Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Chairperson of the Government Administration Committee): Kia ora e Te Heamana. It is a great pleasure for me as chair of the Government Administration Committee to take the first call in this part of the debate. To save Mr Scott getting anxious about the Chairperson's preference; it was entirely just going by the rules rather than the quality of the contribution—Alastair Scott: That's right; it must have been. You put your foot in that—right in the mouth.Hon RUTH DYSON: —although he may have done the same had he judged it on that basis. You never know; we will wait for your contribution and make a decision for ourselves. This is a combination of two committees: the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the Government Administration Committee. Even though our committee had about six votes Estimates referred to it this year with a Minister only two of them are covered in this particular segment—the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and State Services. So I want to dwell on those two votes out of this big long list because they are the ones that come under my committee. When we had the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet before the committee there was a huge variety of issues that we could have raised with it but our committee concentrated primarily on the responsibility of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to oversee the Canterbury earthquake recovery portfolio. One of the two issues that I want to talk about in this regard was the fact that it was very clear from the officials' response to the committee that they share the concerns of Treasury about the risks that are entailed in the Government investment projects the constant delay in those projects and lack of reporting around them. It was reassuring to the committee that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet said: Treasury has raised these major concerns and we share them." We felt that we were at last getting some accountability for the delays the budget blowouts—the broken promises really that people in Canterbury have felt in relation to anchor projects particularly. The second point that I want to raise in that regard is around the convention centre. We had the hearing for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on Wednesday 29 June. We were told that negotiations with the private partners in the convention centre particularly with Plenary Conventions were ongoing and the officials could not share with the committee how they were developing and when we were likely to get an announcement. Within hours—literally; before that day was ended in this Parliament—there was an announcement made that Plenary had pulled out of the discussions.Our committee felt quite cheated actually by that. Here we were with our one point of accountability with the Minister and the department being told that the discussions were ongoing and that they could not share details with us but you know "Hang fire there will be an announcement soon." and later that same day the announcement was made that the negotiations had broken down. I do not think it is credible for this Parliament to believe that the officials were unaware of that situation when they came before it. So I was pretty frustrated at that. The other vote that I would like to just comment on is Vote State Services. It was pretty depressing listening to the story from State Services. It seems like every key Government department and agency has had budget withdrawn and is running down services as a result of that. The Government is looking at every opportunity to increase privatisation. What has it learnt from getting Serco in to run the private prisons? Not a lot by the sound of it: "Anything that moves could be privatised and if it doesn't move let's kick it so it does and then we can privatise it." It is a very narrow ideological attitude and it will not deliver the high-quality public services that New Zealanders expect and in my view deserve. Just this week we had the collapse of the latest brainwave. Why the Minister thought that social bonds which have failed in every other country would succeed in New Zealand—it seems to be a trait of that Minister. It is a case of: "Let's just pick up whatever loopy idea is going and try it out as if New Zealand is good as a guinea pig." So another part-privatisation venture has failed. The reforms of Child Youth and Family are another huge initiative that does not give anybody any confidence in transition planning or maintaining the level of services that we have got let alone filling the gap. Our committee had an interesting time with those two votes those two Estimates but overall I think it was quite depressing."