Volume 669 Week 62 - Thursday 9 December 2010(continued on Saturday 11 December 2010) 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Volume 669 Week 62 - Thursday 9 December 2010(continued on Saturday 11 December 2010) 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16243. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Thursday 9 December 2010 
( 
continued on Saturday 11 December 2010 
) 
Points of Order 
Parliamentary Complex Staff—Expression of Thanks 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I ask your indulgence before the day descends into a total shambles to recognise and thank all the workers in the parliamentary complex who have come in on a Saturday to serve our members of Parliament through until midnight. We deeply appreciate the work they will be doing for us today. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Although the member’s sentiments are heartfelt and are shared by everybody that is not a point of order. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: You used to be on the side of the workers. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I see that that member wants an early shower or maybe a requirement for him to be in the House until midnight reading his own speeches. 
Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 
Second Reading 
Debate resumed. 
PAUL QUINN (National) 
: 
 It gives me great pleasure to stand and speak very briefly to the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Once again very little needs to be said in this reading simply because as all those who have read the amended version of the bill and the report accompanying it will see this bill has been reported back to the House with the unanimous support of the Justice and Electoral Committee. Given that that is the case I have nothing further to say. Thank you. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Mr Speaker— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: What a speech! That’s amazing. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Absolutely! I think I would give Mr Quinn’s speech 1 or 1½ out of 10. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Give it 1. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I would give that speech 1 out of 10. Thank goodness Mr Quinn was here to kick us off this morning with an energetic speech on the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill! On this fine Wellington Saturday morning I am thrilled to be here speaking about this bill. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He’s off home. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Paul Quinn has done his day’s work; he has gone. Gerry has done his day’s work; he is off home. But we are happy to be here. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Is Paul Quinn your constituent or Annette’s in Roseneath? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: He is in Annette King’s electorate. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: The first Saturday’s work he’s done in his entire political career so far. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: No I do not think so I say to Mr Brownlee. 
The Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill has been improved by the Justice and Electoral Committee. That committee is chaired by Chester Borrows who I do not think is appreciated on that side of the House for the full extent of his abilities. The committee did some excellent work. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He should have got Pansy’s job. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That has actually been discussed—whether Chester Borrows should be in Cabinet and who is keeping him out of Cabinet on that side of the House. I am not sure; it could be Mr Quinn’s work in the background yet again. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No. “Mr Quinn” and “work” in one sentence? Wrong. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Yes that is true; sorry. It is impossible. 
This bill has come back to the House in a significantly improved form. I have to say that my very good colleague Su’a William Sio who is the Labour Party’s spokesperson on customs actually came to some caucus members about this bill because he had some very particular concerns about the question of information sharing. A number of us in the caucus when we actually looked at the bill shared those concerns with him. 
Before the bill was referred to the select committee it seemed to have a very open approach around the question of information sharing. If we refer to new section 282B “Access by accessing agency to border information” which is inserted by clause 24 of the bill we see that it says: “(1) The purpose of this section is to facilitate the exchange of information between agencies at the border to enable them to co-ordinate their border protection functions.” I think everybody in the House would want to see a well-coordinated well-organised border system. There obviously are multiple agencies involved here: MAF Biosecurity New Zealand the Customs Service the police and so on. They need to be able to work together well. 
But if we move to new section 282B(2) in clause 24 we see that it states: “An accessing agency may for the purpose of this section access any border information held by a holder agency if the access is authorised by regulations made under this Act.” That is a very open provision. That provision says that agencies that have access as defined under this bill can have any information whatsoever held by those other agencies. The caveats on this provision are included in new section 286A “Regulations relating to information sharing” inserted by clause 25. The first of those caveats is that the Governor-General may by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister make regulations specifying who those agencies are. In effect we were setting up a process by which information could be shared among these agencies simply by Order in Council—simply by the Minister saying: “I think this should happen.” 
As has been spoken about already in the debate on this reading Auckland International Airport as an agency involved in this bill began to think this provision was interesting and began to wonder what it might be able to do with it. It came to the select committee as I understand it and talked about the fact that it was very interested in sharing information about who might be arriving on a flight so that it could perhaps tailor what products were available in the shops at Auckland International Airport. That seems to be a somewhat unusual approach to sharing border information. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: It would assist some members of the Government. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: It may be quite easy. They could make sure there was a large display of chocolates at the door—which might be of some interest to some members on the other side of the House—or possibly a large display of interesting drinks that people might like to buy when they come in to the airport. Auckland International Airport was very keen to get that information and use it as a commercial opportunity. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Sammy Wong is on the way again. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right—they may have been able to see which members and their spouses and so on were finding their way into the country and tailor the goods available. 
From the point of view of this side of the House that provision raised some alarm bells and obviously it also did for the rest of the select committee. When Chester Borrows spoke last night he made the point that the committee members not only took on board the advice of officials that there was a need to tighten up but also put in some additional matters themselves. Those additional matters are now provided in new section 286A(2) which states: “Before recommending the making of regulations under this section the Minister must consider the following matters” and there are a large number of matters that the Minister needs to consider. 
One point that is raised is whether personal information is included within the information that is being shared. I think that highlights some of the key concerns which are that privacy would be heavily compromised and that people who had given information in good faith to a border agency—perhaps the Immigration Service perhaps the Customs Service—could find that information being given out to another agency in a way that they would personally not approve of. That is the first consideration the Minister must have. 
The Minister also has to consider the amount of personal information that is being made available whether it is appropriate for the needs of the accessing agency whether it represents a significant proportion of the border information whether it is everything the agency needs to know how sensitive the information might be and the level of accuracy of the information. There is no particular test on these agencies ensuring that the information is strictly accurate yet it is being shared. That could have some consequences for people whose information is at hand there. 
Perhaps more important is that fact that in subsection (3) of new section 286A there is a series of things that the Minister must do before recommending the making of regulations. I know that the current Minister of Customs Maurice Williamson is not a man who likes any kind of compulsion. He does not like to be told what to do particularly by his own leadership. But now under subsection (3) there are some things he must do. 
The first of the things he must do is consult the Privacy Commissioner. The select committee has put that very important check and balance in place. The Privacy Commissioner has an independent status and role—and we will be talking shortly in a debate on another bill about the importance of independence for core and important officers who work on behalf of us through the Public Service. But as I said the Privacy Commissioner has that independence. The Minister must consult the Privacy Commissioner if information is to be shared in this way. The agencies affected have to be consulted as well as organisations considered by the Minister to be representative of interests likely to be substantially affected by the regulations. So the Minister must consult quite a wide ambit of people when these regulations are being put in place. 
Members of the public are named in their own right as a category and the Minister must give public notice of the consultation being undertaken. Then the Minister must take the results of that consultation into account. So the select committee has I believe done a very good job of ensuring that we now have a provision that enables border agencies to share information with each other within a framework that gives me confidence. It gives me and I hope other members of the House confidence that the process will not compromise personal privacy issues will not compromise the overall security of New Zealand and will not result in information being unreasonably shared—for instance for a highly commercial purpose that might not be appropriate in terms of where that information came from. 
That is only one part of this bill but I have focused on it because it was the part that alarmed me at the bill’s first reading when it was drawn to my attention by Su’aWilliam Sio. I think that the Justice and Electoral Committee has improved it and I think it is a testament to the excellent members of the committee. 
The select committee has made changes in terms of biofuels and they have already been discussed by my colleague Nanaia Mahuta. They too are an improvement. I think therefore that the legislation that has returned to the House for a second reading is an example of why we should send bills to a select committee and should not use the urgency process to bypass proper scrutiny. What if this bill had gone through all stages as other bills have in this process had not had the scrutiny it needed and had not been improved? That would have been a shame and that has been seen far too often from this Government. But at least with this bill we have a process that has worked and much-improved legislation that hopefully most parties in this House will be able to support. 
KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) 
: 
 It is my privilege to participate in the second reading of the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill which deals with a number of issues related to customs and excise. I commend this bill to the House. 
Bill read a second time. 
State Sector Management Bill 
Second Reading 
Debate resumed from 7 December. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is crystal clear to all New Zealanders that after 9 years of a wasteful Labour Government we need to rebalance our economy. We also need to redesign and have a first-class State services sector. 
The State Sector Management Bill achieves all of those goals. It provides for the formation of a new Ministry of Science and Innovation it harmonises the National Library and Archives New Zealand under the Department of Internal Affairs and very importantly it preserves the constitutional independence of the Chief Archivist. On that basis it gives me pleasure to commend this bill to the House. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 One has to wonder where that member Colin King was a decade ago if he thinks this issue is all peace and light. Labour will definitely be opposing the State Sector Management Bill. 
There is an element of this bill that we do not have a problem with at all and that is in respect of the amalgamation of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research Science and Technology to form the new Ministry of Science and Innovation. We think that is great. That is fine and I think we will wait with great interest to see what will emerge from the new Ministry of Science and Innovation especially with Minister Mapp at the helm. Great things are obviously— 
Sue Moroney 
: Anything could happen. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: Anything could happen at all. 
But the aspect of this bill that we are very opposed to for very serious reasons is the proposed merger of Archives New Zealand and the National Library with the Department of Internal Affairs. These institutions are a key part of our democracy—absolutely key. They are about keeping Government departments transparent and the information held in those departments protected. When the Minister of State Services gave his opening speech on this bill it was the most limp speech that I have ever heard. It was quietly given in a measured way and it looked as though it would not panic the punters. But actually this measure shows the determination of National to continue an unrelenting attack on public servants whom they see as just being bureaucrats and bean counters not as people who value their jobs do their jobs with passion and pride and take with great seriousness the roles and the functions of their jobs. The Minister saw this merger in his speech as being simply a little merger that tucks Archives New Zealand and the National Library—including the iconic Alexander Turnbull Library—into the Department of Internal Affairs. National’s position is that we should not worry because it has sorted out everything about the roles and functions of the National Librarian and of the Chief Archivist. It says we should trust it to know what it is doing. 
This merger looks to be all very simple and sort of logical but actually behind it there is an insidious and unrelenting lack of respect for public servants who have done their job. 
I found it interesting that Colin King stood up and gave a silly little speech just reading the opening paragraph of the commentary on the bill—National members have been told to speak just for about 10 seconds on every bill so that they will be out of here by about midday. Mr King was not around a decade ago. A decade ago there was a failed experiment in which Archives New Zealand was put under the Department of Internal Affairs. What goes around comes around; now we are doing it again. Relationships were so bad between the Department of Internal Affairs and Archives New Zealand that they went to court 10 years ago. So what a waste of time and money this merger is. 
The Minister could only come up with the justification that this great merger all in the name of increased efficiency better services for the public better accountability and great improvements in the quality of service provision from the so-called bureaucrats—who are wonderful respected professionals in their jobs—will save only $165000. Archives New Zealand and the National Library have always had an absolutely clean audit from the Audit Office—no problems; nothing that needed to be tidied up. They do their job professionally as stand-alone entities so why in the name of efficiency would one merge them into the Department of Internal Affairs for the sake of saving the princely sum of $165000 and risk that grievances will arise again in the future? The roles of the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian will be third-tier positions and they will not even have face-to-face meetings on a weekly basis with the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. I think that is an absolute insult. 
If Chris Finlayson who does know about the functions of the National Library and Archives New Zealand and about the importance of the material that they preserve had been a little more aware of what was being proposed by stealth by Tony Ryall if he had been a bit more aware and read his Cabinet papers in time he would have jumped up and said this was a foolish move. An absolutely flawed move like this took us to court a decade ago. As a lawyer Minister Finlayson knows that. He knows about the risks if the public record is not kept transparent and people are not held accountable for it. Minister Finlayson knows about the risks but he failed to challenge Nathan Guy and Tony Ryall so this cute little merger this cute little amalgamation went through. Members can look at the resulting effect: 15 jobs are lost. Mr Ryall would say “Only 15—what’s that? That’s great. It’s all in the name of efficiency.” These are not just jobs. These are people who are held accountable for and who know how to manage the public record of both libraries and who know how to look after the body of historical archival material held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. These libraries are not something that can be merged with the Department of Internal Affairs quite easily even though National says the merger does not affect their roles because it has sorted those out in the bill. 
I think this situation is an absolute disgrace. The Chief Archivist and the National Librarian must have statutory independence and their independence is limited if they become part of the Department of Internal Affairs. What happened a decade ago when this happened? It was logical: they struggled to find a voice. If they are put into the third-tier level of management in a huge department a burgeoning huge department then how will they have a voice? How will they have their independence? How can the National Librarian and Chief Archivist go and meet their Minister? That will not happen. They will be swallowed up in the department and will struggle to have a voice to advocate for the record that they manage. This is an absolutely stupid move. It is a flawed move. It has already caused great distress in the library and the archive sector of New Zealand. Those who work in the sector are not fuddy-duddy bureaucrats who feel threatened by the loss of a job; they are there to preserve the function of their job and it has been shown that they have an excellent record. For the sake of $165000 a year and the loss of 15 jobs National thinks this is a great little cute move but it is not. 
In conclusion I say the merger is not necessary at all. It will not generate better public services; it is driven purely by an ideological desire to reduce the number of Government agencies. This is flawed logic. The Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage failed to represent and advocate for Archives New Zealand and the National Library as being very important functions of a creative country in a sector that has a great sense of history. The merger will fail and I ask members to watch to see what will happen with the next audit report. We will argue against this merger in more depth when we get into the Committee stage of this bill. 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker Barker. Kia ora everybody. Nga mihi nui a koutou. Kia ora. This is my first day back in Parliament after 3 weeks on parental leave. It is great to be here on a Saturday. Three weeks ago my wife gave birth to a healthy little baby Zoe Elizabeth Hughes. I wonder what impact the State Sector Management Bill will have on the records and archives we are producing now in Parliament and around our communities. What access will she have when she is 18 and when she is 30? That is the key question we are asking today with this bill. 
I was privileged to join the other members on the Education and Science Committee hearing the submissions. I heard one clear message from all of the submitters. There was a clear message that the merging or the takeover as it was described of the National Library and Archives New Zealand will be bad. It will be bad for Archives New Zealand it will be bad for the National Library and it will be bad for Kiwis accessing those services. 
I was fortunate enough to have a tour of Archives New Zealand with some of the staff. Boy what a fantastic institution it is. I got to see maps of New Zealand from the 1950s with potential nuclear strikes. I got to see handwritten deeds of sale signed with moko. Truly they are national taonga deserving of our utmost respect and utmost care and the risk with this bill we are debating today under urgency on a Saturday is a lack of care and a lack of due diligence and prudence. There is a lack of reasons why we are even addressing these issues today. 
I will briefly touch on some of the impacts of this bill because there will be some and touch on some of the reasons—or slogans as I put it—given for why this bill has been introduced and reasons why I am opposed to it. To begin with the submitters to the select committee presented a great number of risks and reasons why we should not proceed with this bill. We heard that the National Library of New Zealand and Archives New Zealand have different roles: one is a library and one is responsible for archiving. We heard that their independence is at risk. We are putting the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian within a bureaucracy and down three or four tiers from their current position which will reduce their impact and their access to Ministers. It will reduce their ability to have mana to proactively argue and to actually hold the chief executives of Government departments to account and tell them when they are doing a bad job when it comes to archiving. 
We heard that it will impact their budgets although one good thing that I will give to the Government is that separate votes will continue. But we will see budget pressures faced and the risk is that the Department of Internal Affairs one financial year will say that we will just have fewer books that year. We also heard from submitters that this change is impacting on the morale of the staff. These guys do fantastic work day in day out for the country’s sake to protect these taonga and having 15 staff at risk is damaging morale. 
We also heard on the select committee why we are doing this. The reasons that I heard and that I read in the Cabinet papers simply amount to slogans. We heard slogans: future-proofing financial savings efficiencies and digitisation. These are simply slogans without argument or solid facts to back them up. Throughout the select committee process there were no facts and figures and no robust arguments were presented. In that case there remains simply slogans. 
When it comes to the finance we are talking about maybe $165000 a year. It seems crazy that we are doing this for literally $165000 a year. It is as if the Government looking for inspiration for its legislative programme for the year went back and looked at the Shipley-Bolger playbook from the 1990s. When it comes to worker relations it has gone back to the Shipley-Bolger playbook and when it comes to these wonderful Government departments it has gone back to the Shipley-Bolger playbook. We have returned to the 1990s. In the select committee we once again heard that there were compelling reasons why these departments were separated by the Labour Government. 
In summary we oppose this bill for a considerable number of reasons. We have simply heard slogans as arguments for it and it essentially amounts to an ideological solution in search of a problem. Kia ora. 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 ACT is happy to support the State Sector Management Bill which amends a number of Acts in order to amalgamate several Government departments. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Morena. Morenatatou e hoa makuawhakawhaiti mai ki roto i te Whare neiitenei ata. Eharai te mea he nui ngakorero. Kuarongoingakorero a te mema mo te Kakariki. Me mihi ki a ia me tanaekengahaipapamotetahipepi. Me mihi ra ki a koe e hoa ka mutu waihoterakorero ki reira. Engariitua atu o tera kuarongo au ingakorero a te mema rai te mea kei te ahua rite tonu ki a au i te mea kua tae mai wetahi ki a au ki te whakatakotoieramomokorero ki muai a matou o te PatiMaori ara ngauauatanga ka tau mai ki rungaingakaimahi o roto i te National Archives me te Whare Pukapuka o te Motu. Kuarongoake engarii roto ingawhiriwhiringakare au i te tino kite i te whakatinanatanga o eramomowhakaaroi te mea he tino taonga e takotonei ki roto inga whare nei. Hoi ano ka whakarongo ki ngakorero e rere haere nei a koakenei a te wahangaKomiti a katahi ka whiriwhirihia hei tauawa. No reira kia ora tatau. 
[ 
Good morning. Good morning to us all colleagues assembled in the House this morning. It is not as though I have a lot to talk about. I heard what the member from the Greens had to say and I must congratulate him on becoming a father. Well done colleague. We cannot let that go by without acknowledging it. But park that there. Furthermore I note what that member said because it is much like that with me as well. Some have brought that sort of thing about difficulties being placed upon National Archives and National Library of New Zealand staff before us the Maori Party. I have heard about it in the negotiations but have never seen those kinds of thoughts implemented because there are treasures of real significance stored in those buildings. However I will listen to the contributions flying about here and then later perhaps during the Committee stage make a decision at that point. Thank you all 
.] 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak on the second reading of the State Sector Management Bill. This bill is a continuation of the Government’s drive for efficiency and effectiveness across the State services sector. 
Rather than use the Government’s words to talk about one particular issue that the Opposition has raised I thought I would give members the words of the Public Service Association national secretary Brenda Pilott. She says: “We are happy to see that the bill retains the statutory roles of the National Librarian Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library and the Chief Archivist”. Finishing with those words I am proud to support this bill. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 The State Sector Management Bill is a drive but it goes in no particular direction it seems to me. It is a drive towards basically showing people that doing something is better than not doing something. But doing something for absolutely no real reason does not seem to be a particularly good use of our time here on a Saturday morning. 
One thing that brings us together as parliamentarians on a Saturday morning is the feeling that we could have done this better and that the Leader of the House could have organised this a bit better so that instead of being here in Parliament on a Saturday morning we might have actually been spending our time with our constituents. As we all know in our electorates there are many things we could be doing this morning. We do not have very much time before Christmas comes along. 
Firstly I will touch on what has already been mentioned in terms of the Archives and the National Library. The Education and Science Committee sat through 31 submissions of evidence and—Louise Upston will know this as well—every single one of them without exception opposed the bill. The submissions were some of the best I think I have ever heard while sitting on a select committee in my short career here in Parliament. 
Submissions were made by people who had worked under the 1990s regime and had seen the mess that occurred as a result of putting the Archives in particular inside the Department of Internal Affairs. They pleaded for us to keep it separate. They showed us that in almost every other country in the world best practice was to keep archives outside the Department of Internal Affairs. From there it could serve as an independent watchdog and a repository of information that benefited the whole of New Zealand—the whole of New Zealand. 
Instead we are burying both the Archives and the National Library inside the Department of Internal Affairs which will make the heads of both of those departments third-tier positions. That means that they will not despite what we were told in the select committee have access to the responsible Minister. It seems like the Minister would not necessarily be doing anything even if they did have access to the Minister so perhaps that is a pointless point to bring up. 
This measure has been done under the auspices of making something more efficient and more effective. It saves about $160000 a year. We could probably do an internal reshuffle and save more than that if that were able to done. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: One day in Parliament in urgency. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: We would probably save as much as that if we had a Leader of the House who actually organised himself. I have to say that 2 weeks ago we had made plans right through this weekend to get out in the electorate and do things before the Christmas break. Those plans seem to have been shot down. 
Let us move to the research and science provisions in the bill which present less of a problem to this side of the House. In fact I congratulate Minister Mapp on coming up with a good name: the Ministry of Science and Innovation [ 
Interruption 
] That is true. I was reflecting on what would have happened if Wayne Mapp by some remarkable feat had won the 1981 Mt Roskill selection and had come in as the member for Mt Roskill. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: As a Labour member? 
DAVID SHEARER 
: As a Labour member for Mount Roskill—that is right. I was thinking about how he would have risen through the Labour Party as a result of being in Mt Roskill. It is an interesting thought; I did not spend too long thinking about it. 
Dr Mapp came up with a great name: the Ministry of Science and Innovation. We may ask what is in a name. Well the answer is not a whole lot. If we dig below the name we see the same old same old approach coming out yet again. 
I will give members two examples. First of all putting two departments together will not save any money for at least 7 years according to the Auditor-General’s report. That report supposes that no extra people have been taken on board as a result of new things that the new ministry comes up with. It will be 7 years. 
The other thing that was interesting when the select committee looked at this bill was that I expected perhaps in the preamble something slightly more inspirational about what this bill is trying to do. It is bringing together two pieces of Government bureaucracy. The officials said that they had not had time to think about that and that they had been too busy trying to merge the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology. In a sense that says it all about this legislation. It starts off aspiring to be something that really tries to take us forward but it does not. It falls at the first hurdle; it really does not move us forward any more. 
I will give the House a second example which is in respect of appointing the head of this new ministry. From the very beginning I have had no issues or problems with the person who was chosen for this job. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Was it Christine Rankin? 
DAVID SHEARER 
: No in this case it was not Christine Rankin. But I ask members this: if we were going to start a brand new ministry that really looked to be inspirational and aspirational about what we want to do as the Minister has spoken about in every speech he has come out with what would we do? I will tell the House what I would do. I would advertise across the world and try to get the best person for the job from perhaps the other side of the world perhaps from Finland or Denmark which the Minister keeps mentioning as the example of where we want to be in the world. Maybe we should go to Denmark and see whether we can attract anybody from Denmark to New Zealand who can show us what happened there. We could have looked at Sweden or Singapore. 
What happened in this case? Again this is no reflection on the person who was eventually appointed. What happened? We opened that recruitment process for 2½ weeks. I know from talking to a lot of people around town that the recruitment agency did not have the resources to go further abroad and make an international search. There is absolutely no way that we can say with our hand on our heart that we have trawled the world for the best possible person and got the best possible person. If we had done that and the current head of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology had been selected I would have said that it is fantastic to have a Kiwi a New Zealander who is able to do the job. But we have not. 
This is another example that permeates right through the Government of where we have sold ourselves short. We have lacked the vision we have lacked the plan and we have lacked the aspiration even though this is one of the main areas where the Government wants to pick up New Zealand’s economic performance. We have lacked the drive to drive this ministry forward to the place it should be. 
Here we are on a Saturday morning looking at a bill that puts the Archives and the National Library back into the Department of Internal Affairs despite the best advice from just about everybody who has ever worked in both of those areas. In the research science and technology area we could have made a real difference and really lived up to the great name that the Minister has come up with but instead we have fallen sadly short. 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 It is good to speak on the State Sector Management Bill the purpose of which is to amalgamate a number of existing agencies to achieve gains in terms of financial efficiencies effectiveness and future viability of agencies. These amalgamations will improve services within existing baselines reducing cost in the short to medium term and future-proofing the long-term delivery of Government services. I commend this bill to the House. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 If ever there was an example of Government legislation that is a triumph of ideology over common sense then the State Sector Management Bill is that legislation. We are sitting on a Saturday morning under urgency because apparently the most important thing that this Government has to do before Christmas is merge Archives New Zealand and the National Library. God forbid that we should go into 2011 without having merged Archives New Zealand and the National Library! I hate to think what that would mean for the economy of this country and the people of New Zealand. I think that shows the priorities of this Government. It has the people of Aotearoa New Zealand at heart! 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: It was time for a change. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It was absolutely time for a change in the way we manage our National Library and our archives. 
The merger of Archives New Zealand and the National Library absolutely defies belief. It was only 10 years ago that we separated them out because of all the problems they were having when they were administered by the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Education. 
On the subject of Archives New Zealand interestingly enough I think there is quite a lot of correlation between the National Government’s attempts to rewrite history and its desire to run down the role of Archives New Zealand. Archives New Zealand plays a key constitutional role in New Zealand. It ensures that the documents of Government are retained and are available for scrutiny by the people of New Zealand. Should we really be surprised that this National Government has shown no respect for the processes under the Official Information Act? When we put in our Official Information Act requests to the Government the information comes back late. The Government refuses to release anything but if it is forced to release anything we get blank pages or words crossed out because the Government does not want the people of New Zealand to know that the advice it has been getting from its officials shows that the path we are on is not good for our country. So I do not think we should be particularly surprised that the Government would like to undermine the role of Archives New Zealand because that would make it a lot easier for John Key and his team to rewrite history which they have tried to do many many times already. 
This bill will result in the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian being nothing more than third-tier managers in the Department of Internal Affairs. Those roles require independence. One has to ask how the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian can remain independent when they are beholden to a chief executive above them and to managers above them and are far more beholden to a Minister than ever before. 
Let us ask ourselves what the mischief is that the Government is trying to solve. Members across the House have sat on select committees that both these entities have come before for their financial reviews. Both of them are very very well run. They are very efficiently run. They get very good reports from the Audit Office and from select committees. So they are not organisations that are in trouble in any way. They are not organisations that are underperforming. The cost savings that the Government has been trumpeting are simply not there. 
One of the things Government Ministers have said is that if they bring these entities together the big information and communication technology project to digitalise all of this information will be easier to do. Well according to people who actually know about that digitisation it is doomed to fail because of the complexity of this merger and the way that the new entities will be set up. In fact that information and communication technology project is under threat from this merger. 
So why is the Government doing it other than out of blind ideology—blind ideology—and a feeling that it hates Government departments and nameless faceless bureaucrats despite the fact that they are preserving our history for future generations of New Zealanders? The Government has no plan for our economy so instead it will say: “Aren’t we great? We fired a whole lot of people in the State sector. Aren’t we doing a really good job? Look at us managing public funds properly.” even though there will be no savings from this merger and even though it puts at risk very expensive projects that have been ongoing for a long time. More important it undermines the very independence of these two constitutional roles which this House should be protecting. 
