Hipkins Chris: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2363. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on these changes to the Charities Act 2005. I guess in beginning these comments what I want to do is express concern about the lack of a coherent plan or strategy when it comes to the Government’s approach to State sector reform. It does not seem to have any idea what it is trying to do. On the one hand it is putting a whole lot of small entities into Government departments and then it takes one of the biggest Government departments the Ministry of Social Development and suddenly it is putting a board in there somewhere that will have some sort of role in welfare as well. I am not quite sure exactly why or exactly how that is going to work. It is totally incoherent.  
If the Government were to say its strategy was that it was going to do away with all of these independent entities and it was going to merge everything into the superministries that would be a strategy. It would be coherent. It may not be sensible you know and we might not agree with it but at least there would be a logical flow to that kind of restructuring. That is not what we are seeing. What we are seeing is a whole lot of contradictory decisions being made in the way the Government is reorganising the State sector. In fact it is not putting forward adequate business cases. It made the decision to create Steven Joyce’s little empire—what are they calling it—the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment without actually doing the business case. The business case came after it had made the decision to create the ministry. And what we have seen as Iain Lees-Galloway just pointed out is that when the Government makes these decisions it does not do the business case adequately and it costs more money than what it was supposed to. In the case of the merger of Archives and the National Library it cost twice what it was budgeted to cost. And unfortunately what we are seeing in this bill is yet another decision—the decision to do away with the Charities Commission—basically being made on an ad hoc basis without a coherent plan for what the Government is trying to achieve with State sector reform.  
The Charities Commission was set up by the last Government after a substantial process of engagement with the charitable sector. I think that stands in stark contrast to this Government’s approach. The National Government regards government as something that it does to people rather than something that is done with people. And I think in the case of the charitable sector what is actually the most sensible and logical process to follow is one that involves all of the stakeholders and gives them a say in the process. When the decision was made to establish the Charities Commission there was a process put in place to review it. That process has not yet been completed. So why undertake more structural reform which is going to impact significantly on the charitable sector without actually involving it in the review and having a full consultative process whereby the charitable sector can buy into whatever decision is being made?  
I have to say I have monitored the Department of Internal Affairs; I sat on the Government Administration Committee in the last Parliament. I have monitored the Department of Internal Affairs which is becoming this huge mother ship basically of a whole lot of agencies departments and entities that do not really have any relationship with one another. The Department of Internal Affairs is basically just everything else that is left over. All the stuff that no one else wants gets lumped into the Department of Internal Affairs. It is not necessarily a coherent entity. Of course they put the Minister that no one else wants in charge of it normally as well. But that does not necessarily make it the most sensible decision. It does not necessarily make things more efficient because they do not fit together. If there were logical fits for the Department of Internal Affairs it might be more efficient but actually it is not necessarily.  
I have some real concerns about the independence of these smaller entities that are being sucked up into the Department of Internal Affairs though the Charities Commission is the one that is being debated in this bill. But we have seen it with the National Library and with Archives. They have statutorily independent roles that are being sucked into the Department of Internal Affairs without in my view strong protections for the independence of those roles. I am very concerned that if we allow the Charities Commission to be sucked into the Department of Internal Affairs we could actually undermine the charitable sector’s confidence in this process and people’s confidence in the charitable sector because there is not a coherent plan for what the Government is trying to achieve with this particular reform.  
The Supplementary Order Paper being put forward by my colleague Trevor Mallard is in my view a very sensible one. It allows for this provision basically to be put on ice while the review that I have talked about is conducted and takes place. I think that is a very sensible thing to do. But I would actually go further and say that more than just review the Charities Commission it actually needs to go wider than that and what we need to see is a coherent plan for public sector reform. I think it is totally legitimate to say that there should be reform in the public sector that we want a more citizen-centric responsive efficient Public Service. The Labour Party is quite happy to support change where we think that that is what is going to be delivered. We certainly do not think that is going to be delivered by this piece of legislation because it is simply ad hoc. It is basically creating another little empire.  
Like the previous part of the bill that I talked about when we were talking about the new Health Promotion Agency I guess this differs a little bit from other elements of the State sector reform being undertaken by the National Government in that this is another little component part that is not going to end up in the “Ministry of Joyce” the Steven Joyce empire. It is only a matter of time—it is only a matter of time—before this gets sucked up into the orbit of Steven Joyce’s new— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No no. It’s not attractive enough. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It is not attractive enough. No there are not enough fun things for Steven Joyce to play with. So he is just going to leave this behind. But I do not know—I do not know. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: But he is beating Bill English at the Budget. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Treasury could be next to be sucked into the orbit of Steven Joyce’s little empire; it certainly would not surprise me at all.  
This is obviously quite different from other elements of State sector reform in that it is not putting more and more under Steven Joyce’s control. The Department of Internal Affairs is I think an agency that we need to take a step back from and think about what the department is why it is there whether it is a logical grouping of agencies whether there is a more logical grouping to take place there. But we should do that by asking the question of what we are trying to achieve out of it rather than simply having reform for reform’s sake which is what we see from this Government. There is no coherent plan. It is not like it is out there saying: “Well these are the principles behind our State sector reform.” whether it is about efficiency or about making it more responsive to the public. It does not have that coherent articulated set of principles behind the public sector reforms it is doing; it is just literally making it up as it goes along and making contradictory decisions.  
In this decision like the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment decision it is pulling together Government agencies; it is removing independence from the process. Yet in other areas it is adding independence. It is adding independence—or supposed independence—into the welfare system for goodness’ sake and yet it is taking it away from the charitable sector. Well how is that coherent? How does that make any sense whatsoever? I cannot see the logic in it and I have yet to hear the Government articulate exactly what it is that it is trying to do with State sector reform. State sector reform is costly it is time-consuming and when there are these constant reorganisations mergers segmentisation—segmentation—of different agencies— 
Louise Upston 
: New word. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: —yes it was nearly a new word—but when you are constantly— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He thinks he’s John Key. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Golly I am not John Key. That is a bit rough. But when you are constantly pulling departments apart and putting them back together again what it does do is disrupt all of the people who work in those entities from the job that they are there to do. Because of the lack of a coherent plan for State sector reform under this Government we are seeing that the poor people who work in say science and innovation who have only just been reformed and restructured are just finally coming to terms with that fact that they are part of this new agency and now they are being lumped into another new agency. It is constant. The people who work in housing policy who previously were with the Housing New Zealand Corporation then they were yanked out of that and put into the Department of Labour are now going to be put into the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. It is symptomatic of the lack of a coherent strategy for public sector reform which is what we are seeing in this bill when it takes the Charities Commission—particularly in this part—with no coherent plan for what it is trying to do with it and whacks it into the Department of Internal Affairs. I think that is wrong.  
I think what the Government needs to do is take a pause take a breath and come up with a coherent plan for public sector reform. If it actually gets it right—if it gets the principles behind it right—it might actually find that it gets more support from around the Parliament for what it is doing because public sector reform can be a positive thing. If the principles behind it are very clear and if the benefits of it are very clear then we might actually support it. We do not think that this has been well-thought-through. We do not think that undermining the independence of the charitable sector is a good thing and that is the reason why I think the Government should reconsider. It should look at the amendment being put forward by Trevor Mallard and consider putting this one on ice and getting it right.