Robertson Grant: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Robertson Grant: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2746] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I want to refer to an aspect of Part 1 that I have not spoken about yet in this debate. 
Colin King 
: You haven’t spoken about any of it! 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I know that my colleagues on the other side of the Chamber will be surprised that there is an aspect of Part 1 that I have not yet talked about but I want to talk about clause 4 “Interpretation” in which the definition of “employee” is changed. This is a very important change because it extends the protections provided under the Protected Disclosures Act to a couple of other classes of people. I will look at some examples of the kinds of people who might now have the protections of this legislation extended to them. 
Firstly the definition of “public official” has been changed in clause 4(4) to read: “public official means a person who is an employee of a public sector organisation”. It is a wide definition and covers many many people. I had cause to reflect over the dinner break on whether that definition would cover somebody who is employed in one of the independent commissions that help to support our processes of government. Those commissions are indeed public sector organisations by most definitions. In particular I was thinking of the Human Rights Commission or indeed the Race Relations Commissioner. 
That brings us back to the concern raised by a number of members on this side of the Chamber about how people will feel in the climate of fear that the National Government is beginning to create in the Public Service. It is a climate of fear borne of people being worried that their jobs are on the line. How many jobs in the public sector are on the line under the National Government? That climate of fear means that people will not want to speak out. They will not want to blow the whistle on something in case their job is gone and they are chopped off. 
We have recently seen the interesting example of an independent public sector official Joris de Bres who was in Geneva at the UN conference on racism. Mr de Bres is an independent commissioner who along with race relations commissioners from all over the world went to that important conference. He is a public official and obviously has a lot of important things to say about an important issue like racism. 
Hon Member 
: Independently. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Independently as my colleague says. Mr de Bres made some comments about what he felt were the reasons why New Zealand was not represented there. He made those comments in his independent position and suggested that perhaps New Zealand was simply slavishly following behind other countries rather than taking an independent stance. He was immediately subjected to a tirade of abuse from the Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully who accused him of all manner of things—including I might say of being a Labour Party hack. Mr McCully made all kinds of suggestions about Mr de Bres’ independence. It was an outrageous attack of bullying by the Minister and we have to wonder when Mr de Bres and others are faced with this kind of bullying simply for expressing themselves how much confidence we can have that the people who now have the protections of this legislation extended to them will continue to be looked after. 
This emphasises once again the important role of the Office of the Ombudsmen which is another independent office in our system that can now take over investigations. It may well be that Mr de Bres and other officials who feel they have something to talk about will now under this law have to make use of the Ombudsmen. Clearly they can have no confidence that the National Government sees them in an independent light. It is shameful that Mr McCully took it upon himself to attack Joris de Bres in that way. Mr de Bres is an independent official who had every right to be at that conference. 
The other class of employees that is being brought under the Act is employees who work for organisations as volunteers without reward or the expectation of reward for that work. That definition extends things out quite a long way. My colleague Chris Hipkins talked earlier on about the example of somebody who works as an intern. Clause 4(1) will also extend the provision to people who are board members of some organisations as well. Clearly board membership is an important role because once again we have seen the National Government politicise the board appointments process. We have seen the National Government take people off boards and appoint some of its own people. That can be an issue of significant concern. If people feel that their job on a board is under threat are they likely to be able to disclose a problem they see? They will not—they will be intimidated. The extension of this provision is important because those people now have additional protections. But can we have confidence that they will be protected? Under this Government we cannot have confidence that they will be protected. The only thing I can say is that this bill which was drafted by the Labour Government—