Woodhouse Michael; Dean JacquiHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I can assure Dr Duncan Webb that that is exactly what will happen but we're not in the Officers of Parliament Committee; we are in Parliament. We are in the legislature being asked as MPs to pass a piece of law—and that's essentially what's going to happen soon—but it is not consistent with good practice and good democracy that the Opposition simply rolls over and does the Government's bidding. And the idea that the Minister of Finance is cajoling us to go back to our electorates and talk about what we did this week—I'll tell you what we did this week: we stuck up for business. We stuck up for the inconsistency that exists between the suck it up" approach by this Government to the severe staffing shortages that are a handbrake on this economy and a Government that gives itself a pass for teachers and for auditors. We will be going back to our home areas and we will be highlighting that inconsistency and the ham-fisted approach that this Government is taking.There is another I think concerning issue about that that needs to be drawn to the House's attention. This is becoming a pattern. Since the end of 2017 the Labour-led Government has used urgency about a third more often than the Key-English Government—and Ms Genter can chuckle away. She was a lion in Opposition when it came to the use of urgency and shortened report-backs; now she just chuckles and thinks we're being silly. Well that's fickle; that's inconsistent. But it has gone up by about a third as has the use of shortened select committee consideration because this Government doesn't think submissions on bills and making bills better is part of parliamentary business. They think that it's an irritant a distraction from their centralist socialist agenda and that if they don't like something they can just change it—they don't need to consult. We have spent the last 18 hours considering a bill that hasn't gone to consultation where good ideas suggested changes and amendments to it that bring the bill into line with the policy intent were just dismissed as a distraction and filibustering. Well that goes to the arrogance of this Government—arrogant and out of touch—because New Zealanders up and down the country who run their plumbing firms who pick fruit and who export actually pay for the public services that the Government so readily dips their hands into the pockets of New Zealanders to actually pay for. But they don't want to help those businesses. They only want to help themselves and that is a shame.Now I want to touch on a couple of things that were just briefly raised in the committee of the whole House that I don't think were adequately addressed. One is the ability of this Parliament to scrutinise the annual reports of Parliament. The Minister dismisses that as not relevant but the reality is that select committees will not be receiving a significant chunk of the annual reports until next year. Now it's customary—and the Minister has been around this place for nearly 13 years; he knows this—that that period between the end of October and the Christmas recess is actually quite a busy one for select committees as they get a jump-start on the financial review process. It's often that they use the smaller entities to review in that period because the larger ones actually have quite a bit more work up and those are done usually in early February to March. That isn't going to be able to happen next year again—again—and one of two things will need to happen. Either select committees will have to defer other important work or they will have to undertake fewer financial reviews—fewer annual reviews of Crown entities—and that undermines this place's ability to scrutinise the executive.So for him to dismiss that as just simply a red herring is quite wrong. Regardless of whether he will I will be asking for the Business Committee and the Standing Orders Committee to consider whether or not there should be an extension of time for this House—a similar extension of time to the one that the Government has just given itself for audits—and for the select committees to do their job. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander. So we should not have our role in this place undermined by this Government's failure to ensure that it can meet its legislative time frames because it's not the Auditor-General's legislative time frames; it's the Government's legislative time frames. So in letting itself off the hook it is putting pressure on this place.The Minister also mentioned apparently that Australia has done this. Well I've looked very hard and I can't see a thing in reference to the Australian audit office providing relief to Crown entities and public sector entities in Australia with the same thing. So I will keep looking but I think it's rather inconsistent. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission definitely has similar relief to the Financial Markets Authority but I can't see any reference to the thing that Mr Robertson said in interjection on Mr Luxon about the Australian Government and public entities. So we're a bit of an outlier. We are just about to pass a piece of legislation that will provide relief for two years without any other plan and—as Mr Nash interjected on me—this is the plan: just kick the can down the road. No insight into how the problem is going to be fixed. No insight into how it's going to be prevented from happening again. No insight into how other than the audits the work of the Auditor-General is going to be reprioritised five minutes after the finance committee received the annual plan for 2021-22. That's now a doorstop because it clearly isn't going to be able to be embarked on or if it is there may be further delays in audits. So I think we were owed an explanation that did not come.No recruitment strategy ideas no graduate recruitment no retention strategy and I should also note for the House's interest that the section of Vote Audit 2021 in relation to audit and assurance activities has gone down this year compared with last year. Now I'm not sure why that is but it seems highly unusual that when the salaries of auditors working for Audit New Zealand are such an issue the vote should actually go down. So more questions than answers no plan and a ham-fisted process. We're here on Thursday morning and the reason we are here has nothing to do with the Opposition. The Opposition is doing its job. It's the Government that's at fault it's the Government that has brought us here and it's the Government that continues to use urgency time and time again to fix its own mistakes—arrogant and out of touch.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."