Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well that's us being thoroughly lectured to by the good doctor Deborah Russell. Like her I was actually offered a role in Audit New Zealand as it was known then in the mid-1990s and rather pertinently I turned it down to work for a KPMG associate in Dunedin. Not because of the money—in fact I think the starting salary at Audit New Zealand was higher than the KPMG salary—but because of the variety of work and the opportunities for progression.But I do agree that the integrity and probity of our public spending and of the public accounts that are produced is absolutely fundamental to the reputation New Zealand has for good governance. And frankly this bill significantly undermines that confidence and that integrity. But my my aren't the chickens coming home to roost? Because this Government—not only is Dr Russell a good lecturer but this Government has been lecturing to businesses for 3½ years about how they should fix their own houses. When they came to the Ministers of immigration and said Try as we might we cannot find the staff we need" the doors were closed on them—and that was before COVID. But now the Government has a problem and it finds itself a solution. It has a problem with teachers so it just mandates that 300 teachers can come through the border when every other company that's not Government-owned is having to just suck it up and as so many Ministers of the Crown have said pay more.Then when they get a problem identified by the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) that they cannot meet their legislative obligations: "But that's OK we'll give them a pass we'll come to this Parliament bypass that pesky democracy thing." like having a reasonable exposure draft and a select committee process and use the weight of their numbers to ram through a piece of legislation that undermines confidence in our public accounts. And the Government wonders why we don't support this. It's frustrated that we don't think this is a good idea. Well they better lock themselves in for a long evening and an early morning start because there's a lot to be said about this and a lot to be unpacked.I agree with Dr Russell—the Auditor-General office is an independent Officer of Parliament but they're not independent of the law and they're not independent of the need to come to Parliament to have their funding appropriated. It is true that auditors I understand who are employed by the Office of the Auditor-General are paid less on average and that they are vulnerable to being picked off by accounting firms here in New Zealand but those same accounting firms are under the same sort of salary pressure because Australian firms are picking them off. It's a vicious cycle that frankly the Government should fix. They've told businesses for 3½ years that if there's supply side problems meet the market. When there's a shortage of supply what happens? Fourth form economics says the price goes up. That's what they've told businesses for 3½ years. But apparently what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. The Government just says "No no we're not going to do that; we're just going to legislate softer public accounting processes." And they wonder why we oppose that. That's one of the first questions in this debate and throughout the evening that we've got to be examining. We found out about this what Mr Bayly last Thursday last Friday? When did the Minister or the Speaker who is responsible for the appropriation for the independent Offices of Parliament first find out that this was an issue? And why didn't they say anything about that? We've just gone through a whole Budget process. There was an Estimates review. Yes look I preface this comment with an agreement with Mr Robertson Mr Bayly and Dr Russell: I have the highest regard for the Office of the Auditor-General and for Mr Ryan but we've got to know more about when this was first raised. Why was this not made aware to the Governance and Administration Committee when they reviewed the Budget Estimates? Was a Budget bid put in for an increased appropriation in order that Mr Ryan could meet the market and save not lose some of the 27 auditors that over the last year or so he has lost? So why wasn't this raised? Was the Budget bid put in? Was it turned down by the Government?I also want to know what the Auditor-General's priorities are now. The Finance and Expenditure Committee considered this document only this morning and we haven't yet reported back to the House but the report is a public document and it is the annual plan of the Office of the Auditor-General for 2021/22. It sets out a number of projects processes things that it wants to investigate that aren't core business I would suggest. I'll go through this list—I'm not ranking them but this is where the Auditor-General wants to work in 2021: "Improving outcomes for Māori; reducing family violence; improving housing outcomes; improving education outcomes; improving health outcomes; implementing the well-being agenda; resilience and climate change; integrity in the public sector; processes underpinning significant Government investments"—all good things. But first things first: the first role of the Office of the Auditor-General is to audit the accounts of Government and its entities. So my question and we have no answer to these questions either in the communication from the Minister the Auditor-General the legislative statement or this skinny-as-all-hell departmental disclosure statement—David Seymour: You should get the A-G to investigate it!Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —is how are these plans going to change as a consequence? It's a very good suggestion Mr Seymour: get the OAG to investigate it. But this just shows how we are becoming unhooked from the first principle and the first priority of the office and that is to audit the integrity the truth and the fairness of the Crown accounts. That's the number one priority. And if we are going to have to defer the timetable for doing that are we deferring the other things that the Auditor-General has told the committee and the public that he wants to do this year? No answers to those questions. I hope through this long debate we can glean them out. The obvious question actually is why does the bill go broader than the Office of the Auditor-General has asked for? The Minister has told us that there are certain entities that will stick to the four-month reporting time frame and there are other organisations that will get a two-month extension from these current statutory obligations by an amendment to the Crown Entities Act and the Local Government Act. The Auditor-General has told us that he's going to look at the big material entities and do them within the statutory time frame. But the smaller DHBs the smaller council-controlled organisations (CCOs) other Crown entities that aren't as material will be subject to that extension of time. That's not what the bill says. The bill gives a pass for two months for all of those Crown entities and all of those local councils and their CCOs. So the bill does not line up with the policy intent. I'll be having more to say about that as will Mr Bayly and my colleagues throughout this debate.The last thing I want to just mention in this first reading is the Minister's reference to the Financial Markets Authority and the fact that they have given some businesses a pass. Well they did that last year for COVID that's true. And they did it again just last month but they did it for one month for one reporting period. This bill doubles that. It gives it for two months for two years. So what the Minister is saying is that this problem that we only found out about four days ago—they're giving themselves two years to fix it. Well I'm sorry that's not good enough. The public scrutiny and the integrity of Crown accounts deserves a much more proactive response. So again we will be examining this bill from the point of view of why is it so broad and why is it in for so long. There are a heck of a lot of other questions and for the Minister and his colleagues to say "Oh this is just a simple tidy-up short-term issue" on the very thing that underpins the confidence that the public should have in the probity of our spending of their money I think speaks volumes to this Government."