Robertson Grant: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17232. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I can reassure the Leader of the House that we will of course be supporting this motion given the incredibly important work undertaken by the three offices in question: the Auditor-General the Ombudsman and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. On this side of the House we want to recognise the excellent work of all three of those offices which play a very important part in our democratic process. Despite what the Leader of the House might think in actual fact the use of the Office of the Ombudsmen and increasing use of the Office of the Ombudsmen is in fact a sign of a Government in trouble—a sign of a Government that does not want to release information that wants to cover up information and that wants to make sure that New Zealanders cannot get resolution to their problems particularly if you live in Christchurch. My colleagues Clayton Cosgrove and Ruth Dyson will both speak about that in the course of this debate. That is the reason why the Office of the Ombudsmen is getting so much more use.On this side of the House we will continue to make requests of the Office of the Ombudsmen because it is this Government that is refusing to release information. It is this Government that is pushing out the release of information so that the public has to fight tooth and nail just to find out what this Government is up to. If this Government actually had even a small proactive strategy in terms of the release of information it would decrease the number of complaints going to the Ombudsman. There is no doubtthe increase in complaints to the Ombudsman is a direct result of this Government’s failure to release information and its desire for Ministers to systematically avoid answering questions avoid releasing information and avoid transparency. That is the record of this Government. It is arrogant it does not want people to know what it is up to and it is out of touch with the concerns of New Zealanders. The one thing that it can do in the face of the Official Information Act is withhold and avoid. We know the old story from the previous National Government where Tony Ryall had a big drawer in his office full of Official Information Act requests—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Full of what?GRANT ROBERTSON: —full of Official Information Act requests—which he would leave in there until someone complained the third fourth and the fifth time and then finally they would get released. That is the approach of this Government. Under this term of the National-led Government we have had Government departments investigated because of their failure to perform their functions under the Official Information Act. There is no respect for that Act within the current Government. Having been a staff member in a previous Government I know that sometimes Ministers are a bit reluctant about releasing information but they obey the law and they obey the spirit of the law. This Government has consistently failed to obey the spirit of the Official Information Act. So at the moment the Office of the Ombudsmen in the last year received about 13684 complaints. That is a 29 percent increase in the number of complaints.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: How much money has she got?GRANT ROBERTSON: There has been an increase in funding in this Budget which is why we are voting for this motion. But that comes after years of underfunding from this Government. The Chief Ombudsman has had to go cap in hand as she had to do to a previous committee and say: “Please I cannot meet the requests that are coming into my office. Staff are under extreme stress and staff are resigning because of the stress.” Finally the Government gets around to increasing a little bit of money. It is welcome and I am sure it will be welcomed very much in the Office of the Ombudsmen but it does not make up for the underfunding that has happened over the last 5 years of this National-led Government.We support the Office of the Ombudsmen in its work. We want it to be able to respond quickly to complaints. It has not been able to under this Government. Finally it gets a little relief out of this particular motion that we are passing in the House today.I also want to talk about the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. I want to put on the record of this House the appreciation of the Labour Party for the work of Dr Jan Wright. She is a true Officer of Parliament. She will make her view known on environmental issues without fear or favour. It does not matter whether it is a Labour Government or a National Government; she will ensure that her role as Parliament’s representative on the environment is upheld. Her office is one that fully deserves the increase in funding that it will receive out of this motion being passed—again having suffered under a lack of increases in recent years.What I call on the Government to do is actually listen to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It is all very well to say as Gerry Brownlee did that yes the Government respects Jan Wright and that there is a funding increase here today. But it is time for the Government to listen. I just want to cover a couple of areas where that is the case. The first of these comes from in fact the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment yesterday. Although welcoming the intent of the Environmental Reporting Bill which has been introduced by the Government she has said that she is very concerned with it and wants significant changes to it. Here are a couple of the areas where she wants changes which I think the House might want toreflect on. A clause in the Environmental Reporting Bill allows Government Ministers to decide what is and what is not reported upon. So that is the Government not listening to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and not asking whether she is the best person to give it this kind of advice but instead deciding itself what indicators it thinks might make it look a bit better. That is not something that we on this side of the House think should go without some kind of challenge.The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says: “This undermines the independence that is vital for public trust.” That is the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. She is totally within her rights to say that. It is time for the Government to listen to her and to rethink the Environmental Reporting Bill so that it becomes something that is truly of use to New Zealanders in terms of the protection of the environment.During the past year the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has made a number of representations around issues to do with water. It is quite clear that her view is that the Government’s response on issues of water allocation and resource allocation generally has not been adequate. She has criticised the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011 and she has criticised the lack of action in terms of addressing the run-off of nitrate within the framework that has now been put forward by the Government for the management of water. It is time that this Government takes seriously the issue of allocation of water and that it looks not just to its mates. For once it is time that it governs not just in the interests of the few that it knows but in the interests of all New Zealanders when it comes to water. This National-led Government might have decided to give away for free the rights to water to the privatised energy companies but the overall management of water is one of the biggest issues in the environment in New Zealand and this Government is ignoring the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment when she says that the Government’s approach has not been adequate.She has also raised concerns about conservation land and I want to credit my colleague Ruth Dyson for this issue as well which she has consistently raised. That concerns the status of so-called stewardship land within our conservation areas. Stewardship land sits as if in some kind of abyss in a place where it in fact often has higher conservation value than land that is within the conservation estate but remains unprotected. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has called upon the Government to clarify the status of stewardship land and to stop leaving it alone. But once again the Government ignores the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.The final area that I want to address in terms of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is around the Resource Management Act. There was a lot of talk at the weekend that we would see the Government’s reforms to the Resource Management Act back before the House this week. Well they are not. They are not coming back this week and that is because the Government cannot get the numbers to pass them. John Banks knows; he is nodding. It cannot get the numbers to pass them. That is why the reforms are not back. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said that that is because they are some of the most radical changes ever proposed to the Resource Management Act. That is why John Banks supports them—because they are destroying the Resource Management Act which is the ACT Party’s policy. So that is consistency from Mr Banks; I will give him that. It is not consistency from the National Party. It actually passed the Resource Management Act and here it is gutting it—gutting it turning it into a developers’ charter and forgetting about its purpose in terms of managing our natural environment in a sustainable way.That proposal the former Resource Management Reform Bill if it ever makes it back here—if someone in this House turns on their previous position and the Government finds a way of getting it through—will gut and undermine the Resource Management Act and undermine our environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is very very right to ensure that she continues to advocate on that issue. So on this side of the House we strongly support the funding for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and her work.We also strongly support the work of the Office of the Auditor-General. It continues to provide a good service to this Parliament and indeed to New Zealand as a whole. Once again the Government has ignored reports it has made particularly around the Skycity issue where some serious allegations were made around the involvement of John Key and other Ministers in that decision—Hon Gerry Brownlee: No it didn’t.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes it did Mr Brownlee. Mr Brownlee is actually the only Minister who comes off all right in that report so he should probably endorse it. Other Ministers did not come off all right. They interfered in the process. We need a strong Auditor-General to be able to raise those concerns but what we truly need is a Government that will listen to the advice of these Offices of Parliament. This Government is out of touch and arrogant and has stopped listening. A Labour Government will listen to these Offices of Parliament and will strongly support them as we will do by voting for this motion today.