Cosgrove Clayton: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11222. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):Well that was a lesson in how not to do it from that member David Bennett. No one actually knows what he said and it would be an indignity to the House to give that member more than a few seconds.The State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill is an important piece of legislation. I have got to say that the Opposition’s role is to oppose but also to propose but we are getting a little tired on this side of the House of being the guys with the shovel behind the elephant cleaning up the mess made by this crew over here. First it was the car-park tax; they botched that. I am going to pay tribute as I did in the last speech to Mr Hayes who as I have said before showed a ton of guts at the Finance and Expenditure Committee in actually saying that the Government was wrong.Hon Trevor Mallard: I thought it was Maggie Barry.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: No. Old man’s beard? No. John Hayes showed a ton of guts at the select committee in reining in his members and actually speaking out—in the privacy of the select committee with no public present of course. But none the less he opposed that. And we cleaned that up. The iPad tax the car-park tax—we cleaned them up.Now we are cleaning this up because this bill was a mess from start to finish. It took away fundamental rights—fundamental rights of employers. I will say on record and I think it is a comment that most of us across the House would agree with that we have one of the top Civil Services in the world one of the best Public Services in the world a non-corrupt Public Service highly professional. But things go wrong. People are human; mistakes are made.I want to touch on the point that Mr Parker made around what I call the John Banks clause—the immunity clause—because there is a problem. If you actually track back what this does it provides immunity in respect of a gross act of negligence if it occurs. It may be something as simple as the boss saying to the junior public servant: “Don’t do it.”—whatever it may be—“Don’t do that.” The junior not out of any maliciousness simply does it gets it wrong and acts in legal terms—Ms Barry might want to work on this one—in a grossly negligent way. So you then have a victim you then have potential injury or loss but that public servant has immunity.What does that mean? That means that the victim of that grossly negligent act cannot—they have no right to—bring a suit against the Crown. They have virtually no right because the act in itself may carry no vicarious liability and they have no right potentially to bring suit against the individual the junior who in a non-malicious way acted grossly and negligently. That I think is a step too far. I say that simply not as aslur against the Public Service but because people are human and things go wrong. We in our offices every day have constituents and people who come to us where something has gone wrong in the machinery of government. It could be ACC. Mr Little and Mr Mallard have raised a whole series of examples over the last few years in respect of that. Many of those presumably I would argue are not malicious are not done in a malicious fashion. They are what you would commonly call in Kiwi parlance a stuff-up. But there are rights for victims and those who have experienced loss or injury to have and to seek remedy. In this case those rights it appears to us are taken away and we have the John Banks clause the immunity clause. Maybe Mr Banks would want this clause extended to him given his difficult and perilous circumstances at this point.Andrew Little: John Banks Judith Collins—you name them.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Well John Banks Judith Collins and possibly even Peter Dunne. Who knows? The list of suspects goes on—Hon Trevor Mallard: Chris Finlayson.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Chris Finlayson my colleague says. The list goes on and on and on—the rotten foundations that are propping up this crew.The other point I want to make is this. One of the issues that Mr Peters touched on was the infamous strategy report that was leaked by I think this chap Mr Lusk who basically said that the objective of the National Party was to politicise the Public Service to the point where it would just do what it was told. That is a very very dangerous thing. One of the great qualities—Hon Trevor Mallard: Michael Woodhouse agrees.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Michael Woodhouse—well he is a Lusk acolyte I think—Hon Trevor Mallard: No no quite the opposite.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Quite the opposite—OK. [Interruption ] He tried to clean Mr Lusk out. One of the great qualities of our Public Service is that it is an unbiased non-political Public Service that in my experience when I was a Minister gave free and frank advice and would say to you: “Minister I think you are wrong if you are going to do this.”Hon Trevor Mallard: Quite often to me.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Quite often to Trevor Mallard. But if the Minister—where the buck stops—decided “No no I’m going to do it this way. I believe I’m right.” then the Public Service would row the boat in that direction. It would implement as it should constitutionally the wishes of its Minister and its Government which it serves. But the point is that they—the public servants I would deal with; I will not destroy their careers by naming them—would say to the Minister: “Look we are going to give you free and frank advice. We believe that this won’t work. We believe that it is the wrong course of action. Here is our recommendation.” That is what you want from a professional non-political Public Service.But I have talked to the odd public servant recently and they now say things like for instance how the staff-student ratios in education were a stuff-up par excellence by this crew. They were forced to back down by the weight and the pressure put on by parents. The Christchurch school closures—how they were done why they were done criteria being wrong and other issues. I believe and some public servants have said to me that they now do not have the ability or they do not feel confident in saying to the Minister: “We think this is heading for the rocks. We don’t think in the case of Hekia Parata you can convince parents. There is no logic or data that says that if you increase class sizes your kids will get a better education. We think you shouldn’t do this Minister.” I do not believe that that advice came. Likewise on the school closures: “You shouldn’t do it this way Minister. You should front the schools. You should adhere to your own criteriathat you set down for closures which you have departed from. That is not the way Minister to do this in Christchurch.” That advice I suspect if it came—I do not know whether it did; if it did it was not rigorous—was not listened to by the Minister.There is a feeling I believe in the Public Service that one there is no point in giving contrary advice and saying to a Minister “We don’t think this will work.” or two there is a bit of good old-fashioned intimidation where you know that you are going to get trodden on if you give contestable free and frank advice and say: “Minister this may not work.” Therefore we do not get the best possible advice from our public servants.That might suit that crew over there who now have a strategy paper leaked that shows that they do not want that; they just want public servants like robots who will do their bidding. They want a highly politicised Public Service simply to do their bidding. They want a Public Service that effectively is a political lackey for them to do their bidding regardless of the constitution—the lack of it—and regardless of the ethics. That is what is now in print in a strategy paper that Mr Peters alluded to. That is highly dangerous. That is grossly unethical. That is a hit and an attack on our constitution and on the good name of public servants.From time to time of course everyone likes to kick around the old public servant and from time to time bluntly they deserve it—some of them do. Some of them do deserve it and some of them do act from time to time a bit like the old Sir Humphrey where there is a battle between the Minister and the senior public servant because the Minister wants to do something and the senior public servant—one or two in my experience—is implacably opposed which goes beyond simply saying: “Hey we think you should go the other way but we’ll implement it.” So there is a need I think for some discipline around some of those public servants but I say that it is very very dangerous in our open little democracy where a Government openly overtly and bluntly is writing papers about politicising our professional Public Service. That is not on. That is wrong.We will support this legislation because we cleaned it up. It was a mess from start to finish. Some incredible Supplementary Order Papers were put up which broke the consensus as Mr Mallard has said. Ideas and clauses were put up that would have stripped basic working folks—public servants are entitled to get paid especially the odd teacher but these guys struggle with that concept—of basic rights. Not outlandish rights not luxuries not things that any other citizen would not expect if they were working in the private sector—basic rights. And we cleaned that bill up and the Council of Trade Unions and the Public Service Association which we should pay credit to put in robust submissions. I will give some credit to Mr Hayes and others whom we worked with to clean it up. But I have got to say that this is about the third time that the Opposition has had to act like the guy with the shovel behind the elephant and clean up their mess. The people deserve better and we are getting a bit tired of providing the answers to these geniuses over there.