I will follow on from my colleague David Shearer and his comments about the other part of this legislation which is the combining of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. Labour members do not oppose that. I do not think it will make any great change to be perfectly honest. In fact when Dr Mapp came to the select committee for his first appropriation— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Was he awake? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —yes he was awake and he was enthusiastic about his new role—he quite eloquently laid out why the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology were separate. Committee members remember talking about the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. Dr Mapp very eloquently pointed out that the Ministry of Research Science and Technology is the ministry that provides policy to the Government. He told us that it was Government-facing. Then he said that the Foundation for Research Science and Technology was different because it was the funding arm for the area of science and research and development so the Foundation for Research Science and Technology faced out towards the science community. That he explained was why the two entities need to be separate: the Ministry of Research Science and Technology served the Government and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology served the science community and those two roles were very very different. He remembers saying that because he is smiling now. So I wonder why given how eloquently he professed at the select committee that the two entities needed to remain separate all of a sudden we are combining them for no apparent benefit. There will be no cost savings for at least 7 years. 
I also note that this week the Minister of Housing announced exactly the opposite approach for the Housing New Zealand Corporation: the Government will take policy away from the operational arm of the Housing New Zealand Corporation because it needs to keep those two separate. So I am not sure why one thing works for the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Department of Building and Housing and something completely different works for the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology but kei te pai that is all right. We do not think it will do a whole lot of damage. It is really just shuffling the deck chairs. 
It does not answer the more important questions in the area of science and research and development which are why the Government slashed the funding the previous Labour Government had put in place and why it removed the research and development tax credit which was unanimously supported by the sector as a tool it needed to lift private-sector investment in research and development and replaced it with a bureaucratic grants system. If Labour had put that in place members opposite would have been all over us about how bureaucratic it was how inefficient it was and why we had not introduced a tax credit. But they could not accept that a tax credit was a good idea and it was Labour’s idea when it came to research and development. Bill English has always had a funny thing about tax credits. He gets wound up about them. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: And scientists. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He’s against science. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: He’s anti-science. The fact is the research and development tax credit was a good idea. It has been replaced by a very bureaucratic idea which is far less efficient than Labour’s was. The Minister for Crown research institutes keeps going on about how great this Government has been for science. I want to know whether he would say that to my friends whom I went through university with— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: There are too many. 
MOANA MACKEY 
:—that is right there are far too many—whom I studied science with who have been laid off from Crown research institutes under this Government which is apparently the great Government of science because of funding cuts. 
Minister Tony Ryall is in charge of this legislation. Another thing he does not talk about is that a lot of the cuts in science funding have come through health cuts. A lot of scientific research is carried out under funding from the Ministry of Health. I know many people who have lost their jobs. They are highly qualified scientists. That is not to mention the science advisers that have also been fired and who have gone overseas— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Hey in this Government even the science Minister will get laid off. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Quite possibly—who knows? This Government has not been good for science. Here we are merging the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. That is fine. I do not think it will do an awful lot. It will not result in cost savings or better outcomes for science so one has to wonder why we are doing it. I have taken that view from the Minister of Research Science and Technology himself who absolutely convinced me at the select committee in 2009 that this merger was not something the Government should be doing that the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology carry out two very different roles. I took that view from the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp. 
I come back to the core part of this legislation which is the absolute ridiculousness of merging Archives New Zealand and the National Library. Maybe we should not be surprised; this Government has shown absolutely no respect for libraries and librarians and the role they perform. It cut the school library service. People living in provincial New Zealand used to have access to someone at the National Library who could make sure that children growing up in the provinces got the same access to information as children growing up in the cities did. Well that is gone. Guess what they were given? An 0800 number—as if that is the same thing! Provincial schools were up in arms about that because they used the service regularly. It meant that children in rural areas got the same access to information as kids in the cities did. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: What a lot of rubbish. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I tell Anne Tolley to visit some schools in her electorate; they will tell her. But they are not allowed to because when she visits a school the staff are told that they are not allowed to discuss education with her. They are not allowed to discuss education. Because she is their local MP they can talk about local issues only—although I note that she has started to visit schools now that we are coming into election year. 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I rise to support the State Sector Management Bill. This bill amalgamates a number of existing agencies. What do we get from that? We achieve gains in terms of financial and operational efficiencies. It is about improving effectiveness through synergies within those departments. But the best thing this bill does is guarantee the future viability of these agencies. We have inherited a financial mess from the last Labour Government. The amalgamations will improve services within existing baselines and will reduce those costs in the short to medium term. On that basis I commend this bill to the House. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments recommended by the Education and Science Committee by majority be agreed to. 
Ayes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 39; Green Party 5. 
Question agreed to. 
The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 66 Noes 45. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the State Sector Management Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 39; Green Party 5. 
Bill read a second time. 
The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 66 Noes 45. 
Instruction to Committee 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I move  
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the State Sector Management Bill that it have the power to consider and if it thinks fit to adopt the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 196 
. In speaking to this— 
Chris Tremain 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I just want to be clear. Has there been an agreement to allow the member to speak and is what he has requested within the scope of the bill? If it is within the scope of the bill then it would be considered as part of the Committee stage. If it is outside the scope of the bill then there is no reason to allow this member to have a speech. I ask that you make a ruling on this matter immediately and that we take some time to understand what is being proposed here. As a speaker he may—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Points of order will be heard in silence. There is a constant barrage across the House and this is quite a technical point. I want Chris Tremain to continue with his point of order. 
Chris Tremain 
: I am just asking that you have some time to consider what is being proposed in the debate that the Hon Trevor Mallard is putting on to the floor of the House. There have been previous instances in the last month or two where this tactic has been tried and it has I would add been successful at that point in time for the Opposition. But with the benefit of hindsight it should have never been allowed. If the presiding officer had been given the opportunity to consider what was being proposed it would have been ruled out of order at that time and the debate would not have been allowed to proceed. So I ask Mr Assistant Speaker Barker that you consider whether what is being proposed is within the scope of the bill. If it is it will be dealt with in the Committee stage. If it is outside the scope of bill then I ask that it be ruled out of order immediately. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to members— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am entitled to make a ruling. It is the Speaker’s prerogative. I do not need any particular assistance on this matter thank you. Fortunately we have had some time to think about this matter in advance. The point of Mr Mallard’s instruction is that it proposes to set an amendment that seeks to amend the bill to allow for amendment to the functions of the Tertiary Education Commission as set out in the Education Act 1989 by removing the commission’s role as a policy adviser to the Minister for Tertiary Education. Mr Mallard’s instruction proposes an amendment that is foreign to the bill and if it is foreign to the bill it is not a proper instruction. It is therefore out of order. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There was considerable consultation on this particular approach and the advice I received is that any member can move an instruction to include something in a bill. It is regularly done by Ministers for matters that are outside the scope of the bill as a method of including them in the bill. That is the point of the instruction: if something is already part of the bill and it can be considered by the Committee without an instruction there would be no place for instructions whatsoever. Mr Assistant Speaker Barker you know that instructions are regularly used in order to widen the scope of the bill and to include in a bill matters that are related but out of scope. 
Clearly this is a related matter. It is a State sector reorganisation matter. It is actually a transfer of policy function between two State agencies so it is a State sector reorganisation matter. The House of course can vote against it now or the House could deal with it later. In fact the logical thing for the Government would probably be to save a lot of time and deal with it now because it will deal with it later in the education area. It is a photocopy of Anne Tolley’s amendment. The Government supports it completely and the Government could save a lot of time by doing it in the right place rather than in the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) which is the wrong place. 
I go back to the original point. Can you explain Mr Assistant Speaker Barker given your ruling what possible area could be the subject of an instruction? The history of the House has been that instructions from the House to the Committee to consider matters are used for things that would otherwise be outside the scope of the bill. The right to do that has been both the Government’s and the Opposition’s. My anxiety with your ruling—because I want to be on the other side of the House in the not too distant future—is that you will be removing the right of anyone to move an instruction to extend the scope of a bill in order to include in it matters that would otherwise be out or order. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I just say to the member that matters that come before the House have to conform to the Standing Orders and the rules of this House. One cannot amend those by way of an instruction to the Committee by motion. The only method members have to do that is by seeking leave. I have had cases of bills amended by leave as other presiding officers have. There has to be unanimity; it is not a majority decision. 
The member’s amendment is outside of the scope of the bill. It is foreign to the bill and it cannot be done by a motion. I have ruled it out of order. The member has asked what possible options members would have in the future. Members will have in the future exactly the same options they have today. They may seek leave and it must be a majority decision. The matter is closed. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think it is a slight extension of the previous point of order. It goes to the question of the history of the moving at this stage of the debate of motions that have certainly not been by leave that have extended the scope of the bill. That has happened on dozens of occasions since I have been a member of Parliament. Generally it is within the field of the bill but the extension is for something that would not have otherwise been allowed. 
If you are ruling in this way I think you are setting a very dangerous precedent whereby Governments will not be able to extend the scope of bills. I can remember during the whole State sector reorganisation when much more major things came in at this late stage of the bill. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I will clarify it for the member one further time. There is a difference between extending the scope of the bill by resolution and something that is foreign to the bill. I am saying that this amendment is not within the scope; the amendment the member has moved is foreign to the bill. It is quite outside of the bill. In that particular case the only method the member has available is to make the amendment by leave. The member is failing to make that distinction. 
I make the point to the member again if he cares to listen that the member can move an instruction to the Committee on an amendment when it is consistent with the bill or associated with the bill but if it is one step removed and it is foreign to the bill then the member cannot do it by a motion. In that particular case the member can do it only by leave. I have ruled the member’s amendment out and that is the end of the matter. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The point of order goes right to the core of your ruling which is whether this instruction is foreign. This is a State sector restructuring bill. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: My ruling on that instruction is that it is foreign to the bill. It is clear. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I accept your ruling that the Supplementary Order Paper that my colleague was promoting was foreign to the bill. I wonder whether you have had a chance to reflect on Speaker’s ruling 79/3. It is quite an ancient Speaker’s ruling from my perspective as it goes back to 1931. It sets out the conditions in which an instruction that may be foreign or contradictory can be referred to the Committee or in which the House can confer a power on the Committee that it does not ordinarily possess if that is the will of the House. I think 79/3 brings it into the competency of what the member Trevor Mallard was attempting to move. I wonder whether on that scale— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I respond to the member and say that if the member reads 79/3 he will see it is entirely consistent with what I have said. For the member’s assistance: “It is competent for a member to move an instruction the subject-matter of which is neither ‘irrelevant nor foreign nor contradictory to the decision of the House taken on the introduction and second reading of the bill’”. I have said that the member’s amendment is foreign to the bill. I have ruled absolutely in accordance with the Speaker’s ruling from 1931. I thank the member for refreshing my memory. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I move  
That 
it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the State Sector Management Bill that it have the power to consider and if it thinks fit to adopt the typescript amendment to clause 25 
. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to Grant Robertson that his instruction to the Committee is out of order because it seeks to give the Committee the power to do something it already has the power to do. The Committee has that power; it does not need it again. This House does not need belts and braces. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I move  
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the State Sector Management Bill that it have the power to consider the amendments set out in the typescript amendment in the name of my colleague Grant Robertson to insert new clause 28A.  
This is a— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We will not have a speech on that motion. I say to the member that the member’s motion fails for exactly the same reason that I failed Mr Robertson’s. If an amendment is already on the Table and the Committee has the power to consider it it is within scope and it does not need an instruction to the Committee. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I move  
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the State Sector Management Bill that it have the power to consider an amendment from Grant Robertson that is yet to be tabled in this House and is relevant to the bill. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to the member that we will not have motions that anticipate possible amendments. The Committee of the whole House has that power of itself and the Committee having the power to consider any fine amendment moved by Grant Robertson will decide on its own whether it agrees with it. It does not need an instruction to the Committee to do that. 
Hon SIMON POWER (Deputy Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Having listened to the three points of order from Trevor Mallard all of which have been ruled out for lack of compliance with the Standing Orders; having listened to the shadow Leader of the House raise a point of order that in fact confirmed your ruling and did not provide any evidence for it to be revisited; and having listened to the member for Wellington Central try the same tactic I suggest to you that we are now at the point where the Opposition is trifling with your ruling. On two occasions you have declared the matter closed and I suggest that we move on with the business at hand. 
In Committee 
Part 1 Provisions relating to research science and technology 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 Some of the early provisions of the State Sector Management Bill cut to the heart of what the bill is really about in terms of research science and technology issues. First I want to come to the aspect of the definitions contained in this bill. 
A number of submitters made some comment on that matter—in particular on clauses 7(1) and 7(2). One or two of the submitters wanted to try to put into the bill and to have much more fleshed out the definitions of what constitutes science research technological development innovation and benefit to New Zealand. They felt that the bill as it stood at that point did not go into that sufficiently. They wanted to see those terms expressed more fully explained and defined more fully in the legislation and I think there was some sympathy for that view. 
In particular the submitters cut to the definitions that are applied by the OECD in terms of science research and technology. Those definitions which are widely accepted as being the authority on research and development are the Frascati definitions. They define basic research as “experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundation of phenomena and observable facts without any particular application or use in view.” In those terms basic research is what one would call the foundation work that we do in science. Applied research—and I quote from the Frascati definitions again—“is also original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledge. It is however directed primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective.” We can see the difference between the two definitions. 
Our science in New Zealand obviously straddles both of those areas. We have fundamental research taking place particularly in our universities. The work of the Crown research institutes tends to be more of the applied nature although I have to say that even in those institutes a significant amount of good science is happening particularly in the basic earth sciences. But I think the feeling was that those definitions in a sense set the bill up so there was no problem in understanding what was being referred to in clauses 7(1) and (2). 
The applied and the more experimental research is somewhat different from those two areas. Again I will quote from the Frascati definitions: “Experimental development is systematic work drawing on existing knowledge gained from research and/or practical experience which is directed to producing new materials products or devices to installing new processes systems and services or to improving substantially those already produced or installed.” We can think of many many examples of that one of which is the development of the red kiwifruit. That is really a development of something that currently exists but the new knowledge and new science that was applied to kiwifruit enabled a new product to come about. 
In many ways that example cuts to the heart of what this bill looks to do which is to look for innovation in terms of our science research and technology. The bill tries to build on that aspect of what we do in our science and research institutions. That is where we get the greatest amount of economic benefit; the economic benefit comes from improving what already exists. There is nothing wrong with that. Obviously a lot of things come out of blue-sky science and we do some extremely good blue-sky research in our science institutions. But not much of it—or very little of it—actually goes on to produce real economic benefit. The core of the economic benefit comes from the area covered by the Frascati definition that I just read out which applies to experimental development that builds on and develops processes and aspects of our science system that are already in place. 
We discussed at some length in the Education and Science Committee whether it would be worth putting the Frascati definitions in the bill. I think we came to the basic conclusion that with regard to the use of the phrase “RS&T” in clauses 7(2)(e) and (f) although the Frascati definitions are good and comprehensive they are really already embodied inside that definition. They are embodied in the bill already. It is well known what they mean and they are well accepted throughout New Zealand so we thought it was probably unnecessary to draw that definition out any further. However we agreed to amend the phrase “RS&T’ used in clauses 7(2)(e) and (f) to read “research science or technology” but we did not change the definition of “RS&T funding” in clause 4. 
I come to the second issue raised by submitters on this part of this bill which was the phrase “the benefit of New Zealand” in clause 7(1). Again it was felt by some submitters that we should have that specifically brought into the bill and stated up front. The committee did not discuss that in great depth but we felt that the phrase “the benefit of New Zealand” is probably intended to have its ordinary natural meaning. In fact most of us would believe that it is pretty self-explanatory and that to expand it and try to define it would do the opposite to what the submitters wanted which was to make that definition clear. If we had defined it that might have made it much more restrictive in terms of the future interpretation of the legislation. So we left that particular part of the definition “the benefit of New Zealand” in place. 
In conclusion I think this particular issue of the definitions is really important as we are moving towards a bill that in a sense develops a new title of research and innovation and that was well discussed. I think we have now started off this new legislation with a full understanding of exactly what the various definitions mean. We are clear about that and it is based in the commentary on the bill. I will leave it at that. Thank you. 
Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of State Services) 
: 
 Part 1 of the State Sector Management Bill is part of a new strategic approach that the Government is taking in the area of science and innovation whereby we are bringing together the two agencies that provided advice to Ministers in this area. We are bringing a much greater focus on the delivery of science and its outcomes to the New Zealand store of knowledge which will improve our ability to commercialise any ideas and products therefrom. 
The bill brings together the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research Science and Technology into the Ministry of Science and Innovation. The Ministry of Science and Innovation will have separate boards which have been given statutory powers and responsibility for the granting of various innovation funds to people involved in the science sector. 
The Minister of Research Science and Technology the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp has often made the point that he has always met with both the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research Science and Technology every time he has considered these issues. That indicates that in terms of the Minister’s dealings with the department we will have an improved relationship. But more important I think that those involved in research science and technology innovation in New Zealand will see an improved responsiveness from the centre and a much greater focus on the shared priorities that we have across the science and innovation sector. I am sure that later on in response to questions we will be able to give them some more detail on that. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 What a load of twaddle! I am sorry but nothing in the State Sector Management Bill will achieve all the grandiose stuff we just heard about. I am not sure but apparently the Minister of State Services has had great conversations with the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp about how he would have great discussions with the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology. Well the only discussion I have had with Dr Mapp on this matter was when he told a select committee that the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology should not be combined. That is the only thing I have heard Dr Mapp talk about when it comes to the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology. 
The Minister of State Services says we should have a strategic approach. How is this merger a strategic approach to assisting research science and technology in New Zealand? There is nothing strategic about a Minister who less than 18 months ago said this merger should not happen suddenly deciding that because the Government needed to be seen to be doing something it should happen. The Minister also said this merger would help with the delivery of science and science outcomes. I see that the Minister of Research Science and Technology is now in the chair and I would like to know which exact clauses will suddenly help the commercialisation of science in New Zealand. What really worries me about that contribution is that nothing in this bill will do that. Labour will not vote against Part 1 not because we think it will be great but because we do not think it will necessarily do any damage. But if the Government seriously believes that there will be a step change in science in New Zealand from combining the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology then we are really in trouble when it comes to innovation. It simply will not do that. 
I circled under clause 4 which is the interpretation clause: “ ‘Minister’ means the Minister of the Crown who under the authority of any warrant or with the authority of the Prime Minister is for the time being responsible for the administration of this Part”. I would like to remove the word “Minister” and replace it with “Paul Hutchison” because he is a National member who understands the science sector. He would never have stood up and given a contribution like the one given by the Minister of State Services. He claimed that this bill will result in a strategic approach to research and science in New Zealand and commercialisation and all these grandiose things. Paul Hutchison would never have said that because he knows that what the sector needs is more funding. That is why we should remove the word “Minister” and replace it with “Paul Hutchison”. 
I will talk about Subpart 1 “Allocation of funding” which is in Part 1. It outlines the purposes for which this research science and technology funding may be allocated. There a number of very worthy causes here. Clause 7(2)(a) states that the activities should be “likely to increase knowledge or understanding of the physical biological or social environment;”. As we know we are in a brave new world now. The Royal Society of New Zealand is bringing the humanities into its organisation so it is appropriate that under this part of the bill we recognise the research that goes on in the social sector. As we go to clause 7(2)(b) we see that a funded activity “is likely to contribute to New Zealand’s economic growth;”. Absolutely but there should be recognition of the fact that just saying that will not make it happen. I come back to the fact that all the ideas listed in clause 7(2) are worthy ideas but they will not result in anything if the Government keeps slashing funding and support and if scientists in New Zealand keep on being fired. That does not contribute to the economic growth of New Zealand. 
Then we see in clause 7(2)(c) that a funded activity “is likely to develop maintain or increase skills or scientific or technological expertise that is of particular importance to New Zealand;”. We cannot argue with that except to say again that just saying it does not make it so. We would like to see the Minister in the chair take a call to outline how the decisions that his Government has made to cut back on the funding that the previous Government put in place will help bring about the activity described in clause 7(2)(c) into being. From where we sit and from the discussions we are having around the country with people in the sector things are going in the opposite direction. Clause 7(2)(c) states “increase skills or scientific or technological expertise”. Increasing skills in science is a core part of what the sector needs yet science advisers in schools are being fired. How can this measure increase science skills in New Zealand if we have no science advisers which means that science is undervalued at primary school? That will feed all the way through the system and we are very very concerned about that. Those advisers have gone now. They are highly talented highly skilled. They have all been snapped up by other countries which are very happy to have them and those advisers are very happy to be in countries with Governments that support science unlike in New Zealand. 
I think clause 7(2)(d) is very telling. It states that the activities referred to are “unlikely to be funded or adequately funded from non-governmental sources;”. Why do we have to have that? Because New Zealand has one of the lowest private sector spends on research science and technology. Acknowledging here that there is not adequate funding in this area raises the question as to why the National Government got rid of Labour’s research and development tax credit. Why did it get rid of Labour’s research and development tax credit to the point where it now even has to admit in legislation that we cannot get funding from non-governmental sources? The provision refers to activities “unlikely to be funded or adequately funded from non-governmental sources;”. Why does the Minister in chair not explain why he cut one of the single biggest factors that would have resulted in more non-governmental funding of science in New Zealand? Everyone was telling him that. Prior to the last election we found out that groups from all over the country were flying around trying to catch up with Bill English who was then the Opposition spokesman on finance to tell him to please not get rid of the research and development tax credit because more non-governmental funding for science was needed. Yet this Government decided based on who knows what reason it has for doing anything in this area that it would get rid of it. Well Australia did that and do members know what? Australia had to bring it back because its funding had fallen down so far and it had been such a failure yet this Government failed to take that lesson on board. 
We come now to clause 8 which is under the heading “Criteria for assessing RS&T funding”. It lays out criteria that the Minister is to set and that the boards the Government is setting up will need to adhere to when deciding who gets this particular funding. Clause 8(1) states: “The Minister must from time to time by notice given to each board and published in the 
 Gazette 
 set criteria for the assessment of proposals for specified RS&T funding.” That is quite a lot of power for the Minister. We get a bit nervous about a whole lot of power in an area of such technical expertise being placed with a Minister who from time to time may be someone who does not know a lot about research science and technology and does not have a background in it— 
Hon Simon Power 
: Oh! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Simon Power assumes I am talking about the Minister in the chair but I said “from time to time”. That was a very telling Freudian slip I say to Mr Power but I was not actually talking about his colleague. Although I note that when Dr Mapp took over the portfolio he kept telling everyone he went to meet that he did not want the portfolio and was as surprised as anyone to get it. 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: I never said that. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Dr Mapp that he did. I think Dr Mapp was trying to lower expectations but it had a bit of a negative effect in the sector. 
From time to time we may have a Minister who does not have a lot of expertise in this area yet clause 8(1) provides that Minister with an extraordinary amount of power to decide where this funding goes and to set criteria. As someone with a science background one thing I like to point out to colleagues—and I think David Carter has also pointed it out—is that the person who invented the motorcar said that if people had asked what politicians wanted and businesses wanted they would have been told they wanted faster horses. That is very telling. Sometimes Ministers do not know where science funding will go or what the next big thing will be. We could look at a whole lot of other things: penicillin was discovered by mistake; when the electron was discovered everyone said what a useless piece of information it was even though it was kind of interesting and now our entire world is run by electronics. Yet this clause puts the power to direct the direction of funding of science in the hands of one person and I wonder whether that is the most sensible thing to do. It seems to me that it is a move away from the funding of fundamental science which is where we tell people to go out and find new discoveries—the big things that actually create a lot of wealth. They are the kinds of things that are funded in the United States and more and more are being funded in places like Australia where people understand the importance of fundamental science. [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister is chipping away at me but he could get to his feet and take a call which I would very much appreciate. It seems like a lot of power is being given to one Minister to direct which areas of science will be funded. 
I note that funding cannot be given to particular people. That is a very important safeguard in the law and I absolutely agree with it. But there are areas of science where not many people work so one could direct funding towards a particular area of science and it would go to a particular person who one knows is the key person working in that area. So there is a little bit of undermining of that perhaps. I know that my colleague Chris Hipkins is particularly concerned about this issue so I will not steal his thunder in that regard. 
But I would like the Minister in the chair to take a call and can I say how pleased I am that the Minister of Research Science and Technology is in the chair for this particular part. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 As my colleague Moana Mackey alluded—it was a very good call—I wish to talk about the purpose of the bill as stated in Part 1. The Minister of Research Science and Technology is being given the power to establish boards to make independent funding decisions and I stress the word “independent”. I will quiz the Minister in the chair the Minister of Research Science and Technology. I hope that he will give me some responses to the questions I am about to raise about how some of the powers vested in this bill will aid that independence in the decision-making criteria. 
Clause 8(1) states: “The Minister must from time to time by notice given to each board and published in the 
 Gazette 
 set criteria for the assessment of proposals for specified RS&T funding.” But clause 8(3) prevents the Minister from directing funding decisions toward particular people so the Minister could not determine that a particular person or project would be funded. 
However I would like to know how the Government will ensure that the powers given in clause 8(1) and also in clause 10(3) which specifies: “The Minister may specify that a board is to make funding decisions on proposals for specified RS&T funding in relation to 1 or more areas of research science or technology or related activities” will not be used in such a way that funding is directed to specific projects or people. In the research science and technology community in New Zealand there will probably be only one or two people or entities working in a particular area in some cases. It seems that the Minister is being given through the bill the power to direct funding into quite specific projects. I would like some comment from the Minister on that. 
Perhaps as a useful way of doing that he could comment on this: one of the things the bill does is require the Minister to establish one or more boards but I do not think we have heard how the Government envisages implementing this proposal. I would like to know how many boards for example the Government envisages establishing under this bill. The Minister is indicating two boards. I would be interested to hear what areas they will be working in and what the scope of those two boards will be. It could well be that the concern I had about funding being directed into specific areas will be alleviated by the way those boards are to be composed and the remit that they will be given. 
Under the purposes for which research science and technology funding may be allocated I guess I welcomed the order of priority given in the ordering of the activities referred to in the sense that the first priority set out in clause 7(2)(a) is to increase knowledge or understanding of the physical biological and social environment. As my colleague Moana Mackey said we do not always know where scientific discovery will land up. It could well be that some of the major advances in science and technology in the future come from pursuits and endeavours in a research area that at the moment we do not necessarily see much value in. If we were to place the priorities set out in paragraph 7(2)(b) ahead of the priorities set out in subclause 7(2)(a)—subclause 7(2)(b) refers to contributing to New Zealand’s economic growth—we might well miss out on some absolutely fantastic opportunities. 
