Seymour David: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionSeymour David: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11848. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I thank the member who just resumed her seat Eugenie Sage for setting a new standard in the scope of this debate which of course I will not seek to reach because I respect your rulings Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member must not mislead the Committee.DAVID SEYMOUR: I want to touch on Supplementary Order Paper 181 because—as I was working towards in my speech—it is an important part of the story of how this bill got here. It has been helpfully alluded to by the member who just resumed her seat that Part 4 in this particular bill does actually change—oh sorry section 4 does actually—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Clause 4.DAVID SEYMOUR: Clause 4 does significantly change the role of parliamentary under-secretaries. Once you are prepared to open up that distinction then I think it is worth asking whether this is the right way to do it. This House has limited time. There are limited resources for transferring information within Government. How do we find the optimal level of transparency across Government given those constraints?It seems to me that the Law Commission did in fact make a very very helpful contribution in its 2012 report on the public’s right to know when it advocated not only that the Official Information Act be extended—as it has been in clause 4 of this bill—but that it be extended much much wider. Of course the principles on which the commission drew in making those recommendations are the same principles that clause 4 in this bill purports to be based upon. It recommended for instance that the Office of the Ombudsman should also have the Official Information Act extended to it. I support that and I will mention in passing a Supplementary Order Paper that has been ruled out of order that actually would have made that change.The Law Commission—showing neither fear nor favour for its own profession—also recommended that the judiciary has the Official Information Act applied to it.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): All right. Do I need to tell the member?DAVID SEYMOUR: No no. I have got the message.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Right. Well the member will now come back to the bill.DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you Mr Chair. As we can see there is a theme here: by excluding a number of other possibilities this bill has been very narrow in scope. It also tells us something about the motivations of the member in charge of the bill. I think that the people at home will often judge politicians by their motivations and they might wonder why Mr Rurawhe has brought any of these four clauses including clause 4 to this Committee. The fact that he has been so unwilling to follow the Law Commission’s very sensible recommendations and has included only parliamentary under-secretaries in clause 4 is one of the reasons I find it so difficult to support clause 4.I think people at home will be wondering why—if he was really committed to the public’s right to know—Adrian Rurawhe drafted a clause that was so limited in its scope when other credible sources say that there are so many other aspects of government that might have been included in that clause. That is why I find it so difficult to support clause 4 and it is why people at home might be wondering why Mr Rurawhe drafted such a narrow clause. Perhaps if we are very lucky Mr Rurawhe will actually stand up and give the Committee his explanation of precisely why that is.I think it actually is worth mentioning that on several occasions in the recent past a member has left this Parliament because of prosecutions brought in the court system presided over by the judiciary where they were ultimately exonerated in court but none the less lost their career. I think that if we are prepared in clause 4 to extend the Official Information Act to parliamentary under-secretaries and if the judiciary is also being seen to have so much influence on the proceedings in this House and actually change the balance of the House at different times—