Shearer David: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16302. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 The Minister in the chair did not put in his statement that many of the functions of the Chief Archivist have been removed. That clause has been taken out which weakens the role of the Chief Archivist rather than strengthening it. 
Coming to the point of the international research that he referred to if we look a little closer at some of that international research we will find that the safeguards for the archivists in those countries that he mentioned are much more robust than what he is proposing to put forward in the State Sector Management Bill. If he looks at the examples of the UK and the US he will see that they are in fact completely separate. They provide the sorts of safeguards that he believes are in the bill but in fact are not there at all. 
I raise one more procedural matter. Before when the Minister tabled the Crown Law opinion he said that it was publicly available. None of us had been able to get hold of it. 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: It’s on the website—it’s on the Department of Internal Affairs website. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: That is not our understanding I say to the Minister. I think the fact that he brought out the white-out bottle before he started to table the document probably speaks to the fact that this Government has been less than forward with its information. Let us look at people who have tried to put in an Official Information Act request—and I include journalists and even Radio New Zealand who is here today. Radio New Zealand has been trying to get Official Information Act releases done and has appealed to the Ombudsmen over and over. It has been unsuccessful in most cases. I think the fact that this bill is being discussed today in light of all that is testament to where I believe this Government wants us to go in terms of information and its availability to the public: backwards rather than forwards. It will be more guarded more protected and more compromised than it was before. 
I will mention a couple of issues around the independence of Archives New Zealand. I refer to the very good submission that was made by the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission cautioned against downgrading—that was the term it used—record management which would call into question New Zealand’s standing as the most transparent and the least corrupt country in the world. In its submission it referred to the Transparency International ranking which puts New Zealand as the least corrupt country in the world. It believes that this bill would in fact compromise that position and goes on to make a very important point: “The Bill splits possession and control awarding possession of Archives to the DIA while the CA retains control.” 
That creates a real conflict of interest I believe. It creates a conflict of interest between the powers that flow from possession—that is holding it—and the Chief Archivist acting on the basis of control rights. If we have an archivist at the third tier of any bureaucracy there is absolutely no way that that person can stand up and independently argue the case to keep that information independent as it should be. I just cannot believe that the Minister can honestly stand up and say that this legislation will move Archives New Zealand forward in New Zealand; indeed it is moving it backwards. 
When we come to the rationale of why we are here debating this bill under urgency on a Saturday afternoon at 2.25 again the Minister comes up with no real or good reason for why we are here except for technology and technological changes. I have been told that the servers and the computing capacity that are under the control of the Department of Internal Affairs are actually at maximum now. We will be bolting on to that the library and the archives in totally different formats.