Mackey Moana: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16252. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 If ever there was an example of Government legislation that is a triumph of ideology over common sense then the State Sector Management Bill is that legislation. We are sitting on a Saturday morning under urgency because apparently the most important thing that this Government has to do before Christmas is merge Archives New Zealand and the National Library. God forbid that we should go into 2011 without having merged Archives New Zealand and the National Library! I hate to think what that would mean for the economy of this country and the people of New Zealand. I think that shows the priorities of this Government. It has the people of Aotearoa New Zealand at heart! 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: It was time for a change. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It was absolutely time for a change in the way we manage our National Library and our archives. 
The merger of Archives New Zealand and the National Library absolutely defies belief. It was only 10 years ago that we separated them out because of all the problems they were having when they were administered by the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Education. 
On the subject of Archives New Zealand interestingly enough I think there is quite a lot of correlation between the National Government’s attempts to rewrite history and its desire to run down the role of Archives New Zealand. Archives New Zealand plays a key constitutional role in New Zealand. It ensures that the documents of Government are retained and are available for scrutiny by the people of New Zealand. Should we really be surprised that this National Government has shown no respect for the processes under the Official Information Act? When we put in our Official Information Act requests to the Government the information comes back late. The Government refuses to release anything but if it is forced to release anything we get blank pages or words crossed out because the Government does not want the people of New Zealand to know that the advice it has been getting from its officials shows that the path we are on is not good for our country. So I do not think we should be particularly surprised that the Government would like to undermine the role of Archives New Zealand because that would make it a lot easier for John Key and his team to rewrite history which they have tried to do many many times already. 
This bill will result in the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian being nothing more than third-tier managers in the Department of Internal Affairs. Those roles require independence. One has to ask how the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian can remain independent when they are beholden to a chief executive above them and to managers above them and are far more beholden to a Minister than ever before. 
Let us ask ourselves what the mischief is that the Government is trying to solve. Members across the House have sat on select committees that both these entities have come before for their financial reviews. Both of them are very very well run. They are very efficiently run. They get very good reports from the Audit Office and from select committees. So they are not organisations that are in trouble in any way. They are not organisations that are underperforming. The cost savings that the Government has been trumpeting are simply not there. 
One of the things Government Ministers have said is that if they bring these entities together the big information and communication technology project to digitalise all of this information will be easier to do. Well according to people who actually know about that digitisation it is doomed to fail because of the complexity of this merger and the way that the new entities will be set up. In fact that information and communication technology project is under threat from this merger. 
So why is the Government doing it other than out of blind ideology—blind ideology—and a feeling that it hates Government departments and nameless faceless bureaucrats despite the fact that they are preserving our history for future generations of New Zealanders? The Government has no plan for our economy so instead it will say: “Aren’t we great? We fired a whole lot of people in the State sector. Aren’t we doing a really good job? Look at us managing public funds properly.” even though there will be no savings from this merger and even though it puts at risk very expensive projects that have been ongoing for a long time. More important it undermines the very independence of these two constitutional roles which this House should be protecting. 
I will follow on from my colleague David Shearer and his comments about the other part of this legislation which is the combining of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. Labour members do not oppose that. I do not think it will make any great change to be perfectly honest. In fact when Dr Mapp came to the select committee for his first appropriation— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Was he awake? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —yes he was awake and he was enthusiastic about his new role—he quite eloquently laid out why the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology were separate. Committee members remember talking about the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. Dr Mapp very eloquently pointed out that the Ministry of Research Science and Technology is the ministry that provides policy to the Government. He told us that it was Government-facing. Then he said that the Foundation for Research Science and Technology was different because it was the funding arm for the area of science and research and development so the Foundation for Research Science and Technology faced out towards the science community. That he explained was why the two entities need to be separate: the Ministry of Research Science and Technology served the Government and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology served the science community and those two roles were very very different. He remembers saying that because he is smiling now. So I wonder why given how eloquently he professed at the select committee that the two entities needed to remain separate all of a sudden we are combining them for no apparent benefit. There will be no cost savings for at least 7 years. 
I also note that this week the Minister of Housing announced exactly the opposite approach for the Housing New Zealand Corporation: the Government will take policy away from the operational arm of the Housing New Zealand Corporation because it needs to keep those two separate. So I am not sure why one thing works for the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Department of Building and Housing and something completely different works for the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology but kei te pai that is all right. We do not think it will do a whole lot of damage. It is really just shuffling the deck chairs. 
It does not answer the more important questions in the area of science and research and development which are why the Government slashed the funding the previous Labour Government had put in place and why it removed the research and development tax credit which was unanimously supported by the sector as a tool it needed to lift private-sector investment in research and development and replaced it with a bureaucratic grants system. If Labour had put that in place members opposite would have been all over us about how bureaucratic it was how inefficient it was and why we had not introduced a tax credit. But they could not accept that a tax credit was a good idea and it was Labour’s idea when it came to research and development. Bill English has always had a funny thing about tax credits. He gets wound up about them. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: And scientists. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He’s against science. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: He’s anti-science. The fact is the research and development tax credit was a good idea. It has been replaced by a very bureaucratic idea which is far less efficient than Labour’s was. The Minister for Crown research institutes keeps going on about how great this Government has been for science. I want to know whether he would say that to my friends whom I went through university with— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: There are too many. 
MOANA MACKEY 
:—that is right there are far too many—whom I studied science with who have been laid off from Crown research institutes under this Government which is apparently the great Government of science because of funding cuts. 
Minister Tony Ryall is in charge of this legislation. Another thing he does not talk about is that a lot of the cuts in science funding have come through health cuts. A lot of scientific research is carried out under funding from the Ministry of Health. I know many people who have lost their jobs. They are highly qualified scientists. That is not to mention the science advisers that have also been fired and who have gone overseas— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Hey in this Government even the science Minister will get laid off. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Quite possibly—who knows? This Government has not been good for science. Here we are merging the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. That is fine. I do not think it will do an awful lot. It will not result in cost savings or better outcomes for science so one has to wonder why we are doing it. I have taken that view from the Minister of Research Science and Technology himself who absolutely convinced me at the select committee in 2009 that this merger was not something the Government should be doing that the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology carry out two very different roles. I took that view from the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp. 
I come back to the core part of this legislation which is the absolute ridiculousness of merging Archives New Zealand and the National Library. Maybe we should not be surprised; this Government has shown absolutely no respect for libraries and librarians and the role they perform. It cut the school library service. People living in provincial New Zealand used to have access to someone at the National Library who could make sure that children growing up in the provinces got the same access to information as children growing up in the cities did. Well that is gone. Guess what they were given? An 0800 number—as if that is the same thing! Provincial schools were up in arms about that because they used the service regularly. It meant that children in rural areas got the same access to information as kids in the cities did. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: What a lot of rubbish. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I tell Anne Tolley to visit some schools in her electorate; they will tell her. But they are not allowed to because when she visits a school the staff are told that they are not allowed to discuss education with her. They are not allowed to discuss education. Because she is their local MP they can talk about local issues only—although I note that she has started to visit schools now that we are coming into election year.