Goudie Sandra: State Sector Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: State Sector Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7321] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (NZ National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I am very pleased to speak to this part. I would like to commend my colleague Judith Collins for an exemplary speech to the Committee raising some very important points with regard to Part 1. Part 2 about reorganisation with regard to the public sector is a pretty substantial part. I would like to raise a matter that was also raised by one of the submitters to this. In mentioning the submitters my colleague Judith Collins is quite right that the public sector employees would find it very difficult to put in any form of submission protecting their interests on this bill. They would face dismissal or job placement elsewhere—maybe even legislation to move them along. 
I would like to bring the Minister’s attention to a document I have here called  
Legislative 
Change: Guidelines on Process and Content 
 revised edition. This was report No. 6 by the Legislation Advisory Committee. This document talks quite clearly about the role of transparency with regard to State sector departments. One of the things this document says is that Parliament should have to approve the addition of new departments to the list of departments scheduled to the State Sector Act 1988 as well as deletions and alterations and it also recommends that departmental statutes and related legislative provisions should not in general be enacted. 
Here we have some major concerns around the rearrangement of State sector departments. There should be public and parliamentary debate around the legislative processes to test the merits and demerits of any changes that are proposed. But this part of the bill takes all of that away. That denies the public the right to ensure that the processes and the provisions in their interests will be protected. That is absolutely wrong. They should be able to make sure that whatever has been put in place to protect the interests of the people are clear transparent and accountable. 
If we adopt the provisions in Part 2 we are shutting down that openness and that transparency and the public interest will not be well served in that regard. The recommendations come from some pretty substantial people. There is a list of the components of that committee and their recommendations should not be ignored. 
These are the guidelines that have been accepted by this Parliament. They say that the responsibility of developing legislation in accordance with the guidelines rests with the Minister. We have already seen that he has failed in a number of respects in introducing this legislation. He has failed to provide the opportunity for the Supplementary Order Paper to this amendment bill to be put before the select committee and that is a gross omission. That is an absolute failure of fiduciary duty of this Government. I note that the Hon Lianne Dalziel used that term today—fiduciary duty. Do Government members understand its use when they fail to ensure that the fiduciary duty of the Government has been followed in regard to this Supplementary Order Paper? 
I was about to tell members who made up the committee for setting the guidelines for legislative changes and those legislative changes are meant to be the responsibility of the Minister. I find it surprising that he wants to ignore these recommendations given the calibre of those who made them in the first instance: Professor F M Brookfield Mr J G Fogarty QC Mr A R Galbraith QC Mr W Iles QC CMG Sir Kenneth Keith Dr Mervyn Probine CB the Hon Mr Justice Robertson Judge D F G Sheppard Mr C J Thompson Adrienne von Tunzelmann and Rodney Harris as secretary. The calibre of those people is substantial.