Mackey Moana: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16303. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I will respond to the comments made by the Minister in the chair the Minister responsible for Archives New Zealand. I appreciate his taking a call on Part 3 of the bill. I think we found out what he did in his lunch break: he logged on to Wikipedia and did a search on “archives” around the world. But he did not actually address any of the questions that we have been raising about Archives New Zealand. Regardless of how they operate in other places in the world—with very different political systems very different public service set-ups and very different cultures—he still needs to discuss the concerns we have been raising about Archives New Zealand. It reminded me of a comment that the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Bill English made earlier this year. He said he thought we could get rid of a whole lot of Government departments because they did not need policy advice; they could just Google it. Government by Google! I wonder whether this is an extension of that: Government by Google and Wikipedia from the Minister responsible for Archives New Zealand who is overseeing— 
Grant Robertson 
: We could let Google do the Archives. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: We could let Google do the archiving. It would perhaps be helpful. This is very very telling legislation. In Part 2 the Minister was forced by Standing Orders to table a document that he had been quoting from. Members of the Opposition noticed a bottle of twink appearing after the document had been tabled. We were concerned and we raised concerns about that. My colleague Steve Chadwick very helpfully suggested that perhaps if the Hon Nathan Guy was to write his autobiography—in light of Richard Prebble’s autobiography  
I’ve Been Thinking 
—he could call it  
I’ve Been Twinking 
. That is just a little helpful suggestion to the Minister from the Opposition on a Saturday afternoon. 
I want to talk about the impact of this part on the Chief Archivist. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: You don’t even agree with this. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh Tau is awake. I welcome Mr Henare back; it is always a pleasure. We notice when we go through the departmental report that the officials are at pains to constantly point out that the Chief Archivist is subordinate to the chief executive—subordinate. This is not just about the Archives simply moving to a new place where they will still be able to operate in the way they always have. It really stands out in the bill and in the departmental report the extent the Government has gone to to point out that the Chief Archivist is subordinate. 
It is ridiculous to suggest that when the Chief Archivist is relegated to the third-tier level of management in the Department of Internal Affairs he or she will be able to operate the same way he or she already has. Archives will now be subject to budgetary pressures. The Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs gets his budget. He has a lot of different parts in his department that have to be covered including very worthy areas like the New Zealand Fire Service Passports and Births Deaths and Marriages. The Minister in the chair has given us absolutely no guarantee that money that is currently dedicated for Archives New Zealand— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who cares? Who cares what that member says? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Tau Henare says that he does not care. We know that National members do not care about the preservation of documents for the future. They constantly try to rewrite history every day in this House. It would probably help them if the documents that prove that they are wrong were no longer in the public arena. I understand why Mr Henare would be pleased to see Archives New Zealand destroyed because he has had a very colourful political history jumping from political party to political party. He would probably quite like it if all those documents disappeared. He would probably also like it if all the documents showing that he was the worst union organiser in the history of the universe disappeared from the public arena. 
The new Chief Archivist will be subordinate to the Chief Executive. He or she will very very definitely face budgetary pressures and cuts now that he or she is in a department where he or she has to share resources and that will be damaging for Archives New Zealand. The other point of course is that now Archives will no longer present an annual report to Parliament. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Oh wow! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Mr Henare has never liked having to do any work at a select committee so he is probably hoping that this means a little bit less work for the Government. But the fact is that the financial review process is very important. It has been one of the ways in which we have been able to follow the progress of Archives and the National Library which we discussed in the debate on Part 2. What did we learn from that financial review process? These are incredibly well-run organisations. They are efficient they get top marks across the board and there is no mischief that needs to be solved in Part 3 by destroying the Archives which again begs the question of why we are here in urgency on a Saturday passing legislation that fixes nothing.