One of the concerns that we have about all funding for research science and technology—and when I say “we” I mean generally as a country as opposed to specific parties or politicians—is that funding is being too narrowly focused on stuff with an economic impact and not on the wider value of science. If we want to really promote scientific discovery and research new and exciting areas that do not necessarily let us know where the research will lead to it will require a much more holistic approach than simply what is in the bill. The bill is pretty narrowly focused and as Moana Mackey commented it will not really change an awful lot. 
We need to look at where science takes place starting at schools. We are struggling to get kids coming out of schools who are interested in pursuing careers in science. [ 
Interruption 
] There will be even fewer under national standards because science is not given a particularly high priority under the Government’s national standards policy. Actually that is where it starts. It starts with getting more kids who are leaving school wanting to pursue careers in science. If we are not doing that and the Government has taken science advisers out of schools then a lot of the rest of this debate will be immaterial. Also I guess we have to look at the scientific research and endeavours that are undertaken in universities. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Before I get into clauses 7 8 and 9— 
Louise Upston 
: Wishful thinking. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Absolutely! I know Louise Upston will be taking a call because she followed this bill very closely in the Education and Science Committee. I am sure that we will hear from her. Rather than chipping across the Chamber she will get up and take a call because she believes in the importance of science Archives New Zealand and the National Library. 
I will comment briefly on Minister Ryall’s intervention earlier about the importance of having the strategic approach and improved responsiveness that we would see as a result of what is covered in Part 1. It is difficult to take that too seriously because I suspect that the improved responsiveness we will see is that the new Ministry of Science and Innovation will be quicker to say no; that will be the improvement in the responsiveness. If the Government is not prepared to commit resources to science research technology and innovation then all of this shuffling of deckchairs means nothing. I think it is important to say at the outset that members on this side of the Chamber are strongly supportive of science funding. We were very alarmed to see the moves that this Government made in its early days and we would like to see a greater commitment beyond simply structural changes which as my colleague David Shearer said do no harm as such but do not exactly lead us anywhere in a particularly positive direction. 
My colleague Chris Hipkins made some points about clause 7. Some submitters to the select committee expressed concerns about the way in which clause 7 constructs a hierarchy of criteria that will be assessed when making decisions about research science and technology funding. In particular concern was raised about the question of contestability. I know that Minister Ryall Paul Hutchison and other National members who have had a bit of involvement in the sector know that one of the really difficult balances in research science and technology is the balance between stable funding and contestability. It truly is one of the enormous challenges that faces any Government in trying to work out how to ensure that we have that kind of blue-sky thinking that Chris Hipkins talked about or indeed how we avoid the “faster horse” phenomenon that Moana Mackey mentioned. How do we make sure that the new and innovative idea is taken up? 
The concern was raised in the select committee that the way in which clause 7(2) is laid out does not give sufficient emphasis to contestability. The officials made a good argument to the select committee that the merging of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research Science and Technology bring together a number of different types of funding and that the foundation tended to have a fairly rigorously contestable process and the ministry has perhaps a number of other different processes that it is working on and therefore we did not need to take up the idea of the submitter who said that the contestability provisions of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology Act should find their way into this Act. That is an interesting point and it is one that the Minister may choose to comment on. 
When we read through clause 7(2) or the whole of clause 7 for that matter it is true to say that it does not have that clear statement around the question of contestability. I think it is important that we have that balance of stable funding. In particular we know that the Crown research institutes talk a lot about the importance of stable funding and contestable funding—contestable funding that highlights the possibilities of cooperation between different actors in the science sector. I think we can certainly support clause 7 as it stands now but the Minister may choose to comment on how this definition and the purposes will deal with the question of balance between stable funding and contestable funding. I think that lies at the heart of getting our science system right. We have to have the contestability element to generate those new ideas. We have to have the funds to support those new ideas. From time to time when funding for the Marsden Fund is announced and there are some quite different new and unique funding elements—sometimes a research element is undertaken by the spouse of a former Prime Minister for instance or somebody like that—it draws attention from the media. But actually that blue-sky research sometimes is the thing that gives us the spark to generate both economic wealth and social and environmental benefits. I think clause 7(2) is interesting and I would like to hear from the Minister on it even though the select committee itself resolved to accept the officials’ advice in that area. 
Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP (Minister of Research Science and Technology) 
: 
 I thought I should take a call in response to a number of the questions asked. I found it interesting when I listened to the various Labour members from whom we have heard so far. I sometimes think Labour members live in a parallel universe. The sense I am getting from the science sector is that there is a great deal of optimism at the moment and I do not mean just the stuff said directly to me but also what has been said indirectly through the Chief Science Adviser to the Prime Minister Peter Gluckman and many others. The sector sees that the changes the Government has made—which are not just legislative but also broader in the Crown Research Institute Taskforce and the increases in funding to the Marsden Fund and the Health Research Council—have been significant. Although Mr Shearer tended to dismiss these changes as being a minor consequence as indeed did Moana Mackey they are in fact part and parcel of a broader setting that we are changing here. In a sense we could say that this legislation is effectively enabling legislation. Although we may not see the words in here in a strategic setting effectively that is what is then able to be undertaken. That was missed in the previous division of the ministry and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. 
I note that Moana Mackey is inclined to keep repeating the untruth—because she knows it to be untrue—that I did not want to be in charge of the ministry. She knows it is untrue because she knows that I actually said I was not expecting the portfolio. But I am very pleased to have got it. The reason I am pleased to have it is that I had spent a lot of time in Opposition in a working group on the North Shore which included people like Professor Raine and a number of other leading science people. We were thinking about the role of innovation in New Zealand and we wrote a series of papers on it as a part of the work that one does while in Opposition. When Dr Hutchison— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Did he ask the Prime Minister if he could be Minister of this portfolio? 
Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: He knew I was interested because I had been writing papers on innovation for the party. 
In answer to some specific questions that Mr Hipkins raised on the issue of boards I say there will be two boards: one will be a science board and one will be an innovation board. The name—and I think Mr Shearer correctly recognised why the name was chosen—is intended to show an end-to-end process connecting fundamental science right through to commercialisation. As a consequence we need two boards. A science board will fund more of what one might call blue-sky research and will consist mostly of New Zealand’s leading scientists as we would reasonably expect. The other board is the innovation board which will be mostly focused towards the business end of funding: the Technology New Zealand funding and the $50 million there the vouchers worth $20 million over 4 years—they are hugely oversubscribed; there is a good lesson for the future—and the recently announced technology development grants which are worth about $190 million over 4 years. The grants were also hugely well-received. I might also add that they were oversubscribed and they were superior to Labour’s tax credit scheme which was aimed at lawyers. The tax credit scheme went through the Inland Revenue Department system and was disconnected from the most innovative businesses. 
I know that a number of members have made reference to the  
TIN100  
publication which is produced by the Technology Investment Network. That sets out New Zealand’s leading technological companies. They are the ones by and large that have benefited from the technology development grant. A rigorous process was undertaken to work out which firms had the highest levels of research and development capability and they are getting the grants. 
David Shearer 
: Which bureaucrat did that? 
Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: It was an independent selection process I tell the member. So there are two boards there. 
A point was raised by Mr Grant Robertson about the balance between stable funding and contestable funding. That is an important point and the OECD task force made a report in 2007 on this very issue. The previous Government seemingly just ignored that report but we established the Crown Research Institute Taskforce which was intended to take on board the lessons from it. Members may know that the OECD has just come to New Zealand in the last week essentially to review what has occurred since then. The report particularly noted two things. The Crown Research Institute Taskforce will deliver more stable funding. We do not want all of the funding to be stable and I think Mr Robertson was correct in saying that. There is an issue of balance and we have the Science and Innovation Advisory Council to ensure that the balance is there. But there is no doubt that the Crown research institutes are enthusiastic about the results of the task force and are looking forward to implementing it. 
There are three elements. Firstly statements of core purpose are hugely important. The most effective Crown research institutes are the ones that have the best understanding of their mission. The second element is stable funding or core funding as it is called. The third element is a more appropriate form of accountability. Financial measures are still important but they are not the only measures. 
It is my clear understanding that those within the sector have been appreciative of the measures undertaken. They can see the strategic purpose of those measures: the ministry the Crown Research Institute Taskforce and the simplification—hugely—of the appropriations. I inherited a system where the appropriation system was chaotic and caused a huge amount of confusion within the sector. One of the ways that we improve the sector is to reduce compliance costs within the sector. Mr Shearer knows what I am talking about because he has heard it from many many people. Those sorts of things have been done to date. They form something of a foundation for further improvements and the sector has the opportunity to build from it. 
Part 1 is all about getting a more effective system that will be able to achieve the purposes set out in clause 7. I assure Mr Hipkins that the two boards have been established precisely to ensure that the Minister does not fund individual scientists. Thank you. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Before I was interrupted on the State Sector Management Bill I was about to go on to clause 8. But I think I will return briefly to respond to a couple of Dr Mapp’s comments in particular in relation to the research and development tax credit since I had raised that matter. 
Suggesting that the fund that has been set up—some announcements about which were made in the last few days—somehow replaces that tax credit is a bizarre thing to say. How does Dr Mapp or indeed any of the officials who are making the decision really know they have covered the waterfront in terms of making sure we have the best and the brightest people working on the best ideas in New Zealand? The research and development tax credit had the great advantage of being universal for companies and accessed by everybody. Weta Digital does remarkable work and needs to be supported in that but it might not be the only organisation that is doing that work. We need to support companies across the board if we are going to lift the amount of research and development that is done in New Zealand. It is no coincidence that other countries in the world use a universal-style tax credit because they want to encourage all companies to invest in research and development and the opposite is true: they do not want to see companies going overseas because the support is not there. 
One of the great risks of moving away from the tax credit approach is that the Australians have retained the tax credit and the incentive is now there for people to go overseas. So it is all very well to say that a fund has been established and we are finding the people who will lead us into the future but what about new companies? What about the start-up companies that really need that support but now do not get it because winners have been picked by the Minister of Research Science and Technology or the Minister’s officials? I think that the Minister raising that point now really drives home to us why this bill and why Part 1 of this bill although relatively anodyne does not take us anywhere. Those good initiatives of the fifth Labour Government may have been undone by the Minister. 
I am grateful to the Minister for responding to my comments about the question of contestability and stability and obviously that is an issue of great significance to the Crown research institutes. It is also an issue of significance to universities. University research in this country is vitally important to our economy. It is of growing importance to our economy and there is concern among some university researchers about the way in which they relate to Crown research institutes how they are able to work with them and whether there are systems in place within the purposes and the criteria laid out in Part 1 for universities and Crown research institutes to work together. University researchers are very well aware that their job is to get into those contestable areas and to try to get support. They have the Performance-based Research Fund as an underlying piece of stable funding but it is very important for them to know they are regarded as being part of that research sector. I encourage the Minister in talking about that to ensure that universities are mentioned. 
To return to clause 8 as I was about to say in the Education and Science Committee one submitter came to us and suggested that the way in which the Minister might set criteria needs some consideration as well. The question really was whether the Minister should be setting this criteria on an annual basis or perhaps with a slightly more arm’s-length approach by moving out to some kind of policy statement that might set the criteria with a frequency of no more than every 3 years. Again the committee looked at the approach as listed in clause 8 and felt that it was OK for that to continue. But again there was some concern as my colleague Chris Hipkins said about the closeness of the Minister to some of those procedures. How do we know that a particular Minister will not push a particular barrow and so on? That was one of the issues raised under clause 8. The Minister in the chair could take a call and advise us how he will implement clause 8. When this bill is passed into law—for a brief period anyway—it will be his responsibility to implement it. 
The Education and Science Committee decided to make a change to clause 9 and I am sure that my colleague David Shearer will take this matter up as well. We were concerned about the way in which proposals could be referred to the boards and how they would make decisions on those matters. In order for boards to be independent and to give a proper assessment that was not directed entirely by officials or entirely by the Minister they would need their own sources of information. Clearly that was of great concern to us. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 1 during this example of the Government’s bold agenda for reform in our country which sees us sitting under urgency on a Saturday. Part 1 deals with the science sector and we will deal with other parts during the morning. Of course we have been told by members opposite that they are not scared of hard work but we have heard only the briefest of calls from them during the morning. Roger Douglas who came to Parliament to try to reform the State sector could not speak for even 1 minute on a bill that reforms the State sector. So we are grateful to the Minister in the chair the Hon Wayne Mapp who is at least engaging on some of the issues. Although we have a lot of criticism of him at least there is some praise in that respect for the fact that he is taking it very very seriously. But that is not what we are seeing from other areas. 
I have about three points on different clauses that I would like to address this morning. The first is clause 7. It deals with the purposes for which specified research science and technology funding may be allocated. Subclause (2) sets out six criteria for which there are purposes that are considered to be germane to the funding of sciences. I think that the areas the Minister has set out are far too narrow. In particular I would like him to comment on the complete absence of any focus on Maori issues for research science and technology. I see that the Maori Party supports this bill and I ask them to reflect on this clause. There is nothing in the purposes listed that specifically indicates there is a role for this new agency to have any focus on Maori issues for research science and technology. I say to the Minister if the New Zealand Government is not going to have a focus on Maori issues for research science and technology then which country is? Which country will look at Maori-specific issues a Maori kaupapa view on research science and technology as he is specifically making sure that in this bill the New Zealand Government is not going to. 
That is a massive omission from and weakness in clause 7(2). New Zealand’s economic growth is specified as the second purpose but there is nothing at all for Maori interests—in particular Maori economic development. If we think of some of the areas where there are significant Maori asset holdings in the country particularly around land holdings I would have thought that the ability of innovation in research science and technology to unlock some of the potential for Maori economic interests would be absolutely suited to enhanced by and lifted up by the purposes in clause 7. I want to know from the Minister whether that was an overt decision by the Government when considering this issue through Cabinet. Did it make an overt decision to exclude a specified clause for Maori issues? 
Moana Mackey 
: They talked to him about it. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The member Moana Mackey makes the point to me that Maori have specifically talked to him about it. Maori interests have gone to him and said they want to be included in the research science and technology agenda. Clause 7(2) does not facilitate the ability for that to happen. I think that is a mistake; it is an omission. I do not think we should simply vote this bill through because it is Saturday morning and Government members are grumpy at the Leader of the House because they are here. That is not a reason not to speak. 
Hon Member 
: That’s rubbish. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The member opposite looks particularly grumpy but that could be for other reasons. We know well and truly of their inability to engage in debate on these issues. We know they have had enough. They say we should just get over it and go. But if “getting over it and going” means that Maori interests are forgotten then the Government will have to make sure it does not omit such important issues as Maori economic interests. I want the Minister to talk about that in a very important way for our country because if the New Zealand Government cannot do it no other Government will. He needs to address that and explain why it has been left out. 
Another purpose that has been left out is to make sure there is a connection with private scientific research. That is a big mistake. This Government talks long about the need to have public-private partnerships yet this bill is at the cutting edge of the Government’s reform agenda. Members of Parliament like Melissa Lee came here to merge Archives New Zealand and the National Library. She came here to make sure that the Foundation for Research Science and Technology can line up with the Ministry of Research Science and Technology. Those are crucial issues of substance amazing things that have happened yet we now know that Government members will not have the gumption to talk about them particularly to bring that private focus through in this clause. So I wanted to talk about why the Maori focus is not included in the purposes in clause 7(2) and also why the private focus is not there. If the Minister has cause to reflect on those exclusions he may be able to inform the Committee. 
We could amend the clause right here and now. We could introduce a new paragraph (g) in subclause (2) to provide a kaupapa focus. If that amendment were put up I am sure Te Ururoa Flavell from the Maori Party would support that. He seems to be getting some notes at the present time on that very matter. I cannot believe that the Maori Party would vote for a clause that specifically excludes the ability of Maori to be recognised overtly. 
We know that National went through a phase where things Maori were unpopular. The 2005 intake campaigned on the “Kiwi not iwi” billboards and some Ministers—particularly one I see on the front-bench—cackled and giggled away about how brave they were in the Brash years. That was an amazing thing she thought. Then that kind of went out of vogue because it was all “tihei mauri ora!” with the Maori Party and getting in with them. So Government members in regard to clause 7 could show us that they genuinely meant that stuff or whether it was just a passing moment in time. Was it just one of those things one does in Opposition but not in Government? That could be the new principle of the Brownlee Government. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: The member is flustered. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: No there is so much to say because I know there are only a limited number of calls between now and midnight and I intend to take all of them before I come back here on Monday morning. I want to make sure we are working very hard. The Leader of the House should not be so surly about his inability to run a programme and his inability to put together a programme where people could agree on things. That would not fit with clause 7 I must admit. But clause 7 should include a Maori focus and a private focus. If the Minister ignores everything else I say I can understand that but on that Maori issue I would like to hear from him because at one time he was the Opposition spokesperson on the eradication of political correctness. That is what he was. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Wayne Mapp. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Wayne Mapp had a portfolio about eradicating political correctness. I want to know whether his bias and prejudice on that matter is why clause 7 has come through in this way. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Lost it in November 2008. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Huge success! The portfolio did not survive a change of leader. As soon as Brash had gone and Gerry Brownlee was sacked as deputy leader of the National Party the portfolio was gone. That was part of the long decline of Gerry Brownlee’s career which started the moment John Key took the leadership and Wayne Mapp lost his portfolio. Mr Chairman I was responding to an interjection. 
The next thing I want to say is about clause 8(3)(b) and the conflicts with the board being directed to allocate funds for the benefit of a particular person. I trust that the Minister has quite a sensible approach on this and about how the board will operate. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I don’t know about that. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I am a generous person. It is ridiculous. I want the Minister to give us an assurance that he will not have that board modelled on the way the New Zealand Transport Agency board has been modelled in this respect. We see extraordinary political interference from the Minister of Transport in respect of a similar kind of clause in another law. I want the Minister to give an assurance to the Committee that the kind of political interference that Steven Joyce undertakes particularly around ridiculous roading proposals for the people of Kapiti will not be repeated in the science sphere. But that is just by the by. 
The next clause I want to address is clause 10(7) and it is very important because this bill is at the heart of the Government’s reform agenda. This bill shows how it will transform the New Zealand economy—turbocharge New Zealand catch up with Australia and bring step change for working families in New Zealand. This bill is part of the reform agenda to do that. Clause 10(7) refers to all the administrative services being transferred to the new ministry to enable the board to carry out its function. That goes to the heart of the cost of this legislation becoming law. At the time Minister Tony Ryall—let us not say any more about that—said that over 3 years this bill would save $20 million through the savings in administrative costs. I would like to know from the Minister under clause 10(7) how much there will be in savings as a result of the research science and technology changes and what the administrative costs are that are being transferred for the ministry to pick up for these two boards to operate. If it is $20 million over 3 years for the whole package what proportion of that fits in under the research science and technology banner? We have not had anywhere that I can see an explanation of what those costs are. 
The Government is trying to get the deficit down because it has borrowed money for tax cuts and we are running a big deficit in New Zealand. If this reform agenda is about reducing costs then surely the Minister will be able to tell us what burden of costs will be put on the ministry under this clause. It seems to me this could be an area where any of the savings that Minister Tony Ryall has identified could easily be eaten up by the board functions. He has told us that under paragraph (a) of the purpose clause there will be two boards; the purpose of Part 1 is to establish boards. I was going to ask him how many boards; he has told us there are two. We would like to know about the cost. The Maori issues are very important. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 It is something of a disgrace that the National Government should want to shut down discussion of the State Sector Management Bill which is critical legislation being brought to us under urgency. I will address that matter in a moment. At the outset I say that as somebody who gave up science at the end of the fifth form I am not one to talk about any details of science but I grasp absolutely the importance of research science and technology to the future of this county. It is a no-brainer. It is recognised internationally. In fact President Obama said that the future lies in science science and science. I have been really pleased over the last 2 years—although it has taken the Minister of Research Science and Technology Dr Wayne Mapp 2 years—to see him move to a position where there is a quiver of excitement about him around this portfolio. It is clear that he has now latched on to the fact that this is of critical importance. 
The Labour Party supports this particular move in this bill. But why are we debating it in urgency? I do not understand why it should have been brought under urgency. It seems to me that in Part 1 which we are debating at the moment nothing needed urgency applied to it. I advise the Minister that if in fact this had been a tax bill that had reintroduced the research and development tax credit then yes urgency might have been needed in order for the tax credit to be effective again from 1 April. But no this Government decided when it came into office to kill the research and development tax credit which had been in place for nearly 1 year and was about to bear fruit for all of those businesses that had invested in research and development and were going to see some of the benefits of that investment. If that had been Part 1 of this bill then there might have been some justification for urgency. However as it is under Part 1 we have all the provisions relating to research science and technology particularly the allocation of funding and the establishment of the structures that will deliver it. 
The thing about this legislation and the enabling clauses in this part of the legislation is that the country actually needs more than what this tinkering delivers. In fact if the Government had not been so obsessed with utu and revenge and it had just taken a deep breath when it first came into office it may have seen the sense and the purpose of the research and development tax credit and not taken the axe to it as it did to our Fast Forward Fund of some $700 million which was beginning to bear substantial fruit. In scrapping the tax credit and not reintroducing it through a tax bill but simply reshuffling the structures this Government is really indicating that first of all it has been misfiring on the elements that are needed to promote a really dynamic science and innovation environment in New Zealand and secondly it has taken 2 years to get to anything that would be remotely useful in this space in New Zealand. 
We do not oppose the reshuffling that is happening but we are concerned that this is all there is at the moment. Although there is some reference to funding in this part of the bill the fact remains that it is nowhere near sufficient. This is a moment when as with so many other parts of the Government’s activity there is insufficient investment. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am just checking before I call the next speaker. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Which one paid the most? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: They are all in arrears. I call David Shearer. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I will spend a couple of minutes commenting on the response of the Minister of State Services to questions that arose as a result of some of the probing from this side of the Committee on this part of the State Sector Management Bill. I thought two things he said were really important. First of all he said that the vouchers and the grant scheme that this Government has brought in as its new way of stimulating the economic side of our science and innovation moving forward are oversubscribed. That is the word: “oversubscribed”. It means that a bunch of different companies out there did not get a look in. They did not actually get any of the grants or the vouchers. Why would they not get a look in? One of the reasons might be that with many of these companies that applied for a grant the entrepreneurs behind them have mortgaged their own house have borrowed from friends and have gone to the bank because they have a really good idea. They have an idea like for example Facebook or Google. Those people went to the Government department went to the bureaucrats who decide on the vouchers and grants that are to be allocated and were turned down. 
Members should contrast that with the tax credit. The tax credit would actually universally enable companies to get research and development relief as a result of their own efforts. It would have brought about a cultural change in companies in New Zealand that would lift our appalling private sector research and development which is less than one-third of the OECD average. It would have actually brought about the transformation that this Government says it wants. It would have brought about the step change that it wants. 
I come back to what the Minister said in response to questions. He said that this scheme is superior to Labour’s tax credits. I point out one piece of information that came up in the last few weeks when I was talking to various people. First of all companies want the tax credit more than they want the grants. That is overwhelming. If members sit down and talk to the chief executive officer of any company they will find that that is exactly what they will say: they would prefer the tax credit of course. But the grant is there so they apply for it. They apply for it because it means they will get more money for research and development and they can use the money they were going to spend on research and development to fund other parts of the company. It is not stimulating more research and development; it is keeping it more or less the same. 
But I come back to the point that the tax credit system is superior. When the Labour Government was putting the tax credit in place it went to Australia and looked at its tax credit system to see what was available and what was being offered. The Australian system was effectively a 7 percent tax credit at that point. It was very hard to administer and was not seen as particularly cutting edge. Our officials came back here and put together the tax credit and it came in during the last year of the Labour Government. It was supported by Treasury. It was a 15 percent tax credit that would cost about $37 million in its first year and rise to about $350 million after 5 years. Foolishly it was voted out by this Government when it came into office. 
What did the Rudd Labor Government in Australia do when it came into office? The first thing it did was raise its research and development budget by 25 percent. If we are looking to try to catch Australia we should consider what Australia did. That was the first thing it did. I think there was a 6 percent increase in the total package of reforms that this Government brought in in the Budget versus Australia’s 25 percent. But the really interesting thing that happened was that the Australian officials came to New Zealand looked at our tax credit system and took it back to Australia. Australia right now has an almost carbon copy of the credit system that the Labour Government put in place here. Why is that? It is because Australia recognised that that was the best thing it could do to encourage innovation in companies throughout Australia. There has been an appalling loss of potential in this country as a result of this Government cutting the Labour tax credit. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak on Part 1 of the State Sector Management Bill in relation to the merger of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the creation of a Ministry of Science and Innovation. As other colleagues have said we support this provision and believe it to be in line with our support for innovation. We are concerned though that this by itself will not make the huge difference that we need in this country. A merger is not a plan and this Government has failed to show real commitment in the area of innovation. 
I want to talk specifically about clauses 17 18 and 19. These are the clauses that relate to the employees of these organisations. Whenever we look at structural change like this it is very important that we consider the implications for the people who work in those organisations. These are people with families who work very hard at their jobs. I understand that the people who work at the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology are well-regarded people who are committed to the work they do. I know that the organisation that speaks on behalf of those employees the Public Service Association has acknowledged in its submission to the select committee that its members at the Ministry of Research Science and Technology are generally supportive of the objectives of the merger and welcome the opportunity to work in a new organisation mandated to lead Government and sector work on science and innovation. So it is a good start that the employees can see that it is valuable. They are also not resistant to change and their union makes that point but they urged the Education and Science Committee to take account of the fact that change is difficult and stressful that it can be demoralising and that those issues must be mitigated by good process and good leadership. I hope that that has been taken on board by the Minister. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister if he was listening as to whether he considers that it is important to provide and encourage that good leadership in a process of staff change. 
As I say clauses 17 18 and 19 outline the rights of employees in these organisations. It appears that they are reasonably comprehensive and will allow for a smooth transfer of employees from both the foundation and the ministry into the new organisation the Ministry of Science and Innovation. I am very pleased to see that but there is a need for some certainty in these organisations. Certainly the people who work at the Ministry of Research Science and Technology have already been going through a period of significant uncertainty. I understand that last year 50 percent of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology’s first second and third-tier managers left and that none were replaced on a permanent basis. That takes me to my next point which is that this new organisation which we support is expecting a lot more. There are a whole lot of new things to be done and that is positive but the expectation of this Government is that this will be done with less staff. So there is a significant reduction in staffing— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Fewer staff. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: Sorry fewer staff. I thank my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard very much. He is on the ball even at this time on a Saturday morning. Fewer staff will be expected to deliver more and that is an important point. We need to make sure that we are not putting levels of pressure on people that would undermine the very good intentions of this new ministry. 
