Street Maryan: Official Information (Openness of District  Health Boards New Zealand) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Street Maryan: Official Information (Openness of District  Health Boards New Zealand) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5268] 
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to contribute to this debate this evening and as my colleague the Hon Pete Hodgson has said Labour will be supporting the Official Information (Openness of District Health Boards New Zealand) Amendment Bill going to the Health Committee. I am particularly pleased to contribute to this debate because I am the only person in this House who can actually add some inside information having been for the last 2½ years prior to entering Parliament an employee of District Health Boards New Zealand. In that capacity I was the employee relations portfolio manager for 2½ years or thereabouts. I have listened with interest to the comments that members have made and with some amusement to the kinds of things they have in fact imputed to District Health Boards New Zealand. However I support this bill going to the select committee in the first instance because I think it raises some important points—points that others have mentioned—about openness and access to information. 
But can I first of all say that District Health Boards New Zealand was set up as an incorporated society for all the reasons that other members have read off the briefing sheet. But in practice it was set up as an incorporated society that was accountable as the Hon Pete Hodgson said to all of the 21 district health board chief executives in order to provide some economies of scale in order to provide some leverage in arriving at contracts across the country and in order to arrive—particularly in my own area—at some consistency of remuneration and employment conditions for people employed in the district health board sector. 
On one occasion I was served with an Official Information Act notice in my area of industrial relations for District Health Boards New Zealand. I was not obliged to answer it but I asked the organisation why it had “OIA-ed” me and why it had not just rung me up and asked me. In the event District Health Boards New Zealand decided to contest the legality of our position that we were not bound by the Official Information Act. I think that is one of the events that has probably given rise to this bill. However the organisation did have the grace to say to me that in fact all it needed to do was to ask one district health board for the information and it could get it and that is exactly what it did. Because the district health boards were under the Official Information Act they had to provide the information and they did. There was no problem about that. 
I am interested to know what kind of information has not been accessible. I hope the Health Committee will be able to probe this. What kind of information has not been accessible? If it was information about the nurses’ negotiations for example I would have been very happy to tell anybody who asked that we arrived at a very good agreement. We came in on budget and we came in without any industrial action. It has meant a huge improvement in the conditions of nurses in the district health boards—not only in their salaries but in the actual conditions of work—and it has resulted in some consistency across the country. 
The second point I would like to make is one that concerns me: what does this mean for other incorporated societies? It was an issue that Pete Hodgson touched on with reference to Local Government New Zealand. But there are further implications that the select committee should consider. For example if this could be applied to other incorporated societies what does that do to the ethic that underpins and the integrity that surrounds our voluntary sector in New Zealand which is made up of non-governmental organisations that are largely incorporated societies? If this does not apply or is not meant to apply to incorporated societies in general then why is District Health Boards New Zealand being singled out? The select committee should consider this as a possible unintended consequence of this bill. 
Thirdly what else could or should be added to this bill and to schedule 1 of the Official Information Act? This point was made by the honourable member Sue Kedgley earlier. There may be a number of other organisations that although not in receipt of Government moneys particularly may impact on public policy and should be covered. I suggest that the New Zealand Medical Association could be amongst those.