Curran Clare: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 09 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9549. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): In my colleague David Clark’s contribution in the second reading of this bill he made it clear that Labour would be supporting this bill but with some quite strong reservations. Although we support—and have supported right from the very beginning—the intent of this bill and continue to support the intent of this bill along with pretty much all of the submitters who came before the Commerce Committee our reservations have only really got stronger particularly as each day goes on about this Government’s capability to introduce a new system in a way that is not going to end up turning into a bungle and creating a whole lot more cost when it was set up to save money. I will certainly be speaking to those remarks throughout my contribution.We thought that this was a relatively uncontroversial bill. We thought that there were probably some things that needed to be teased out in the select committee and they certainly were. But as we went through the select committee process and listened to what some of the submitters were saying we became more and more concerned. We remain supporting this bill as I have said with quite strong reservations because ultimately we support the intent. We support the intent of having a number system for business whether that is in the private sector or across the public sector to enable there to be more efficiencies and efficient easier interactions for business in New Zealand.In his remarks in the second reading the Minister said that this would enable easy and more efficient interactions and it would do so by allocating a unique number to corporate and public entities and to unincorporated entities that are in business such as sole traders partnerships and trustees of trusts. Well that sounds great but in practice particularly in the short to medium term that is just not going to be the case because the Government is not ready. The Government did not do its work. The Government agencies—there is a very small number of Government agencies that will actually be prepared for this new system when it comes in; the rest of them are not. As we went through the select committee process more and more submitters became concerned. They became concerned about this and they became concerned that there was not a requirement for Government agencies to get their act together.This has the hallmark of what we are seeing as a pattern of half measures a halfway house and possibly a shambles of a new system that is being introduced. I think that what we are looking at through this bill—if it gets pushed through its third reading—in the short term is the making of another major and another embarrassing IT blunder by this Government in terms of its implementation of something that is not a bad idea. As I have said we support the intent of it but there is no plan and there is no indication of the resources that are going to be needed to make this actually work as a system across Government. There were too many red flags starting to be raised during the select committee process that we have some real concerns about.Of course as we know this Government has a track record of making these shambolic embarrassing IT blunders. We have seen one in just the last couple of days with the payroll scandal within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which is affecting a huge number of employees which is essentially exposing the Government’s mismanagement. It is exposing the Government’s mismanagement and the incompetence of having a merger of departments—a great big merger creating a great big ministry that needed to create a payroll system right across that. What did the Government do? It created a system and we are now starting to see the real problems emerge around that. Not only that but we have also heard today that it has been revealed that the ministry is paying a quarter of its invoices late—it was my colleague Jacinda Ardern who revealed this today—and that over 11000 bills have not been paid on time. It is a breach of the payment rules that it publishes.The relevance to this legislation going through the House is quite clear. This is actually about a Government that makes these decisions decides to think big merges a whole lot of departments comes up with an idea puts a system in place—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Stuffs it up.CLARE CURRAN: —and then stuffs it up—quite right. It is struggling with the payment system. So if it is struggling with the payment systems—and let us remember Novopay and let us remember the $40 million - plus—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: That was Steven Joyce.CLARE CURRAN: That was a Steven Joyce special. Let us remember just exactly the impact of that which is still being felt in schools. I was in a school just on Monday where I was being told of the continuing issues. Of course our schools are run by competent people who have adapted to this shambolic system and because they are committed to what they are doing they are managing to get on with the job. But it has taken massive amounts of time and energy and wasted time and energy within each of the 2500—is that right—schools throughout New Zealand to actually adapt to the shambles that the Government hoisted upon us with the Novopay debacle. And that is not all in terms of mismanagement. We have also seen another major piece of mismanagement this week within the Ministry of Health with a refurbishment cost of $24 million from reserves that did not even exist with the Minister of Health describing it as a forecasting error and diminishing its importance.What this points to is a pattern. It is a pattern of making decisions putting forward legislation—and it is not always a bad idea that the Government comes up with. The idea of having a New Zealand Business Number is not a bad idea but has the work been done? Has the work been done to work out before the legislation came to the House how it is going to be implemented and what the impact of that is going to be? To display to the House that it is not just Labour saying this in its submission to the Commerce Committee the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand—an eminently sensible organisation—noted that it was in favour of the bill and its intent but felt that the New Zealand Business Number “would need prompt and broad integration by government agencies in order to capitalise on these so-called benefits to businesses.” It said its “views in this regard have not changed …” throughout its process of being associated with the bill. It said: “We are therefore disappointed to note that the current Bill no longer mandates government agency recognition of the NZBN as it did in section 34 of the initial Bill.”In clause 34 of the initial bill that came to this House which was tabled in this House at the beginning of this process there was a mandate for Government agencies to be a part of this process. During the process as the Government realised that it did not have all these agencies ready to go through the processes that they needed to it withdrew that mandate. The Government withdrew it and as a result we are left with a bill that if it is passed will be piecemeal. There is likely to be a shambolic approach by Government agencies that are not prepared for a New Zealand Business Number. It will in the end create a more complicated system. It will not deliver the efficiencies certainly in the short to medium term. This Government has brought a bill to the House that it is just not prepared for.