Chadwick Steve: Research Science and Technology Bill National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chadwick Steve: Research Science and Technology Bill National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16315. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 After hearing the Committee stage of the State Sector Management Bill Labour’s position remains absolutely opposed to Part 2 and Part 3 of that bill which have been split off into separate bills with regard to Archives New Zealand and the National Library. We remain committed to the merger of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology into the Ministry of Science and Innovation but we have to add the rejoinder that that ministry must be adequately funded or we will not see innovation emerging from it. 
I will mention in the House some of the observations that we have made today. It was disappointing to see the lack of understanding from the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy. He appears to be a really straight prosaic and sort of plodding Minister who gets the work done. He is a farmer by background and he has never managed a large number of people. He has failed to demonstrate an understanding today of the culture of the organisations. He has been led by Minister Tony Ryall who is far more cunning in his endeavour to restructure the Public Service with his hands all over it and who has bullied Nathan Guy into accepting that there is just a simple realignment involved when putting the National Library Archives New Zealand and the Alexander Turnbull Library into the Department of Internal Affairs. Nathan Guy has been absolutely duped by his senior Minister. 
It was appalling to see in the Committee as we came to the debate on Part 3 in respect of public records the Minister in the chair having been requested to table a Crown Law opinion by Grant Robertson reach for the twink to alter that report before Labour could get to the Table. The whole point of Archives New Zealand and the independence of the Chief Archivist is to have transparency and open access to the public record and with that independence only the Chief Archivist can decide what can be deleted. How on earth could we trust that Minister in the chair who will forever be named “Twinky Guy”? That will stick with him. He has never managed an organisation and he fails to understand the cultural impact of an organisation that he has inherited which went through this experiment in the 1990s. That experiment failed dismally and only a decade ago Archives New Zealand was given institutional independence and has thrived ever since. 
The audit department could find no fault with Archives New Zealand; neither could the public of New Zealand. There have been no complaints. But we heard the Minister in the chair say the reason why it needs to be put back into the Department of Internal Affairs is that its building had a leaky roof. Well Minister Tony Ryall had a far better rationalisation than just the leaky roof. When he first came into the House he said in a very quiet and measured voice that the purpose of these amalgamations was to improve services within their existing boundaries reduce cost in the short to medium term and future-proof the long-term delivery of Government services. What a lot of baloney! What a lot of blah! Tony Ryall did this so that he could slash and burn the public services in order to grow some superministries and get them under his purview. I think that it is very sad to see Nathan Guy being marginalised just as the National Librarian and the Chief Archivist are absolutely being marginalised by their third-tier reporting positions in relation to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. 
Tony Ryall did make a good point about the new digital platform but why would Tony Ryall think that the digital platform was better placed within the Department of Internal Affairs than within any other ministry? Why? It is going through a process at the moment of digitalisation and this will simply add layer upon layer of pressure on that platform. Heaven forbid we have seen that happen in Parliament as we have tried to upgrade a simple information technology programme for members of Parliament that has simply failed us in doing that function. I do not think the digitalisation here will ever deliver the efficiencies that Tony Ryall wants to achieve. 
Chris Finlayson is the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage and I find it distinctly interesting that his opinion has been absolutely missing here in a Cabinet decision. What on earth was the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage doing missing in action and allowing this fundamental error to occur? Well he was not a Minister and he was not around in the 1990s to know that a merger failed then. And it will fail again as the culture of these organisations causes nothing but conflict within a Government department. So we see the Minister here being limp in his delivery trying to convince us all that this measure will be a good thing primarily for the public of New Zealand. 
It was nice to hear Minister Ryall actually show a little concern about the staff. I have never heard Government Ministers ever acknowledge the pressure that they put on the public services and that is why we are sitting in urgency at 3.20 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Tony Ryall said the librarians and archivists all wanted to be given certainty of the merger into the superministry the Department of Internal Affairs by February. That is why we are here discussing this bill in urgency today. I had never heard a Minister of the Crown show any vague concern at all about the staff’s well-being as bureaucrats. They have been treated as fodder; they have been slashed and burned. Those Government Ministers have shown an absolute arrogance and failed to understand the professionalism and also the institutional memory of so many of our senior professionals—they are not bureaucrats—in the Public Service. New Zealand had a Public Service that we were proud of in the 9 years under Labour and it is now being decimated under the guise of bringing in efficiency and improved services for the public. 
We oppose this legislation. Labour Opposition member Grant Robertson put forward several very serious amendments. Those serious amendments were totally disregarded with the Government’s attitude being: “Why bother? You are there. We won. You lost. Eat that!”. Those amendments which were put forward by someone who knows about the culture of Archives New Zealand the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library were totally disregarded. That is the right of the Government but there will be problems with the lack of independence of the officers of those institutions. I was pleased to hear my colleague say that when Labour returns to Government—and it will happen—we will restore their level of independence to the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian. 
This is a sad day. The Government has got it wrong. It will not admit that and it never will. Government members will stand up and say it is fantastic that they have done this. They will say it is done and dusted so we should move on to the next item on the Order Paper. There are people behind this; there are entities behind this. They have been built up with a level of pride and professionalism which will be decimated in this transition back into a superministry. I think that is terribly sad. I do not believe that the move towards digitalisation in this legislation will work any better than it did when we set out to do it. I recall a speech by Marian Hobbs that talked about the need to digitalise the archival record. It is slow and it is not easy. It is a long process and we have to invest in that process. But what will we achieve here? We will achieve something like the loss of 15 jobs. The Government will say that is good—15 more public servants down the road at a saving of $165000 a year. The Minister of Internal Affairs today for the first time tabled his figures which stated that oh no it would be $1.5 million. We have never had access to that figure even though we have asked for it in written questions and there have been Official Information Act requests. So we query—with a Minister who had his twink pen ready to delete things—whether there is even any rigour behind the figures that that Minister tabled in the House today. 
Our minority report on the State Sector Management Bill before it was divided says it all. We are deeply saddened.