Sage Eugenie: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 24 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2503. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker and I will endeavour to speak to the provisions of the legislation arising from the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). It is important to recognise that statutes amendment bills are intended to be non-controversial and I thank the Hon David Parker for his explanation during the Committee stage about the changes to the Standing Orders that generally disallow omnibus changes to legislation but do make exceptions for statutes amendment bills. It is because they are non-controversial and have tended to make small technical changes to legislation that they are quite different from other bills before this House and if one single MP opposes a statutes amendment bill then it does not proceed.The Green Party exercised that right recently because it was proposed through Supplementary Order Paper 50 to amend the original bill to change the Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Act 2013 to increase the travel benefits for MPs who had entered Parliament prior to 1999. To the Green Party that looked to be both substantive and controversial and it had no place in a statutes amendment bill. Therefore we opposed it and it is not in the bill. I think that if that process where we had to have the consensus of all the parties applied to other legislation legislation would be less partisan it would be much more enduring and you would not get the changes that are made by different Governments as they get into Parliament. So there are major advantages in a statutes amendment bill because it does have the agreement of all the House.I would like to comment on some of the changes that the legislation makes to the Official Information Act—and they may seem small but they are significant. One of them is that if someone asks a department a Minister or an agency that the Official Information Act covers for information orally then the department or agency can ask that this be put in writing but if that person—the requester—does not do that then the department has got to record its understanding of the request and then provide a copy to the requester. The legislation also makes other changes to the Official Information Act to clarify that requests for information can be made in any form and do not need to refer to the Act. Also the changes put in doubt that agencies Ministers and departments can provide the information to requesters in an electronic form.Another improvement in the legislation is to allow the Ombudsman to hear complaints under the Act when an agency has failed to decide a request as soon as reasonably practicable. These sorts of changes are entirely consistent with the spirit and intent of the Official Information Act which is to promote open government and as the Dominion Post said in an article last year access to good information is not just some theoretical nicety; it is the oil that makes democracy work. It is because Government agencies are acting theoretically on our collective behalf—we fund them through our taxes—that we have every right to expect that they tell us what they are doing and that they respond promptly to requests for information.The Official Information Act was introduced under the Muldoon Government but the way that it is currently administered under this Government shows what a blatant disregard National has for the Act’s history and for the principles that informed it. We now see major delays in the release of information and pages and pages of redactions when the information is finally released so the Government has certainly strayed a long way from National’s original values of ensuring that there are effective checks on the power of the State and ensuring that the State is accountable.David Fisher made a significant speech late last year which described some of those changes. He said that when he started out as a journalist you could just ring someone in a Government department ask for information and it was provided. Now that does not happen and we have the Prime Minister saying last October that Ministers sometimes waited 20 days to respond because the Government might take the view that it is in its best interests to do that. So that is a real corruption of the spirit and intent of the legislation. This legislation will not fix that so the only thing we can hope for is that the review undertaken by the Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakem into the way in which the Official Information Act is being implemented will result in some quite substantive changes and recommendations for change to try to restore public confidence in the effective operation of the Act.The Official Information Act is critical. It is the essential oil of our democracy and the Government needs to listen to the Chief Ombudsman’s recommendations when they come through and it would be good if the public availed itself of the opportunity to make submissions to that review on how the Act is working. This legislation makes some minor changes but they will not correct that erosion of the spirit and intent of the Act with Ministers sitting on information major delays in its release and major redactions. But the Green Party will support this legislation for the small changes it does make in that area. Thank you.