Clark David: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11695. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):There have been several points raised by the Hon Lianne Dalziel that I wish to pick up on. The first amongst them is the shambles that is “MoBIE”—the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. She spoke about how the Department of Building and Housing would appear to be out and the Department of Labour would appear to be out. It is true also that health and safety is something that needs specific attention. This Government is talking about pulling that out. It has folded things in; it is pulling them out. There is a huge amount of cost that has gone into that particular organisation over recent years.Minister Joyce has until now avoided answering questions on the costs of restructuring and rebranding the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. It is an organisation that is not performing terribly well. Mr Joyce himself was unable toanswer questions before a select committee recently in a public session on the costs of restructuring in the organisation. We had the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology or “MoRST” and “FoRST” as one limb in there. They got divorced and then we had the Ministry of Science and Innovation which could not reconcile them and so on and so forth. There are a bunch of departments shoved in together with no seeming logic to it and they are not performing well. There are ones that should come out. It is a shambles what is going on in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and we are only just touching the surface of it.This bill the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill is one that we will of course be supporting. The title could be different. To bring it into the title and commencement clause discussion we could call it the “Ease of Good Government Bill”. We are delighted that the Government has seen fit to include changes that were put through in the Finance and Expenditure Committee at the behest of Labour and the State sector unions that have averted disaster for Government workers who were set to lose their redundancy entitlements and employment rights. We are pleased that members of that committee could work together to ensure that those things did not happen. We voted against this bill initially and now we are supporting it and that is as a result of that committee taking a longer view and saying that this legislation needs to survive different Governments. So those things have made this a better bill.We could also call it the “Can’t Stop Bad Policy Bill” because no matter how good the regulations are and how smoothly the apparatus of Government works you cannot account for bad policy. You just simply cannot. Nobody can—not even you Mr Chairperson. If the Government wishes to push bad policy through it can do that despite legislation. It can pursue anything it wants to. We know for example that in the electricity sector power prices are going up and up and up and up. John Key says that Kiwis are paying about the right amount for power; most of New Zealand disagrees with him I think. This Government is pursuing that same strategy with the same electricity sector that it has always had with prices continuing to rise. That is something that Labour thinks we need to do something about.This kind of bill will actually enable good policy to be put in place more cleanly. It will mean that the apparatus of Government is not tied up with unnecessary reporting or overly burdensome reporting. It will hopefully be more effectual in reporting the kinds of things that the public needs and wants to know about. The Government will be held accountable to the public in an appropriate way with a minimum burden on officials to deliver accountability mechanisms but an appropriate one. It is a balance as I have said earlier. Again we could call it the “State Sector and Public Finance Reform (Providing Balance) Bill”. We could put brackets in there and that would be an alternative name.I think that some of these names I am discussing will be considered by the Minister in the chair the Minister of Conservation who I can see is deep in thought. I would welcome the Minister in the chair’s views on the appropriateness of these names as he thinks them over.Part of the job of us here in Parliament is to decide just which names for bills are appropriate. As people search through them online—and I know as I have searched through bills online—sometimes they are hard to locate. Sometimes it is hard to find the bill you are looking for because it is named in a way that is not intuitive. I think that bills ought to be named in a way that is accessible for the public.This bill here does pick up good governance practices. It attempts to make sure that things are done in a transparent way that there are sanctions and rewards for departments that those are clearly laid out that they are reported that there is transparency and that there are clear lines of accountability.We see in this bill the State Services Commissioner’s role outlined for the first time ever in a way that now means that we can better understand what his or her role is in the State sector and we can see how chief executives can move their own resources around from one area to another much more easily as a vacancy arises and so on. This smoothing of the paths of Government should indeed over the longer term make for a better Government.The point I raised earlier though is incredibly relevant which is that the actions taken in this bill will not stop a Government putting bad policies in place. They simply cannot.If a Government like this one thinks that the current housing shortage in New Zealand is simply unavoidable and that if we carry on with the same policies suddenly magically houses will appear despite the rate of new house builds dropping steadily over the last 20 years that may be its ideology and it can stick to it. This bill will do nothing—absolutely nothing—to address that. Labour on the other hand thinks that we need proactive policies. So for example the KiwiBuild policy which Mr Peseta Lotu-Iiga over there is admiring from afar but knows he cannot publicly endorse is a policy that will improve the lot of Kiwis. For those who currently cannot afford housing we know that this kind of policy the New Zealand KiwiBuild policy will actually make the world a better place for them. So that is what Labour is committing to—10000 new houses a year with the KiwiBuild policy affordable houses. That is 10000 new houses a year and affordable housing for New Zealanders because we think that that is a priority.Likewise in the energy sector with the NZ Power proposal we will make sure that ordinary Kiwi families pay $300 less a year for their power bills. That is significant because New Zealand families are struggling.This Government has the worst economic record of any Government in the last 50 years—Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: How many?Dr DAVID CLARK: —50 years Mr Lotu-Iiga; I am glad you asked—and that terrible economic record needs to be addressed but this Government seems to have no plan to do that. This piece of legislation will not give the Government good ideas; it will only enable Governments that have good ideas to put them into practice in a timely effective and efficient way. So the real effects of this legislation will have to wait for a future Labour Government I suspect.This Government is doing the right thing by putting the conditions for good government in place but unfortunately it seems to lack a plan that will really appeal to New Zealanders and make New Zealand a better place for ordinary New Zealanders to live in. As inequalities rise the Government does not seem willing to put in place the kinds of necessary economic changes such as more savings a pro-growth tax policy and monetary policy reform that would actually improve the lot of ordinary Kiwis. Instead we see median wages dropping in New Zealand consistently under this Government. Kiwis are struggling small businesses are struggling and that is because this Government is prepared to sit on its hands and stick with the policies of the 1980s which have not been working for so very long now sadly.This legislation will mean that policies that are good like those that Labour has can be introduced in an effective and efficient way in years to come. It will not help this Government which has no plan to reform the economy in the meantime because it will carry on doing what it is doing which is just taking a hands-off approach—hands off the steering wheel—as the economy goes further towards the interests of those who already have and further away from the interests of the have-nots in our country.Labour is very happy to support this legislation. As I said at the beginning we are pleased with the changes that have been made in the select committee to avert the disaster for Government workers who were set to lose their redundancy entitlements and employment rights. We congratulate the New Zealand Public Service Association and the Council of Trade Unions on their good work and I congratulate the members of the committee who worked together to make sure that this legislation did not end up dividing the House but instead ended up being legislation that with some reservations the Labour Party will happily support. I am looking forward to the Minister in the chair’s contribution. Thank you.