Locke Keith: State Sector Management Bill — First Reading 
Locke Keith: State Sector Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13691] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be opposing the State Sector Management Bill because it could have a disastrous effect on both the National Library and Archives New Zealand. Those two institutions are important not only for the present generation but also for future generations of New Zealanders. 
We are particularly worried that making Archives New Zealand a subordinate agency within the Department of Internal Affairs could undermine its important constitutional role. We believe it should not and must not lose the independence it has gained particularly through the Public Records Act which put into statute the independence of the Chief Archivist. We see in this bill a step backwards to the situation that existed last century when National Archives and the Chief Archivist were subordinate to the Department of Internal Affairs and to the chief executive officer of that agency. 
We have been heading in a good direction since the passage of the Public Records Act and the implementation of the 1985 Unesco guidelines on national archives which insisted on the constitutional independence of the archives of individual countries. To understand the need for that independence we need to look at the reason for the independence of other bodies that are Offices of Parliament. In the case of the Ombudsman and the Auditor-General a key reason is that potentially both of those offices could be in conflict with the Government. The Ombudsman and the Auditor-General sometimes give what could be described as very critical reports on the behaviour of the executive so maintaining their independence is critical. 
The role of Archives New Zealand in holding Governments to account is not fully understood. The Archives and Records Association of New Zealand states that that independence is important to maintain the “ability to keep governments accountable for their actions through the records they create and maintain.” There will always be a tension—and this tension was brought out during the debate on the Public Records Act—between the Chief Archivist and the chief executive officers of various departments about which records will be kept and which will not. There is always a tendency for chief executives to define certain material as classified and say that it should not be transferred to the archives or to say that if it is transferred it should be kept classified. There is also a tendency for the departments to say that we should get rid of material that is embarrassing and that it should not be transferred to Archives New Zealand. There will always be those conflicts. 
We will have those conflicts about the Department of Internal Affairs’ own records when they are transferred to Archives New Zealand. If the Chief Archivist is subordinate to the chief executive officer of the Department of Internal Affairs it will create a problem. We have already seen public debate over for example the transfer of some of David Lange’s papers to Archives New Zealand. There was an argument over some papers of the Government Communications Security Bureau and whether they were secret or classified what should be done with them and whether they should be culled from the archives. We have had a debate about SIS records and found out that before the Public Records Act was passed the SIS got rid of a lot of records it should not have. People have written recently to ask for their records since the SIS rightly adopted a more open policy on the release of archives but have found that their records were destroyed a few years ago. The archive on my own father which the family asked for was destroyed by the SIS a few years back. That was very bad not only for the family but for the historical record. 
That conflict over archives management is quite important. When we use the parallel of the Ombudsman and the Auditor-General we can see that if the Office of the Ombudsmen was made subordinate to the chief executive of the Ministry of Justice it would undermine the independence of the office. Similarly if the Auditor-General’s office was placed under Treasury the Auditor-General’s independent role would be undermined. 
Various lobby groups have been active since this move was announced including a lot of people formerly in Archives New Zealand leading people in Archives New Zealand and librarians. All sorts of people have been very concerned about this move and they have described what happened previously. When National Archives was subordinate to the Department of Internal Affairs the result was the unlawful destruction of records court actions weakening of regional offices of the archives and not least budgetary problems. It is easy for a chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs to say it is a bit short this year because the Government has asked for cuts of 5 percent or 10 percent—whatever it might be—and that a body should slow up on the purchase of materials for the National Library or the transfer of material to Archives New Zealand for a year. They might say they could save a bit of money that way for a year that few people would notice and that they would get away with it. That is why it is important to maintain the organisational and budgetary independence of Archives New Zealand so that they can continue to get their collections up to the proper standard. Once it has fallen behind it is very hard to catch up and to purchase books that were in print and are now out of print. 
The argument for all the affected agencies—such as Archives New Zealand the National Library and Births Deaths and Marriages—to be under the Department of Internal Affairs is that it is all to do with digitisation of records and making records more accessible to the public. In fact the role of the different agencies is significant. The Minister of State Services said that there is a common focus on using digital technology and making Government information widely accessible to citizens on the Internet. In fact that would mean we are developing a more populist role for Archives New Zealand rather than collecting information that we do not even know will be useful in the future. There was talk by a previous speaker about some of the archive material that iwi now use in Treaty claims. It was not necessarily collected because it was seen as useful at the time but it is the historical record and was made use of by future generations. 
There is nothing wrong with cooperating on digital platforms. Independent agencies can use the same platforms exchange technology use the same payroll systems contract out for payroll systems and whatever they might think appropriate. But they do not need to be merged in the way that this bill proposes. 
There is also the question of the different roles of the Department of Internal Affairs libraries and archives. It can be argued for example that libraries are about the provision of information to people to the public. Archives are about accumulating evidence whether or not it is useful to the public at the present time. That is the importance of its constitutional role. A section of the Department of Internal Affairs is about the very opposite: censorship. In fact the Library and Information Association of New Zealand in some of the stuff it has written about this move which it opposes said: “Libraries adhere to the general principle of Freedom of Information whereas the Department of Internal Affairs has a censorship role which could potentially result in a conflict.” So there are different roles. Librarians may want to put some material into a library but the censors in the other part of the Department of Internal Affairs say that it should be banned or excluded and it should not be made available. We see a conflict of roles here. 
If we are to be true to the basic principles underlying our National Library collection and Archives New Zealand they should remain separate from each other and independent of the Department of Internal Affairs so that the Chief Archivist is not a subordinate player to the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. Thank you.