Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Every time Julie Anne Genter gives a speech I sit and I hope and I pray that she has had an original thought but every time exactly the same no matter what the bill the same thing: very little attention to what this House is actually up to.I rise on behalf of ACT in support of the Annual Reporting and Audit Time Frames Extensions Legislation Bill. I take issue with some of the claims of my friends in the National Party. I don't think that this will dilute the standards of auditing. What it will do is allow some of the report-back dates for the Auditor-General to be later than they would otherwise be but I think it's well worth canvassing just why we are in this situation.I think there are basically two reasons: one that started to be canvassed is the massive shortage of auditors and accountants. The reason that we have a shortage is simply because New Zealand is an island nation an economy of 5 million people that relies on being able to attract skills from outside our borders for the economy to go and grow. If you think about it there's no example in the world—or at least the economically functioning world—where we actually have only 5 million people in a labour market and no access for businesses to hire skills from outside that 5 million. You think about it: Denmark 5 million people access to the entire European Union; Colorado 5 million people access to the United States labour market; British Columbia 5 million people part of Canada's labour market of 38 million. No one else in the world tries to wall off a labour market of 5 million people and get the mix of skills required for businesses to operate in a modern economy so that's not surprising.The problem is the Government has given its Auditor-General—or at least Parliament's Auditor-General—an out by introducing this legislation but what is the remedy for everybody else who is facing exactly the same problem? It's not just auditors in the public sector; it's in the private sector. I visited a big four" accounting firm in Auckland a couple of weeks ago. They said "We have 88 vacancies for our Auckland office right now." they can't get them. I was talking to someone who was getting their taxes done two months late. They asked their accountant "What's the hold up?" They said "Like everybody we're facing a skills shortage."So here's the question: when people have to file with the IRD are they going to get an extension of time because their accountant was busy like the Auditor-General is? And what about every other sector of the economy? What about Olaf the baker in Mount Eden Village? He's across the road from Frasers the iconic cafe—it's got a sign on the door saying "We don't open on Mondays because we can't get enough people." Are they going to get a law passed to make their lives easier? Olaf himself is down so many bakers that he can't produce the bread to keep his 28 staff that he's still got going. Is he going to get any special dispensation? Of course he's not. The Government is solving this problem for the Auditor-General and the ACT Party agrees it might as well happen—if we can save them we shouldn't spite them—but what is the Government going to do about immigration? How is it going to innovate in regards to isolation and managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) so more than a few hundred people a day can enter New Zealand? It has no plan.And even if it did Immigration New Zealand are not processing visas. What is it going to do about the shambles of the department that drives more constituents through the doors of local MPs than any other department? When I was first elected I didn't think any department could drive more constituents through my office door than Auckland Transport—how wrong I was. I hadn't thought about Immigration New Zealand. Somebody walks through my door I can almost guarantee you 50:50 it'll be an Immigration New Zealand problem. When the lockdown happened last year Immigration New Zealand went home and had a holiday for seven weeks. They couldn't work because their IT systems don't work. If we don't put a bomb under Immigration New Zealand there won't be any visas even if the problem of MIQ shortages is solved.And then there's the question of: what's the policy? This Government campaigned on 30000 net permanent or long-term arrivals per year. They delivered two years later 92000 so they didn't carry out their policy but COVID did. Last year we had only 6000 permanent net long-term arrivals. So what is the future of immigration in New Zealand? The Minister helpfully read out a speech from another Minister because the wrong Minister showed up—that's what this Government's like—and said it's time for a once-in-a-generation reset. Everybody is facing this problem. Nobody knows if they're going to be able to get skilled labour. The Government if it was serious instead of rushing through this legislation under urgency at the last minute before the winter recess would actually have a broader solution to safely reconnecting with the world post-COVID but as we see time and again the Prime Minister gets asked in question time "What's the plan?" and all she does is discombobulate dissemble and otherwise fail to answer the question relying on the Speaker to say "Well at least she addressed part of it."DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Do not bring the Speaker into the debate.DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker I have not brought the Speaker into the debate at all. What I have said—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I disagree with you. Don't bring the Speaker into the debate.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well Mr Speaker I don't understand why that is but I'll continue anyway. That is the Prime Minister's strategy—it doesn't involve the Speaker. I was describing her strategy.In any case the other problem that the Auditor-General has other than a shortage of staff is so much demand to fix up the Government's various screw-ups. And here's just a few they've had to do recently: the Provincial Growth Fund. We had a joker called Shane Jones who gave out money to people who were associated with his boss's lawyer his boss's lawyer's son I think his boss's partner were all involved—DEPUTY SPEAKER: And I'll ask the member to come back to the bill. You haven't mentioned anything relating to the bill in the last two minutes.DAVID SEYMOUR: The Auditor-General's under time pressure—I've been talking about the bill the whole way through—DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's the second and final warning by the way.DAVID SEYMOUR: And the Auditor-General said "improvements … needed in how appropriations administered how conflicts of interest in contracts were managed and how investments were tracked and reported." I mean the reason he's so busy is that's the kind of thing that this Government has been serving up—that was the Provincial Growth Fund.Then there's the vaccine roll-out: "Given the significance of the challenge I did not expect to find a perfect plan." says the Auditor-General—at least he's sporting and gives them a chance—"However to successfully navigate these challenges a clear strategy a well thought-out path and fit-for-purpose governance arrangements are required. In particular I expected to see a level of planning that matched the public commitments the Government has made." These are the kinds of things that Auditor-General is finding all the time about the way that this Government screws up its own programmes that's why he's so busy. That was his report on the vaccine roll-out.What about light rail? Now we're getting into a power force in New Zealand politics called the "Twyford effect". Light rail: "Our initial concern was that given the strong presumption in the rules that the best way to ensure value for money is some form of competitive market process a parallel process involving only two parties did not on the face of it seem proportionate to the value risk and complexity of this particular procurement. We therefore wanted to understand what consideration officials had given to the rules … [and] taken to ensure the good practice principles underlying the rules were given effect to even though the rules were not." That's light rail.And then there's Ihumātao—the kinds of things the Auditor-General has been kept so busy with because this Government seems to be able to screw up everything it touches. "In our view the intent of the document prepared by the ministry and the intent of the joint Ministers was to establish a new appropriation that would provide authority for the purchase of the land at Ihumātao. However as described above there were two important omissions from the approval for the expenditure. As a result the payment of $29.9 million used to purchase the land was incurred without the proper authority."No wonder the Auditor-General needs an extension of time there are so many screw-ups and in many cases downright dodgy activities happening with the expenditure of public money under this Government the Auditor-General needs to work double time and compounded by the fact that this Government has no plan to safely reconnect with the world so we can actually get some skills into our economy of only 5 million people. He needs this extension of time so we'd rather that the Government solve the problem in other ways but they seem incapable of that so we can only as ACT commend this bill to the House. Thank you Mr Speaker."