Dalziel Lianne: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — Second Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — Second Reading 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am very grateful to my colleague David Cunliffe for taking the first call on the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill due to the fact that I was attending a dinner in the room next door and unfortunately did not get the message in time to bring my notes down to the House. I would normally lead in this debate on the basis that I sat on the Commerce Committee and in fact I chair the select committee that heard the submissions on this bill. 
I think that the bill has been improved by the work that we have done on the committee. But I place on record my absolute 100 percent support for what my colleague David Cunliffe said and I made Labour’s position absolutely clear at the select committee which is that we want a Productivity Commission that successive Governments can support—we want that. We are in a better position to achieve that but it can be abused. That will be largely dependent on whether the Government of the day and currently that is the National Government is prepared to use the Productivity Commission that is established by this legislation in the way that it is intended. I think the select committee has given a very good steer about how we want that to occur. 
I make one preliminary point: there were 13 submissions received on this bill—just 13. We have just heard the previous speaker Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga say that this bill was the most important legislation that we have had before the House for some time and he was overplaying the significance of it. I am a huge supporter of the concept of a Productivity Commission. It is something that I used to muse about when I was Minister of Commerce having a joint Australia - New Zealand Productivity Commission so impressed was I with Gary Banks who has been referred to as the chair of the Australian Productivity Commission and indeed the commission itself. The work that the commission does has integrity it has status and it has incredible levels of buy-in across the whole of Australia within its states across Government and across the non-governmental sector as well. It has developed a way of consulting that I believe we could learn from and that I hope is implemented by this bill. 
But 13 submissions! What on earth is going on when only 13 organisations bother to put pen to paper to say they either support or reject elements of this bill? I was extremely disappointed that Business New Zealand did not even make an oral submission in support of its written submission. In fact I had spoken to the committee clerk and asked to allow for half an hour for two of the most important submissions. I wanted half an hour for the Business New Zealand submission in order to hear it in detail and really tease out the important things. We had room to move with only 13 submissions received; only seven submitters wanted to be heard. So I said that I would like the other half-hour slot to go to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions had been working on productivity in a very unified and collaborative manner with the previous Labour Government. So I felt that that would be a really good way to test a number of these issues and really tease out whether there were any differences and what points and commonality there would be. I felt on this issue that there would be more in common than there would be opposed. 
Business New Zealand did not even bother making an oral submission in support of its written submission and I was disappointed in that. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions did come and it presented a very in-depth submission. It then provided the committee with some follow-up material on all the work that it had been doing on the development of productivity. It focused on one element of productivity which was labour market productivity. But the point that it made to the select committee was that if we were to list some elements of productivity how can we leave that out? How can we have one thing but not the other? So that is why we took out the references to the specific elements of productivity that had been included in the previous functions of the commission. So the whole focus on reviewing existing regulatory regimes and agencies including their efficiency and effectiveness and undertaking regulatory impact analyses of specified regulatory proposals is all gone. The reason it is gone is that there is no need to limit how we view productivity in this way. 
The other significant change that we made was to the purpose of the commission. So the purpose of the commission originally read: “The principal purpose of the Commission is to provide advice to the Government on improving productivity in a way that is directed to supporting the overall well-being of New Zealanders.” We have now added the words “… having regard to a wide range of communities of interest and population groups in New Zealand society.” Unless we take that broader view of productivity we will be stuck in a very narrow frame probably one promoted by a former leader of the National Opposition as he then was Dr Don Brash who is now leading the 2025 Taskforce. I noticed that his productivity was so good that he spent his entire 3-year salary budget in 1 year. So that is productivity from that field. The Council of Trade Unions made some extremely good points because it was prepared to walk the talk. It was actively involved with the previous Government over the development of productivity. 
I will spend a bit of time talking about the hearing of evidence in relation to the Australian Productivity Commission and I place on record our select committee’s gratitude to Gary Banks for agreeing to travel over from Australia to present to us. We had two meetings with him one in the public arena and then he spoke with us privately. In terms of the private one it probably added more flesh to the detail rather than to the bones which were clearly stated in the public session. So I will talk a little bit about what the relationship between the Australian Productivity Commission and the New Zealand Productivity Commission will be. Gary Banks made very clear that his organisation would do what it could for the New Zealand Productivity Commission once it is created to cooperate with it and assist it in various ways. That is an offer we must accept because the two productivity commissions working collaboratively will strengthen the capacity for an overall lift in productivity on both sides of the Tasman. 
What I thought was very interesting because we have been very much of the view that we want to match as far as we can the Australian Productivity Commission was when Gary Banks gave the select committee a summary of where the commission had come from. It evolved from a long line of institutions going back a long way—indeed going back to 1922 with the Tariff Board which is where the industry focus came from in Australia’s legislation. The summary then talked about the modern form of the organisation created under the Whitlam Government in 1973 with two further incarnations since the Industry Commission following the Industries Assistance Commission and then the Productivity Commission following the Industry Commission. 
The changes that he identified had occurred under both Labor and Liberal-National administrations in Australia so the organisation has bipartisan support. He did say that in its earlier history there was often a little bit of tension periodically about the organisation given the nature of its role. 
The process the Australian Productivity Commission uses is simply this: it undertakes its first level of submissions on the original report it produces a draft report and then the commission hears submissions on the draft report. That is the strength of Australia’s organisation. Gary Banks said that the Government can sit back and watch how the politics play out when the commission’s draft proposals are debated in public. But that is a real strength because everyone knows what the debate is about at that point and as a result the commission has a high degree of credibility. The result is in the decisions that the successive Governments take on the recommendations of the reports. 
I am pleased that as a select committee we were able to make significant changes to the bill. On that basis Labour will be supporting its passage through the House.