English Bill: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
English Bill: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17840. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 This bill does have some positive changes for public sector management but the heart of the debate over it is going to be whether this Government can be trusted with this particular tool kit. This is a Government that has overturned most of the conventions and understandings by which the public service has operated. The public service operates at its best when it has clear direction from a Minister and a Government and is allowed to get on with the job. Part of that job is always going to be dealing with the political pressures that arise around Government decisions because Government decisions will not always be greeted favourably. That means that public and political pressure will come on those decisions and on the public servants who execute them. What happens then is absolutely vital and is the real test of whether the Government is managing the public sector properly. If the Government changes its position just as a matter of whim because of political pressure and if it blames the civil servants for the embarrassment that is caused by their carrying out the Government’s own decisions then the public service has less capacity to function with independence and integrity. 
I will just point out a few examples which raise questions about the Government’s intent in respect of the civil service and therefore the effectiveness of this legislation. One would be the fate of the Community Employment Group. They made the mistake of implementing Government policy. That is a bad mistake when Steve Maharey is the Minister in charge of one’s department. He had this idea of the Social Entrepreneur Fund which turned into a slush fund for all sorts of mad schemes. These were gradually revealed to the public. They were an embarrassment as they should have been because it was a stupid policy and under a Minister who cannot implement anything. 
So what did he do? He then turned round and abolished the Community Employment Group altogether. He did not just shut down the Social Entrepreneur Fund; he decided to punish by sacking those people who he believed had embarrassed the Government. As it happens the Community Employment Group is one of the more useful social bureaucracies around the place. It has made valuable and long-lasting contributions in my electorate but it is gone. 
What impression does that leave with the civil service? Civil servants believe that the Government is putting in place a bad policy but carry it out because they are professional civil servants then find that the Government comes along and punishes them when the inevitable political embarrassment arises. That is one reason why this Government cannot be trusted. 
I will give the House another example—the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology and its saga over Cool IT. That raises a number of questions about public sector administration. The Minister has in recent weeks decided to withhold money from the polytechnic. Is that because he believes that it did something with public money that it should not have? No it is the result of 12 months of public embarrassment for the Government in the media. 
Everyone who is involved in the sector knows that. The Minister has moved simply because the political pressure has become sufficient that he feels he has to or he will lose all credibility. Again those actions cut across all the conventions and understandings of the way this legislation imagines the public sector would work—where there are clear delineations of responsibilities where there is transparent accountability for the money where the Minister has powers but does not use them except in extreme circumstances and where public servants can operate in an environment of certainty and predictability. 
That is why I worry about things like the whole-of-Government direction that is in the bill. It is couched in the usual loose terminology of good intentions in the same way that local body legislation prescribes that local government is now responsible for the environmental social economic and sustainable good of their communities. It is meaningless garbage in legislation. It could mean anything. It could mean nothing. That is the kind of thinking the Government will bring to bear through mechanisms like the whole-of-Government direction. I hope that in the Committee stage some attention will be paid to the kind of approach that is implicit in the bill. 
I am particularly concerned about the effect of the bill on the tertiary education sector. I draw the House’s attention to that because that is probably the group that is most opposed to the bill and in my view for good reason. The second-most opposed initially was the Clerk of the House. I must compliment him on the best example of a senior public service leader standing against the tide. The Government’s initial legislation was a disgrace. It showed its contempt for Parliament and for the accountability that must go on in this place. The Clerk as at times the Speaker should stood up for Parliament and put a case. A committee of parliamentarians—rather than Ministers thank God—heard that submission and changed the bill substantially. I record the Opposition’s gratitude for the role that the Clerk and his office played in holding back the steamroller of the executive. 
I return to the tertiary sector because as I said people in that sector were among the strongest opponents of this legislation. The relationship between government and universities in particular but also polytechs is a somewhat delicate one. Their ownership is unclear. The accountabilities are relatively clear but the role those institutions have to make autonomous decisions of their own is absolutely vital. It is absolutely vital that they do not feel stood over by the Government. It is vital that they can act as Parliament has charged them to do as the critics and conscience of society. 
Now I have to say I approached the argument of the tertiary institutions with some scepticism because in the last 5 or 6 years they have cravenly supported in just about every respect the Government’s tertiary policy—up until 6 months ago. That tertiary policy has put together a whole mechanism of control. The Tertiary Education Commission a $50 million extension of the Minister’s office is a hopelessly complicated bureaucracy that for all the wires pulleys and computers actually does almost nothing. 
So there should be no surprise that the Government has taken from the tertiary sector the message that it can do pretty much what it likes. All those fine academics who used to denounce past Governments with such vigour have lain supine while the Government rolled over them. Finally they decided to stand up for themselves and oppose the provisions in the bill and I fully support them on that. It should be absolutely clear that tertiary institutions—universities in particular—are independent of government and particularly independent of this Government which believes that it knows better and can do jobs better than the people doing them. It thinks it can run universities better. That is why it is bringing them in under the provisions of this bill. It can run the public service better than the civil servants can and that is why some new tools have been included in the bill for the Government to use. 
This debate is essentially about trust. On its own in the hands of a Government that respects the civil service the bill will be useful constructive and forward-looking but in the hands of a Government whose dead political reach goes into every corner of life in New Zealand and whose politicisation of the public service including the police is a disgrace this bill could end up being quite dangerous.