Hipkins Chris: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2015/16Text is subject to correctionHipkins Chris: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2015/16[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3078. Text is subject to correction.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):It is a great pleasure to speak on this particular topic. I certainly want to endorse the additional funding that is being provided for the Office of the Auditor-General and for the Office of the Ombudsmen. We certainly see the important constitutional role that those bodies play. Of course we see the important role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment as well although there is no additional funding in this particular allocation going to that body.I want to talk particularly about the additional funding for the Office of the Ombudsmen and I want to express some concern about the pressure that that office has been under and the fact that the additional appropriation being granted to it today is not going to deal with that issue. It is significantly less I understand than it asked for and it is going to continue to fall further behind. Page 14 of the report of the Officers of Parliament Committee indicates that an additional $340000 has been allocated to the Ombudsman for its complaints and investigations. That simply is not enough. There are months and months and months’ worth of delays for the investigation of complaints by the Ombudsman. A large chunk of those relate to the application of the Official Information Act. There is a significant body of complaints regarding the situation in Christchurch following the earthquakes. These complaints all deserve to be thoroughly investigated and they will not be thoroughly investigated unless the appropriation for the Office of the Ombudsmen is increased significantly more than this particular recommendation.The Ombudsman’s role is so important. It is the watchdog for public accountability in New Zealand and if it is not adequately resourced to do that job then there really is nowhere else to turn. The Official Information Act in New Zealand is a constitutional instrument. It is at the very heart of the notion of open government and it is the Office of the Ombudsmen that can investigate the flouting of legislation.It is no wonder given the massive backlog of complaints regarding the Official Information Act that the Office of the Ombudsmen is currently dealing with that there are Ministers in the Government including the Prime Minister who simply openly admit they do not comply with the law; they do not comply with the Official Information Act. One of the reasons they are so happy to openly admit that is that they know there is no way they are going to be held to account for it. The Ombudsman simply does not have the resources at its disposal to adequately investigate all of the complaints. By the time those complaints are investigated months if not years may have gone by and there is simply no scope for justice to be done.When the Prime Minister stands up and says “Well we release information under the OIA when it’s convenient to us.” that may be a year after someone has asked for it. If the Office of the Ombudsmen does not have the power to step in and do something about that—well it does have the power to step in and do something about it but if it does not have the resources to step in and do something about it then there is never going to be any accountability. The Government will never be held to account for that abuse of power and that is an abuse of the powerful position it holds.We have an Official Information Act and an Office of the Ombudsmen to prevent the abuse of ministerial power and if one is not being applied and the other is not being resourced then we may as well not have them. I am certainly not advocating that we not have them; I think they are very important. I want to give some examples of what this means in context. This Government has simply locked down the flow of all information when it comes to Government activity. We have a variety of ways as members of Parliament to seek information. We can seek information through the parliamentary process through written questions.I will give an example of an issue that I have just recently encountered. I asked for information in a written question. The Minister replied to the written question saying that the answer is on some website somewhere. I went to that website and there was information that was similar but it was not the information I had asked for. The only course of action I have once I have exhausted the ability to go through the parliamentary process is to lodge an Official Information Act request.The reality of that under this Government is that we are looking at 6 months to a year before I even get a decent reply to it. So I get a reply back from the Government a reply that probably does not answer the question I then complain to the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman then rings up and says: “It’s in the pile and we’ll get to it when we possibly can.” But the reality is that it simply does not have the resources to do that. It could be months if not years before it finally does. Then at the end of all that if it upholds my request and says that yes I should have been given that information under the Official Information Act in the first place quite often—more often than not—it is too late. The issue has well passed and the information is nowhere near as useful as it would have been. That is why resourcing the Ombudsman is so vitally important.I say to the members opposite that what goes around comes around. Labour members have sat over there on the Government side and many of those Government members have sat over here and been on the receiving end of it. I have to say that one day—and I hope it will be in 2017—what goes around will come around and they will find themselves here. If the Ombudsman has not been adequately resourced they will encounter the same issues. It is not good for the democratic process. It is simply not good for the democratic process for the Government to be so locked down and so withholding of information that it does not allow the effective functioning of the democratic process and the accountability that the Government should be subject to. The Office of the Ombudsmen is being choked. The watchdog is being choked and our democratic system is in peril because of that. This may sound all very lofty and worthy and so on but it is important. It is vitally important.Let me give you a very specific and practical example. In the case of Hutt Valley High School almost every education agency that investigated it failed to address what was a significant bullying issue amongst the student population there. It was when parents complained to the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman investigated that something finally happened and something was finally done. It took the Ombudsman who is not in any way connected to the education system to investigate the matter to bring it out in the open and to finally get it dealt with. It was an absolute scandal but it has been dealt with. The Ombudsman deserves an absolute pat on the back for that because it was a vitally important service.Let us take for example the issue of charter schools. We debated that when the bill promoting charter schools was before the House. Charter schools are specifically excluded from the coverage of the Ombudsman but the one thing the Ombudsman can do is ensure that the information held by the Government on the operation of those charter schools is being released. It can ensure that there is at least some public accountability by ensuring that the Official Information Act is being adhered to. The reality is that it is not. The Government knows that it can simply sit on that information and not release it and it knows there is not going to be a sanction because by the time the Ombudsman gets around to it—because of lack of resourcing—any issues will have passed.We have got a situation with one charter school and I referred to it in question time today. The school has been in operation for nearly a year and a half now—we are well through term 2—and there are massive concerns about it. Yet reports that the Minister has received on it are not being released under the Official Information Act despite the fact that people have asked for them. The Government is wilfully flouting the law. There is no accountability. There is no ability to hold the Government to account for the decisions it has made and there is no sanction because the Ombudsman does not have the resourcing to cover that.The Office of the Auditor-General performs a very similar role and from what I understand is being resourced sufficiently to do the job it is asked to. The Office of the Auditor-General looks particularly at the expenditure of public funding. I think it is an indictment on us that we ensure that an office is sufficiently resourced when it is dealing with money while the Office of the Ombudsman dealing with people is not sufficiently resourced. We should place just as much emphasis on the roles of the Ombudsmen who deal predominantly with people and the actions of people and Government entities as we do when it comes to the role of the Office of the Auditor-General and holding the Government to account for the expenditure of taxpayer funding.So those are I think very important issues that I would like to see this House address. They are not going to be addressed in this appropriation. We do as I said welcome the additional funding that is being allocated but we will be pushing over the next year to ensure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is well resourced so that when National members find themselves sitting over here in 2017 they actually have an Office of the Ombudsmen that can perform its role in a democratic society as it should. It cannot at the moment and the fact that the current Government is content to let that situation rest is an indictment on the level to which it has become comfortable with the power that it currently holds and the level of arrogance quite frankly that it has in not allowing the Office of the Ombudsmen to do its job properly.These guys over there think that they are entitled to be there and that they should not have to answer to anybody for the decisions they make. They should. That is what democracy is about. They are absolutely I guess flipping the bird to the democratic process when they ensure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is so starved of resources that it cannot do its job properly.