Seymour David: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7251. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I would like to thank the member Adrian Rurawhe for giving me this opportunity by bringing this bill. I felt a little bit bad over the weekend because I said on the radio that it was evident that the member had brought a bill that he did not understand had not written himself and had probably been allocated out of the Labour caucus ballot. I still feel bad but I now know from his speech that it was absolutely correct. You could see him reading away bumbling through his notes.I also saw one other thing in that speech—actually let me come back a second. I want to pay a compliment to Sarah Dowie who made an excellently set-out speech. She logically laid out the argument and the facts and was not the Opposition rude when it was vexed by the force of Sarah Dowie’s argument?But coming back to the bill I felt a bit bad but maybe I should not have because I also noticed something about this bill which is that it is indeed a stunt bill. I was flattered perhaps to star in most of Adrian Rurawhe’s speech. This is a bill entirely designed to target a particular member—strangely enough me. You have to ask yourself why did the Labour Government not change the law when Dover Samuels was a parliamentary under-secretary back in 2005? I have got a few theories about why that might be. It might be because Labour actually understands the Official Information Act quite well. It might be that it understands the Official Information Act quite well because most of its front bench were in Parliament in 1982 when the Act was originally passed. It might also be that Labour understands how this actually operates. It is in the Constitution Act which almost all of the Labour caucus were here to pass.Parliamentary under-secretaries derive their power entirely from Ministers. They do not have decision-making powers.The Labour Party probably understands that the purpose of the Official Information Act is to allow citizens and the House of Representatives to keep an eye on the executive to understand how it makes its decisions and why and what those decisions are. If any member of this House or the public wants to know about policies where I have assigned responsibility from the Minister they need only go to the Minister for the official information because the Minister makes the final decision and the Minister has all of the official information.This bill is redundant. It is only useful as a stunt by the Labour Party and have we not seen the hypocrisy of it coming out because of course Labour itself did not act when it had parliamentary under-secretaries in Helen Clark’s time.Finally can I suggest that in the law and public policy that Adrian Rurawhe was so keen to quote the exercise of the law should be proportional. What that means is that in order to achieve its purpose which is to allow citizens to hold the Government to account the law should use only the amount of inconvenience and effort required to achieve that. We have already established that it is possible to hold the executive to account and to understand its decisions by making an Official Information Act request to the Minister responsible. What extra benefit would there be from placing an additional burden on parliamentary under-secretaries to comply with the Official Information Act?Denis O’Rourke: What harm would there be?DAVID SEYMOUR: And what harm would there be? I am hearing this from the old man in the corner. Let me tell him what harm there would be. The harm would be that he would be the first person to stand up when parliamentary under-secretaries in this Government or in any other requested additional funding and resources to comply with Official Information Act requests—that is what would be required.So I will conclude by saying that this bill is a political stunt. It is sad for the quality of debate on public policy in this House that it is the second Labour stunt bill that has come up today. It is a stunt bill because it does not achieve any of the purposes for which it is required. All it does is attempt to attack me and although I am a little bit flattered I cannot support the bill.Finally the law in achieving its objectives should be proportional and would be a disproportionate application of the law to apply the Official Information Act requests to parliamentary under-secretaries. When Labour wrote the Constitution Act of 1986 when it had intellectual giants like Sir Geoffrey Palmer—unlike today—Labour got it right. Even when the Muldoon Government introduced the Official Information Act in 1982 it actually got it right. So those laws will stand tonight because my colleagues on this side of the House and I will be opposing this silly vexatious stunt bill. Thank you.