One of the very interesting points in clause 19 I want to talk about is subclause (3) which is about the avoidance of doubt. It states that: “the employment of a transferred employee … does not—(a) constitute new employment for the purposes of the KiwiSaver Act” and that is good but most important paragraph (b) states that it does not “treat that employee as a new employee for the purposes of the Employment Relations Act”. Many people in this Chamber may not understand the significance of that although I hope that at least the people on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee do. It is of course that these employees unlike many other New Zealand employees will not be prone to dismissal in the first 90 days of their new employment. They will retain their rights as employees. They will retain the right to take an unjustified dismissal case should that unfortunate situation ever arise for them. I thought that it was worth noting that at least this group of employees will not suffer from the consequences of the very poor employment relations changes that have been made. 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 43 
New Zealand Labour 37; Green Party 6. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Darren Hughes to clause 7 be agreed to: 
to add to subclause (2) the following paragraph: 
(g)promotes or facilitates a Maori world view of research science and technology. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 47 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6; Maori Party 3. 
Noes 63 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 189 in the name of Hon Tony Ryall to Part 1 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Part 1 as amended agreed to. 
Part 2 Amendments to National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga  o Aotearoa) Act 2003 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The debate includes schedule 3. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 We move now to the parts of the State Sector Management Bill that the Labour Opposition has significant concerns about. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It’s the controversial bit. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: It is controversial and it makes quite a significant change to very important parts of our democratic and constitutional infrastructure. Part 2 obviously deals with the National Library’s merger into the Department of Internal Affairs and Part 3 deals with the Archives New Zealand merger. 
I turn to Part 2. This is where Labour has a particular concern about why this is being done. Obviously when we come to debate clause by clause there is no clause generally that will answer that question but I think it is an important place to start our debate. The National Library is regarded by most people in the public sector and most of the stakeholders who work with it as a high-functioning well-regarded organisation. I am sure the Minister in the chair the Minister responsible for the National Library would agree with that. In fact Audit New Zealand has consistently over the last few years noted what a high-functioning organisation the National Library is. 
The question is why on earth we are here today on a Saturday morning debating merging a high-functioning nimble organisation such as the National Library— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I’ve got an answer for that. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I would be interested to hear that in a moment I say to Mr Cosgrove. Why would we be merging a high-functioning nimble organisation like the National Library into a large organisation with multiple responsibilities such as the Department of Internal Affairs when we heard that the financial savings from this merger for both Archives New Zealand and the National Library could be as low as $160000 a year—$160000 a year—with about 15 jobs lost? 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: It costs more than that to run Parliament. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right. As the Hon Ruth Dyson said it is probably costing more than that for us to be here today. If financial saving is the justification from the Government then it is indeed a very very poor justification. 
Part 2 begins by defining a number of terms and these are quite significant. Although a particular Minister we are told by the National Government will still hold the portfolio for the National Library we now see that the National Librarian immediately becomes subject to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. The chief executive will act as the employer for the National Librarian who is in charge of our National Library. So immediately the Government’s claim that this bill—this particular part of the bill—does not dilute the independence of the National Library is called into question. When we get into the interpretation we see that the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs now has that power. 
In the remainder of Part 2 of this bill there are some mitigation measures around how the National Librarian will still be able to perform his or her role. But that does not get us away from the fact that we are reducing the independence of the person who heads our National Library today let alone—and I will come back to this in later calls—the head of the Alexander Turnbull Library. 
In the midst of the exercise that we did the Department of Internal Affairs released the organisational design for the new department with the merged Archives New Zealand and National Library in it. We saw that in this case the National Librarian will be a third-tier manager in the Department of Internal Affairs—not even part of the executive leadership team and not able to influence directly the overall strategy of the Department of Internal Affairs. Immediately again the independence and the influence of the National Librarian is taken out and reduced by this bill. 
We ask ourselves to what end. This organisation is achieving well—though admittedly facing budget cuts as my colleague Moana Mackey said in the second reading of this bill. The funding for the school library service has been cut from the National Library. But still it is performing well as an organisation. We ask ourselves why we would dilute that influence. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: What’s the answer? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: We do not know because throughout the select committee process we got no answer to justify why this was being done. In the end it came down to some kind of ideological view about reducing the number of Government departments and possibly cutting the chief executive salary bill. That was about as good as we got. There was no justification for how this change might actually improve the services New Zealanders get. There was no justification for how it might actually enhance our historical and democratic infrastructure. It was almost as if it was about solving someone else’s problem—a problem that we could never actually identify. 
As a consequence I have put forward a typescript amendment in my name to insert a new subclause in clause 25 which amends section 9 of the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Act so that we can actually ensure that the National Librarian has some influence. At the moment there is no guaranteed access to the Minister for the National Librarian. I am sure that Minister Guy will undertake his job seriously and he will want to talk to the National Librarian from time to time. But it will be Mr Guy’s prerogative to decide. He will decide whether he should meet the National Librarian; it is not guaranteed in this bill. I have an amendment that would give the National Librarian the ability on his or her own initiative to advise the Minister and to report to the Minister and to acknowledge that the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs is not necessarily the conduit through which they have to go. 
This is the only way that we will be able to ensure that the National Library retains the degree of independence it needs as part of our system. The history of an agency—and we will come back to this matter in Part 3 which is around Archives New Zealand—subsumed within the Department of Internal Affairs and how it actually gets access and influence in the process is a very important matter. I urge the Minister to take a call and tell us whether he is prepared to support my amendment because we on this side of the Chamber believe that the National Librarian needs that ability to speak directly to the Minister. 
The other element missing is how we mitigate the measures that are in here. Obviously I want to make it clear that from a Labour point of view we believe that it is wholly unnecessary to merge the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs but as we are here debating these clauses we want to try to improve them and ensure that there actually is the degree of independence that the National Librarian requires. 
The other new clause we propose is clause 29A which requires the National Librarian to prepare annual reports. At the moment that requirement has gone because the library is subsumed within the Department of Internal Affairs. Yes there might end up being a section in the department’s report where the National Library’s activities will be covered but New Zealanders will now have a lot less information available to them about the activities of the National Library. So I am suggesting new clause 29A which requires the National Librarian to publish a report for tabling in this House and the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library—which as I say I will return to in a future call—will also have an obligation to prepare such a report. These things are extremely important because this is the only way that we will know that New Zealanders’ faith and trust in the National Library can be upheld. We need to have that requirement within this bill. 
Those are two mitigation measures but overall the position of the National Librarian is diminished by this particular part of the bill. We had submissions in the Education and Science Committee from people from bodies such as the Library and Information Association of New Zealand and the Friends of the Turnbull Library. All of them came to us and said that we needed to ensure that the National Library had status mana influence and independence. All of those things are important. Although the National Library will never make the headlines and it will never be the thing that people immediately refer to at their summer barbecues it lies at the heart of—[ 
Interruption 
] Judith Collins will. Quite often Judith Collins at her summer barbecues talks about the National Library. In between talking about Clayton Cosgrove she talks about the National Library which is obviously important to her. The independence of the National Librarian is a subject that New Zealanders should be concerned about. 
The committee was told by officials and press reports from the Minister that this change represented a reasonable practice internationally. Well that is simply not borne out by the evidence that we have found. In actual fact a national library is regarded in most countries as a key core element of something beyond the administration of Government which makes it incredibly sad that this National Government has reduced the National Library to being a mere part of the bureaucracy a department that could be placed anywhere. Quite frankly under the logic being applied in this bill the National Library could be merged into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. It really would not make any difference because it is all about back-office efficiencies. We are all in favour of back-office efficiencies but I ask why we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. We could have a high-functioning organisation supported to continue that work rather than being subsumed alongside other parts of the Department of Internal Affairs that quite frankly are not relevant to its work. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 Part 2 of the State Sector Management Bill really concerns us here in Opposition. It is very clear that Cabinet Ministers in Government have dropped the ball on an incredibly important aspect of our cultural and heritage sector. In fact my colleague Grant Robertson just talked about this shift of where we plonk the National Library and what we do with the Alexander Turnbull Library. It would have probably fitted better in a structure of the Ministry of Arts Culture and Heritage not sitting in the huge Government Department of Internal Affairs. The Minister of Internal Affairs the Hon Nathan Guy is looking at me thinking gosh that might have been quite a good idea and asking the Government why it did not think of that. But at the financial review of the Department of Internal Affairs I asked some questions of the chief executive. He is new keen and determined to provide improved customer services—more efficient services that are accountable to the public. But he looked a bit perplexed about why the entities were to be merged. The justification we heard at the select committee was that a new information technology transformation was happening in Government departments. We heard that the National Library and Archives will be digitised and new technologies will be used and that the emergence of those new technologies drove the decision which is simply nuts. 
I reiterate that if Minister Finlayson had been watching all the Cabinet papers that were going through the hands of Minister Ryall and Nathan Guy he would have stood up because he knows and he would have advocated that the process should stop and that a fundamental error was being made in this component. Minister Finlayson has dropped the ball on our heritage and cultural sector and the importance of the repository of national collections. 
The National Library was established in 1965. It brought together the General Assembly Library the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Library. Some of these functions in New Zealand have great historical significance and date back to the 1850s. On Part 2 we seek assurances that the role of the National Librarian the delegations of the National Librarian and the Alexander Turnbull Library will all continue. But for goodness’ sake the Minister in the chair knows how ministries work and this is becoming a superministry. These incredibly important functions that should be stand-alone functions are put into third-tier divisions of this new monster Department of Internal Affairs with no lines to the Minister unless my colleague Grant Robertson’s amendment is passed today. I urge members of the House to at least consider that amendment that allows the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian to have reporting lines to the Minister. We need to open up those doors so they can take those unique elements of the National Library service not just to the chief executive who has his door open but for goodness’ sake directly to the Minister. I think there are very substantial amendments that we need to look at. 
I believe also that National has forgotten—this issue came up and is in our minority report—about the damage to the reputation of the Alexander Turnbull Library. The holdings of that library are private collections that New Zealanders who had a great love of books our history and our collected stories donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library. Those holdings will now sit under the auspices of the Department of Internal Affairs. That is absolutely simply crazy and it defies logic. Judith Collins laughs but I am sure that in her family history there will be people who probably would like to have confidence that if they donate great collections of books to the Alexander Turnbull Library for goodness’ sake they will not be under the management and executive function of the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. It is absolutely stupid. 
I know what happened here: the Government looked for efficiencies economies of scale and digitalisation opportunities because there will need to be digitalisation of a lot of our material held. But that is not where this department the National Library and the role of the chief librarian should sit. It is an insult to those professionals. It is no wonder that those professionals who have great dignity and intelligence feel insulted by what is happening to them and to their passion for collections of great significance. They will find themselves in the Department of Internal Affairs which is an awful name. I ask what that name says about telling about our stories and our unique identity as New Zealanders both to children in the country and to those internationally: “Go to the Department of Internal Affairs when you come to New Zealand. There’s an Alexander Turnbull Library run by the Department of Internal Affairs.” It is an insult and it is no wonder that those professionals are quietly making decisions about their own future which will delight Tony Ryall because he wants those vacancies to occur in the name of efficiency. He forgets what he is losing in institutional memory and the experience of amazingly qualified people who are seen internationally as great leaders of managing such repositories of information. 
This is a shambles. This is what happened in Canada. The Minister in the chair should listen to the fact that when we looked at international examples we saw that when there was a merger in Canada—because we always look to similar things that are happening and where great ideas are happening internationally—there was a decline in services. I ask whether the Minister really looked and saw the impact of that. He was actually beaten by Minister Tony Ryall who said: “This is what we are going to do. Have I got an idea for you! We are just going to make a superministry here. Now who should we suck into this ministry called the Department of Internal Affairs? Not Creative New Zealand or the Ministry of Arts Culture and Heritage.” That is where Archives and the National Library should have sat. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I am sure this Minister boldly stood up for his department. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: No he did not. He did not advocate at all. But do not worry because here we are in Part 2 looking after the delegations of the National Librarian and the functions of the National Librarian. Clause 27 relates to the continuation of the Alexander Turnbull Library. “Do not worry New Zealanders it will still be there.”! Great! Third tier in the Department of Internal Affairs—what an insult! What an insult to the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library. 
I am afraid this bill will—[ 
Interruption 
] Yes it is look at clause 28. It is an insult. This bill has resulted in a deep vein of resentment against this Government and the high-handed and arrogant way it views public servants as just bureaucrats whom it can shuffle around on the decks and not be worried about the impact for $165000 of savings every year. It says: “Have we got the answer for you for the super-service on archival material and library material!”. That is a disgrace. It has insulted professionals in New Zealand. It will not result in a better service for the public. It subsumes those who have developed independence and professional integrity into a super ministry. That will have a very negative impact on this Government when it comes to the election next year. 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chair. We have heard a couple of excellent calls— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: But I haven’t spoken yet. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: —from Grant Robertson and Steve Chadwick. I am sure we will have some excellent calls from the member Darren Hughes later. 
I disagree with one part Grant Robertson talked about which is that the State Services Management Bill will not be discussed over summer barbecues. I for one being particularly geeky will be talking about this at my summer barbecues— 
Grant Robertson 
: Go to Judith Collins’ barbecue because she will be. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: Oh and Judith Collins. Maybe we will be at the same barbecue. A whole sector of the country will be talking about this bill at summer barbecues: the historians the archivists and those involved in the science and technology sector. They will be talking about it. Steve Chadwick is right: some of those people are feeling insulted professionally by what is happening in this bill. 
I said I am geeky; it is true. I have been campaigning this year to stop library fee introductions at libraries in Taranaki and in Tauranga. I introduced an amendment to the Local Government Act to ensure free access to library books. It is just so important. Our libraries are our community hubs. The National Library is the hub of our country. It is the host of our nation’s intellect our creativity our entertainment. It is an amazing source. It is particularly important for those 3000 other libraries around the country that it supplies. 
What questions will be asked at those summer barbecues? One of the questions is why we are doing it. Another relevant question is why we are doing it under urgency. But why are we doing it full stop? When we look at the Cabinet paper that sparked this bill we see that the National Library and Archives New Zealand were described as well-regarded institutions. The Library and Information Association of New Zealand wrote in its submission: “structural changes made should enhance rather than detract from the many services provided by the National Library and enjoyed by New Zealanders today. The rationale for the merger is superficial the savings seem to be minimal and inevitably there will be a loss of productivity during and after such a major restructure.” 
The key question—which is absent from the Cabinet papers and from mention by the Government officials and the Minister of State Services—is what the impact will be for library users. It is amazing that in a bill that talks about library users and archive users there is hardly any mention of what the improvements will be for those who access the National Library. There is no mention of that. There is no mention of how we are enshrining best library practice in this bill. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Professionalism doesn’t matter. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: Professionalism does not matter. 
I will touch on four points to do with Part 2. First I will look at the role of the National Librarian; second I will look at the technology and digitisation debate; third I will look at the overseas image and the impact this bill will have on that; and fourth I will ask why. 
First I will look at the role of the National Librarian. This bill changes the role seriously. It reduces the role from an executive to an employee. It puts the role into a third-tier relationship. One submitter commented that it is like being dropped from the All Blacks and moving down to a provincial second XV. We are seeing the National Librarian drop in mana in influence and in the ability to talk to the responsible Minister and convince him or her of the need for action. When it comes to the Alexander Turnbull Library the position has dropped even further to a position that is even worse than the provincial team—maybe to a high school first XV bench. It has dropped down to the fourth tier. Ironically the Guardians/Kaitiaki of the Alexander Turnbull Library will have more access to the Minister than the National Librarian will have under this bill. 
The Green Party will today support many of the Labour amendments including changing clause 25 in order to bring back access to the Minister for the National Librarian. I am thinking of the Minister when I support this amendment because it is important that the Minister gets the best possible advice. He does not want to be given the low-down on the National Library by a dry Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs; he wants to hear from someone with fire in their belly someone with a bit of passion for libraries and for the importance of libraries. I am thinking of the Minister. I hope that National supports that amendment because the Minister needs all the advice he can get. I support it. Likewise the public needs all the good advice it can get. We will support the amendment to add new clause 29A. 
Part 2 changes the relationship with the Minister. We can write all we want in the bill about ensuring statutory independence but the reality is that it will come down to the people who are in those positions. Who will the Department of Internal Affairs chief executive be? Who will the National Librarian be? How will they work together? 
It is a false premise that because the Department of Internal Affairs and the National Library do broadly similar material they should be merged together. Conglomeration can be good but in this case it seems to be conglomeration for conglomeration’s sake. 
When we look at technology we see that we need to take our hat off to the National Library. These excellent hard-working Kiwis are world leaders in their field. It is not a huge proportion of its income that deals with digitisation but they are leaders in their field already. If it ain’t broke let us not try to fix it. I am a fan of digitisation personally. I think we should be digitising as much as we can. But that is not the major rationale for literally pulling an independent department and having it taken over by the Department of Internal Affairs. 
I have heard no reason presented by anyone as to why digitisation needs to be in conglomerated departments. Already the National Library is sharing information with things like the EPIC database and the Matapihi website. It is working with other Government departments in backroom service provision. 
When it comes to digitisation the key issue like many things in life simply comes down to cold hard cash. If we want to see more digitisation of our national treasures in New Zealand this Government needs to put more cash into it. It cannot do it on the cheap. It is not just a convenient way of looking like we are acting. If it is serious about it it needs to put in more cash not shuffle the deckchairs. 
In terms of our overseas image this bill is taking us backwards. A third-tier position for our National Librarian is not best practice. The Library and Information Association of New Zealand said that we risk “losing standing as a major culture and heritage organisation for New Zealand.” which will have impacts nationally and internationally. 
Why are we doing this? Ultimately it is all because we want to have fewer Government departments to remember. It is all about trimming the State sector. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Slash-and-burn. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: It is about slashing and burning. Dr Don Gilling pointed out that 28 departments and programmes out of 69 that were funded in the last financial year are smaller than the National Library and 16 are smaller than Archives New Zealand. The fact that those departments are small is not a robust argument for their being taken over by this new super-department the Department of Internal Affairs. I tell those 16 and 28 smaller departments to watch out because Steven Joyce is coming. Ultimately we might have one super-department under Minister Steven Joyce. Kia ora. 
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
: 
 It has been interesting to hear the debate this morning. I think it is worthy that I make a contribution at this stage. Importantly I have had 18 months in this role. There are real synergies between the three departments. We have heard a lot of political rhetoric and I want to address that this morning. There is a really strong focus with these three departments the Department of Internal Affairs the National Library and Archives New Zealand to get more information online and more accessible to every New Zealander. Just this week the Government announced all those communities that will benefit from the roll-out of the $1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband. That is really positive. 
I will focus on Part 2 of the bill which involves the National Library. It has a wealth of material online. The  
Appendices to the Journals 
 from Parliament are now online dating back to the 1860s. 
The changes to this bill are very minimal and technical. It preserves the cultural and institutional capability of both departments. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: It’s a major culture shift. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: It is interesting that the Hon Steve Chadwick interjects that it does not. I would like to ask Steve Chadwick why Labour in the 9 years it was in power did not address the terrible issues to do with the National Library’s leaking roof. It took this Government to come in and invest $52 million. In the first couple of weeks of becoming a Minister I went for a tour of the National Library and there was a hosepipe coming out of the roof and into a bucket. So here we have members of the previous Labour Government banging on during the Committee stage about the importance of these cultural institutions yet they did nothing in the 9 years they were awash with cash in terms of fixing up the library so that it had a decent roof on it so that important collections like the Alexander Turnbull Library collection would not rot. 
This Government has made a very valuable contribution over the road to the important rejuvenation project of the National Library. The other thing that is really important is that in this Budget we have been able to roll out $12.6 million into a digital archive—and that is new money and it is really really important. It has been very well received by the sector. 
The other thing worth noting is that Mr Robertson in his address said that the savings could be only about $165000 per year. In actual fact as I look at the out-years the information I have says that the savings will be up around $1.5 million per year. So once again I am not sure where Mr Robertson gets his comments from. 
The other point—and I have heard quite a bit of rhetoric about “third-tier”—that it is important to realise is that within the Department of Internal Affairs is an example of a third-tier manager who employs 205 people; it is the person in charge of the passport operation. That person employs 205 people and creates and generates third-party revenues of about $55 million. The performance of the New Zealand Passports Office and New Zealand’s visa-free status across 50 countries indicates a classic example of someone who is performing very well in a third-tier role and has the support of the New Zealand public. 
The other important point I make is that Mr Robertson said he was in favour of combining back-office functions and cost savings. That is very very important and I am pleased that Mr Robertson agrees with the thrust of this bill. He has publicly stated in the House today that he supports combining back-office functions and cost savings which is great. Mrs Chadwick talked about it becoming a superministry. When Mr Robertson was publicly saying in March that there was going to be a big combined department of information he was saying that it was way too radical. But now he is saying that we should not be touching it at all. So I think there is quite a bit of confusion on that side of the House. On the one hand they are saying that what Stevie Chadwick was proposing before would have been way too radical; and now on the other hand the opponents of the bill are saying that we should not be touching these important cultural institutions at all. So I look forward to hearing more debate on this bill. 
It is appropriate while I am on my feet to talk about the Crown Law opinion which was released following the waiving of legal privilege by the Attorney-General. I thank the Attorney-General for releasing it. Let us put the facts on the table. I am interested to hear our opponents negate this important Crown Law opinion. The Crown Law document states: “In our opinion the Bill: … Preserves the current statutory purposes of the National Library and Archives New Zealand; … Makes no change to the current level of statutory independence enjoyed by the National Librarian; … Increases the level of statutory independence enjoyed by the Chief Archivist;”. 
Moana Mackey 
: He has to table it now. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: It is publicly available. It goes on to state that “the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian are carrying out their roles and functions independently to the extent that those roles are legally required to be carried out independently. It would not be lawful for the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs to interfere with the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian’s performance of their statutory duties”. It states that the bill also “Preserves the role and function of the Alexander Turnbull Library as set out in the current legislation; and … Preserves the role and function of the statutory advisory groups prescribed by the National Library Act and the Public Records Act”. The National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Act 2003 and the Public Records Act 2005 which National supported carry on. “In short” this Crown Law opinion states “the changes to the National Library Act and the Public Records Act seem entirely limited to dealing with the fact that the National Library and Archives New Zealand would cease to be separate departments of the Crown and would become part of the Department of Internal Affairs.” That is a very powerful Crown Law opinion and I look forward to hearing members opposite trying to negate this. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The Minister of Internal Affairs has been quoting at some length from an official document and I request that he table it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Is it an official document? 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: It is publicly available. 
CHRIS TREMAIN (Senior Whip—National) 
: 
 In responding to the comments made on the other side of the Chamber I note that the Minister made clear in his speech that it was a public document in the public domain. In that regard there is no need for him to table it. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 As far as I am aware the point made by the senior Government whip is wholly irrelevant. If the Minister was quoting from an official document in this Chamber he needs to table it—that is what the Standing Orders state. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Standing Order 367 states: “Whenever a Minister quotes from a document relating to public affairs a member may on a point of order require the Minister to table the document. The Minister must then table the document unless it is of a confidential nature.” 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: It is publicly available. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That does not matter. You have read out the Standing Order and I followed the process in that Standing Order. I requested that the Minister table the document. The question of whether the document is already in the public arena is completely irrelevant and he is in fact challenging your ruling. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I do not think the Minister was challenging my ruling. He was simply saying that the document is publicly available. I have had an indication from the Minister that he is willing to table the document. 
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
: 
 I seek leave to table— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: You don’t need to seek leave; you just table it. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: I table it. 
Document laid on the Table of the House. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I thank the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy for taking a call. He went to great lengths to read out a Crown Law opinion stating that the State Sector Management Bill will not affect the independence of the National Library and will not prevent the independent voice of the National Library and the National Librarian from being heard. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague. The document that Minister Guy quoted from earlier has been tabled—I am observing the proceedings—but it has not been stamped. My colleague has approached the Table to try to get a copy of it and I now see a twink pen or a whitener being handed to the Minister to remove things from the document which has already been tabled. That document is now the property of the Committee and of the House not of the Minister. The idea that it would be tampered with after it has been tabled and not yet stamped is very concerning. It is now the Committee’s property. A member of the Committee wants to look at it immediately and it should be available to the Committee member. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: That’s why we need an independent archivist! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I assure the member that Parliament does have an independent archivist; it is the Clerk’s Office. The document has been tabled. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I trust this is a new point of order. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: It is. I think it is appropriate given what has just been said that we get an assurance from the Minister that the document he has tabled in the interim between it going to the Clerk and being stamped has not been altered or tampered with in any way. I would like an assurance. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member could have taken that from my statement before that the document has been tabled. If the member is saying that I am telling him that a different document has been tabled then that is a reflection on the Chair. I have confirmed to the Committee that the document has been tabled and the member should accept that at its word. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I give you an absolute assurance that I was not doing what you were suggesting. I was not questioning your word. I was simply asking given that twink bottles were floating around— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Does the member wish to withdraw and apologise? 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Absolutely. I never question your integrity; I just wanted that assurance from the Minister. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Thank you. You have that assurance. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think the problem is that some members could not see the document as it went across to the Clerk whereas I did and I can— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The matter has been dealt with. I have now given the Committee three assurances that it is the same document. I do not need to know whether members are confused disorientated or cannot figure out whether it is Thursday or Saturday. None of that is relevant. The document has been tabled. Everybody is satisfied honour is restored and that is the end of the matter. If I hear another point or order of this matter I will—[ 
Interruption 
] No. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That was an example if there ever was one of why we need an independent archivist. We want to avoid this kind of situation. The Minister in the chair is the Minister responsible for the National Library and Archives New Zealand. 
Hon Members 
: “Mr Twink.” 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Yes “Mr Twink.” We are only in the Committee stage of the bill that seeks to bring together Archives New Zealand and the National Library and put them into the Department of Internal Affairs and already serious questions are being raised about the independence of the process and whether important Government documents have been tampered with. If we cannot get through the Committee of the whole House feeling assured that there will not be any political interference what will it be like when we merge the two entities? 
I want to comment on the Minister’s contribution. He read out the Crown Law opinion that the provisions in Part 2 will not have any impact on the functioning of the National Library. Of course that was the case back when these two entities used to be together in the 1990s. If the Minister would get out of his ivory tower and talk to the people who work in the National Library they would tell him that despite the legal situation—and a Crown Law opinion would have said exactly the same thing back then—the reality was that they did struggle in terms of independence. 
The reality was that they struggled to have their voice heard when they were under the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Education. So instead of reading from some piece of paper to make himself feel better—because legally Crown Law has said that he should not worry about anything—why does he not talk to the people who worked in that entity the last time it was combined under the Department of Internal Affairs? They will tell him that what he has said in the Chamber today is absolutely not correct. That is why every single submission to the Education and Science Committee opposed this measure. In reality they could not carry out those important constitutional functions of being independent and protecting important public documents when they were subsumed by a big Government department like the Department of Internal Affairs. I think it is very disappointing that the Minister chose to not address those facts. 
