Fenton Darien: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2755] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I want to bring us back to the bill after that interesting fairly predictable speech from the National Government member. The original Protected Disclosures Act required a review within 2 years and that was carried out by the previous Labour Government. That is what we did and we asked Mary Scholtens to do the review. A review cannot be carried out in 5 minutes; it took a long time. It is a very interesting and comprehensive report and I suggest the National Party members actually read it. They might find some information there that has an awful lot more to do with this bill than have some of the speeches we have heard from them. 
As I said in my contribution before I was on the Government Administration Committee and interestingly there was not a huge wave of submissions. The committee asked to hear from the Public Service Association at my instigation and it confirmed Mary Scholtens’ observation that the procedures were not necessarily widely understood or widely used in the public sector. I have some questions that I would like to ask the Minister about that. If this amendment bill is going to do better I would like to know what resources the Minister proposes to provide to the Office of the Ombudsmen—a question that was asked earlier by my colleague Grant Robertson. If this amendment bill is going to do better and given that we are placing a lot more obligations on the Office of the Ombudsmen the office needs to be properly resourced. 
The next question I would like the Minister to address is about the low level of take-up of the procedures. The National Government has criticised that fact but one could take the view that the reason the procedures were not taken up was that not a lot of protected disclosures needed to happen because we had such a good Public Service and such a good Government in power—unlike the previous period the 1990s. I note again that the reason the Protected Disclosures Act came about in the first place was the problems and the culture of fear that had developed in the 1990s around the issues with Neil Pugmire and Good Health Wanganui—a ridiculous name! Given the low level of take-up of those procedures as identified in the report I ask what the Minister plans to do to ensure that the new procedures and rights under this bill are properly promulgated to all workers in all parts of the Public Service. We must bear in mind that we are talking about not just the core public sector but also the health sector the education sector the community sector and the non-governmental sector—all sectors that actually receive Government funding—and this bill now extends the protected disclosure procedures to volunteers by widening the definition of “employee”. 
I want to make a couple of other points in response to some of the contributions from National Government members. I was interested in the contribution from the member for Maungakiekie Sam Peseta Lotu-Iiga because I understand that some New Zealand Educational Institute workers and school support staff went to see him the other day and they were talking about their wages and how shocking they are. Apparently he got on the phone to the Minister of Education Anne Tolley and assured those people that he had her ear and she would address the issue of school support staff. These workers are on $12.94 an hour! I ask the Minister whether given the threats the public sector is facing those people will use these protected disclosure measures. I would like to hear from the member for Maungakiekie what the response from the Minister was and whether there were any assurances that those people will get decent pay increases in the current wage round. By all means he should take another call on that question. 
I go back to the issue of Mrs Houston which members have gone on and on about. As I said I was on the select committee so I heard from Mrs Houston and indeed she went through a difficult time but what I would say about her situation is that she took a personal grievance action against the district health board. If people read her submission to the committee they will see that that happened and that she ended up settling with the district health board. I do not have the amount of money in front of me but she did receive a settlement as often happens in these situations. May I say that that was able to happen because the Labour Government brought in the Employment Relations Act which brought in personal grievance protections for workers in that situation. In fact the Protected Disclosures Act 2000 which this bill amends refers directly back to the Employment Relations Act and the right of workers to be protected under that Act.