Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): National will be supporting the introduction and referral of the Public Service Legislation Bill to select committee. There is much we support in this bill in the updating of our legislation that governs our Public Service. There are also areas of which we have some concern and look forward to scrutinising through the select committee process.I want to firstly say that there is a huge amount about the New Zealand Public Service that is good. It is so important for New Zealand and when I have—since holding this portfolio—looked at other jurisdictions our Public Service is politically neutral and actually that is not true for the senior office holders of many of our similar countries. The fact that our public sector has quite high levels of accountability particularly in terms of expenditure of public money was pivotal to the State sector reform of 1988. Also in terms of the thousands of New Zealanders who work in our Public Service and are dedicated to providing New Zealanders with first-class public services across so many important areas. I want to acknowledge the important work of Paula Bennett who was the former State services Minister who began the review of the 1988 State Sector Act and who alongside the Rt Hon Bill English initiated some of the important thinking of trying to get a greater degree of cooperation across Government agencies so that we get over the silo mentality in addressing some of the most challenging social issues that our country faces.I want to talk about two particular areas where we are supportive of this bill and then some of the areas of which we have concerns about. The first thing is that we have had situations where a Public Service department has restructured the employees of that department then go and seek employment in another part of the Public Service and the State incurs a substantive redundancy bill even though the person is working for the Public Service the very next day. We think having a more unified approach across the public sector prevents some of those sorts of anomalies that to the average taxpaying and hard-working Kiwi do not make sense.The second area of which I've indicated National is supportive in the new Public Service Legislation Bill is the new mechanisms that are proposed for getting cross-agencies to work more closely together. It is a natural response to the work associated with the Social Investment Agency that National established within the State Services Commission. The new provisions of this bill that we are supportive of will actually enable that sort of model to be expanded.I want to talk about four areas where we have some concerns about the bill. The first is that pre-1988 we had a very inefficient public sector—the Gliding On programme or Yes Minister in the UK context that took the mickey out of just this massive dysfunctional bureaucracy—Hon Chris Hipkins: It was a documentary!Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —was part of—Chris Hipkins interjects that Yes Minister was probably a documentary. I have some sympathy for that view albeit it really challenges us in looking at this bill to ensure that the elected representatives do retain their authority and their important role in the Public Service.But my concern is that in the Government provisions around the new principles that apply to the public sector National is concerned that the importance of that efficiency—that importance of making sure that every dollar of taxpayers' money is spent wisely within the Public Service—is not there. There are a whole lot of principles of which we agree with about Public Service neutrality but actually one of the really important issues for our Public Service is that they are delivering value for money and that every dollar that they spend on behalf of New Zealand taxpayers is spent as though that person themselves has had to earn that hard-earned dollar. The world and our own history is littered with examples of where public money is not spent wisely and why that is a really important part of the principles that we want to apply to the public sector.The second area of which the Parliament has to find a balance is this: what level of flexibility do we provide in legislation for the reorganisation of State departments? Here are the two extremes. You've got some Governments around the world where there's so limited capacity to be able to restructure the public sector that you end up with Government departments that are way out of touch for the changes that do occur in nations. And so I don't want a very rigid public sector that's not able to restructure and change with the times. But equally we need to be very careful that we don't continuously turn the Public Service on its head.I get quite frustrated—having been in the House for some time—that an answer to a public issue is to rename or to reorganise the public sector. It's sort of the easiest exercise in the book—as if we change the name of the Department of Social Welfare to the Ministry of Social Development. And I could give you another hundred examples of where changing the name and reorganising the department becomes an excuse for actually the sort of reforms that will make a difference in New Zealanders' lives. So Parliament in this Public Service legislation needs to provide a balance between enabling State sector agencies to change and be restructured but not to have it so loose that we have a continuous sort of rolling maul of a Public Service always being reformed and restructured. My first look at this bill is that it goes too far down the road of making it too easy to be able to continuously change the public sector. The third area in which National has some concerns about this bill is around the accountability of chief executives and those that work in the public sector because here's the trade-off. If we go pre-1988 in the old State Sector Act 1962 if there was some sort of a mess or appalling failure within the public sector everybody ducked for cover. There were no clear lines of accountability and in my view that made for a weaker Public Service. You do need to have agencies that have very clear objectives. You need to have a clear chief executive who is in charge of that agency for delivering value for money for the public sector but also delivering the important outcomes that this Parliament has charged that agency with. Our concern in respect of this bill is that that accountability is being blurred and there is a trade-off because if you want to provide the greater flexibility of agencies being able to work together that is a good thing but if it turns into everybody being involved and nobody being accountable actually the quality of the public services that New Zealanders have will be worse off. That is why National wishes to retain the strong public sector accountability that in my view was a very substantive improvement on the pre-1988 State Sector Act. We worry that in the provisions of this bill—of sort of creating everybody doing everything holding hands together and singing Kumbaya"—we lose the focus and the accountability that actually is important to getting results. The last point I want to note is a concern about the shortened report-back time that the Minister has signalled. We need to recognise that actually the legislation that governs the organisation and the management of our Public Service is incredibly important. We are talking about agencies that expend over $80 billion every single year. We are talking about an Act that was last reformed 30 years ago and it is likely that this Act will hopefully serve our country for the next 30 years. A good period of the time between now and 28 April actually is the holidays. We think there is no justification for such an important bill for the shortened report-back period. The Government has been mulling over these issues for over two years. It's not unreasonable on such a large bill with such huge public significance for Parliament to be able to have the normal six-month process. The Parliament should not have to pay for the Minister meeting a slower timetable than he had set out around the introduction of this bill and so we would wish the Government to reconsider about the shortened report-back period."