I come now to clause 30 which talks about documents being made available for public exhibition. Now that the National Library will be part of the Department of Internal Affairs I am a little bit concerned because another group that is covered by the Department of Internal Affairs is the New Zealand Fire Service and this is a Minister who will not let Opposition MPs visit fire departments without his permission. 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: That’s not true. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It is true. The New Zealand Fire Service is actually quite independent from the Government except that the Department of Internal Affairs covers the New Zealand Fire Service Commission which regulates some of the areas of the Fire Service. If this Minister has been stopping Opposition MPs from visiting the Fire Service what does that mean— 
Sandra Goudie 
: That’s what the previous Minster did. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Sandra Goudie should take a call instead of screaming across the Chamber. 
What kind of confidence can we have that clause 30 will be adhered to and that the public will have access to all the information in the National Library without ministerial interference when the very Minister who will be in charge of the Department of Internal Affairs and the National Library is a Minister we have to question about whether documents are being tampered with or properly filed with the Clerk? He has also stopped Opposition MPs from visiting fire departments in their own areas. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He says that’s not true. We need that on the record. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Does the Minister say that that is not true and that Opposition MPs are allowed to visit fire stations without his approval? He is very quiet now. Can we visit fire stations without the Minister’s approval? Yes? No? Maybe? 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: I have a policy. Mr Hipkins knows it. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh he has a policy. Yes we know; it is that we are not allowed to visit without the Minister’s permission. What does clause 30 mean in terms of ensuring that documents are made available for public exhibition and to members when the Minister himself has blocked people from visiting other parts of the Department of Internal Affairs even though he should not have the power to do that? 
I come now to Subpart 2 which is about the transfer of employees of the National Library. The reason I raise this is that in Part 1 there is a lot of information about the transfer of employees to the new Ministry of Science and Innovation. Some very important points were mentioned such as the fact that they would all go over on existing terms and conditions. It very clearly stated that provisions under the KiwiSaver Act and the Employment Relations Act did not apply to these employees. I am talking about the 90-day right-to-fire period for new employees. 
Part 1 which deals with the merging of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology into a new ministry made it very clear that those employees would not be required to be on a 90-day trial period. They would be deemed to be carrying on their employment. But in Part 2 we do not have those clauses. 
Part 2 has one clause on the transfer of employees whereas Part 1 has pages and pages. I would like to know from the Minister what that means for employees of the National Library when they are transferred over to the Department of Internal Affairs. The Minister has not ruled out those employees suddenly finding themselves on a 90-day right-to-fire probationary period even though they may have been working with the National Library for more than a decade. 
I would like the Minister in the chair to tell us whether the employment of employees transferred from the National Library to the Department of Internal Affairs will be deemed to have been continuous or whether those employees will suddenly find that they are categorised as new employees and that they are on the 90-day right-to-fire probationary period. So will the Minister—hello? No the Minister is not paying any attention to what members are saying which is very distressing. Clause 35 in Part 2 is very short when it comes to the transferring of employees. If there is anything urgent about this bill being debated today on a Saturday it is that we let the employees of the National Library know whether their employment will be secure under Part 2. 
In Part 1 it is very clear that employment will be deemed to have been continuous. Employees will continue to have a job and leading up to Christmas I think it would be particularly nice of the Minister to take a call and clarify that clause 35 covers this and gives those employees certainty that they will still have a job. We are here under urgency because apparently the merging of these entities is so important that we need to be here on a Saturday. Well nothing could be more important than clarifying what clause 35 means for the employees of that National Library. 
I hope that the Minister will take a call so that those employees can know that they will still have a job leading up to Christmas and that they will not have 3 months of uncertainty during which time they could be fired for absolutely no reason whatsoever—with no reason having to be given—while at the same we know that the Government is sending a razor gang out there to slash funding in the public sector. So I think the Minister should take a call on that particular part. 
I come now to clause 24 “National Librarian”. I know that this is an area that some of my colleagues will pick up on in more detail. Clause 24 has some quite odd wording. As we know 
the National Librarian will now be a level 3 manager in the Department of Internal Affairs. So he or she will go from the being the person who runs it to being not even a second-tier manger but a third-tier manager in the Department of Internal Affairs. 
Clause 24(2) states: “The National Librarian is the person for the time being appointed to that office…”. That definition jumped out at me. I do not think “for the time being” needs to be said unless it is suggesting that there will be a time when a National Librarian is not employed in that office. I wonder whether this is a little indication about where the role of National Librarian is going. I know that my colleague Jacinda Ardern has more to say about that. The words “The National Librarian is the person for the time being appointed to that office by the chief executive …” are— 
Grant Robertson 
: Kind of like while they feel like it. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right. It is like saying: “At the moment you’re allowed to have this job—for the time being—but don’t get too comfortable because in the future this role may not be there.” That is not the kind of wording I remember seeing for other positions within the public sector. It stands to reason that the National Librarian is the person who is doing the job and that the chief executive appoints him or her. It does not need to be clarified that it is just in the here and now and that he or she should not make any long-term plans. So I would like the Minister in the chair to get up and allay concerns on this side of the Chamber. 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
: 
 I will take a brief call to ask some questions of the Minister in the chair the Minister of Internal Affairs with regard to Part 2 of the State Sector Management Bill. I hope he takes the opportunity to respond. 
The National Library has the largest collection of Maori language resources in the country and although the 2003 State Sector Act is not changed substantially by this bill the implication is that the organisational change in the bill may have a particular effect on how the National Library and the National Librarian currently operate. Te komitiMaori was established by the National Librarian in 1996. It advises the National Librarian on specific aspects of the Maori language collection. Also there are protocols for donors of collections to the National Library. It is unclear whether the role of te komitiMaori will be affected by this bill. The concerns I raise are in relation to specifically the Maori collection and whether the National Librarian will retain the responsibility outlined in the 2003 Act around kaitiakitanga preservation and the role of the collection. I also want to ensure that adequate advice will be given to the National Librarian in carrying out his or her functions because as I read the change the National Librarian will be dropped to a tier 3 type of role. The bill implies that the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs may take on some of the responsibilities with regard to how te komitiMaori operates and clarification on that point would be useful. 
I also understand from the submission that was provided by te komitiMaori to the chief executive that it too has significant concerns about the way in which the restructure might affect it. Notably it believes that there could be a risk to the library’s national profile and position as a respected and trusted national institution responsible for the care of documentary and cultural heritage collections. It is also worried that there could be a reduction in the library’s capability and focus to carry out the purposes of the Act as they relate to kaitiakitanga taonga and mataurangaMaori. Specifically it could lead to an overall diminishing of current levels of effective library services to Maori and partnerships with Maori as these aspects are integral to providing quality librarianship and information management. 
I suspect that those comments were made because if a value-for-money exercise is being undertaken across the whole of the department it obviously will have effects across the departments under the umbrella of the Department of Internal Affairs and could lead whether directly or indirectly to a compromising of the emphasis on the Maori collection which te komitiMaori believes should be maintained. People cannot go anywhere else in the world to find a good Maori language collection except the National Library. Te komitiMaori wants to be sure that the emphasis and responsibilities outlined in the 2003 Act will be maintained and guaranteed despite the organisational change yet that is not clear. 
The Minister should take a call on these types of issues because I believe they are absolutely critical if we want to retain the integrity and esteem of the collections held within the National Library and the way in which they are managed for future generations. I understand from that same submission that there is a review of services to Maori within the National Library. It would be interesting to see how that review might or might not impact on further changes in this bill or indeed the principal Act. I am sure that the Maori Party would be concerned about any diminishing of emphasis on the Maori language collection held by the National Library. It would not as we would not want to see any diminishing of effort on that front. We believe that the collection is second to none. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very concerned about the role of the Chief Archivist and what the changes in Part 3 will mean for that role. The Chief Archivist will face the same issues as the National Librarian and I will talk about those in just a moment. The advice that the Education and Science Committee received in the form of submissions from a variety of submitters expressed real concern about the role and independence of the National Librarian and the fact that that was going to be compromised by merging Archives New Zealand and the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs. I think the critical issue here is whether the Minister of State Services could be seen to exert more influence on the National Librarian under this legislation now that it is part of the Department of Internal Affairs than he would had the National Library remained independent. I think it would be fair to conclude that to be correct. 
I have no faith whatsoever that under this Government the independence of the National Librarian will be preserved because this Government constantly claims that departments are acting independently with no influence from Ministers but the reality is that that is not the case. We had a very recent example where a Minister effectively told a Government agency not to publicise a transport designation right before a by-election campaign because he thought that would impact the outcome of the by-election campaign. That department did exactly what the Minister requested. The Minister stood up in this House and said that he did not do that but the reality is that in the “nudge nudge wink wink” way that these things work what happened was pretty clear. I do not think anybody in this House or any member of the public believed that Minister when he said he had no influence on that matter. With regard to the National Library the concern is that we will see the same type of thing taking place. 
I am concerned about the role of the Alexander Turnbull Library and its integration effectively with the Department of Internal Affairs. This department runs a huge range of functions that are totally incompatible let us be frank about that. It goes from censorship to the National Library to the Fire Service to civil defence to local government and to a whole range of other things. All of those things are within the Department of Internal Affairs. I do not believe that one of the rationales for this move is that it will be more efficient. I simply do not believe that this move will result in any greater efficiency. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Ministerial Services. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Ministerial Services fits within the Department of Internal Affairs. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Absolute conflict. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: There is an absolute conflict there. It does not get much more connected to ministerial operations on a day-to-day basis than the Department of Internal Affairs which runs individual Ministers’ offices. It will also now have responsibility for the National Library. It is pretty clear that there are some conflicts of interest there. 
I will talk particularly about the Alexander Turnbull Library because this bill changes the appointment provisions for the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library. That appointment will no longer be made by the National Librarian but by the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. There is no guarantee that the person making the appointment of the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library will have the relevant expertise. Under existing legislation the National Librarian who has specialist knowledge and expertise is guaranteed to make the choice of who will run the Alexander Turnbull Library. 
The custody of the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library will now reside within the department instead of within the National Library as a separate department. 
There was a range of submissions on the issue of the Alexander Turnbull Library which I think are worth talking about in more detail. Several submitters expressed concern that downgrading the status and identity of the library would damage its national and international reputation. The Alexander Turnbull Library is very widely respected both nationally and internationally and its independence is very important. There was a concern that this bill will compromise the intention to maintain the identity and status of the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library make it more difficult to obtain funding compromise the Chief Librarian’s independence risk a conflict situation if the National Librarian’s recommendation for the appointment of the Chief Librarian was not followed and so on. Among the submissions there were recommendations to amend the bill to provide for an annual report for the Alexander Turnbull Library and/or the National Library to be tabled in the House. 
Under the current legislation— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I will allow Chris Hipkins to continue as he is in full flight. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Thank you very much Mr Chairperson. It probably will not be another full 5-minute contribution because I am coming to the conclusion of what I was saying but one of the concerns— 
Sandra Goudie 
: Yay! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That was Sandra Goudie. I like to hear from Sandra Goudie. I would like to hear what she has to say. I am not sure whether she is capable of making a contribution; I am not even sure she knows what the Alexander Turnbull Library actually is. 
Grant Robertson 
: A library—a place with books. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well we definitely will not find Sandra Goudie in it. Under the current legislation the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library report independently to this House. There is a clear line of accountability and clear reporting directly to this House. That will not be the case under this bill because it will all be amalgamated within the Department of Internal Affairs’ reporting line to the House. One of the things we have seen in recent years is a drive by Government—and I think some of it is actually very justified—to dramatically reduce the volume of information that is reported to the House in terms of statements of intent annual reports and so on. What we will see is a much less comprehensive description of the activities of the department coming through particularly in an environment where the Department of Internal Affairs which has such a wide array of functions will be trying to compress those into a concise summary for the House. We will lose a lot of the very valuable detail in terms of the reporting function that the National Library currently undertakes when that change takes place. 
Other recommendations that have come forth through the submissions included a recommendation for the Chief Librarian to report directly to the Minister—to have in the legislation a clear direct accountability to the Minister—rather than report through the Chief Executive. In that regard the amendment put forward by my colleague Grant Robertson to clause 25 basically creates an ability for the National Librarian to advise the Minister on any matter relating to the functions and powers of the National Librarian. It is important to note that this bill does not give the National Librarian by right that ability to directly advise the Minister. So one of the amendments put forward by Grant Robertson—and I think it is a very important one—gives the National Librarian the express power to provide advice directly to the Minister on any matter relating to the functions and powers of the National Librarian. That is very important because it removes that filtered level. 
The Chief Executive will have a range of pressures one of which will be a resourcing pressure. The National Librarian should be able to go directly to the Minister and say that the Department of Internal Affairs which the National Library is now part of is not providing the necessary resources or support to the library in order to carry out its functions. The National Librarian needs to be able to go directly to the Minister and say that but this legislation as put forward by the Government does not provide that opportunity. The amendment to clause 25 set out by Grant Robertson gives the National Librarian that power. 
The amendment would add a new clause 25(5). It states: “In exercising the functions of the National Librarian under this section the National Librarian shall not be responsible to the chief executive but shall act independently.” I think that is incredibly important. The independence of this role is the primary concern of the Labour Opposition in our contributions to this debate. This bill waters down the National Librarian’s independence and makes the National Librarian a third-tier manager subordinate to the chief executive. The National Librarian will be subordinate not just to the chief executive; there will be another person between the National Librarian and the chief executive and the Minister. The National Librarian is going from having a direct relationship with a Minister of the Crown to having further layers of bureaucracy ahead of him or her. That raises real concerns given the significance of the role of the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I don’t think Brendan Boyle wanted it. He put it up in a way which is really impossible. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I am certainly not sure that Brendan Boyle wanted this responsibility. 
The second amendment put forward by Grant Robertson to insert new clause 29A relates to annual reports. It places an obligation on the National Librarian to “prepare publish and present an annual report to the Minister for tabling in Parliament …”. Again that function has been removed by this legislation. Basically it means that the reporting function for the National Library will be subsumed within the Department of Internal Affairs so this House will not have access to the volume of information about the activities of the National Library that it has been used to getting. This amendment put forward by Grant Robertson reinstates some of that reporting. 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I will follow on from where Chris Hipkins just left off and I will comment particularly on the contribution made by the Minister in the chair the Hon Nathan Guy. When the Minister spoke earlier I anticipated a solid reasoning of why this amalgamation would make a real difference and that did not happen. What I did hear was that he was unable to provide any assurance to us that attending or visiting fire stations around the country would be able to happen freely but he certainly did not give a good interpretation of why this legislation is important. Why we are sitting here under urgency on a Saturday to listen to that? Members talked about whether it would be a topic of conversations around barbecues over the next few weeks; I think it actually will be. I think it will be used as an example of what this Government proposes to do and what it is actually doing. 
I will go back to one thing that the Minister raised which was the issue of new technology. When we were listening in the Education and Science Committee this issue came up over and over again as a vindication of why this legislation had to go through. It is an information technology - driven rationale. There is no other rationale that we could come to to understand why on earth this is being done except for the fact that there might be some sort of ideological reason why this might happen. We could pick on librarians and they are unlikely to fight back. Librarians can be bullied and they are not likely to march on Parliament. 
Independence as Chris Hipkins was talking about before he sat down is indeed compromised by this legislation. It could not not be compromised. I want to look at the part of the bill that covers independence in reporting. The bill changes the status of the National Librarian from chief executive to employee. There is a feeling that by making this person the head of the National Library a third-tier employee of the Department of Internal Affairs a department that as we have heard has massive amounts of other responsibilities—it is a grab bag of just about everything in Government that does not fit into a particular ministry—somehow this employee will have exactly the same ability to influence and maintain the independence of the National Library as happened before. It is simply not the case. There were 31 submitters who appeared before the select committee and 100 percent of those submissions—and Colin King knows this for a fact because he was sitting there and listening as well; he is nodding his head—opposed this change. They basically centred their objections on the fact that the chief executive has been relegated to being an employee and the role will be diluted by organisational layers the National Librarian will lose the right to the Minister and the National Librarian’s influence and independence will be adversely affected. 
Mr Nathan Guy has put before us the Crown Law report which we had not seen previously along with a bottle of white-out—talk about a lack of ability—and he read selectively from that report. But the bottom line is that if we submerge the head of a department into the third level of a hierarchy and then expect that person to operate with the same independence as he or she did beforehand we are dreaming; we are completely dreaming. There is no way that bureaucracies operate like that; anybody who has been in a bureaucracy knows that. The National Librarian of course will have to report up the chain of command. Of course the National Librarian will not have the same ability to exercise independence as he or she did previously. Of course the National Librarian will not be able to assure New Zealanders that that is the case. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I appreciate the opportunity to take my first call on the State Sector Management Bill and in particular on Part 2. I felt prompted to speak on this bill after hearing the contribution of the Minister of Internal Affairs Nathan Guy. For those members who were not here at that time I say that I was listening intently because I was seeking the purpose of the bill generally and in particular the purpose of this significant part—Part 2. I did not get any answers other than that apparently we are making this significant merger because the Minister went on a tour of the National Library and saw a leak in the roof. Apparently that is the reason we are now merging the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs. 
We also heard from the Minister and this is something that vexed me greatly the claim that the previous Labour Government had somehow run the National Library and Archives New Zealand into the ground. I make the following point: I was not a member of the Education and Science Committee which heard the submissions on this bill but I do note as reported in the select committee’s report that one submitter who worked in this area noted that “The past management of the archives function…has an unfortunate history characterised by arrested development lack of resourcing poor understanding litigation rancour and distrust.” Another submitter commented that “Thousands of unique items that have relevance today have been lost by fire water vermin and indifference.” I think that was both a metaphorical and a literal reference and it came directly from a submitter who was referring to the 1990s—the point when as I understand it we last had a go at merging these functions. 
I ask the Minister given that in his first attempt he did not submit to the Committee why we are making this merger whether he could articulate that again for the benefit of the Committee. At the moment I see no specific point relating to those functions that demonstrates this need. In fact in seeking the reason why this might be occurring I felt inclined to draw on some other experience that I have had as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee. We have recently undergone a similar consolidation through the Legal Services Agency. At least in that case it came off the back of a report by Dame Margaret Bazley proving that we probably needed to make significant changes in this area and that is where this consolidation occurred. Our committee was at great pains to ensure that in doing so we maintained the independence of office that was needed to maintain the public confidence in the Legal Services Agency as it stood. I do not feel I have the same confidence in the way that this merger is taking place. 
As has already been remarked the National Librarian will be a mere third-tier manager within the Department of Internal Affairs. We need to understand what that will mean at a functional level in terms of the reporting requirements of the National Librarian directly to Parliament. As a third-tier manager experience holds that when that individual comes to a select committee he or she is unlikely even to necessarily have his or her own hearing. I ask the Minister whether members of Parliament will have the ability to question and cross-examine the National Librarian directly— 
Moana Mackey 
: As they can now. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: —as they can currently. I ask the Minister whether members of Parliament will have the ability to directly question the National Librarian. 
There is no response from the Minister but I can see by the small glint in his facial expression that he has registered my question. I hope that at some time he can clarify that for us. Perhaps he could do it in the next part when we talk about the same issue with the Chief Archivist. That is one of the most important abilities we can maintain; not only their ability to report directly to Parliament but our ability as members of Parliament to directly question them. 
I have a second question for the Minister which comes under section 9A inserted by clause 26. I would be interested to hear some explanation from the Minister on where he anticipates the National Librarian as a mere third-tier manager can use these quite strong delegation powers that have been gifted to him or her. Section 9A sets out what a delegation must include. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 25 be agreed to: 
to add the following subclause: 
(4)Section 9 is amended by adding the following subsection: 
“(3A)Without limiting section 8 the National Librarian may from time to time on the National Librarian’s own initiative or at the request of the Minister— 
“(a)advise the Minister on any matter relating to the functions and powers of the National Librarian: 
“(b)report to the Minister on any matter relating to the functions and powers of the National Librarian.” 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to.  
Ayes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Noes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 25 be agreed to: 
to add the following subclause: 
(4)Section 9 is amended by inserting the following subsections: 
“(5)In exercising the functions of the National Librarian under this section the National Librarian shall not be responsible to the chief executive but shall act independently. 
“(6)Nothing in subsection (5) of this section limits the responsibility of the National Librarian to the chief executive for the efficient effective and economical management of the activities of the National Librarian.” 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Noes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to Part 2 be agreed to: 
to insert the following clause after clause 29: 
29AAnnual reports 
(1)The National Librarian has obligation to prepare publish and present an annual report to the Minister for tabling in Parliament on the National Library and the general administration of this Act in conformity with section 43 and 44 of the Public Finance Act 1989. 
(2)The Chief Librarian of Alexander Turnbull Library has obligation to prepare publish and present an annual report to the Minister for tabling in Parliament on Alexander Turnbull Library and the general administration of this Act in conformity with sections 43 and 44 of the Public Finance Act 1989. 
(3)All costs associated with the preparation and publishing of annual reports by the National Librarian and the Chief Librarian of Alexander Turnbull Library must be provided for from Department of Internal Affairs funding outside of the National Library’s and Alexander Turnbull Library’s budgets. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Noes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 189 in the name of the Hon Tony Ryall be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 2 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
Part 3 Amendments to Public Records Act 2005 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Chair. 
Hon John Boscawen 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt; I was waiting for the end of the voting. I seek leave to amend a vote from last night on the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill vote. We cast two votes in favour— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The member will have to do that in the House and not in the Committee because that was a decision of the House and not of the Committee. You will have to do that in the House. I have called Grant Robertson. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I am quite interested to know how the vote is going to change actually because it was an interesting vote by the ACT Party. 
We now move on to Part 3 of this State Sector Management Bill which deals with Archives New Zealand’s merger into the Department of Internal Affairs. This is a very significant change. I am not belittling the change in relation to the National Library; as speakers on this side of the Chamber have argued we regard the reduction in the independence and the amount of information and knowledge we will have about the National Library to be a significant matter. But the role of Archives New Zealand constitutionally in New Zealand is a very important matter. I will take a little bit of time in this first call— 
Chris Hipkins 
: The first of many! 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: —the first of many that is correct—to talk about the overall significance of Archives New Zealand. 
Archives in any country provide the ultimate accountability for Government because we know that records will be retained and records will be maintained and protected. Not only that but under our system Archives New Zealand has the role of ensuring that departments deposit documents and do not destroy them. In fact that is the key reason the Chief Archivist needs independence because the Chief Archivist is the person who can go to another Government department and demand its records be deposited. He or she has that ability; he or she has that statutory role. The question can very quickly be raised once one makes the Chief Archivist a third-tier manager at the Department of Internal Affairs as to what happens when he or she has to go to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs—his or her boss—to say: “You have to deposit that document. That document must be deposited.”? Immediately we run into the problem of this part of the bill because the role of Archives New Zealand is core in ensuring that our democracy is open and transparent. 
In the Education and Science Committee the Human Rights Commission came to us and its officials wrote a submission for us in which they talked about the important constitutional role of preserving Crown records. That is not done just for historians; as they said it is done actually for the accountability of our Government over the full term of those Governments. If people want practical examples of why that is important or significant I give the examples of every single Treaty claim and every time we dig in a street in Aro Valley in Wellington and need to know where the power cables might be. Actually that example was an interesting case when some privatisation took place; it was interesting to learn just how much information there was. If we have that information we have it because we have good records and we have good archives. 
We have had a bit of discussion during this debate about what happened in the 1990s when Archives New Zealand was part of the Department of Internal Affairs. I will read out to members a letter sent to somebody on 13 June 2001 by the Hon Matt Robson. He was writing to somebody who was looking for some information with regard to a ministerial inquiry. I will read the second paragraph in which Mr Robson states: “I have caused inquiries to be made of the tribunal’s division of the Department for Courts. Unfortunately I have discovered that apart from the committee’s report all documents relating to the inquiry including the submissions were destroyed in 1999. It appears that the destruction of these documents was inadvertent.” That is the kind of thing people are concerned about. That is the kind of thing that drove former Chief Archivists to come to us at the select committee and say: “This is not some theoretical exercise. This happened in the 1990s in New Zealand and it was an unmitigated disaster.” 
As my colleague Jacinda Ardern said before one submitter noted that important historical records were lost to “vermin and indifference”. There is the apocryphal story about what happened to the copy of the Treaty of Waitangi when that was involved in Archives New Zealand becoming part of the Department of Internal Affairs’ “important historical records”. These things are simply not right in a good-quality democracy. In 1997 Sir Geoffrey Palmer said: “it is a core responsibility of the State to maintain a proper and impartial record of the decisions and activities of the New Zealand Government. Not only are such records essential nourishment to the intellectual life of New Zealand they are an important instrument in the accountability of governments.” He went on to say that “the existence of a public record on every government exerts a salutary and beneficial effect on Ministers and that effect could be undermined if the strength and integrity of the archive system in New Zealand is diminished”. My colleague Trevor Mallard from his experience certainly knows about that. The Minister in the chair Nathan Guy—with his twink bottle—might deserve to bear that in mind as well. 
The Human Rights Commission commented on this bill: “By integrating Archives New Zealand into the DIA and subjugating the agency to officials superior to a downgraded CA the Bill risks undermining the independence of the CA and severely impinges on New Zealand’s constitutional and democratic protections.” That is it. That is what we are debating today: the undermining of our constitutional and democratic protections through this merger. It has been so glibly done I might add. We have heard so little from the Government about what really justifies these changes. 
Labour again has a number of amendments that we have put up on Part 3 to try to mitigate some of the worst aspects of this bill. We make it absolutely clear that when Labour is returned to Government we will be seeking to give Archives New Zealand and the Chief Archivist the independence that they need for reasons of democratic and constitutional infrastructure as we have said before. It may be that consideration could be given to a model beyond a department such as a Crown entity model or an Officer of Parliament model. We are open to those suggestions but we underline our view that the critical role of an independent Chief Archivist must be protected. 
Quite simply this bill does not do that. The Chief Archivist will become an employee of the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. The Chief Archivist will have no right of access to the Minister and no independent reporting right to the Parliament. This bill diminishes the rights independence and influence of the Chief Archivist. The Crown Law opinion which Mr Guy had to have torn from his hands emphasises that point in many ways. It has looked at the legal aspects of the merger and did that completely without the context of the Department of Internal’s Affairs structure which is actually the practical way that the merger will work. 
No doubt if Mr Guy chooses to take a call he will tell us that the provisions in Part 3 do enough to ensure the independence of the Chief Archivist. However as David Shearer said earlier every submitter who came to the Education and Science Committee told us that they did not believe that that was possible. The two former Chief Archivists who came before the committee gave incredibly persuasive submissions about their experiences under a regime where they were part of the Department of Internal Affairs. They said their influence was limited their time was taken up with other matters and their ability to have archives given some kind of importance was severely diminished alongside the other priorities of the Department of Internal Affairs. Some people do not think these issues are important but having archives having good-quality material and systems that hold Governments accountable is what holds our democracy together. Part 3 undermines that because the reasoning behind this merger has nothing to do with good-quality archives; it has to do with the Minister’s belief—influenced by officials no doubt—that digitalisation is all that matters. He believes that that project is all that matters and that there will be fewer departments. 
