Mallard Trevor: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11698. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):It is my pleasure to take well three or four calls on the concluding stage of this legislation.John Hayes: Only three or four?Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Yes only three or four. One of the things that I might say I am slightly perplexed about is that we have sitting in the chair the Hon Nick Smith.Hon Ruth Dyson: Well at least he’s good compared with the others.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well I would not go that far and I do not know him that well. But we have sitting right at the back of the Chamber a newly minted Minister who chaired the Finance and Expenditure Committee and actually knows about the bill.Hon Dr Nick Smith: He’s good.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Sorry?Hon Dr Nick Smith: He’s good.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well I am told he had potential. I would have picked Sam Lotu-Iiga to become a Minister ahead of him. My understanding is that he is going to get his best publicity ever next week when he becomes the “Minister in charge of Killing Dogs So Drug Dealers Can Make Bigger Profits”. That is Todd McClay the Minister who is going to take responsibility for that going through this House with advice from a number of departments under this legislation. He is going to be the Minister who says: “We will kill dogs so that drug dealers can have bigger profits.” I know that if Sam Lotu-Iiga had been the Associate Minister of Health he would never have had a bar of that sort of policy.Hon Ruth Dyson: He’s the only one who thinks he should be Minister.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Who?Hon Ruth Dyson: Sam.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: No no. I think Sam would have been a better Minister than Todd McClay.Hon Ruth Dyson: Well that’s two of you.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well no no. That is not true. A number of the member’s colleagues tell me that they think that he would be a much better Minister for Pacific Island Affairs than for example Hekia Parata. I mean for goodness’ sake! [Interruption ] Well no I am praising the member opposite Mr Chairperson. And actually the responsibilities of a Minister of the Crown and how they are discharged are very much a part of this bill.Members opposite invited me earlier to talk to them a little bit about the divisibility of the Crown or what used to be when I was first a member of Parliament the indivisibility of the Crown. And you know it is relatively historic. It dates from the days when the Crown in the United Kingdom—probably the English Parliament at the time—was the agent for the King or the Queen on occasion. And because it was acting in the name of the monarch it could not have internal divisions. What it had to do was sort it out: “This is the Government division and that cannot be divided.” You did not have the nonsense of one Government agency suing another Government agencybecause they could not sue each other. They should not have been able to sue each other because they were a part of an undivided Crown. Obviously now with the National Government’s splits and divisions and stuff like that that doctrine has become slightly dated. I think the time of Ruth Richardson was the time when it took its biggest dive downwards.But I want to say it is relatively good that there is a tiny step back towards the concept of the Government working as a team working together and working out what is the best thing for the people of New Zealand rather than heading as it had been into the many many agencies all heading off in their own directions sometimes quite independently. I am sure all those people who have been Ministers in the past would have found agencies actually working in contradiction to each other. One of my colleagues Lianne Dalziel reminded me earlier about high and complex needs and just really the inability of the agencies to come together and to work properly as a team to get something that was logical for those young people who were really at most risk and amongst the most marginalised people in the country. The agencies could not do it.The other point that I would like to make is that sometimes some of the best policy advice does not necessarily come from the big agencies which sometimes get caught very much in their own ruts. I noticed this as the Minister of Education and the Minister for Sport and Recreation. Actually some of the best policy advice came from a tiny policy team of three four or five people because they could cut through cut to the chase work out what the issue was get the evidence and you could have evidence-based decision-making. Whereas in education especially in the early days when I was Minister there was so much long-term prejudice and not the ability not the habit of looking at the evidence. They were tied up in what had been the policy of the agency for a long time rather than working necessarily for the best for the young people of New Zealand.This State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill is a tiny step and I do not think it goes far enough. I would like to refer to new section 47(1) of the bill “Responsibilities of Commissioner”. I am now going to plead guilty as I did to the Hon Stan Rodger a month or two ago for being the Minister of State Services who abolished the senior executive service because basically it did not work. It was a very good idea as part of the original State Sector Act to build up a team of senior people who got some special training and were more available for secondment to move from one agency to another. People who were being if not targeted if not anointed chief executives of the future—John Hayes: Groomed.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Sorry?John Hayes: Groomed.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Yes well grooming is a word that has different connotations these days. I think the idea that John Hayes was grooming public servants is probably not quite the approach that is appropriate. In the old sense of the “groomed” word then certainly that was the idea—that you were building up a team of people from whom the vast majority of the future chief executives would come because the skills had been developed. Basically it did not work. It did not work because of the very narrow approach of the majority of the chief executives of the Public Service who were focused on their own agency on their own outcomes and on their own statements of intent rather than considering the good of New Zealand and the quality of the Public Service both immediately but more especially in the medium and the longer term.Clause 38 of the bill puts back on to the commissioner the responsibility for developing and implementing a strategy for senior leadership and management capability in the Public Service. But what it does not do is give the commissioner any authority to actually implement it. What it says is that if a chief executive gives theState Services Commissioner two fingers then they are allowed to get away with it. The bracketed phrase at the end of new section 47(1) “(with the agreement of the relevant chief executives)” essentially goes back to the failed senior executive service model whereby they will I am sure focus more on their own agencies rather than the overall good of the Public Service. In my view—and Todd McClay might want to take responsibility for this—there is a failure within that provision to actually achieve what is a noble objective.I think all of us now agree that we have had far too many chief executives come in from offshore who do not understand the New Zealand culture. I am not going to use Lesley Longstone as an example. I do not want to go into it in any depth. As far as that one is concerned if you are working for Hekia Parata you basically have to be a saint in order to cope. It may well be that the new chief executive is a saint and he will be able to cope or more likely actually he will be able to manage the Minister in order to achieve the outcomes that are required.