Street Maryan: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11668. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour):It is a pleasure to rise to talk on Part 3 of this legislation the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill. [Interruption ]The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order! I know it is Thursday morning—Hon Member: It’s not Thursday.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Well Tuesday morning then. I know that everyone is in jovial spirits but the reality is that we have one speaker addressing Parliament and when members who do not have the floor interject on each other it is not permitted. All of you may have a call or take one shortly.Hon MARYAN STREET: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I wonder whether you could clarify for the member opposite which part—[Interruption ]The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! There is a point of order on the floor. The member is a long long experienced member and he knows.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I already have a point of order from the Hon Maryan Street. [Interruption ]Hon MARYAN STREET: I think he has just recognised my point of order.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I cannot take two.Hon MARYAN STREET: Thank you very much Mr Chair. I wonder whether you could clarify for the members opposite which part of the bill we are discussing. Is it Part 3?The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It is Part 3.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I hate to interrupt my colleague but that was in part what my point of order was because I was actually shocked to find out that across the Chamber someone thought it was Part 2. But then again that is the person who would have things not happen over her dead body.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. As I said it is Thursday morning but we are still in Tuesday.Hon MARYAN STREET: Thank you very much Mr Chairperson. In case some of the members opposite who were also here in the Chamber late last night when I spoke on Part 2 of the bill which we have just passed were asleep at that time I would like to repeat the importance of this legislation and the timeliness of it. I glossed over the fact that it is 100 years this year of good-quality public service in New Zealand. That is being celebrated by Transparency International New Zealand as it moves to do its audit on our processes and the apparatus that keep us at the top of the indices on transparency and on the perception of a lack of corruption. Those are parts of our reputation that I personally—and I know my colleagues also—hold very dear. That reputation is absolutely predicated on the transparency and the quality of the Public Service.So it is 100 years of public service and simultaneously 100 years since the formation and of the work of the Public Service Association. In case people were not up at midnight last night when I said that I would like to draw that to people’s attention again. I would also like to invite people to come to the opening of the exhibition of 100 years of the Public Service Association’s banners at the Nelson Provincial Museum in a couple of weeks’ time. If people wish to have a weekend in Nelson—which of course is a lovely place to be—come on the Friday night and come to the opening of that banner exhibition which is part of the history of the Public Service Association an organisation that has always prided itself on defending the quality and the independence of our Public Service.In accordance with this bill that is apposite because amendments that have been made to this legislation have been done with agreement across the House and have also been taken to the Public Service Association and the Council of Trade Unions as appropriate stakeholders in this legislation. That is important and it is one of the things that allows us to have a robust Public Service—that it also has union representation that not only protects the terms and conditions of the people who work in the Public Service but also works to ensure the highest level of integrity of that service. So I would like to pay my particular tribute to the Public Service Association in its centennial year.But one of the things I want to focus on especially in Part 3 is the point that my colleague David Cunliffe has been talking about just now in a slightly different context. It is the requirement that boards of statutory Crown entities—and this is the relevant part because we are talking about amendments to the Crown Entities Act—ensure that those entities collaborate with other public entities where appropriate.Again I would like to give an example that may highlight the importance of this. That example is that for the moment in time—the moment in history—when I was the Minister for ACC a portfolio that I really loved one of the things I enjoyed about it was the fact that I chaired a cross-government working group. In those days we had an Injury Prevention Strategy. We no longer have an Injury Prevention Strategy under this Government which is a tragedy. But when we did there were six work streams in that Injury Prevention Strategy and they covered a huge array of Crown entities and ministries and departments so they covered all kinds of interests.When that committee met to consider the Injury Prevention Strategy and its success or otherwise in each of those streams it meant that the people in the room were from the Ministry of Justice they were from the Ministry of Transport they were from the police they were from Water Safety New Zealand they were from the Ministry of Health and they were from mental health organisations in particular. They were from a whole range of interests. If this is one way of getting the Government to work more horizontally than vertically then I welcome it. That committee I am using as the example worked horizontally because it needed to look at suicide prevention it needed to look at deaths and injuries caused by water and it needed to look at road transport accidents. It needed to look at six areas where injuries could be prevented. It had a work stream on falls. Well it is unfortunate that this Government has now taken away the funding for the National Falls Prevention Strategy that was in place. It really enabled lots of elderly people to prevent themselves from falling and having those injuries that we know are so tragic and difficult in older age.So the point is that in this committee room—and yes it was almost bigger thanBen-Hur —to have all these people talking to each other was critically important. The prime example I give which will be of interest to my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway is that across each of those work streams 28 to 35 percent of the accidents if I remember correctly were caused by alcohol. In seeing that synergy across six different work streams of injury prevention it was patently obvious that an area that the Government needed to focus on was harm caused by alcohol. That I have to say is another lost opportunity that this Government has committed in recent months—that it did not take the opportunity to reduce the harm caused by alcohol in the way that it could have.When I as a Minister was sitting there with all of those departments there they could all listen to each other. In transport we could talk about road transport accidents. We could talk about deaths by boating injuries from boating or water-related accidents and so on. Then it became clear that there was an underpinning commonality amongst all of those that should become a priority for Government action and so it did with our Government with the inquiry and the report on alcohol reform from the Law Commission.I use that as an example in order to point out why this legislation is important. It is so that we can ensure that requiring the boards of statutory Crown entities not even departments or ministries but just Crown entities to talk to each other—like requiring Housing New Zealand for example to talk to other parts of Government apparatus—would be an advantageous thing for the people of New Zealand. I welcome this provision in particular and I welcome it as a little step. I do not see it as a huge cataclysmic step or an improvement in Government administration but I do see it as an important small step to learning how we might govern horizontally across portfolios and Government departments and Crown entities rather than vertically in the silos that we have been accustomed to administering in the past. I think this is a useful harbinger I hope of change—