When the merger was announced on 18 March I began a process to request information under the Official Information Act to see the justification for it. It is quite ironic that I had to go to the Ombudsman on appeal—twice—to get the information. Until today I had not seen the Crown Law opinion that was referred to earlier because the Minister of State Services—more than the Minister responsible for Archives New Zealand who is also the Minister responsible for National Library and did provide some information—made sure that that information was withheld. The information was withheld because officials in the National Library Archives New Zealand and elsewhere knew that this merger was not the right thing to do. They knew that this was wrong because in the 1990s they seen the experience. They had been there and done that. Two former Chief Archivists also told the select committee that in the 1990s some Chief Executives of the Department of Internal Affairs were very helpful and had tried their best; others had had not. There were others—and one in particular—who had a different agenda which was actually about whether the Archives could in fact be run privately. I am sure that that agenda could come back one day. When Chief Archivists and Archives New Zealand staff get in a situation where the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs has a completely different agenda then that is a very unfortunate thing. Part 3 is a very very bad part of the bill. 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 In my second reading speech I talked about my adventure to the national archives around the corner from Parliament and about some of the documents I had seen. I tell the Committee that I got to see some wonderful documents of our history. I saw police records from the Wairau Affair. I saw a wanted poster of Hone Heke which had been found literally between the pages of another book only weeks before. I saw transcripts from the Parker-Hulme murder case which was immortalised in the movie  
Heavenly Creatures 
. 
I also saw something that I think is instructive for us today. I found some wonderful photographs of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Egypt taken during World War II. A no doubt good-intentioned army soldier had decided to paste all those wonderful pictures into a book thereby wrecking them. I think that is the metaphor for today. I do not doubt the good intentions of what the Government is trying to do. I do not think it dislikes Archives New Zealand or dislikes the National Library. I think it is going into this merger with good intentions but I say that we will see bad consequences. 
I am a historian by academic training and those old adages ring true: “Know your history”; “Know where you’ve come from to know where you’re going.” The risk is that we will be repeating the mistakes that were made in the 1990s before those departments were separated. We will have to go through a whole process once again of disaggregating them. 
Part 3 of the bill amends the Public Records Act 2005. We are not talking about a dusty old collection of papers; we are talking about important taonga—treasures—of our New Zealand culture and our history. We are also talking about important constitutional features of our democracy. I want to re-pose the questions and answers that I heard at the Education and Science Committee from the New Zealand Historical Association. It asked whether the system was broke; the answer was no. It asked whether we were adopting best practice today; the answer was no. It asked whether the bill would take us backwards; the answer was yes. It asked whether there were risks with this bill; the answer was yes. Those risks we are talking about are to the independence of Archives New Zealand to the great work it is doing to the safe custody of our national taonga and to our international image. We are also talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi impacts. 
When we look at the risks to the independence of Archives New Zealand we see that this bill firstly downgrades the Chief Archivist from the position of a chief executive to simply an employee of the Department of Internal Affairs. He or she will be legislatively accountable yet will have financial organisational and authoritative means counting against them because basically the chief executive—a third-tier employee—will have to comply with the culture the strategic direction and the financial direction of the Department of Internal Affairs. That is not just an academic debate; the independence of that position will be eroded. 
The Minister in the chair the Hon Nathan Guy talked about the Crown Law opinion but he did not mention how rushed it was. He did not talk about the fact that Archives New Zealand is not like the Passports Office which he used as an example. We are talking about important constitutional roles in our democracy. The risk is that the chief executive of Archives New Zealand downgraded to a third-tier official will have all the burdens of administrative work within the hierarchical structure of the Department of Internal Affairs but will not be able to sit on the executive team in order to actually make a difference. We are really talking about the worst of both worlds. 
Secondly the select committee made a good change in deleting most of the provisions in clauses 47 to 58 which means public records will be retained in the possession of Archives New Zealand and not by the Department of Internal Affairs. There were legitimate concerns expressed by people who have items in the Archives or who would like to donate items to the Archives in the future. We are talking about differentiated roles between the two different departments being taken over and the Department of Internal Affairs. On the one hand we have the Department of Internal Affairs which looks after items like censorship; on the other hand we have the important constitutional role to manage our archives well. As the Lange papers in Archives New Zealand show or WikiLeaks shows— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but the time has come for the luncheon break. 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I return to Part 3 of the State Sector Management Bill. When I was speaking earlier on I was speaking more generally about the concern Labour had on a philosophical level about what is happening in Part 3 which undermines the independence and ability of the Chief Archivist to perform his or her core constitutional role. 
I will now refer to specific elements of Part 3. Firstly I refer to a change that has been made by the Education and Science Committee on the question of Archives New Zealand’s continuing existence in some form or name. Essentially the bill removed all references to Archives New Zealand because Archives New Zealand as we know it as a Government entity will not exist. Archives New Zealand is still the repository for documents—this would continue. A number of submitters raised questions around the ownership and control of documents and people had concerns that as the bill was drafted the Department of Internal Affairs rather than Archives New Zealand would have ownership and control of those public documents. Clearly that concerned a lot of submitters; it was raised by a large number of people. I am pleased to say that the committee was able to make a change and a large number of clauses have been changed so the phrase “Archives New Zealand” is included. 
That is important because again it goes to the heart of the matter of ensuring that there is an independent archive. The absence of that and the handing over effectively of control or ownership of documents to the Department of Internal Affairs raises all those concerns again that it will not be Archives New Zealand that controls these important records but a Government department into which the archive has been subsumed. In that small matter we were able to achieve a change in the Education and Science Committee but it does not take away from the other matters that we have traversed. 
A number of submitters raised important concerns about the way in which the Chief Archivist is appointed and how his or her independence is maintained. The critical change made was that under this bill the Chief Archivist can act independently “in exercising his or her professional judgment;”. Under the previous legislation the Public Records Act 2005 the Chief Archivist was independent in the discharge of his or her duties and functions. We now have a difference. There is a downgrading so that rather than the Chief Archivist being responsible for and having independence in all of his or her activities he or she merely has independence in the exercise of his or her professional judgment. The select committee sought clarification from the officials that this really was about ensuring that the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs’ authority remained totally unchallenged. That is the nub of the problem. In this situation we need a Chief Archivist who can challenge the authority of the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs where that is necessary. That alteration in terms of the description of the Chief Archivist’s independence is a critical change and one raised by a large number of submitters but one that we were not able to resolve satisfactorily in the select committee. In one of my typescript amendments we are attempting to rectify that situation and I encourage the Government to ensure that that amendment is passed. 
The relationship between the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs and the Chief Archivist is obviously at the heart of that matter and again it has not been dealt with adequately in the bill. The chief executive will be the employer and the Chief Archivist’s role will be subsumed because of the structure of the State Sector Act. The release of the structural document for the Department of Internal Affairs reconfirmed this and showed that the Chief Archivist will be a third-tier manager outside the executive leadership team. That is a very important point. The Chief Executive and managers of the Department of Internal Affairs who will set the strategic direction for the Department of Internal Affairs will not include the Chief Archivist. We on this side of the Chamber find that simply unacceptable for such a significant constitutional organisation. We would like to see that changed and there are Supplementary Order Papers dealing with that. 
The National Library’s situation is similar. The whole question of reporting has completely changed. Reporting will be via the Department of Internal Affairs. The National Library will report to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs and that is not acceptable. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I will carry on from my colleague Grant Robertson who started the debate after lunch. The Minister in the chair the Minister of Internal Affairs made Part 3 which contains the delegations and functions of the Chief Archivist and administrative matters sound very prosaic boring and bureaucratic. But what the Government obviously fails to get is the cultural impact made by Archives New Zealand and the professionalism of the role of the Chief Archivist on both central government and local government. 
The Chief Archivist is tasked with creating and monitoring standards for both paper and digital records management in central government and local government. That includes deciding what may be disposed of and how records are made open to the public. It is a big power. We have already seen—with the Minister in the chair changing a Crown Law opinion with his twink pen before he was prepared for the Opposition to pick it up—how records can be dealt with by stealth. It is funny that we are now up to the public records part of the debate when we have just witnessed that activity by the Minister in the chair. We can see how important independence is for the role of the Chief Archivist. Public records should not be altered and the public has the right to access those records. 
I chaired the Health Committee inquiry into agent orange. The select committee asked for the Ministry of Defence papers on where agent orange was used in Viet Nam. We found with great alarm that huge chunks of that public record were simply missing. It was annotated and then there were big gaps. That is of huge concern especially if when future Governments scrutinise the activities of either the Crown or Crown entities they find that there has been obvious tampering or loss. That is not good professional record-keeping. That is a critical role of the Chief Archivist. 
That function was one of the reasons why in May 2000 the previous Labour Government lauded a new dawn for the National Archives. Marian Hobbs said: “Most people know that the Archives preserve historic documents fundamental to our existence as a nation such as the Treaty of Waitangi and the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition. … the work of the Archives is directed at ensuring that a full and accurate record is kept throughout Government.” That is a critical function of the Archives. 
In Part 3 we see that even though clause 41 states the Chief Archivist is to act independently the Chief Archivist will report to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs for goodness’ sake! The chief executive is under great financial pressure. I ask how easy it will be for the chief executive to exert pressure on the Chief Archivist to cut corners and to not properly store and maintain the public record. That is the danger of having a lack of independence for the Chief Archivist through the restructuring that happened after the Minister received the Crown Law opinion. It is a real worry. 
It is also a real worry for members in the Chamber to see the Minister in the chair twinking away. I found that deeply disturbing. He now has the name “Twinkie” Guy and that will stick for ever. “I’ve been twinking” “Twink Big”—there will be talk about the Minister of Internal Affairs “twinking big”. You know it will not go away; we are determined that it will not go away. It becomes part of the legacy of this House’s storytelling now. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He’s a big twinker. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: He is a big twinker—he is. Members may think the Minister is very prosaic and a solid performer but the stealth with which he reached for that twink will go down in history as we engage in the debate on Part 3 of the State Sector Management Bill which is anything other than boring. That is why we are going to keep on with our pressure here right up to Christmas. Our colleague Grant Robertson has some very good amendments which I do hope the Minister listens to. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I join my colleagues in speaking on Part 3 of the State Sector Management Bill and I wholeheartedly endorse the comments made by Grant Robertson and Steve Chadwick in relation to the importance of Archives New Zealand and our concern about what this legislation will do to the independence and robustness of our information-keeping service. Many of the same concerns applied to the discussion on the National Library. The independence of records and the ability to maintain them so that people can analyse and consider our history to reflect critically on what was or was not done and to be able to look at for example how we are governed is a fundamental right and a fundamental necessity in a democracy. So we are very concerned about this. Although as others have said new section 12 in clause 41 states that the Chief Archivist is to act independently we do not believe that that goes far enough. The provision is constrained in that it states the Chief Archivist “must act independently in exercising his or her professional judgment;” but we are not confident that that independence of the Chief Archivist will be maintained when the role is that of an employee and a third-tier manager. 
The people who work in places like Archives New Zealand and the National Library are professional people who are absolutely committed to what they do. We know here from dealing with the Parliamentary Library just how committed the people who work in this kind of role are to doing the job properly to ensure that they act in a way that is open and transparent and that applies equally to those working in Archives New Zealand. Those people do that work because they are passionate about maintaining records and having those records accessible to New Zealanders. The reality is that reducing the independence of the Chief Archivist will have flow-on effects on everybody who works in Archives New Zealand. I would like the Minister in the chair the Minister of Internal Affairs to respond to some of the concerns that members on this side of the Chamber are raising. 
My colleague Moana Mackey talked in the debate on the previous part about the provisions for the transfer of employees of the National Library and compared them with the transfer provisions in Part 1 for those working in the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. I want to make similar comments in relation to the transfer of employees of Archives New Zealand. Effectively this bill is very limited and we want some confidence that the provisions outlined in clause 59 “Transfer of Archives New Zealand employees to department” actually do cover all the areas covered in the provisions relating to the transfer of Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology staff which seem to be comprehensive. Those provisions refer to people being covered by their collective employment agreement and ensure continuity of service and importantly make the clear distinction that these people are not new employees for the purposes of either KiwiSaver or more important the Employment Relations Act. If that was the case as Moana Mackey and I have said previously they could be fired at will without reason and without recourse to any justice. We want to know precisely what the provisions in clause 59 do guarantee to people who work in Archives New Zealand. 
I had a quick look at sections 30E 30F and 30G in the State Sector Act which essentially relate to issues such as technical redundancy. In other words if people are transferred they will not have access to any sort of redundancy payment. I would like the Minister in the chair to come to the party to give us some reassurance on that matter to perhaps get some advice from officials and to tell us precisely what that means and give us some confidence that employment rights for these workers are protected. As I say the people who work at somewhere like Archives New Zealand are professional people who want to do a good job and concentrate on the issue of managing our information. 
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister responsible for Archives New Zealand) 
: 
 Part 3 amends the Public Records Act 2005. In essence it removes the reference to “chief executive” and replaces it with “Chief Archivist”. Therefore the Chief Archivist can focus purely on his or her pure role of getting on with the functions of the job which is vitally important. 
We have heard a lot this afternoon about what occurred in the 1990s. I point out that moving forward Parliament addressed that with the Public Records Act 2005 which was supported by the then National Opposition. The 2005 Act focused on the auditing of practice and the independent external parties that the Chief Archivist has to have come in to look at his or her performance. Also the results of the audit are tabled in Parliament which is another important point of scrutiny. These provisions further strengthen the independence of the Chief Archivist as confirmed by the Crown Law opinion. As a result of that three reports are available to the public. First the Chief Archivist is responsible for the State record-keeping of public offices; secondly there is the audit report; and thirdly there is the report of the Archives Council. Those three reports will all be available to the public. 
The crux of Part 3 is covered in new section 12 in clause 41. It states for those who are listening and even for the Opposition that the Chief Archivist “(a) must act independently in exercising his or her professional judgment; and (b) is not subject to direction from either the Minister or the chief executive.” The Committee should be reassured by that very important point. The provisions have been further strengthened by those who have been involved as part of the select committee process and I need to acknowledge those people who have been involved in that process. 
The other important point to make about this is to look at where Chief Archivists operate around the world and I think it is important to give members some examples. They all have statutory independence. In Australia the Chief Archivist sits within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In Sweden the Chief Archivist operates under the Ministry of Culture. In the UK the Chief Archivist operates out of the Ministry of Justice. In Ireland the Chief Archivist operates out of the Department of Tourism Culture and Sport. And in Canada it sits within the Canadian heritage portfolio. All operate with statutory independence. 
I also wish to mention in relation to the focus on digitisation and getting more information online the $12.6 million that over 4 years will help to store preserve and give access to important public records for all New Zealanders. The other significant point is that a recent survey concluded that half of the information that local governments up and down the country have in their records is not now in a form that they can reuse. That is an important point. We have to move forward on these matters while allowing the Chief Archivist to have statutory independence and that very important provision is covered in new section 12. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 The Minister in the chair did not put in his statement that many of the functions of the Chief Archivist have been removed. That clause has been taken out which weakens the role of the Chief Archivist rather than strengthening it. 
Coming to the point of the international research that he referred to if we look a little closer at some of that international research we will find that the safeguards for the archivists in those countries that he mentioned are much more robust than what he is proposing to put forward in the State Sector Management Bill. If he looks at the examples of the UK and the US he will see that they are in fact completely separate. They provide the sorts of safeguards that he believes are in the bill but in fact are not there at all. 
I raise one more procedural matter. Before when the Minister tabled the Crown Law opinion he said that it was publicly available. None of us had been able to get hold of it. 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: It’s on the website—it’s on the Department of Internal Affairs website. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: That is not our understanding I say to the Minister. I think the fact that he brought out the white-out bottle before he started to table the document probably speaks to the fact that this Government has been less than forward with its information. Let us look at people who have tried to put in an Official Information Act request—and I include journalists and even Radio New Zealand who is here today. Radio New Zealand has been trying to get Official Information Act releases done and has appealed to the Ombudsmen over and over. It has been unsuccessful in most cases. I think the fact that this bill is being discussed today in light of all that is testament to where I believe this Government wants us to go in terms of information and its availability to the public: backwards rather than forwards. It will be more guarded more protected and more compromised than it was before. 
I will mention a couple of issues around the independence of Archives New Zealand. I refer to the very good submission that was made by the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission cautioned against downgrading—that was the term it used—record management which would call into question New Zealand’s standing as the most transparent and the least corrupt country in the world. In its submission it referred to the Transparency International ranking which puts New Zealand as the least corrupt country in the world. It believes that this bill would in fact compromise that position and goes on to make a very important point: “The Bill splits possession and control awarding possession of Archives to the DIA while the CA retains control.” 
That creates a real conflict of interest I believe. It creates a conflict of interest between the powers that flow from possession—that is holding it—and the Chief Archivist acting on the basis of control rights. If we have an archivist at the third tier of any bureaucracy there is absolutely no way that that person can stand up and independently argue the case to keep that information independent as it should be. I just cannot believe that the Minister can honestly stand up and say that this legislation will move Archives New Zealand forward in New Zealand; indeed it is moving it backwards. 
When we come to the rationale of why we are here debating this bill under urgency on a Saturday afternoon at 2.25 again the Minister comes up with no real or good reason for why we are here except for technology and technological changes. I have been told that the servers and the computing capacity that are under the control of the Department of Internal Affairs are actually at maximum now. We will be bolting on to that the library and the archives in totally different formats. 
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. 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I appreciate very much the opportunity to take my first call on the State Sector Management Bill on Saturday afternoon at 2.30. We will be on this bill for some time I think; there is a lot to talk about too. I am sure that Mr Henare will make a contribution. He will get on his feet and make a 5-minute contribution because he obviously feels so passionately about this legislation although I suspect that those opposite will continue to sit in silence. 
In addressing Part 3 I say that I have been listening to the debate on this bill and I have been becoming increasingly concerned about what is happening to the independence of our National Library and our Archives New Zealand. They really are important; in many ways they define us as a people. They protect our democracy our history and of course the accountability of the Government—a very very important matter. But we are seeing that this Government’s preparedness to be accountable is being washed away by every session we have in urgency. No one is allowed to come along and say what they think. No the Government does not want to hear from people. It does not want to go through the process and actually I am really worried about that because I do not ever want to see a situation exist where those in power write our history or influence it. We have seen that happen in history and we do not want to have that happen in New Zealand. But this could be a key step towards it and I am very worried about that. 
Archives New Zealand and our National Library are part of our collective memory as a nation. I was looking at what is in the Archives; for the purposes of listeners I tell them that I think the Archives are worth going through. What are we talking about there? We are not talking about a few dusty old books locked away in a couple of rooms; we are talking about over 96 kilometres of archives 21500 motion picture reels and over 5 million records. They are described on Archway which is the main online website finding aid. 
Archives New Zealand also holds our founding document—the Treaty of Waitangi. It holds our founding document— 
Grant Robertson 
: Damaged when the DIA had it. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right. It was damaged when it was last under the auspices of the Department of Internal Affairs. Archives New Zealand also holds the Declaration of Independence of the northern chiefs. I would have thought that the Maori Party would be really concerned about the possible damage that could be done to that document and the interference that could go on if for example the Government pretended that we had never had it. 
Hon Member 
: They might twink it out. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yes they could twink it out. The “Minister for Twinking” could just twink it out. That is right. The Archives hold the women’s suffrage petition from 1893. That is really really important but of course that could be twinked out as well could it not? We could pretend and just go back to saying that we did not want women to have the vote. 
I noticed that one of the really interesting collections on display at the moment at Archives New Zealand is called “Walter’s World”. Mr Nash that wonderful Labour member would be interested in this because it is about his great-grandfather. The collection is called “Walter’s World: the Nash Collection”. The Archives website says about the exhibition: “From food to fascism from world travel to World Wars Walter Nash kept everything. His papers provide an insight into all aspects of the world in which he lived. The extent of the collection is vast—several thousand “bundles” of papers photos and other items. They are currently being listed for placement on Archway.” The collection is based on loose themes it is the Nash collection and it is about one of the great Labour Prime Ministers of New Zealand. It is an important part of our history a really important part of our history on display at Archives New Zealand along with many many other really important collections. As I said they are part of our collective memory as a nation. 
Recently a Booker Prize winner said of politicians: “Tell me what you read and I will understand what you know.” I would love to know what the Minister reads—I would love to know. He has clearly taken no notice of the very good advice he has had from Archives New Zealand or the lessons of the 1990s merger. There was a lot of history there but National took no notice and Labour of course had to fix it up. The Minister had to twink out a document that was tabled in the Chamber today because he had not read it properly so I think we understand what he knows because we know what he has not read. 
I am friends with a number of senior people in this field and they are really alarmed at this bill. They are very very alarmed at the potential of this bill to undermine their independence and their passion and— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Professionalism. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: —their professionalism; that is right—also their jobs. We know that this move is driven by ideology. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the State Sector Management Bill and express some concerns that I have about the amalgamation of Archives New Zealand into the Department of Internal Affairs and in particular the impact that that will have on the independence of the Chief Archivist. We cannot underestimate and understate the importance of the independence of the Chief Archivist given the importance of the material— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Leave it to Beaver. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: —that is right—that Archives New Zealand looks after. I can recall for example only 3 or 4 years ago following the passing of the late Rt Hon David Lange that there was a bit of a furore about material held by Archives New Zealand in his name being made public and whether there was adequate process to make sure that we were not releasing some stuff that should not be released. I think some SIS stuff and some Government Communications Security Bureau stuff ended up being released when David Lange’s papers were all released. There was a review I understand of some of the practices and processes— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: He forgot to hand it back. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Yes he forgot to hand it back; that is right. There was a review of the practices and processes that Archives New Zealand undertakes in releasing papers following somebody’s demise. One of the things that that underscored however was the importance of the independence of Archives New Zealand as the guardians of our nation’s history. After a period of time people have a right to know what is going on and to have access to whatever is contained within such papers however inconvenient the content may be. Archives New Zealand records significant volumes of information regarding ministerial decisions Government decisions members of Parliament and public records. That information may become inconvenient over time and Ministers and members of Parliament may not want it to see the light of day. It would be very concerning if we created an environment in which any political pressure could be brought to bear very subtly behind the scenes on the Chief Archivist. 
The concern I have is that if the role is downgraded to a third-tier manager within the Department of Internal Affairs then in fact the diminished significance of that role leaves the Chief Archivist more open to pressure. It leaves the Chief Archivist more open to pressure in a number of respects. First of all the reporting function to Parliament will be significantly weakened. At the moment the Chief Archivist has a direct reporting line to the Minister where he or she can advise and meet with the Minister independently. The Chief Archivist has a direct reporting line to this Parliament. The Chief Archivist presents us with an annual report and all of the other documents that an independent agency would present to this Parliament. Much in the same way that I have concerns about the role of the National Librarian being merged within the Department of Internal Affairs I have concerns about that regarding the Chief Archivist. 
The potential for the Department of Internal Affairs to starve Archives New Zealand of the necessary resources to fulfil its statutory functions is increased by the changes being proposed in this legislation. Also weakened is the ability of the Chief Archivist to express concerns about that and to whistle-blow or alert Parliament or the Minister to the fact that it does not have the resources it needs to carry out its statutory functions. 
We have seen in recent years a welcome move quite frankly to reduce the volume of information provided in annual reports and statements of intent that come to this House. I am concerned that if we try to shrink down the information that we get from a department like the Department of Internal Affairs which has such a broad range of totally incompatible functions we will lose all meaning in what is reported to the House and Parliament will not receive the information it needs. If we put that in the context of having entities like the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian merged into the Department of Internal Affairs that concern only becomes more apparent because the more contradictory and incompatible the functions incorporated within the Department of Internal Affairs the more likely it is that they will feel the squeeze and the significance of the functions that they undertake will be undermined. There have been significant concerns raised about this particular proposal by people who work in this area. The New Zealand Historical Association and the New Zealand Society of Authors were particularly concerned about having access potentially restricted to archived material if political constraints and political considerations become part of this mix. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Boy this is riveting stuff! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: He is on the edge of his seat. Tau Henare is quite literally on the edge of his seat and I think that that is really good. 
Grant Robertson 
: It’s the only way he can sit down. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It is the only way he can sit down nowadays but I am glad that he has found this particular contribution entertaining and I would be happy to continue to entertain him for another 5 minutes. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 38 be agreed to: 
to omit from subclause (1) “repository” and substitute “government agency”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to 
. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 39 be agreed to: 
to add the following subclause as subclause (2): 
There shall be within the department an institution known as Archives New Zealand under the control and management of the Chief Archivist for the purposes of that office’s exercise of all functions specified in section 11 of the principal Act. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 40 be agreed to: 
to insert in section 10(2) “in consultation with the Archives Council and national stakeholder organisations” after “chief executive”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 40 be agreed to: 
to add the following clause as subclause (2): 
(2)Section 10 is amended by adding the following subsections: 
“(3)The Chief Archivist must not at the same time hold any other position in the department. 
“(4)There shall be regular consultations between chief executive his or her representatives and the Chief Archivist. 
“(5)The chief executive shall monitor and report on the performance of the Chief Archivist.” 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to Part 3 be agreed to: 
to insert the following clause after clause 40: 
40AFunctions and duties of Chief Archivist 
Section 11(1)(c) is amended by adding the following subparagraphs: 
“(iv)to select and control the staff of Archives New Zealand; and 
“(v)to take reasonable steps to provide suitable accommodation for public archives under his or her possession and control; and”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to Part 3 be agreed to: 
to insert the following clause after clause 40: 
40AFunctions and duties of Chief Archivist 
Section 11(1)(c) is amended by adding the following subparagraph: 
“(iv)to advise and assist the Minister in matters relating to archives”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 41 be agreed to: 
to add to section 12 the following subsections as subsections (2) and (3): 
“(2)In relation to the performance of his or her functions and duties and to the exercise of his or her powers under Part 2 the Chief Archivist— 
“(a)must act independently in exercising his or her functions duties and powers; and 
“(b)is not subject to direction from either the Minister or the chief executive. 
“(3)At the Minister’s discretion the Chief Archivist shall have the right of independent access to the Minister on any matter in connection with the Chief Archivist’s statutory responsibilities.” 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Noes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 189 in the name of the Hon Tony Ryall to Part 3 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 3 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 43 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 5. 
Part 3 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 1 agreed to.  
Schedule 2 agreed to.  
Schedule 3 agreed to.  
Schedule 4 agreed to.  
Clause 1 agreed to.  
Clause 2 agreed to.  
The Committee divided the bill into the Research Science and Technology Bill the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill and the Public Records Amendment Bill pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper188. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted. 
Voting 
Correction—Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill 
Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN (Whip—ACT) 
: 
 I seek leave to amend the ACT Party’s vote on the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. There was a split vote. We were entitled to cast only four votes. The vote now stands at two votes in favour and two votes against. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to correct the record. Is there any objection? There is no objection. The record will be corrected. 
