Sepuloni Carmel: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2016/17Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2016/17[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10327. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to congratulate the speaker on as my colleague Trevor Mallard said earlier leading a unified select committee discussion around the decisions that need to be made by the Officers of Parliament Committee. It is my first term on that select committee and as a newer member it has been really interesting learning with regard to these really important functions. It has been unanimous within the select committee some good discussions have been had and I think that we have made some really good decisions.I think one of the best decisions made actually was the appointment of the current Chief Ombudsman. So I have to say that it was disappointing to hear Gerry Brownlee criticising the Chief Ombudsman earlier and questioning whether or not he should be making comments publicly about the legalities involved in his role the legal requirements of Government departments and how he is looking to hold them to account. Because actually when we appoint a Chief Ombudsman who was formerly a top judge I think all of us would expect that he is going to be dead-set on upholding the law. That is a good thing for this House and that is a good thing for this country.The Chief Ombudsman has been very clear with the select committee about what he intends to do and we have absolute confidence in his ability to do that. We want to ensure that the public has that confidence as well so it is really important that we do not have members of this House undermining the Chief Ombudsman and the important role that he has to do.He talked to the select committee about the importance of ensuring that members look at the shape of the requests that they are making. He will be attacking that backlog that is there. We are all I guess particularly from the Opposition side of the House very aware of that backlog. We all have Official Information Act requests that have been denied for what we do not believe are reasonable reasons but also that have been delayed in getting back to us. Many of us have been waiting for months for what we think should be given to us on time.Just to explain the problem that we have and that the Chief Ombudsman is going to be attacking—we have had an increase of about 40 percent over the past 5 years in the workload of the Office of the Ombudsmen. In 2014-15 the office received 12151 complaints and other contacts about the administrative conduct and decisions of Government agencies. This has been acknowledged in the funding by the select committee of eight additional investigating staff.Although some progress has been made in the net clearance in 2014-15 of 98.5 percent of complaints and contacts closed in a reporting year as a proportion of total complaints and contacts received during that year the number of aged investigations—that is the number awaiting closure for over a year—is unacceptably high.So we are looking forward to the Chief Ombudsman doing what he said he will do in attacking that backlog and getting this office back into shape. We have absolute confidence in the Chief Ombudsman’s ability to do the job. I think I will leave it at that. I just hope that members of this House will get behind the Chief Ombudsman and support him to undertake the really important work that he has to do.Motion agreed to and Address agreed to.