Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Injecting a bit of seriousness into this debate first of all I would like to thank and congratulate my colleague Adrian Rurawhe and also my colleague Chris Hipkins on the work that they have put in to bringing this bill to the House and putting it through.This is not a gimmick. This is a serious piece of legislation. It is a small step towards better open government but it is an important demonstration of the principles of open government. I do want to really stress that because that is what it is—no more no less. It is a small but important demonstration of the important principles of open government.There is a lot being said tonight particularly by the members of the Government on that side of the House about open government and their commitment to it. Well I will tell you that this Government pays lip service to the principles and the practice of open government. The Government claims that it is interested in transparency but it abuses in general the spirit of the Official Information Act by responding as late as possible to Official Information Act requests by redacting large tracts of information and in many cases refusing to answer Official Information Act requests on spurious grounds resulting in enormous numbers of complaints to the Ombudsmen and weighing down the Office of the Ombudsmen. The Official Information Act is one of the few mechanisms for public scrutiny of government decision-making and government process. And this bill which as I said is small by opening up parliamentary under-secretaries to scrutiny under the Official Information Act is important; it is an important part of that.There have been some pretty silly contributions in the course of the debate on this bill the silliest being that of the ACT Party member David Seymour who opposed it and then provided silly Supplementary Order Papers and now I understand is supporting it. The weight of evidence has been clear about the sensible nature of this small but important step towards better accountability.The final comment that I will make is that in terms of this Government's commitment to open government—the farcicality of its commitment to open government—there is nothing clearer than the warning letter that has been sent to the New Zealand Government by the Open Government Partnership which is the partnership of 69 countries working to implement national commitments to promote greater transparency accountability and engagement of citizens in policy making. New Zealand signed up to the Open Government Partnership several years ago but it is expected to demonstrate its commitments. Well these commitments have not been demonstrated and a warning letter was sent by the acting director of the Open Government Partnership support unit in March this year to our Government warning us that we have acted contrary to Open Government Partnership process by not completing the assessments that we should have done by not undertaking the processes of engagement with the public that we should have done and we have been warned.The consequences of that may be that we can no longer participate in the Open Government Partnership. If that was to occur would that not be a farce—with all of the calls all of the claims of transparency openness and accountability—if New Zealand was turfed out of the Open Government Partnership? Well we are in danger of that happening. Tonight we have a demonstration from this side of the House that we are committed to real principles of open government to a pathway to better engagement with New Zealand citizens to real accountability and honesty and scrutiny of the processes of Government. So I commend this bill to the House.