Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I do not have to defend my conduct in respect of the Saudi sheep saga. I think the Auditor-General's report is public record of that disgraceful piece of history in New Zealand. The point I was making is that we could not get to the bottom of it through the Official Information Act. It took the Auditor-General to do it because we could not get there under the Official Information Act. We did get there through the Auditor-General.I want to deal with some of the points that have been made. The last contribution by this man Brett Hudson—I do not know; the lack of logic in that. He stood up and said we do not need this legislation because since 2012 there has been a 66 percent increase in the funding of the Office of the Ombudsmen in order for the Ombudsman to do his or her job—66 percent. Why Mr Hudson do you think they needed a 66 percent increase in budget to do their job? Because Government departments are not meeting their obligations and therefore people are complaining to the Ombudsman and the Office of the Ombudsmen is having to spend 66 percent more than they used to in order to make Government departments do what they should do.That is proof that there is need of another intervention. Instead of as the member would have it just chucking another 66 percent budget into the Office of the Ombudsmen and spending an extra many millions of dollars every year to make Government departments do what they ought to do why do we not create an incentive for them to do it without having to spend all of that extra money through the Ombudsmen's office? That is what this bill would do.I heard that there would be unintended consequences and someone else said that that was going to increase the business of the Ombudsman or something like that. The Ombudsman does not control the flow of complaints. The Ombudsman has to act on complaints. It is only when they receive a complaint from members of the public that they can act upon it. It is the public who makes complaints not the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman has to respond to complaints. I think that deals with that particular issue. I do want to thank Paul Foster-Bell for correcting the name of Sheik Al Khalaf; I am sorry I got that wrong.There is no doubt in my mind that we do have a slowly degrading compliance with the Official Information Act. We do have the no-surprises policy being taken too far and I think if you talk to any journalist or Opposition MP they will say that more often than not they are taken to the end of the period under the Official Information Act if it is embarrassing to the Government and then they are often refused documents. And then if they get them they are subject to redactions that are unjustified. And some of this is driven by the desire of departments to please their Minister rather than just independently as they have a duty to do by law abiding by the terms of the Official Information Act. I know that concerns the Ombudsman.In respect of the backlog of complaints: that is true. I agree that backlog is being worked through well by the Ombudsman. And I am not criticising the Ombudsman. What I am doing is trying to create an incentive. I think the most powerful part of this incentive would be that if Government departments were often recalcitrant then it would actually come up in financial reviews. I know that I as an Opposition member would have as one of the questions on the annual review of the Government department: How often were you pinged by the Ombudsman?". And actually if someone was pinged frequently I would be asking the chief executive and I would be raising it in the report back to Parliament to say that it looks like this department according to the Ombudsman is not doing this properly. The Ombudsman can be trusted to exercise their discretion appropriately as to when they ping a Government department but I can tell you in some of these cases that I have had experience with I have got no doubt—absolutely no doubt—that there was wilful obstruction on the part of the Government departments in disclosing what legally ought to have been done.And what was the consequence for them? None. What was the effect of it? Delay. What was the political effect of delay? The Government got off the hook. That is why they were delaying in the first place and that is why they were making the redactions. I would hope that this bill does get the support of sufficient members in the House. It is clear that the National members are not going to vote for it but we will see whether some of these other parties—like the ACT Party which says that it believes in appropriate incentives—whether their vote comes through. Thank you."