Correction—State Sector Management Bill 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 In a similar vein I seek leave to correct a voting tally. A vote was cast this morning for the Progressive Party—for the Hon Jim Anderton—and that vote was cast in error. I seek leave for that vote to be deleted from the record. 
Chris Tremain 
: Which particular bill was it? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It was just one vote. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: He cast only one vote. Does the member know which one it was? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well there have been so many but it was one this morning. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The Clerk is happy to look for that and correct it. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It just needs to be twinked out I think is the term. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: As you say. 
Research Science and Technology Bill 
National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill 
Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) 
Third Readings 
Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of State Services) 
: 
 I move  
That the Research Science and Technology Bill the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill and the Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time 
. I would like to start by thanking the chair of the Education and Science Committee Mr Allan Peachey members of the committee and committee staff for their work on what was formerly the State Sector Management Bill. I would also like to acknowledge the Parliamentary Counsel Office the State Services Commission and affected agencies for their support. 
The passing of this legislation is important because it now provides certainty to the many staff who work in the affected agencies. They were expecting the new Ministry of Science and Innovation to begin on 1 February and they have been working towards that. Similarly staff in the National Library and in Archives New Zealand have been working towards their incorporation into the Department of Internal Affairs from 1 February next year. The passing of this legislation enables them to do that. 
In referring to the debate that went on in the Committee stage it is important to identify a number of features that need to be reported and stated in the third readings. The Hon Nathan Guy made it quite clear that in the view of the Crown Law Office this legislation actually strengthens the independence of the Chief Archivist. Similarly I reject the criticism of members opposite that statutory officers within departments cannot act independently. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Oh my God! 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Ms Chadwick says: “Oh my God!” as though with a sense of disbelief. Well she should know that David Henry as Chief Electoral Officer a statutory officer in the Department of Justice has shown that statutory officers act with great integrity. He revealed the fact that Labour spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars in the 2005 general election when it ripped off taxpayers in order to win the election. 
Grant Robertson 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take offence at the statement the Minister has just made about the Labour Party and I ask that he withdraw and apologise. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You are objecting to? 
Grant Robertson 
: I am objecting to the accusation he has made about members on this side of the House. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Speaker’s ruling 44/5 applies. If the member has taken objection I ask the member to withdraw the comment. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: I withdraw. David Henry showed that the Labour Party used public money and had to pay it back. What do we call it when a party uses $800000 of taxpayers’ money that it has to pay back? I use that example not to cause controversy but to alert members to the fact that statutory officers do act with independence and we would expect that to happen following the incorporation of these agencies into the Department of Internal Affairs. 
The provisions contained in the legislation mark the next step in the Government’s drive to ensure that its administrative arrangements are organised to deliver improved services at reduced cost in the short to medium term and to future-proof the delivery of Government responsibility and services for the long term. Collectively these and other changes add up to a commitment by the Government not to impose a one-size-fits-all approach or a blunt chop of significant numbers of Government agencies but to consider each sector on its own and to put in place administrative arrangements that are best suited for the sector. 
This bill combines the capabilities of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology into a new department that will clearly leave the sector with a unified strategic policy direction with more clarity and certainty around agency responsibilities and with reduced complexity and transaction costs across the system. The Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) and the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill will provide a simpler and more effective governance approach for gathering information protecting information and providing access to records and information that are vital to individual New Zealanders communities the Government of the day and Parliament. Bringing together the National Library Archives New Zealand and the Department of Internal Affairs will provide for better integrated decision-making and enable staff to draw on wider pools of expertise within a much larger corporate environment with reduced collaboration costs and lower corporate overheads. 
As the Hon Nathan Guy said all three of those agencies are embarking on or are some way down the track of a massive digitalisation of their collections and information. It makes a lot of sense to minimise and mitigate the risk of the future in that respect by bringing those three agencies together. It is actually a 21st century approach to Archives New Zealand and the National Library rather than some sort of quaint reminiscence of what it used to be like in the 1970s when trucks arrived from the National Library to give a few books to the schools. 
In summary these bills form the foundation of a better more integrated and more efficient administration of the Government’s role in research science and technology and for the gathering protection and development of some of New Zealand’s most important records knowledge and information resources. The Government welcomes the enactment of these bills. I think very importantly that the passing of these bills under urgency gives greater certainty to the staff who are involved that the various agencies will be in a position to meet the 1 February time line for the beginning of these new agencies. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It is interesting that the Minister ended his speech with faux concern for the staff of these agencies. These are the same agencies where staff numbers have been cut and morale is incredibly low as it is right across the public sector under this Minister of State Services Tony Ryall. It is also interesting to note that he decided to invoke the Crown Law opinion to say that the independence and the statutory functions of the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian were strengthened. That is so far from the truth it is unbelievable. That Crown Law opinion which we had to prise from the hands of Nathan Guy before he got the twink bottle on to it actually says nothing of the sort. It says some benign things about the legal status of the new arrangements but because it was written before the Department of Internal Affairs’ new structure was announced it does not cover the fact that the Chief Archivist and National Librarian will be third-tier managers. It does mention that if the National Librarian and the Chief Archivist are subservient to the chief executive it would “impact to some extent on the National Librarian’s scope of decision making.” so it acknowledges that the independence and influence of the National Librarian and the Chief Archivist are diminished as a result of this legislation. 
It is interesting to note as a number of other speakers have mentioned that throughout the process of the Government deciding what it wanted to do with Archives New Zealand and the National Library it has been almost impossible to get information out of the Minister of State Services about the proposals. I had two complaints go to the Ombudsmen which were ruled in my favour in respect of getting information but that took months and months. The irony is not lost on this side of the House that for the Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) the bill that changes the nature of Archives New Zealand we could not get official information out. Then to have Minister Guy get out his twink pen earlier today just capped it off for us really showing the attitude towards the importance of information the storage of information and the availability of information for all New Zealanders. 
Obviously as we have said before what is now the Research Science and Technology Bill which was Part 1 of the original bill is not a bill that we have great opposition to although it would be fair to say that we have fairly lukewarm enthusiasm for it. However we strongly oppose the other two bills that this legislation has been divided into the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill and the Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2). When we look specifically at the National Library and the contributions about it in the Committee stage we see that I was not able to spend time on the Alexander Turnbull Library. We on this side of the House spoke at great length about the impact of the legislative changes on the National Librarian. We put forward amendments to attempt to change those so that the National Librarian could have independence and could report to Parliament but they were voted down. But we did not really have time to talk about the Alexander Turnbull Library. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I did—I did. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Yes my colleague Chris Hipkins did speak about it for a little while. 
I want to come back to the matter whereby the librarian who is the head of the Alexander Turnbull Library will be at the fourth-tier level of the Department of Internal Affairs. That was a matter of great concern to a number of submitters who came to the select committee and who said to us that they were concerned the status and mana of the Alexander Turnbull Library would be severally undermined by this bill. The Friends of the Turnbull Library and the National Library Society all raised concern about the Alexander Turnbull Library. That library is not a library of Government documents; it is a library of family documents from all over New Zealand going very far back including—and my colleague Nanaia Mahuta mentioned this—the question of documents provided by Maori. 
Te komitiMaori raised their concerns with the select committee as well. In fact it was during the submission of Te komitiMaori that I put the question to one person who was representative of families who had documents in the Turnbull Library and I asked whether they would think again of putting documents into the Alexander Turnbull Library if this bill were passed. They replied straight away that they would—because their concern is that the Turnbull Library represents something of significance and something of independence—rather than feel they were giving these documents over to the Government in the form of the Department of Internal Affairs. So I think it is worth noting and reinforcing what my colleague Chris Hipkins had to say earlier on: the Alexander Turnbull Library is being diminished by this bill. There are protections in place within the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Act but I am not confident now that the library having been made part of the Department of Internal Affairs will retain the status and mana that it has and deserves. 
Moving back to the question of Archives New Zealand I think that this is a particularly sad day for us today because we are moving back to the position of the 1990s. That position has been described by a former Chief Archivist as being one in which there was an environment of distrust and rancour. There was litigation; the matter about where the archives should be placed was taken to court in the 1990s. When Labour came into office in 1999 we moved to create a separate agency called Archives New Zealand to ensure that we met international good practice. The Unesco guidelines on archives say the following in relation to organisational placement: “Placement within the government that prevents the submission of the agency beneath competing interests; eliminates blurring of functions with other professional agencies and disciplines; protects against interference with agency program responsibilities under the colour of co-ordination authority; and eliminates hampering supervision and control by having little or no professional knowledge of its program responsibilities and operations.” 
That was the situation in the 1990s. We were against the Unesco guidelines because Archives New Zealand was within the Department of Internal Affairs. We separated it out after the 1999 election and the last 10 years have been marked by the best-ever operations of archives in New Zealand. Members can talk to any stakeholder around New Zealand and they will be told that Archives New Zealand has never operated better than the way in which it has been operating today. But we are undoing today the progress we have made in the last 10 years. There has been no justification whatsoever provided to the Committee or this House as to why we are actually doing that. 
There were some good comments from the Minister about digitalisation. As the experience in Canada showed much of that did not actually take place; much of the perceived benefit was not there. David Shearer has already raised concerns about whether the computer systems at the Department of Internal Affairs can actually cope with this change. There is no justification for changing a fundamentally important part of our constitutional and democratic infrastructure. 
We had submitter after submitter; I want to pay tribute to the submitters some of whom are in the gallery today and I say that the quality of the submissions we heard in the select committee process was extremely high. Not only were they based on strong values and on strong underpinnings of what an archives and a library should be but they were based on empirical experience. They were based on the experience of people working in Archives New Zealand in the 1990s who were unable to perform their jobs to the fullest of their abilities because of the structure they were part of. It is an unfortunate thing that those people have had to come back to a committee now after they thought all of it had been resolved at the beginning of the century. The commitment that I make to those people—and I made it in the Committee stage—is that if a Labour Party is returned to office we will look again at this legislation and ensure there is a structure that gives proper independence to Archives New Zealand and to the Chief Archivist. We are not bound to what the structure might be but it will be one that enables Archives New Zealand to operate independently and to the fullest ability of the people in it. 
In the brief time remaining I will mention a couple of other matters such as the whole question of transparency. I have already raised the issue of the Official Information Act and of the twinking of documents. It is very unfortunate that we will now have less information about Archives New Zealand and the National Library in the public arena. There will be no direct reports to this Parliament and I regard that as something that will diminish those two institutions. 
The National Library and Archives New Zealand are made up of much more than documents books and papers. Those institutions are also the professionals who work in those organisations and throughout this debate their professionalism has been undermined by the belief shown by the other side of the House that they are simply mere bureaucrats who can be reorganised and reshuffled into any old organisation. Those people deserve far better than that; they are the custodians of our heritage. They are the protectors of our transparency and accountability in Government and we need to support them not undermine them. On this side of the House we will continue to support Archives New Zealand the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library and we will ensure that in time they are returned to their proper status. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call during the third reading of the Research Science and Technology Bill the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill and the Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2). The Government remains committed to designing a first-class State Service and that is never clearer than when we look at combining the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology together under the Ministry of Science and Innovation. This is the first major amendment to the Foundation for Research Science and Technology Act since 1990 and it certainly sets up science and innovation to take us forward. We know that as an economy we need to have a well-aligned science and innovation service and commercialisation arm. It gives me great pleasure to support this legislation and commend it to the House. 
Debate interrupted. 
Voting 
Correction—State Sector Management Bill 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Junior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I wish to correct the vote this morning from the Progressive Party. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: On which bill was this? 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: The vote on the second reading of the State Sector Management Bill and the vote on the majority amendments recommended by Education and Science Committee. I seek leave to withdraw the Progressive vote. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. The record will be amended. 
Research Science and Technology Bill 
National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill 
Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) 
Third Readings 
Debate resumed. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 After hearing the Committee stage of the State Sector Management Bill Labour’s position remains absolutely opposed to Part 2 and Part 3 of that bill which have been split off into separate bills with regard to Archives New Zealand and the National Library. We remain committed to the merger of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology into the Ministry of Science and Innovation but we have to add the rejoinder that that ministry must be adequately funded or we will not see innovation emerging from it. 
I will mention in the House some of the observations that we have made today. It was disappointing to see the lack of understanding from the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy. He appears to be a really straight prosaic and sort of plodding Minister who gets the work done. He is a farmer by background and he has never managed a large number of people. He has failed to demonstrate an understanding today of the culture of the organisations. He has been led by Minister Tony Ryall who is far more cunning in his endeavour to restructure the Public Service with his hands all over it and who has bullied Nathan Guy into accepting that there is just a simple realignment involved when putting the National Library Archives New Zealand and the Alexander Turnbull Library into the Department of Internal Affairs. Nathan Guy has been absolutely duped by his senior Minister. 
It was appalling to see in the Committee as we came to the debate on Part 3 in respect of public records the Minister in the chair having been requested to table a Crown Law opinion by Grant Robertson reach for the twink to alter that report before Labour could get to the Table. The whole point of Archives New Zealand and the independence of the Chief Archivist is to have transparency and open access to the public record and with that independence only the Chief Archivist can decide what can be deleted. How on earth could we trust that Minister in the chair who will forever be named “Twinky Guy”? That will stick with him. He has never managed an organisation and he fails to understand the cultural impact of an organisation that he has inherited which went through this experiment in the 1990s. That experiment failed dismally and only a decade ago Archives New Zealand was given institutional independence and has thrived ever since. 
The audit department could find no fault with Archives New Zealand; neither could the public of New Zealand. There have been no complaints. But we heard the Minister in the chair say the reason why it needs to be put back into the Department of Internal Affairs is that its building had a leaky roof. Well Minister Tony Ryall had a far better rationalisation than just the leaky roof. When he first came into the House he said in a very quiet and measured voice that the purpose of these amalgamations was to improve services within their existing boundaries reduce cost in the short to medium term and future-proof the long-term delivery of Government services. What a lot of baloney! What a lot of blah! Tony Ryall did this so that he could slash and burn the public services in order to grow some superministries and get them under his purview. I think that it is very sad to see Nathan Guy being marginalised just as the National Librarian and the Chief Archivist are absolutely being marginalised by their third-tier reporting positions in relation to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. 
Tony Ryall did make a good point about the new digital platform but why would Tony Ryall think that the digital platform was better placed within the Department of Internal Affairs than within any other ministry? Why? It is going through a process at the moment of digitalisation and this will simply add layer upon layer of pressure on that platform. Heaven forbid we have seen that happen in Parliament as we have tried to upgrade a simple information technology programme for members of Parliament that has simply failed us in doing that function. I do not think the digitalisation here will ever deliver the efficiencies that Tony Ryall wants to achieve. 
Chris Finlayson is the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage and I find it distinctly interesting that his opinion has been absolutely missing here in a Cabinet decision. What on earth was the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage doing missing in action and allowing this fundamental error to occur? Well he was not a Minister and he was not around in the 1990s to know that a merger failed then. And it will fail again as the culture of these organisations causes nothing but conflict within a Government department. So we see the Minister here being limp in his delivery trying to convince us all that this measure will be a good thing primarily for the public of New Zealand. 
It was nice to hear Minister Ryall actually show a little concern about the staff. I have never heard Government Ministers ever acknowledge the pressure that they put on the public services and that is why we are sitting in urgency at 3.20 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Tony Ryall said the librarians and archivists all wanted to be given certainty of the merger into the superministry the Department of Internal Affairs by February. That is why we are here discussing this bill in urgency today. I had never heard a Minister of the Crown show any vague concern at all about the staff’s well-being as bureaucrats. They have been treated as fodder; they have been slashed and burned. Those Government Ministers have shown an absolute arrogance and failed to understand the professionalism and also the institutional memory of so many of our senior professionals—they are not bureaucrats—in the Public Service. New Zealand had a Public Service that we were proud of in the 9 years under Labour and it is now being decimated under the guise of bringing in efficiency and improved services for the public. 
We oppose this legislation. Labour Opposition member Grant Robertson put forward several very serious amendments. Those serious amendments were totally disregarded with the Government’s attitude being: “Why bother? You are there. We won. You lost. Eat that!”. Those amendments which were put forward by someone who knows about the culture of Archives New Zealand the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library were totally disregarded. That is the right of the Government but there will be problems with the lack of independence of the officers of those institutions. I was pleased to hear my colleague say that when Labour returns to Government—and it will happen—we will restore their level of independence to the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian. 
This is a sad day. The Government has got it wrong. It will not admit that and it never will. Government members will stand up and say it is fantastic that they have done this. They will say it is done and dusted so we should move on to the next item on the Order Paper. There are people behind this; there are entities behind this. They have been built up with a level of pride and professionalism which will be decimated in this transition back into a superministry. I think that is terribly sad. I do not believe that the move towards digitalisation in this legislation will work any better than it did when we set out to do it. I recall a speech by Marian Hobbs that talked about the need to digitalise the archival record. It is slow and it is not easy. It is a long process and we have to invest in that process. But what will we achieve here? We will achieve something like the loss of 15 jobs. The Government will say that is good—15 more public servants down the road at a saving of $165000 a year. The Minister of Internal Affairs today for the first time tabled his figures which stated that oh no it would be $1.5 million. We have never had access to that figure even though we have asked for it in written questions and there have been Official Information Act requests. So we query—with a Minister who had his twink pen ready to delete things—whether there is even any rigour behind the figures that that Minister tabled in the House today. 
Our minority report on the State Sector Management Bill before it was divided says it all. We are deeply saddened. 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Here we are on Saturday afternoon. I hope no National Party voters are watching the broadcast today because I think if they are they would be a bit more distracted from the “smile and wave” of the Prime Minister and they would look at the substance of what is happening today. If we look at the substance of what is happening today we see that bad legislation is being passed under bad process and I think those voters would look twice at National. I guess it is not surprising that we have this bad legislation being passed under bad process but I have been shocked. I ask where the National members are today. Where are they? Why have they not stood up and presented their argument— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member cannot refer to the absence of members. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. [ 
Interruption 
] They certainly have been absent. We have seen— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I know the member is new but once I have made a statement and I have ruled the member must not try to relitigate it. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: We have seen some serious argument with serious counterargument missing. We have seen some serious amendments presented and also voted down. I am not talking about just political amendments; I am talking about serious credible amendments which were also voted down. 
Before the lunch break we were discussing the urgency and I think this is why this is bad process. Why are we passing this legislation at 3.20 nearly 3.30 on a Saturday afternoon under urgency? When I think of urgency I think of tackling the climate crisis. I think of tackling the great economic problems. I think of tackling that growing gap between the rich and poor and tackling inequality in New Zealand. Over the lunchtime I went and welcomed Sea Shepherd to Wellington. When I think about urgency I think about those hundreds of whales about to be slaughtered in the Southern Ocean not about one Government department taking over a couple of other departments in the name of ideology. 
Before lunch I talked about my photo analogy. I went to the archives and found this great collection of World War II photographs that had ignorantly and in an uninformed manner been stuck together with glue. That had wrecked those precious photographs for ever—those tremendous one-offs. I think that is an apt analogy for this legislation. We are seeing an uninformed and ad hoc approach with this legislation. It is being rushed through under urgency without due consideration and due argument and thinking. We are not talking about dusty old documents or about hypothetical things; we are talking about treasures—the treasures of our country. 
In the rushed debate today we have not heard answers to the questions about why we need to be doing this and whether the institutions and the departments are broke. We have not heard whether we are talking about best practice to support the users of the National Library and Archives New Zealand. We have not talked about the best practice internationally or about whether this is taking us forwards or backwards and we have not heard answers that legitimately address those concerns. A telling omission in the debate in the officials’ recommendations and in the Cabinet document is what this bill will actually do for users of the National Library what it will mean for historians researchers and genealogists and what it will mean for people who donate goods to the Alexander Turnbull Library. It is a telling omission because it shows that this legislation is more about ideology to do with getting rid of a few workers in the State sector—about State sector ideology—than it is about supporting best practice and these much-loved and treasured institutions. 
I believe that there is an absence of a robust argument or actual tabled figures when we talk about things like future-proofing efficiency and digitisation. If we do not have the facts then we are simply spouting slogans. That is what we have heard from the get-go at the start of this process in the Cabinet document through to the debate today. We have seen the bad process when the Minister in the chair—the “Minister of Twink”—quickly twinked out our documents and the document that he tabled. If only another Minister could twink out those houses in the Mana electorate where his motorway is going through! 
I am still baffled as to why we are debating this legislation today and why the National members on the Education and Science Committee did not go back to their caucus and Cabinet and say: “Well look fellows all the evidence from all the experts said that we should not be doing this. There is no real reason—we are talking about only $165000 a year. Come on guys let’s have a bit of common sense.” Unfortunately those members did not go back and say that and they have not presented today a coherent argument as to why we are doing this. We heard from the Minister of Internal Affairs about the National Library’s leaky roof under the previous Government. Come on let us be serious—we are talking about our national treasures today. 
However I thank the members of the select committee for the questions. I thank Grant Robertson and David Shearer for their excellent work on Parts 1 2 and 3. I thank the submitters—people who are passionately inspired by and who care about our national treasures. For them this legislation is not just about dusty old documents; it is about their lifeblood something they are absolutely passionate about. We heard about whether this legislation will be debated over summer barbecues this year. I am sure that it will be and I hope it will be. What we are talking about is not lemon institutions—bad Government departments—but about institutions that are well regarded internationally and that perform well according to the Cabinet paper that started off this process. 
I guess the main reason why I am opposed to this legislation is that it is a contradiction in terms. The legislation says that we will be preserving these institutions’ statutory independence which is a contradiction because at the moment we have the reality of independence for the National Librarian and the Chief Archivist and we are relegating them to a third tier. It is as if we are dropping them from the All Blacks and putting them down to a provincial rugby team—we are putting them on the bench. It is a contradiction to say that they will still have the same level of independence. The fact is that they were chief executive officers but now they will simply be employees. They are accountable to the Department of Internal Affairs and they will have to comply with the culture the financial decisions that are made and the personality of the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. They will have to compete with the other third-tier chief employees from agencies such as the Passports Office which Minister Guy talked about earlier. They will have to compete within the Department of Internal Affairs for focus and that is not good enough. The National Library and Archives New Zealand are not just any old departments like the Passports Office; these are important constitutional departments. 
We have the risk of conflict occurring between the different departments within the Department of Internal Affairs. We have the risk of their voices which are so important being silenced. We also have the risk that we will see the worst of both worlds—we will see the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian spending a great deal of their time on the day-to-day administration of being part of the Department of Internal Affairs without having any ability to influence the executive team of that department. I point out that there have been some good changes to the legislation such as the ability to have a separate and independent vote and the good change from the select committee which was to delete most of the clauses between clause 47 and clause 58 thereby retaining the public records within Archives New Zealand and not with the Department of Internal Affairs. 
Lastly I want to touch on the risk to our image and this is true. National members may scoff but the risk is true. We are worsening the standard when countries all around the world are investing in their institutions such as these. They are adopting best international practice. Now the US the UK Australia and Canada all have more power more profile and more independence of their statutory offices like the National Library than we do in New Zealand. This legislation takes us backwards. It is contrary to the Unesco guidelines it is contrary to the International Council on Archives document on principles and it is a step backwards. 
In summary I am glad the State Sector Management Bill has been divided because I wholeheartedly endorse the Green Party’s vote against Parts 2 and 3. It is bad practice to be passing this legislation under urgency. It is bad legislation. It is bad not to listen to the select committee submitters who were overwhelming. It is bad not to listen to the experts in the field who produce coherent arguments which were not backed up. It is legitimate to ask: is it broke? No. Is it adopting best international practice for the sector? No. Does it take us backwards? Yes. Will it really impact on the independence and the actual great work of these institutions? Yes. Should this legislation proceed? No. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I will take a relatively brief call on the third readings. First I say right from the outset that over the course of the last 6½ hours that we have been debating this legislation we are still waiting for any good reason why Archives New Zealand and the National Library have to be pushed into the Department of Internal Affairs. We listened to Nathan Guy talk about all sorts of things but there was no solid rationale and no coherent argument for why we are here today debating this ridiculous legislation until Tony Ryall rose at the very end and mentioned the word “digitalisation”. Digitalisation seems to be the key that brings us to the House today to try to bring Archives New Zealand and the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs. It is a software solution to a much more complex set of issues than I think Tony Ryall realises. The situation with Archives New Zealand and the National Library is that “it ain’t broke” and we should not be trying to fix it. They are very good institutions they have shown themselves to be much better as independent organisations and we should not be trying to push them into the Department of Internal Affairs. 
But the other part of this legislation deals with research science and technology. Dr Wayne Mapp went to some lengths to explain how this part of the legislation will bring about a huge step change in the way that the economic progress and fortunes of this country will proceed. The name of the new Ministry of Science and Innovation is good but if we look beyond the name we see that there is not much more to it. Let us face it. The new ministry has a new leader who was recruited within New Zealand. That is fine but the Minister did not even bother to look more widely internationally. 
The Minister has spoken about the vouchers and the grants that this Government brought in under the Government’s Budget earlier this year. What do those grants and vouchers do? He said that they are superior to the 15 percent tax credit that this Government abolished when it came into power. I can tell Dr Mapp that they are certainly not better. It is half the value of what National promised when in Opposition. National promised twice the value that the Government delivered in the Budget. The Government has done away with the 15 percent tax credits. If we went around any private companies in this country and ask them whether they would prefer a bunch of grants that they would have to apply to a Government department for—so that whether they get some money to do research and development would depend on the good feelings and the warm feelings of a bureaucrat—or whether they would want a 15 percent tax credit I can tell Dr Mapp that we would find they would prefer the 15 percent tax credit all up all of the time. But it is not only that. 
The third thing I point out about the tax credit is that it has taken 2 years for money to be paid out on these grants and vouchers. In those 2 years we could have had decent innovation amongst our companies out there—decent innovation. Instead tax credits were stopped and it has taken 2 years for us to construct this new wonderful scheme that the Minister has brought out whereby basically companies have to go cap in hand to a bureaucrat in order to get money to fund their research and development. 
Colin King 
: Instead of using creative accounting. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Colin King is interjecting. I say to him that Australia came over and took our 15 percent tax credit lock stock and barrel—everything that we had done—and transported it over there. That is what Australian companies have. This Government proclaims that it wants us to catch up to Australia and the Australians have come over to New Zealand and taken one of our best ideas and transported it back there. The Australians are using it and their companies are getting all the advantages. That is not to mention that the Australians have bumped up their research and development spend by 25 percent. 
