Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I have two questions for Minister Robertson but before I ask them I just want to take the opportunity to commend to the committee the tabled amendment in my name. I think Simeon Brown in his contribution made the very good point that actually size isn't always the best proxy for risk. The Human Rights Commission—Chris Penk: Careful!Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —I think is an organisation—we know that don't we Mr Brown? I think good things—Greg O'Connor: A good big man will beat a good little man any day!Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —come in small parcels. Mr O'Connor knows that the nippy halfback is just as important as the big front-rower.Now I want to come to this point about—so firstly I'll speak to my tabled amendment. My amendment is to exclude from the extension Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency. They are big and complex and risky and actually consistent with the Auditor-General's expectations for what he thinks will happen over the next few months.Now the Minister again as I say is trying to have a dollar each way. He's talking about how we should not be legislating over the exercise of judgment of the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General but the one thing the Auditor-General cannot exercise judgment over is the statutory time frames for reporting. So we're not doing any such thing in suggesting amendments to the bill that give effect to the very policy intent that the Minister wants to achieve. There is no harm in agreeing to the amendments that I and my colleagues have tabled. It is simply a statutory reflection of what the Controller and Auditor-General actually believes will be achieved.In a normal year he cannot exercise his judgment to say Well the statutory deadline is 31 October but I'm a bit busy. We're going to extend it out." He has no such discretion. I should note that while the Minister keeps quoting actions of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) in respect of extension of time for reporting to them they didn't do a change to the law. All the FMA said was they would suspend action and they would not prosecute or pursue in respect of those failed deadlines. Now the Controller and Auditor-General doesn't have that discretion either so the Government argues that the bill is necessary. That's their prerogative but at least the amendments that I and my colleagues are suggesting give better effect to the reporting deadlines.Now the two questions I have—and I'm still reeling somewhat at the revelation and I must confess I missed it in the letter from Mr Ryan to him and Mr Bayly and that comment that as always final priorities will depend to some extent on entity readiness for audit. So my question in respect of that is: was that the first time that the Minister had been made aware that entities in his control and other ministerial colleagues' control may not be ready for audit and is that why we are passing this? So have they received advice that individual entities whether they be DHBs or State-owned enterprises won't be ready for audit? Has the Auditor-General's office—and I see that their fine staff are represented on the bench tonight and may be able to answer this. Have Crown entities or local councils come to the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General and said "We can't. We're going to struggle with our entity readiness for audit."? What is the problem that we're trying to solve here? Because that hasn't been pointed out prior to this.Now my last question is in relation to the responsibilities that this House has and I am a very firm believer in the separation of the executive from the legislature. One of the things that this House has to do through its select committees is financial review. Now last financial review period we were somewhat disrupted as a House by two things. One was COVID and the extension that was necessary last year and the other was the 2020 general election which squeezed up considerably the time that committees had many of them brand new committees—sorry brand new members of the committees. The Finance and Expenditure Committee is a very good example of that—a good committee lots of new members. So we were squeezing up the financial review and some would argue or I would argue that we were rushing it somewhat. [Time expired]"