Locke Keith: Governor-General Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Locke Keith: Governor-General Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:14796] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I rise to follow on from the speech made by Nikki Kaye. She talked about the issue of transparency. The Greens are very much in favour of transparency and it is good that the Governor-General Bill is introducing somewhat more transparency in terms of the payments of the Governor-General annuities and the rest of it. It is also good that we are laying out how the Remuneration Authority an independent body will determine such matters in the future. 
I think that if we want to have proper transparency that transparency has to go across the board. I say in response to the suggestion in the debate earlier today that there be more transparency in the actual nomination for Governor-General to go to the Queen—or King perhaps at a later point—that that process is not as transparent as I think Nikki Kaye would like. When a nomination goes off to the Queen how are we to know what factors are being taken into consideration? It is all done in the deep dark corners of the ninth floor of the Beehive I think. 
Certainly the Green Party has never been consulted on who should be the Governor-General and because that lacks transparency and proper accountability there is good reason to think that if we are to make transparency in appointment parallel with transparency in remuneration—which this bill is going down the road to improving—then we have to have some process whereby it is all out in the open names come before Parliament and Parliament determines in one way or another which candidate nomination it comes up with is to go to the Queen in a democratic and much more transparent process. My Supplementary Order Paper which unfortunately was not able to come before the Committee of the whole House would have addressed that. 
The other point in relation to annuities is that clause 8 talks about annuities being paid at a yearly rate determined from time to time by the Remuneration Authority for each complete year not exceeding 5 years. So the annuities very definitely relate to the length of service of the Governor-General. It would be much more transparent if we had in legislation a fixed term for the Governor-General so that the Remuneration Authority did not have to guess how long each newly appointed Governor-General might serve and what the Government might determine their length of service to be. If there was a fixed term the Remuneration Authority would know exactly where it stood in determining those annuities. I think that it is a pity that the second part of my Supplementary Order Paper is not coming before the Committee. It would have straightened out that and made it much easier for the Remuneration Authority. 
It may be that the Remuneration Authority decides to reduce some of the annuities because we are in rather tight times. It may well decide that 6 months’ redundancy pay amounting to $96000 and a $62000 annuity for Governors-General for the rest of their lives is a little bit excessive. It may not of course but I think we should consider that matter. We do not want to spend huge amounts on Governors-General. We do not want them to feel too much privilege; we want Governors-General to be ordinary people who can reflect society. 
It is great that we have such a person in Anand Satyanand. As Governor-General he reflects many New Zealanders. I think it is important that Governors-General do not receive too great a remuneration and annuity because they may think the job puts them up with the elite in our society and not in a job where they deal with ordinary people in their daily lives. The fact that Governors-General go around the country opening bowling clubs and all the rest of it brings them into contact with ordinary people and I think that their remuneration and annuities should be commensurate with those tasks. The tasks are not heavily political on a day-to-day basis although Governors-General play a very important constitutional role particularly in our MMP system.