Street Maryan: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11704. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour):I rise to take a call on clauses 1 and 2. It is worth restating the significance of this legislation the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill as I have mentioned in previous contributions but the thing that is becoming increasingly apparent as the speeches unfold is a point I referred to earlier. This is only the beginning of something that could be a substantial rethink of the way we actually administer the Government in this country and administer those parts of Government activity that receive Government appropriation and therefore taxpayers’ money.This bill will of course become three bills—the State Sector Amendment Bill the Public Finance Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Crown Entities Amendment Bill. In each of those respects it takes us further along. It takes us further towards an integrated system of administration. We have administered Government for the last umpteen decades in this country according to siloed portfolios and people have made a lot of the fact that this is a course of action that has probably run its time. I think that this bill presents a novel opportunity but it is still just a small step in the direction of alternativeways of running the Government that could in fact deliver more integrated services to New Zealand citizens.As far as the State sector amendment part of this legislation is concerned I just want to reiterate one of the old principles. I was put in mind of this by the Hon Trevor Mallard’s discourse on the indivisibility of Government. This is that in my view the Public Service the State sector not only delivers the programme of the democratically elected Parliament of the day but it also acts as a buffer between executive power and the citizenry. So it is there and it has several things that it is charged to do. Of course it must implement the Government’s programme because one would assume that the Government has been elected to implement the programme. That is of course less decisive under MMP than it was under first past the post.Often we hear the Government taking liberties with that notion of having been elected with an overwhelming mandate. Certainly if a party goes to the polls saying it is going to sell State-owned assets and it gets 40-something percent of the party vote—even if it is 44 percent of the party vote—that is still not a majority in favour of that mandate. One would assume that if it wanted to really be honest about getting a mandate for a divisive policy such as the selling of State assets it would try to go for a 50 percent or greater portion of the vote in order to be able honestly to say that it had a majority mandate for that policy.But the point behind this is that the State Service the Public Service has operated and accumulated knowledge and wisdom over time. Our Public Service is held in extremely high regard by all of those agencies that measure such things. The integrity of our Public Service and its independence are critically important to our ability to score highly on the lack of corruption index and on the transparency index which Governments are measured by around the world. It is in large measure that our reputation and our scoring highly on Transparency International’s various indices including the lack of corruption one have us coming at first or first-equal position in successive years.I trust that this piece of legislation will actually enhance the operation of the Government’s departments and ministries so that integrated services which are increasingly being seen as necessary can be delivered for the effective provision of those services to New Zealand citizens. But I do not want to leave that point just yet about being a buffer between executive power and the rights of the citizens. I think the State Service the Public Service has sat there for a long time as a buffer between overwhelming and dictatorial executive power. There are things that the Government cannot do because of the rights and the structures that are in place in our democratic system and that is how it should be.So this is important in that it changes the workings of the apparatus of government. Whether it is a Crown entity or whether it is reporting mechanisms—as in the Public Finance Act amendment part of this legislation or as I say Crown entities in the Crown Entities Act amendment part of this legislation—the principle is the same. If we can begin to integrate appropriations operations and accountabilities of government through these mechanisms then that is to be applauded. I use again the example I used late last night of the appropriation for Whānau Ora. Being a health initiative one would have thought that it could have come before the Health Committee for scrutiny. One could have thought that the Minister of Health would be able to say to the Health Committee that this is how the appropriation around Whānau Ora has been expended and these are the accountability mechanisms and the performance indicators around that appropriation. But no because it is not something the Minister of Health was very fond of it was sent out to the Minister of Māori Affairs and to Te Puni Kōkiri when really the people who had a serious interest in scrutinising it were not only the members of theMāori Affairs Committee but the members of the Health Committee as well. So if there can be better ways of ensuring that appropriations are both reported on and accounted for and made more transparent by the provisions of what will become the State Sector Amendment Bill and the Public Finance Amendment Bill (No 2) then let us proceed with that.But let us not imagine that we are there yet. What we do need is a new way of looking at how to deliver integrated services. This is particularly apparent in health but also it is really apparent in the social development portfolio. It is very apparent there. It became apparent to us when we were delivering the Strengthening Families initiative that in fact numbers of organisations needed to be involved and engaged with the welfare of a particular family and a particular child. So not only did we need to have police justice corrections education and health organisations involved but we needed to ensure that they were singing off the same page and that they were able to deliver the services that that family needed at that time. So I am hopeful that this is the beginning of something new.As far as the Crown Entities Act part of the bill is concerned the more of those entities that talk to each other and that operate in conjunction with each other the better. This is simply a subset of that working across ministries departments and other parts of Government. I welcome this bill and I look forward to what it may bring next.