Dowie Sarah: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1891. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this omnibus bill—again another technical bill. These bills do seem to sit with the Government Administration Committee. As a member of that committee along with the member opposite Ruth Dyson who is the chair of it—I guess we must have the brainpower for these very technical bills so it is wonderful to be speaking on this bill.I note that it has cross-party support and that is fantastic. It is fantastic that these changes to the interpretation of these Acts will be made expediently and will allow clarification. Obviously the aim for laws and statutes is that they are read in plain simple English and that anyone can pick them up and read them and that it does not become a legislation-fest for solicitors.But I would like to just focus my comments on one part of this bill and that is the changes to the Official Information Act 1982. When I used to work for the Department of Conservation obviously official information requests were very important. They kept us as officers of the Department of Conservation honest and accountable. This Act plays a very important role in doing that.Just starting from the beginning clause 72 clarifies that the request for official information can be communicated in any form including orally. Quite frankly this was often the way that official information requests were communicated to us. It is only fair that people be allowed to request information in that way. Obviously it helps to clarify that request when it is put in writing but by using your emotional intelligence skills you can talk to the requester delve a little deeper investigate what they want take notes and let them request that information in an oral manner. I think that is fair.Clause 73 of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) clarifies that partial transfer of official information is permitted and that is fair enough too. While at the Department of Conservation especially in the concessions realm I was dealing with quite a lot of information and lots of printout reports from a computer database. Often it was time-consuming to collate that. Often the requester would need that information as soon as possible and that is actually part of the legislation—that Government departments deal with the requests as expediently as possible or at the very least within 20 working days. So the partial transfer of information allows that requester to obtain the information earlier than obviously waiting for the entire request to be processed. It means that they can act on that themselves in an expedient manner.With regard to clause 74 this clarifies that if a request for official information is amended then that revised request is to be treated as a new request. Again while working for the Department of Conservation I found that often requesters would change their minds which would change the nature of the request and that could be quite a significant change for officers dealing with that information especially if it was a great deal of information at the other end. So it is only fair that the officer gets a fresh time limit to deal with that information at that time.Clause 75 of the bill puts beyond doubt that official information is able to be released electronically. That saves on cost especially when there are quite a few reports being generated in those requests. It means that the requester does not have to pay for the information; it can be just emailed to them and they can flick through that relatively quickly and get the gist of the information that they need. Again I think that is pretty pragmatic. It has probably been going on for some time but it now just sets that straight in the legislation so that there can be no challenges.In respect of clause 76 of the bill amending the Official Information Act 1982 it clarifies that an agency must make reasonable efforts to locate the information before refusing on the grounds that the information cannot be located. I can speak firsthand from working for the Department of Conservation that it has screeds of information generated back—for 7 years I think it has to keep the information. There are files upon files and it can in some ways become onerous for it to check for that information. But it is accepted that the Official Information Act is about transparency it is about accountability and hence those officers must exhaust their efforts and use reasonable efforts to locate information that is requested.In respect of clause 77 of the bill this clarifies that the Ombudsmen can notify the Chief Archivist if a request is refused on grounds that may indicate that the Public Records Act 2005 has not been complied with. Again this is a check and balance that is required in respect of the Official Information Act.Finally clause 77 of the bill clarifies that the Ombudsmen can hear complaints under the Act that an agency has failed to decide a request as soon as is reasonably practicable. So again this is another important check and balance in respect of the Official Information Act which is so important in our democracy to maintain that transparency and accountability.It is with pleasure that I speak to this technical bill. It is an expedient way to deal with a number of changes that do have cross-party support. It allows us to get on with more pressing business but allows things to be tidied up under these Acts so that—to coin a phrase—you cannot drive a wedge through that legislation. It goes to the intent of the primary legislation and certainly helps us to deliver better public services for New Zealand. So with that I commend the bill to the House.