Wong Pansy: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — First Reading 
Wong Pansy: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11022] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
National supports the referral of the Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill which will be further divided into five separate bills to the Finance Expenditure Committee. The only reason we are doing so is that we believe that these five pieces of legislation should be subject to public submission and a lot of scrutiny. 
Personally I am very sceptical about the Labour Government’s agenda of collapsing the Fiscal Responsibility Act into the Public Finance Act. We know that this stand-alone Act has been seen as a landmark in terms of the accountability of the New Zealand Parliament for the way it conducts its financial scrutiny of Government spending. 
I would say that most of the business community and a lot of professional bodies I have talked to over the years have become increasingly sceptical whenever Labour Governments put up legislation that seems to be well meaning but can be a real disaster to implement. So as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I welcome the opportunity to give particular parts of this bill real scrutiny. 
I want to raise some of the questions we will look at during the select committee process. One of those questions concerns the changes to the Budget Policy Statement. Currently the statement which the Finance and Expenditure Committee has just finished examining contains two parts. One is the Government’s spending strategy; the other one is the longer-term objective. This particular legislation proposes that in future the Budget Policy Statement will not draw on the longer-term objective. Rather it will simply focus on short-term spending. 
We already have the business associations commenting in last week’s select committee that the bill removes a very important part of the Budget Policy Statement. We all know that there is great danger in any Government telling the public about its short-term spending without that public at the same time gaining an appreciation of the wider longer-term horizon in terms of where that spending will occur and what the Government’s financial position is. 
Interestingly during the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement today the Deputy Prime Minister pleaded that the Government was already cash-strapped and was looking at a cash shortage. Last week the Government announced to the public that its initiatives included a family assistance package and big spending in all sorts of areas but today our Minister of Finance is pleading that for the coming year the Government is already short of cash. 
I think the proposed change to the Budget Policy Statement might be received with a lot of scepticism that the Government can fail in any one period to give the total position. [ 
Interruption 
] Exactly and it might just signal that Labour after being in Government for 4 long years—and has already put up tax in 18 areas and in various forms like the petrol tax—may make the poor taxpayer face more charges. I have a lot of scepticism about the Government’s proposed changes to collapse the Fiscal Responsibility Act. We are looking forward to the submitters examining that particular issue. 
I also want to focus the public’s attention on another matter that the legislation is meant to address and that is the issue of the State sector providing standards value and integrity. Certainly during the last 4 years we have seen a very sad state of affairs regarding how some senior management in entities such as New Zealand Post and TVNZ handle their financial statements which were supposed to be scrutinised by their internal auditors and executive management. 
But when there are scandals when there are outrages over spending as far as the taxpayer is concerned those matters eventually have to be pursued by very hard-working members of Parliament—such as my parliamentary colleagues the Hon Murray McCully and ACT’s Rodney Hide. Without the dedication and tenacity of those members of Parliament the senior management of those State-owned enterprises would have refused to answer questions from the select committee and would have had to be dragged to the Privileges Committee and that wastes more taxpayers’ money. 
The Audit Office took 12 months to find the truth of the TVNZ matter and I would say let the chairman off the hook. I do not think that that is the type of behaviour the standards or the values that the public should tolerate. The Labour Government always likes to introduce legislation and use a lot of glossy terms such as “to raise the high standard of the State sector provide leadership and have a coordinated approach”. But I want to say on the record that Labour’s past performance simply does not stack up. 
When this legislation is referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee the hard-working members of Parliament—particularly from National ACT and New Zealand First—will certainly make sure the bill which makes changes to the well-received Fiscal Responsibility Act is well scrutinised. I have to include the Greens in that because every now and then they put in some good work and we cannot rely on Labour and United Future to raise any questions during those select committee hearings. Secondly we want to ensure that the bill steps up to the mark in terms of setting new standards of accountability for State sector performance. 
The Labour Government should not take National’s support for the referral of this billto the select committee as an indication of anything other than that we believe it should be subject to public scrutiny. National members have a lot of reservations about the changes proposed and we certainly have a lot of reservations about whether the words in the legislation can actually be implemented adhered to and monitored properly. 
Bill read a first time and referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee