Martin Tracey: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2015/16Text is subject to correctionMartin Tracey: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2015/16[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3083. Text is subject to correction.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First):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 11000 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.TRACEY MARTIN: 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 1155 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.