King Colin: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
King Colin: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2762] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 There has been a very interesting and fulsome debate on considering the Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill. Seen in the context of the Committee here and the bill’s significance the title is appropriate. I did not have the pleasure of sitting on the Government Administration Committee but I see that it was well chaired by Shane Arden under the previous Parliament. The bill has come back to the Chamber and it will progress through this Committee stage. No doubt it will progress further to receive its third reading and pass into law. 
But we must not forget about the procession of events that have led to where we are today. I heard members on the other side of the Chamber talking about those early days in relation to Lake Alice Hospital. I think we have to reflect on that and be aware of the consequences of a person there who was moved from the heart to report the occurrence of things that were not right and who suffered the ultimate embarrassment of being dismissed—and dismissed probably under some form of fabricated excuse—rather than being treated as a person who was actually trying to make sure that a Government department behaved at a very very high level of integrity. 
We have moved on down through the situations. We heard about the case before the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board and that too cannot be dismissed. It showed us that it was very important that a review of the Protected Disclosures Act was entered into. That was done in 2003 and done with a great deal of integrity and we are now applying ourselves here to the bill that emanated from that review. 
The Committee effectively agrees on the bill’s appropriateness and I believe that two areas epitomise it all: no longer do whistleblowers have to stick to the very letter of the law; as long as they stick roughly to the processes that have been adopted by a public organisation they should then be taken seriously. And they can go to the Ombudsmen who should get alongside them and walk them through the process where necessary. That will do a lot for the general public. 
We heard from Dr Paul Hutchison that only 23 percent of people working in Government departments—I believe that may have been in the health sector—knew about the Protected Disclosures Act 2000. That is really shameful. If anything is achieved with this bill and with the introduction of these amendments into the Act and if that raises the public profile of the procedures required to improve the process around the protection of people who genuinely believe that wrong things are being carried out within a Government department—and they can have that level of protection—then this bill should be commended. I think we have to keep challenging ourselves because really if we leave it just there there may be no improvement whatsoever and we want to see that people can have confidence and can speak out freely. We notice also that the bill talks about the immunity that people can experience if they are wrong and I think that that is also appropriate. However if a person blatantly abused that situation it would not stand the test of natural justice. 
So the title of the bill—the Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill—is appropriate. It is appropriate for a number of reasons but more particularly because the Act it amends is called the Protected Disclosures Act 2000. Thank you.