Tisch Lindsay: Offices of Parliament—Address to Governor-General 
Tisch Lindsay: Offices of Parliament—Address to Governor-General 
[Volume:625;Page:20178] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 National will be supporting this motion. I was on the Officers of Parliament Committee that looked very closely at the appropriations. There are just a couple of points I want to make concerning this report. 
Firstly I draw the House’s attention to the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General’s proposed retirement plan. The retirement plan was based on the 2004-05 Budget round submission in which the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General indicated it was investigating its eligibility to be part of the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme. Circumstances prevented the office from becoming a member of the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme so a separate retirement savings plan was created in September 2004. This plan replicates with two minor exceptions the terms and conditions of the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme. 
Those exceptions were firstly that members of the current Government Superannuation Fund scheme are entitled to join the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General’s plan but would not be eligible under the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme. Secondly the scheme does not create any obligation on the office to increase the employer’s contribution beyond the initial 1.5 percent. The State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme commits all member employer organisations to increasing their contribution in line with the overall scheme. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General cannot make such a commitment as Audit New Zealand is required to fund its employer contribution from fee recoveries. Any increased contribution across the whole of the office including Audit New Zealand can be considered only in light of its ongoing and sustainable affordability. That was the case that the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General put up. 
Our committee disagreed with that and said that there was no foundation for it and that the funding provided for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General’s retirement plan should reflect the funding that would be available under the State sector scheme. It was very clear that we disagreed with the case put up by the office. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General is entitled to depart from the policy of the State sector scheme. We considered that the cost of doing so should be met from existing funding and should not be treated separately. So we recommended an appropriation of $97000 GST inclusive for 2004-05 and the out-years to fund provision of the office’s retirement plan to all employees except those who are members of the Government Superannuation Fund. That was where we departed from what the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General asked for at the time. 
I also bring the House’s attention to the Office of the Ombudsmen because there was much discussion about what was happening about the office’s prison investigation support. If we look at the background of the prison complaint investigation support we see that in 1995 the office was resourced for three full-time prison investigators to enable it to undertake more focused work dealing with prison complaints and incidents in custody such as deaths and specific concerns from inmates. Then a regular plan of prison visits was instigated where each institution is visited on average nine times each year to supplement direct demands from inmates in the specific inmate-related incidents in penal institutions. Since then we have seen a huge increase in the demand from prison inmates for such a service. In the report from the Office of the Ombudsmen it is noted that the number of complaints received from inmates has increased significantly from 760 in 1994 to 2598 in the year ended 30 June 2004. That is an average of 866 per prison investigator. Those numbers are conservative as all telephone inquiries of complaints are not recorded. So there has been a huge increase in prison complaints and the office is expected to provide a service for dealing with them. 
The issues one needs to consider are that prison investigators are specialists in their particular field that their workload is both high and demanding in the number of complaints required to be actioned and that they have considerable and growing work stress relating to the constant need to deal with many difficult and very often unreasonable individuals. There are some pretty substantive statistics to show which prisons the complaints to the Office of the Ombudsmen are coming from. Where we are seeing a huge increase in prison complaints the question has to be asked whether the Office of the Ombudsmen should be handling them? There was a view within the committee that the Department of Corrections should be looking at those complaints. We do not know the nature of the complaints but the demand on the Office of the Ombudsmen is increasing because it is a facility available to the inmates. We ask whether the Department of Corrections should not have some responsibility for dealing with those areas. 
Another issue the office raised was that it also carries out two visits to each of the 40 tertiary institutions throughout the country. So that once again is a demand on the office. There is also an increase in parliamentary requests. As we move into election mode there is an increasing demand from various political parties—all political parties no doubt—and they will be seeking extra support from the office with regards to information they require. 
Finally I will move to the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. One of the areas that we found quite strange was that the office was doing report reprints and was asking for a one-off appropriation of $67000 with GST inclusive for the year 2004-05 to meet the costs of additional print reruns. The question that comes out of this is why it is not user-pays. If someone wants a report after the initial runs are done why should there not be a user-pays system in place whereby money can be sourced in that area? 
The other interesting point is the increased baseline funding of $400000 that has been recommended. The increased funding should allow the office to expand its capacity to address Resource Management Act issues which have been increasing over the period of time as well. Last year the office had 150 complaints under the Resource Management Act so there are some issues there. The increase in funding was recommended by the majority in Committee. National is happy to support the appropriations and the Government motion.