Mallard Trevor: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2016/17Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2016/17[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10325. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I think the last comments made by the Leader of the House have caused me to divert substantially from the comments that I was going to make. The first thing I want to do is to congratulate Mr Speaker on the good work that he does chairing the Officers of Parliament Committee and on the way that he builds unanimity around both the appropriation and the appointment process. To have Gerry Brownlee the Leader of the House criticise the fine legal brain of the new Chief Ombudsman as he just did when he said he was concerned—Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There is a procedure in the Standing Orders that would allow me to make a comment about that right now but I will not. All I will say is that I made no such accusation.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: It appears to be a matter for debate.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The Leader of the House might be being disorderly in attempting to break up the comments. He did say he was concerned about the comments of the Chief Ombudsman. That is what he said. When the leader of this Parliament the Leader of the House in this Parliament indicates that about the Chief Ombudsman it is something that causes me concern because we are meant to be behind the Chief Ombudsman who was very recently appointed. I think the member himself might have moved the nomination. Certainly it was moved from his office. It is a fine appointment.I want to say that the Chief Ombudsman has said that he will do two things. He will talk to members of Parliament from all parties about the shape of their requests and help them to make them more reasonable and easier to answer. He will insist on the standards of the law being met by Government departments and by Ministers and he will report to this House on this. I think that is a damn fine thing. I see anxiety on the part of the Leader of the House for an ombudsman who is going to line up with the law whom this Parliament is now going to give the resources to to get him to do his job properly: to attack the backlog to do really innovative things like using the phone to help sort out disputes—something that was not part of the practice in the past—and to use something really innovative like using emails to sort out problems which apparently the Leader of the House does not like. I think it is a good thing.I think I can probably share a comment from the Chief Ombudsman because it was one that was said to a couple of members. He received a letter from New Zealand Post after he had circulated around the fact that the Office of the Ombudsmen was now going to deal by email and not by letter indicating that the Chief Ombudsman was part of the cause of the problem of the rundown in New Zealand Post. It is finally catching up—finally catching up—with the world of the 21st century. I think it is really good that the Chief Ombudsman is setting up a team to attack the backlog. I think it is really good that Ministers—I am not saying it is only Ministers from that side who have been slow in responding to the Chief Ombudsman. It is something that has happened in the past but it has got much more common now. It was not good when our Ministers did it. It is disgraceful at the moment. To have someone getting the resources to sort it out is something that I think is very important.