Yang JianDr JIAN YANG (National): We support the intention of the bill and that is to help deliver better outcomes and also services for New Zealanders by creating a modern agile and adaptive Public Service and also by affirming the constitutional role of the Public Service in supporting the democratic Government of New Zealand. The bill repeals the State Sector Act 1988. The Act itself is over 30 years old. Although we have had 13 times of changes to the Act itself the Act has become somewhat outdated so we agree—we agree—that there are areas where the Public Service can do better and we need to make sure that the Act is able to meet requirements today and tomorrow. So the Public Service is essential to the functioning of the Government and also New Zealanders contact and communicate with the Government on a daily basis. So such services are particularly important. Over all New Zealanders are satisfied with the services provided by our public sector. As a matter of fact they may be very proud of our Public Service. Nevertheless we believe the Public Service can do better. The bill itself attempts to help create a unified Public Service that acts as a single team to provide better services to all New Zealanders. The bill also attempts to strengthen and streamline the Māori-Crown relationship the employment of the Public Service and the leadership and also the organisation and also the Public Service in the regions. So all these are good attempts—we support all these attempts. We do think that there are good changes in this bill. For example we support the provisions that enable public servants to move more easily between public agencies. We also support provisions that enable departmental joint ventures so as to better tackle those challenges that transcend individual department agencies. So we also support overall public sector principles such as political neutrality free and frank advice merit-based appointments open government and stewardship. So having said that we have some problems with the bill. Firstly this is an important and complicated bill and we believe it deserves a better deliberation process. The bill will have far-reaching implications for the operations of the Public Service in New Zealand. There is a strong public interest in the bill. Let me tell the member what the committee has done—what happened in the past few months regarding this bill. The committee spent 16 hours considering the bill including 45 minutes on the initial briefing about five hours on oral submissions and just 11 hours on the departmental report which contains 69 recommendations. National members of the committee made a consistent effort to actively engage in committee procedures in an effort to improve the bill. The bill was referred to the committee on 23 November 2019. I as the chair of the committee called for public submissions the following day without any delaying and submissions were closed on 31 January 2020. Remember this period coincided with Christmas and New Year holidays. Now the committee process was then delayed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Now in the level 4 lockdown we lost two meetings and then on the first day we entered the level 3 lockdown the committee had a meeting and considered the particular bill. We spent 1½ hours on this particular bill. Unfortunately the committee lost another two meetings because of urgency—the House urgency. So when it became clear that the committee would not be able to meet and report back that line of 8 June National members proposed an extension of the report-back date to 29 July. Then we shortened that to 6 July. Still Labour MPs opposed our request. Then the Chief Parliamentary Counsel wrote to the committee saying that due to insufficient time being allowed the Parliamentary Counsel Office would not be able to prepare a revision-tracked version of the bill before the report-back date of 8 June. She notes that For a large bill requiring extensive or complex amendments such as the Public Service Legislation Bill more time is needed." So National members then agreed with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel and on the meeting on 3 June we proposed yet another extension and that is 3 July—even shorter than earlier suggested extensions. So we are disappointed that Labour members of the committee rejected the proposal again and insisted on a truncated committee process which would compromise the quality of the bill. This is important complex and large legislation. It should not have been rushed through during the COVID emergency or rushed under urgency. There is nothing urgent here because this is a long-term reform and it needs better consideration and care. We should deal with this with precision. In addition to the process issue National also has some concerns over this particular bill. For example National is concerned with increased size of the central government bureaucracy and increased centralisation that this bill is designed to support. The bill is a lost opportunity to improve the accountability of the Public Service and to improve the connectedness between local and central government. Now this bill as it stands makes it too easy for Governments to constantly change ministries' and departments' names. Also it will encourage a culture of changing names and forms of Public Service departments rather than actually improving the delivery of public services. So I oppose the bill."