Faafoi Kris: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10646. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is an absolute pleasure to speak in the finance and government administration part of this debate. [Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I will sit the member down. I will start his time again. Mr O’Connor I would appreciate it if your coaching of the Chair ceased. Thank you.KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you very much Mr Chair and thank you for doing a great job.There are many examples of the visible arrogance of the Government—and we have seen the arrogance of the Prime Mnister in the last couple of weeks around his inability to tackle foreign trusts—but there are some invisible signs of the Government’s arrogance that I want to talk about during this section on finance and government administration. It is the total lack of respect that the Government has around the Official Information Act. For the Official Information Act to have any integrity a Government has to abide by the letter of the law. But we have seen time and time again over the Government’s last 7 years occasions on which it completely and utterly played the Official Information Act and in some respects completely and utterly did not abide by the Official Information Act.The Official Information Act is very important to make sure that the decisions this Government makes are transparent that it adheres to the rules that govern it and that it is not pulling the swifty behind the scenes for New Zealanders. But there have been many instances where the Government has been pulling swifties and it has gone out of its way to conceal that by not obeying the letter of the law around the Official Information Act. I think that in this country of New Zealand where we hold on to democracy and transparency of that democracy maintaining the integrity of the Official Information Act is extremely important. I would like to put on the record my thanks to the new Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier for the remarks that he has made since he has been appointed to that role. I think the Government is going to find it much much harder with Mr Boshier at the helm of the Office of the Ombudsman to pull this swifty on New Zealand as it has for the last 7 years.I would like to give you an example of where the Government tried to pull the swifty on my office when I put in an Official Information Act request around the costings of its Homestart Housing New Zealand package. I wondered whether or not the Government was just using its Homestart roadshow as a bit of a publicity stunt where its MPs could use a platform to go out and talk about the apparent success of the Government. When I asked them for the costings and what was going on behind the scenes there was quite a lot—and I think the people at home can see that on this document I am holding—that was blanked out. It was about how these Homestart roadshow meetings were being organised and what was going on behind the scenes.On this page here you can see that Housing New Zealand Corporation has ruled this part here to fall under section 9(2)(g)(i)—which in English means it is out of the scope of the request that I have made under the Official Information Act—and it has blanked that out. Interestingly enough the words preceding the blanking or the redacting say “National MP Parmjeet Parmar has also expressed a strong interest in holding a roadshow” and then it goes on to say in the famous words of the Hon Annette King “blankety blank blank blank blank blank”. I wanted to know what was going on and why this says “blankety blank blank blank blank blank”. Why would the officials say that I cannot have that information because it is out of scope? Well thankfully somewhere else in that document someone forgot to “blankety blank blank blank” blank out the details after those words. And I have got it here on the record that it says: “Parmjeet Parmar has also expressed a strong interest in hosting a roadshow”—and here comes the blanked-out part—“because she is keen to raise local profile in Mt Roskill in the case of a by-election”. Why would the Government not want the people of New Zealand to see that? Is it because it is illegal to use taxpayer money to campaign and that it might cause the Government huge embarrassment? I would hazard a guess yes.I want to know why the Government is so arrogant that it thinks it can “blankety blank blank” its way to completely and utterly disobeying the Official Information Act. That is complete and utter arrogance and being out of touch. The Government knows that if the people of New Zealand saw this “blankety blank blank blank blank” approach that the Government is taking they would be disappointed.