided. And so my very specific questions that I’d want the Minister to address are why there are those different commencement dates; why would we not want those protections for public servants, particularly in respect of any redundancy provisions? If the argument is that this bill makes those provisions fairer—and I’m one of those that say they are an improvement—why we would want to defer that beyond the implementation date for the bill?

Finally, I would say that in the committee stage, we found errors in this legislation, and I would argue that that being the case, with the indecent haste that the Government has rammed this legislation through under urgency, a 200-page SOP only made available two days ago—why would it be that we want to rush in with the implementation of the bill? That is why National members do not support the commencement provisions that are set out. This is actually, alongside our finance legislation, some of the most important legislation that Parliament has. It goes to the heart of the relationship between the country’s elected representatives in this Parliament and the thousands of public servants that we have with us, and that’s why I’d ask the Minister to address those questions.

There are two issues there. Most of this law comes into effect the day after it receives the Royal assent. There are two areas that don’t. Clause 89 provides continuous employment that will enable the portability of entitlements to statutory leave within the Public Service. It does not have a specific date by which it will come into effect. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that agencies’ current administrative policies and payroll infrastructure vary significantly and aligning this will take some time to get right, and it’s difficult to put a specific date on the time frame that that will take. There are also some likely forthcoming changes to the Holidays Act that will need to be taken into account as well. Of course, the timetable for that will be determined by the Parliament, and as such it’s not possible to put a specific date into this bill.

With regard to clause 110, it’s a technical clause which repeals aspects of the bill which make amendments to other Acts, repeals, or revokes legislation. So this is a technical provision used by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO). This commences six months after the enactment as all of the amendments, repeals, and revocations will have been undertaken or completed by then. So PCO then repeals these matters to keep them off the statute book and to keep the legislation tidy.