Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this legislation. I acknowledge the Minister Chris Hipkins who's done a good job to get it to this point in the House and the team behind it. It's always interesting to follow the member Ian McKelvie in his contributions. I think he's quite an erudite member and brings down that real home experience to the debates in Parliament. I guess two reflections: I found it quite interesting the diversity of interactions that say someone in Taumarunui would have to have with New Plymouth and Palmerston North and a host of other centres. You wouldn't design a system like that would you? But that's the system we have today. Also his reflection around the interface of backbench members with the public sector. Now it's been one of I think the privileges of the Green Party in our first opportunity to be in Government to actually work much more closely with the public sector and public servants. I wonder if this is an opportunity for the House to actually encourage members of Opposition parties who haven't had the privilege to be a Minister to have more ability to interface with who I believe—and I echo the sentiments of other members in the House—are incredibly dedicated hard-working individuals. The old Roger Hall Glide Time cliché is well left in the past. These are high-quality public servants with the national interest at heart. Instead of just the two maybe interactions a year in select committee with annual reviews or potentially Estimates I think we should encourage that because these are the Ministers who will be working with them in the future. I'd like to acknowledge the public servants in New Zealand. My father worked for the IRD for many many years so I saw it from that perspective. He always had the joke It was a taxing job" which he used at every single barbecue and Christmas. Now he alongside his colleagues worked incredibly hard but his career with IRD was in the wake of the big reforms of the 1980s and of course our State Sector Act dates from 1988. I was seven years old at the time. This is something that is high due for reform and modernisation. This I think you can quite easily say is one of the largest reforms to the public sector in New Zealand's history and I think it should be commended for its scope for the scale and for the intentions behind it. Every single issue that we have in New Zealand be it swimmable rivers or climate change or transport or housing has a Public Service dimension and New Zealanders have to interface with the public sector many times across their lifetime so we want to have a service which lives up to the high-quality expectations of New Zealanders. If we're going to tackle some of these long-term systemic problems we need a high-performing agile innovative public sector.Three areas I'd like to touch on in particular. The first I guess is the structural and while acknowledging this isn't the most sexiest topic to be discussing it is the foundation of a well-functioning democracy. I think many of our positive attributes as a country—and many other countries do look at New Zealand with a jealous eye—have come down to the Public Service the apolitical nature of them the fact of our low levels of corruption high levels of integrity; again not the sexiest topics to be debating but fundamental for a functioning society. It's something I've only really appreciated with the privilege of being an MP and interacting with so many people across my career. So establishing the values the principles and the purposes of an apolitical public sector is crucial in this large legislation. Now the second major area—and this is where I think the innovative aspect comes in—is changing the way that the 1988 Act provided for Government structures. Now by allowing departments that was very much par for the course with governance thinking of that time. However what we've wanted and the public have demanded is the ability for the Public Service and the Government not to think in silos not to just think of something as a discrete box that maybe on the margins interacts with other areas of Government department; they just want to see joined-up thinking. They don't care about the structure of the body providing the advice or the service. They just want to make sure there's good advice or a good service being provided. So the ability to reform this to add other structural categories from interdepartmental executive boards to bring those heads together through interdepartmental ventures to actually deliver those services I think is a positive innovation. I wasn't aware that the 1988 legislation was silent on the Treaty of Waitangi. I think that shows the date and the genesis of that legislation. So I'm glad that is being included in this new legislation at the moment. From a Green Party perspective you know it's something we've really urged Parliament to consider actually taking that further so that this legislation actually gives effect to the Treaty of Waitangi our foundational document the heart of our modern constitutional relationship. So that's something we'd like to see strengthened.Now this is the point where the public gets their say. I note it is a shortened select committee but I do urge the public to have their say because everything they care about—from rivers to transport to roads to climate change to jobs—has an impact on this legislation. So please I urge them to have their say. Kia ora koutou."