Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Mr Chair. I will pick up the point that my colleague Brett Hudson was making around the commencement date 31 October. Here we are on 12 September and it's only what six weeks away. It just seems like almost unseemly haste in the implementation of this bill. There are a number of steps that still have to come into force so I'm sure the committee will be watching—oh we still have to have the third reading. I suppose the Leader of the House will—there was time this morning in fact because the House rose an hour and 45 minutes before it was due to and a couple of bills just slid off. The whip on that side of the House is called Ruth Dyson so there we are. There was no Minister ready in the House to take a call which is pretty outstanding work on behalf of the Government—just a shambolic state of affairs because this morning could have been an opportunity to perhaps pop in another reading of this State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill because the Government just seems to be so very keen to have this bill enacted with a lot of haste. I think members on this side would have been quite prepared since the Order Paper has moved around considerably. Not only last evening but today there has been considerable movement on the Order Paper so I don't see any reason why for this particular bill we couldn't have had the committee stage this morning after the grand mal which was the fault of the senior Government whip and the Ministers present in the House. But our whips who are ever-vigilant would have made it possible for us to deal with the committee stage of this bill. Of course this morning was still yesterday as members will recall and so we could well have been on to the next reading of this bill which would have suited the Government's agenda. I don't know why they didn't think of that.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): This is not a general debate. This is a debate on clauses 1 and 2 of this bill.Hon JACQUI DEAN: Oh thank you—thank you Mr Chair. I do appreciate your guidance. So I just say with regret: opportunity missed and a shambolic morning on behalf of the Government.We do need to be careful in the passage of this bill and the provisions in this bill that we don't enable a witch-hunt on behalf of this Government for a couple of CEOs and their conditions and rates of pay. If we do see that then our concerns on this side of the Chamber will be vindicated but I sincerely hope that we do not. We also need to be mindful of Treasury advice which said the Public Service agencies are very large organisations that control very large budgets and have a high degree of public visibility and ministerial accountability and we need to make sure that in enacting this bill we recognise that potential CEOs of these large organisations are in fact competing against the private sector for top-quality candidates. I know that this Government wants to bring the top down and wants to sort of suppress the top. I understand that; I understand their philosophy. But we mustn't—mustn't—have a situation where good people are turned away from public sector service because of the enactment of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill and the dampening impact potentially it will have on CEOs' salaries.We have to recognise and on this side of the Chamber we absolutely recognise that for the important public sector work we need the best candidate possible and if we can possibly take someone from the private sector and put them into a public sector role then all power to them. Their experience and the degree of responsibility they are going to have to show in that public sector role—the visibility they have to all New Zealanders and to the Government—are accounted for in their conditions of work and their remuneration. National does support this bill but it has noted a number of concerns and raises a flag to this Government that we will be watching how this bill is enacted.