Hayes John: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHayes John: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11218. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa):I support this bill the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill and want to thank colleagues across the Chamber for their support and for very sensibly contributing to the select committee process which sees the result here in this House today. I would say to the people of New Zealand who might have been listening to the last speaker Denise Roche this afternoon that if in the next election you are looking for a very left-wing Government you will have heard a speaker who alluded to the sort of New Zealand those members would construct if they ever were to get a chance at power in this country.I speak as a former public servant. We have had in this country for more than 100 years a very professional Public Service and the Government wants to strengthen the legislative framework so that all New Zealanders benefit from a public sector that is oriented to delivering results. It is very tempting—and I saw it in a meeting in my electorate this week—for a bunch of different Government agencies to all work in their own silos and they are not all that interested about coming and working together. So the purpose of this bill is to ensure that the benefits of wider changes to the public sector become apparent. We want to see more New Zealanders satisfied with our public services. We want them to be satisfied with the front-line public services that they receive and surveys are indicating that they are moving into that space.Another point that I would like to make in the wake of the last speaker is just to make sure that that speaker understands that we now have more women—significantly more women—in leadership roles in the public sector. At just over 42 percent we now have the highest percentage of women in senior leadership positions in the 13 years since the Human Resources Capability Survey of the Public Service departments began—42 percent the highest ever.Can I just very quickly touch on another point that came up from the last speaker which was around the question of provisions in this legislation for redundancy. I think that if you start from the point of asking yourself where the Government’s money comes from—out of people’s pockets—then how is it possible to look a taxpayer in the eye a taxpayer who contributes their taxes to the Government and say: “Look you’ve gone from this department and you were made redundant but you’re going to go to that department the next day and you should be entitled to redundancy.”? You cannot find one person paying taxes in this country who thinks that that is sensible and that is the arrangement that the Green Party would like to see.So it seems to me that a key provision of this bill is very important because it relates to civil servants who are made redundant but who have a new State sector job to go to.Those people will not be able to get a redundancy payout. The criteria for not getting a redundancy payment are if the civil servant starts working the next day or even before their current employment contract ends is treated as undertaking a continuation of service within the Public Service is substantially in the same general locality or within a reasonable commuting distance of the last job or has a collective package of terms and conditions that are no less favourable than those that apply to their current position. I think it is essential to note in this process that not every single term or condition in the new job has to be the same for that situation to arise.I think this is a very good bill. It has broad support across Parliament particularly in our Finance and Expenditure Committee and I commend it to the House.