One of the main drivers of this Government’s economic development which is research development and innovation is purely pathetic. The Government has dismantled the best thing that has been brought in. It is the biggest tax cut that companies in this country have ever received. It is bigger than the tax cut that was announced in the Budget. Companies that are exporting which are the most valuable to us in New Zealand have had a tax increase as a result of this Government. It took away the 15 percent tax credit and that 15 percent tax credit was one of the biggest helps to innovation and development in this country. 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Good for creative accounting. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: It is simply what we have now—State welfare for companies. It will do nothing to raise the research and development private spend which is at an abysmal level in this country; it will do nothing for that. 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Prove it. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Dr Mapp keeps on interjecting. Dr Mapp keeps talking about Denmark being a wonderful country. Denmark has the same agricultural basis as New Zealand but it has managed to increase its manufacturing and its innovation. How about taking on some of the same things that Denmark has done rather than sitting there and talking about what a wonderful place Denmark might be? What about having a tax credit for research and development? Denmark has lots of assistance and lots of support and far more support than this Government is handing out. If this Minister really wants to be aspirational why do we not go over to Denmark and see who is over there who might lead our Ministry of Science and Innovation rather than opening up the recruitment process for a period of 2 weeks and 3 days? Somehow in 2 weeks and 3 days we were supposed to attract the best and the brightest throughout the world. Instead we kept our aspirations looking towards our feet rather than looking towards the sky. Instead of that we certainly have not gone through the right process. 
I believe that although this legislation seeks to bring the Ministry of Research Science and Technology together with the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and create a new dynamic innovative powerhouse in the Ministry of Science and Innovation it is doing nothing of the sort. In fact as we found out at the Education and Science Committee when we asked some of the officials: “Where are the aspirational aspects in this bill? Where is the statement of intent as to what it will do?” they said: “Well actually we’ve just been struggling with trying to bring the two parts of these two organisations together and we really haven’t got to that yet.” I think that should have been set through the leadership of the Minister and we should have had an aspiration that we could have actually followed in the legislation that followed that aspiration. Instead we have legislation welding together a couple of departments. We are not opposed to it because when we come back into power we will make something of them. We will take this shell we will take this pathetic attempt at innovation—nothing more than the words—and we will stitch it together and actually make something of it. That will include having a tax credit such as the one the Government has taken away. 
This legislation that has kept us here on a Saturday for 6½ hours is nothing short of a complete waste of time. We have taken Archives New Zealand and the National Library of New Zealand back to the Dark Ages of the 1990s and we have been completely and utterly unaspirational as it concerns the Ministry of Science and Innovation. I can think of many many things I could have done with these 6 hours today rather than sitting here in this House and listening to that. Thank you. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 This John Key - led Government is overwhelmingly supported by New Zealanders. I will tell the House two of the six reasons why that is. We have a strong economic plan and two components of that plan are supported by this legislation: enhancing science and innovation and getting a better and more efficient and effective public sector. That is why I am delighted to support this legislation. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Research Science and Technology Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 103 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 38; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 6 
Green Party 6. 
Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Public Records Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. 
Ayes 65 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand Labour 38; Green Party 6. 
Bill read a third time. 
Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 
In Committee 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I seek leave to suspend Standing Order 256 relating to omnibus bills to allow the Committee of the whole House on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to consider an amendment in my name that proposes amendments to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.  
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I am pleased that we have finally got to the debate on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2); I think it is fair to say that it will not take quite as long as it might have previously. I think there will be an interesting debate when we get to new Part 1A which we will debate after Part 1. 
That leaves us with a number of areas where Labour disagrees very firmly with National. The first area I will focus on is the question of whether entry to a State school should be a hereditary right; whether in the end someone whose parents or even grandparents went to a school should have a right to enter that school over and above someone who lives close to the school and who would otherwise be in the zone. It is the view of Labour—the very firm view of Labour—that State schools in New Zealand should not be subject to entitlement rights. People should not be able to pass down the right to attend particular schools. Generally this is from father to son; it is more often that way than from mother to daughter. The rule just about always concerns single-sex schools. I know National is firmly in favour of hereditary rights but generally that is not the case in New Zealand and for that reason we have amendments that focus on that question. 
Some amendments sitting on the Table focus on the question of private schools and their disciplinary procedures. The Law Commission undertook a very very thorough review of the law as it related to independent schools and made a series of recommendations. To give the Government credit it picked up a few of those recommendations but it did not pick up some of the more important ones and it was totally unable to tell the Education and Science Committee why. I am not blaming officials in this area—it is not their job to defend Government policy—but we were looking for reasons why some of the suggestions of the Law Commission were not picked up after its well-researched project. Because we did not get a good explanation we have in fact picked up two of the Law Commission’s recommendations ourselves. 
The first recommendation is pretty simple. It would make private schools’ disciplinary procedures available on request to students and their parents when students are facing suspension exclusion or expulsion. That seems pretty reasonable. We are not saying that the procedures have to be printed; they could be on a website and people could get them that way. They could be in a booklet. If we are to have a just approach to discipline within the private school system then having a system that records those processes and makes them available to students is as the Law Commission recommended pretty reasonable. We cannot see why a Government would not want to do that. 
In a similar vein the commission said schools should adhere to some basic procedural requirements. When students have been suspended their parents should have the right to request that the suspension be lifted or varied and have the right to make submissions in support of the request. Adequate notice of the proposed exclusion or expulsion should be given to the students and their parents. There should be a reasonable opportunity for the parents to attend a meeting. Again anyone who has any sense of natural justice would say that none of that should be a problem; it should be pretty much automatic. 
I do not want to in any way portray the Labour Party as a defender of independent schools but I say that most of them have very good processes. I think that very very few of them would have a problem with these recommendations. But as the Law Commission makes clear a few independent schools—some traditional and some I might describe as weird and wonderful—do not have processes that work in an appropriate manner. I see no reason why they should not have good processes. 
The next area I will focus on is the question of disciplinary processes to do with the Teachers Council. I thank the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education for inviting me to her office to give me a group of areas in relation to which she was proposing to table a late Supplementary Order Paper in the select committee. I think members of the select committee will agree that I probably ended up promoting the Supplementary Order Paper within the committee because I have no doubt that the disciplinary procedures for the Teachers Council are dated and do not work effectively. 
I acknowledge and I warn Ms Turei that Catherine Delahunty a member of the committee was not happy with that process. I agree with her: it was not good process. We asked both the unions the Teachers Council and the School Trustees Association to appear. None of us thought it was good process but then again none of us thought it would be worth waiting another couple of years till a similar bill came down the track and just leaving the gap there. That call was made. 
I must say—and I feel slightly surprised about this—I have read recently about a plan by the Minister for Tertiary Education for another Education Amendment bill mainly dealing with tertiary matters. It is too late now for this particular part but it might have been better process if in fact it had been associated with that legislation. As we are learning when Education Amendment bills occur they can be very broad. That would have been better process but that was not the case. 
Having said that the Minister and I talked about one area that we thought we would progress but which after she received further advice she chose not to move on. For me it was probably the most important issue that sat there—that is the fact that so often when cases are before the disciplinary tribunal there is a reflection across quite a big group of teachers because of the very poor suppression arrangements in the rules of the Teachers Council. Some very good work has been done by Simon Power on the suppression issue. 
I have picked up on that issue in Supplementary Order Paper 183 in my name. It would add new clauses 12DA and 12DB. They effectively incorporate those principles into the processes. We would move to an assumption of openness but then have the committee closed and have the ability to suppress names. No one wants to see the names of kids who have been molested by teachers published. But at the moment the rules of the Teachers Council are basically all or nothing. It is either all open or all closed. They do not have an ability there. 
There are two approaches. One is that we can write the rules for the council and those are set out in my Supplementary Order Paper. The Teachers Council says that it has not changed the rules because it thinks that the $1000 fine imposed on media organisations that breach suppression is not sufficient. I agree with the council. Media organisations want to get a lot of publicity. It is fair to say that probably the Minister and I both get calls on Friday nights and Saturday mornings from Sunday papers with case after case that they glory in. But they do have a case. It is reasonable that there should be an ability to focus on it. 
The alternative is set out in my second Supplementary Order Paper. New clause 12DC changes the $1000 fine to a $100000 fine. It does not rewrite the rules. That amendment would allow the Teachers Council to redo its rules and have proper suppression rules. It could name the teacher but protect the child. I think that would be reasonable and it would have a presumption of openness. At the moment that is not the case. 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 In my opinion the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) represents why we have the tail of underachievement that the Minister in the chair the Hon Anne Tolley often talks about. She talks often about the one in five children who fail at school. If we look at the five general areas in the bill four of those areas would fail to raise achievement in any way in my opinion. It is my ongoing concern that we have Education Amendment bills that actually do not focus on the core purpose of the education system—that is to make sure that children learn. 
One of the areas in this bill deals with secondary-tertiary programmes and I believe that has real merit. I commend the Minister for taking a gamble on this. There is no evidence that this will make a difference to raising student achievement but I think it is something that should be explored. It should have researchers following it along so that in time we can see whether the secondary-tertiary programmes do make a difference. Then if they do not we need to have the courage to do away with them. There is a very simple way that we can check whether they are making a difference. If members refer back to education research such as that by Professor John Hattie they will see that he talks about the effect size of educational initiatives. If a programme has an effect-size of greater than 0.4 then it is making a difference to student learning. 
Just about every initiative or strategy that teachers use in class could be said to work to some effect or another. But it is the strategies and innovations that work the most that we really need to encourage. As I say if over time research goes to show that secondary-tertiary programmes do not have an effect size of over 0.4 then we need to have the courage to try something else. 
I think this part of the bill is a good start. I believe we could go further in terms of the secondary-tertiary programmes. They change the context of a student’s learning. Instead of being stuck in the form rooms of a traditional school setting where students are bound by the school rules—they have to wear their uniform pull their socks up tuck their shirts in and those sort of things—they have the opportunity to move into an educational setting where they are treated more like adults. It is interesting to note that a teacher I used to work with often commented to me that while a child is at a school in the compulsory learning sector they should be called a pupil and it is only when they go into a tertiary setting that they should be called a student. What we have with secondary-tertiary programmes are pupils moving from the old traditional school setting into a more adult setting. I think that is a really good change of context and in itself that could be a motivating factor. 
However secondary-tertiary situations will not make a difference if the lecturers in front of the students are not expert practitioners. That is the crux of what we always have to consider whenever we talk about education legislation that the people in front of the students are highly skilled practitioners. We need to keep focusing on what will make students learn and what will make 100 percent of our school students achieve beyond their potential. Of course it comes down to the expertise in front of the students and whether the strategies teachers are using have an effect size above 0.4. As I have said an initiative with an effect size between 0.4 and zero will be in the bottom half of the strategies that make kids learn. Some strategies would have an effect size of 0.01 which means there is a tiny improvement in students’ achievement . 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I am sorry that I did not get to my feet quickly enough at the conclusion of the Hon Trevor Mallard’s speech. I wanted to acknowledge his assistance with Supplementary Order Paper 177 on the Teachers Council amendments in particular and explain to him that although we discussed name suppression—and I am keen to promote that on behalf of the Teachers Council—we believe that going ahead with those changes at this time would be out of step with the work that my colleague the Hon Simon Power is also doing on name suppression within the criminal law system. Mr Power’s bill has gone to a select committee so the proposal is that we wait for that bill to come back to the House and ensure that whatever we do is in step with that legislation. Although we will be voting against the amendment today we support doing something as soon as we possibly can. 
The second issue is to do with the proposal to increase the maximum fine. I am advised that this would be totally out of step with other provisions—for instance the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act which has a maximum fine of $10000 for the breach of a similar order. We need to make sure we are in step with other legislation. 
Finally I say to Mr Davis that he is absolutely right but unfortunately we cannot legislate for high-quality teaching. We know that it makes the most significant difference in schoolchildren’s learning. The way we do that is through the support we put behind the teaching force with things like professional development resources tools and techniques. It is the support that we put behind our teachers. Unfortunately we cannot legislate for that quality; legislation changes the structure. Mr Davis is right with regard to the trades academies that we are attempting to change the structure to create new opportunities and of course we will evaluate the effectiveness of those changes. 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I will speak on behalf of my colleague Catherine Delahunty who is the Green Party’s education spokesperson and a member of the Education and Science Committee which considered the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). She has asked that I raise a number of points during the Committee stage today. 
The Green Party has real concerns about a number of aspects of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and we will continue to oppose it. The areas of concern are those that have been outlined by submitters such as the Law Commission the Human Rights Commission and of course the early childhood education sector. The issue of limited-attendance centres for children and the loss of police vetting has had some media coverage and for good reason. The Green Party agrees with Labour that the rationale for removing safety aspects at creches in malls because they are not educational facilities does not stack up. The police vetting of staff working with children should be a bottom line and we would like to see clarity as to which legislation protects children before those clauses are removed from the Education Act. I am aware that there is a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table to fix the situation which the Green Party will support. 
We were also concerned about the issue of staff ratios. The whole approach to limited-attendance centres is classic laissez-faire politics. It sounds great to say that we should leave it to parental choice but we do not think parents realise that standards will be removed from those centres. The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater because regulation is allegedly bad and children’s needs are not at the centre of the argument in these clauses. 
We are opposed to the changes to out-of-zone enrolments—again we understand there is a Supplementary Order Paper to deal with that—and the criteria that give priority to children of former pupils or board members from outside the zone for the school. That kind of privileging is not warranted in public schools. The Green Party is opposed to that provision and if there is the capacity to change it we would certainly support it. 
One submitter raised the issue of the management of private schools indicating that the bill has missed an opportunity to address recommendations from the Law Commission on a range of issues from suspension to governance. Although the Green Party does not prioritise issues in the private sector because we have our hands full trying to keep a free and equitable education ethos in the public school system of Aotearoa New Zealand I know there are also Supplementary Order Papers on the Table on this issue which may attract Green support. Children have human rights in all areas of education private or public and there are genuine gaps in the law and in the process of natural justice so we are looking at those Supplementary Order Papers carefully. 
We also oppose the late amendments to the bill which Labour and National presented to the select committee and education sector in the last stages of the process. It is not good practice to shoehorn even more complex elements into the bill and to expect the education sector to have any ownership of it. The provisions around broadening the powers of the Teachers Council to suspend teachers needs a much more careful discussion with the sector itself and that has not happened. Therefore despite parts of the bill appearing inoffensive the Green Party will not support this bill and we will not support the Labour Supplementary Order Paper concerning the Teachers Council. Thank you. 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 Firstly I will respond to what the Minister of Education said about being unable to legislate for good teaching or words to that effect. I agree with what she said but I think that as a Minister she is the person who is able to create the conditions in which teachers can weave their magic. 
One of the conditions that will have some effect is the provision of secondary-tertiary programmes. I would like to think that the Government could have taken the whole change of context idea a step further and perhaps it could have introduced an idea that I raised in the second reading around specialist schools. Legislating for specialist schools could provide something similar to secondary-tertiary programmes in that they change the context in which students are learning. 
I know that the ACT Party and the National Party often talk about choice for parents and students but that choice normally revolves around a student in a decile 4 school in one part of a city being able to go across town during the day to a decile 8 school. That is fine for upwardly mobile folks but it does not address the issue of choice for those who cannot get around cities. The problem is that a decile 4 school teaches basically the same sort of stuff that a decile 8 school teaches whereas with specialist schools someone who lives in the middle of a city could within 20 minutes go to a school that offers a different type of learning such as specialisation in the arts specialisation in sports or specialisation in science or technology. The Minister could legislate for different contexts that provide real choice for parents and students and I would like to lay that thought on the table. 
To go back to the parts of the bill we are debating I point out my that colleague Trevor Mallard has already brought up the enrolment scheme priorities and changing the law so that the children of former pupils can attend the school their parents used to go to. How many students will pass National Certificate of Educational Achievement purely because they were able to attend the school their parents attended? We are talking about maybe a couple of hundred pupils at the most. It will not have an effect on the greater need of students across schools in New Zealand. So I fail to see why this provision has any real need to be discussed at a time such as this when we have more serious concerns—for example the fact that one child in five is failing. This adds nothing to the raising of student achievement. 
Likewise if there is someone who lives in the Hutt Valley but is a member of a board of trustees here in the city so that their child can go to a school here in the city how many students are we talking about who will benefit from this? The critical mass of students across New Zealand will not have their educational standards lifted by this. I believe that it is just another example of education legislation focusing on the wrong issues when we should be fairly and squarely focusing on the aspects that will raise achievement the most. 
I believe that there has been a change in position in relation to limited-attendance centres since the second reading. I thought that was silly lawmaking at its worst in that limited-attendance centres would not have to vet people who were going to work there. I thought that was absolutely ridiculous and in fact dangerous for the little kiddies who would be attending those limited-attendance centres. There is no way on earth that a parent taking their child by the hand to drop them off at a limited-attendance centre for a couple of hours while mum or dad goes and does the shopping— 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on a couple of matters. It may come as some surprise to members opposite—and it might even wake up Paul Quinn if I am lucky—that I am going to speak about the fact that there is unnecessary law. I think that I have a reputation amongst members on the other side of the Chamber for liking big Government and lots of laws and regulation which is grossly—Colin King is nodding. 
Colin King 
: Absolutely! 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: There we go. Well this is the exception proving the rule. In particular I will speak about the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 176 which some of us felt was more appropriately placed within the State Sector Management Bill because it is a matter of the organisation of the State sector but we lost that debate with the current Chairperson earlier today as to its placement and we respect his ruling entirely in that regard. But what this particular Supplementary Order Paper does is change where the policy function for tertiary education is placed. I can see that I really am not doing very well with Mr Quinn at all. Currently that policy function is held within the Tertiary Education Commission—I say to Mr Quinn that he needs to wave a white flag not a blue one—and it is to be transferred back to the Ministry of Education. That is not a position that we on this side of the House necessarily oppose. The functions of the Tertiary Education Commission have been overburdened. It has certainly had some issues with getting some of its core mandate completed and the policy function did not always sit easily with the commission so that is to be transferred to the Ministry of Education. 
The question we have on this side of the Chamber is why we need to do this at all through this process. Why are we doing this through a legislative process? We do not think it needs to be done in this way in any way shape or form. The reorganisation of the State sector does not necessarily require any kind of legislation. We had to do it earlier today in terms of Archives New Zealand and the National Library because of the statutory functions of the Chief Archivist the National Librarian and the Turnbull librarians. In the previous debate we were changing the parts of the Public Records Act and the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Act that deal with how we protect particular functions. On this side of the Chamber we felt that those protections were not adequate. That is not what this bill is about though. This bill is simply about a policy function of a particular Government agency that the Government has decided to shift. On this side of the Chamber we do not have a problem with that concept but we ask whether we are making law just for the sake of it here. Perhaps the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education might want to respond as to why we have gone down this path. 
The whole question of whether laws are required to do some of the things in this legislation also came up during the select committee process in respect of the issue of secondary-tertiary partnerships. There are in fact a number of very good models of secondary-tertiary partnerships in New Zealand and that is covered in Part 1 of the bill. There are a number of such programmes and members would have visited them. For example there is the tertiary high school at Manukau Institute of Technology which is an excellent model of working with kids— 
Colin King 
: But they have legislation though. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I say to Mr King that the question is whether legislation was needed—that is the point. It is happening. The point I make is that it is under way. It is actually operating. One of the concerns expressed to members on this side of the House was that if we move into a more legislative framework around this matter we would be restricting the flexibility that is inherent in making these sorts of programmes work. A lot of us know about different kinds of programmes like this around New Zealand. 
Concern was expressed by some providers that if we start putting in tight legislative rules about how these secondary-tertiary partnerships operate then they might not be able to continue to be the flexible responsive kind of operations we want them to be. Again we make it very clear that members on this side of the Chamber are strongly supportive of partnerships like this. In fact we need more of them. We need to make sure that children who are not coping in the traditional environment of secondary schools have a vehicle with which to continue in training and education. I am sure that the Minister in the chair the Hon Anne Tolley is nodding. She may well have visited the Manukau campus too. It is an excellent model but it is not the perfect model for every town region and city in New Zealand and other models can be explored. This matter is covered in clause 10 which will insert new sections 31A to 31L into the Education Act 1989. 
The question we ask is whether we are restricting ourselves. We do not oppose this move but it seems that on both these counts the law may be unnecessary. 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 I will respond briefly to the point made by Kelvin Davis about clause 6 “How to select applicants who live outside the home zone” particularly in relation to new section 11F(1)(d). Mr Davis argued against why we might want to include this provision and I will give an opposing point of view to his. 
I believe that this paragraph provides for tradition in a world where we have become increasingly transient. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Inherited rights to go to a State school— 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: Members should listen to me. We end up as Diaspora all around the world and around New Zealand. It is like a marae if for some reason someone could not go back to their marae because they no longer lived in the area. I think that within all sorts of schools across the decile levels as families stay in those schools over time they build whakapapa tikanga and tradition which encourages a sense of community that I believe we are losing. 
I think this provision helps to build community across all the deciles. From that point of view when brothers and sisters can go back and be part of those schools and those communities it builds tradition and I think that is a very good thing. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I look forward to having that debate on the hustings. Mr Quinn is saying that people can go to Hutt Valley High School because their parents went there but people who live a lot closer cannot. 
Colin King 
: After—after you’ve got that— 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No I make it very clear to Colin King that the way the system works is that there is a zone and when there is a lot of demand on a zone it shrinks. There will always be someone who is just outside the border who if the inherited rights did not apply would have got in to a school because the zone would have been bigger. Colin King knows that. I look forward to the people who are on the wrong side of Waiwhetu Road saying that they would have got into Hutt Valley High School if it was not for the Government’s rules that have inherited rights for people to go to Hutt Valley High School. That is what will happen. That is the way it will work. Colin King knows that. I look forward to debating that. 
Colin King 
: No I don’t. Nor does Allan Peachey. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well Allan Peachey does not think there should be zones at all. Allan Peachey thinks we should just be able to flog any kid from anywhere and the principal should decide. Those were the rules under a former National Government before zoning came in. 
I go back to a point that my colleague Grant Robertson made—that is the way we are shaping up education legislation. When I was the Minister of Education there was a general review of education legislation going on. I do not know whether we made a lot of progress on it over 6 years but there was a hope to get a new education Act that was slimmed down and did the things that legislation needed to do. I see that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education is nodding; that review is still ongoing. It will be good to see it and do some work on it. The idea was to remove from the Education Act the stuff that did not need to be in legislation. I see the Minister is nodding that this is occurring under the National Government. 
My question for her is: why then are we putting into legislation which Government agency should run the policy function for tertiary education? That does not need to be in legislation. A Cabinet minute is fine. A Cabinet minute would cover that. I think something has happened similar to a couple of little boys having a competition to see who can pee further up a wall. The Ministry of Education won and it wants that written into legislation. That is essentially what happened. There is no need for it at all. All it is proof of is who won the competition. It is proof of who won the competition and that could have been in a Cabinet minute rather— 
Hon Simon Power 
: Get some sleep man. Get some sleep. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I hope to get some sleep. I hope to be out of here by midnight tonight if not half-past 10. 
The other point that I will make is very similar. In fact it is probably more important. It is about the secondary-tertiary programmes in the bill. I reinforce what my colleague said. There are a lot of very good programmes going on around the country. There are not enough and not all of them are good but there are a lot that are good. They are running very well at the moment as a result of the application of ministerial discretion and occasional Cabinet decisions. They work. That is all that is necessary. 
The problem is that when we start putting that sort of detail into legislation it gets quite hard to change. The flexibility is lost. The ability to take the moment and to move when a community is ready to go is lost. There is a danger that the community will not only have to come back to Cabinet but also have to come back to Parliament to make the change. We all know that could take a couple of years. I think we also all know that when communities are ready to move in this area they do not want to do it slowly and they should not have to do it slowly. We should not be a brake on innovation. I accept that the Minister is genuine and she thinks this will help. I just warn her that it will make it worse not better. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I take a brief call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). In many ways we are largely in agreement on the aspects that were being talked about. I will pick up on a couple of points. One is the secondary-tertiary interface. The option of partnership which has been taken up is the right one. That was certainly reinforced by many of the people who spoke in submissions at the Education and Science Committee. I think this is where education is heading towards: encouraging many more of our young people through school and if school is not an appropriate vehicle for them enabling them to move on to a tertiary education system that provides them with more flexibility in order to carry on and in a sense regain that confidence in schooling. The Manukau Institute of Technology which has started this has been mentioned. That went through in an earlier piece of legislation late last year or earlier this year. Fine work has been done there by Stuart Middleton who is a former teacher of mine who actually taught me in the seventh form. 
Hon Member 
: He didn’t do a very good job! 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Well he has been around for a while I have to say but he is still looking pretty good for his age—in fact he does not look very different. I will send him the  
Hansard  
at the end of this debate. 
Grant Robertson 
: What about you? Do you look different? 
DAVID SHEARER 
: I look very different from the way I did back then! 
I will comment on something that has not been picked up yet which is the—again welcome—change with regard to the refund provision for international students. I reinforce what has already been said about the period during which international students on courses of 3 months or longer can withdraw from the course and receive a refund of their course fees. It really helps a lot of the waka-jumping that has continued to happen. It will protect many of the institutions that have actually felt very much disadvantaged by the fact that this has been able to happen. The refund provisions here will help protect and strengthen our institutions and not put them at an economic or financial disadvantage as a result of this occurring. I think it is a welcome step and again it is a part of this bill that seeks to tidy up a lot of the extraneous types of things that are not really affecting our education system profoundly but nevertheless will help it to be much better than it was. 
On that note it was great to see the OECD report come out earlier this week that showed that in maths and science we are in the top five in the OECD and in reading we are in the top 10. But—and I think the “but” is significant—the range between the top and the bottom was one of the widest in the OECD. In part that is because our top is so high but also it is because our bottom—particularly amongst Pasifika and Maori kids—is so low. If there is one area we could focus on and in part the secondary-tertiary interface being improved will help it is making sure that those kids at the bottom end actually get helped up and pushed into continuing on with tertiary education. 
I echo some of my colleagues’ position on the enrolment scheme priorities. We will obviously not oppose this but I am not so sure that I agree with Chris Tremain on the issue of tradition. I think traditions are a fine thing but it speaks to privilege and access more than it does to tradition. 
With those short remarks on those three or four key points I say that those are the interventions I would like to make. I look forward to this legislation going through this evening. Thank you. 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I too will respond to Chris Tremain’s comments and his analogy about not accessing one’s own marae if one lives way away from it. Quite frankly I would just go to the nearest marae just like if my children could not go to the school that I went to I would send them to the nearest school. This is exactly what I have done in Kaitaia. I grew up in Kawakawa an hour and a half’s drive south and it would not be practical for me to bus my kids down to the school I went to so I just send them to the local school. 
I will address the amendment from the Hon Trevor Mallard inserting new section 35RB after new section 35R in clause 11 of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Subsection 1 of 35RB says: “Any student who is facing suspension or expulsion from attendance at a school registered under section 35A or the parents of that student may request details of that school’s disciplinary procedures.” I think that is common sense. In fact it was my impression as a former principal that schools were meant to put out to their community their complaints procedure at the start. So if a parent or a student— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: State schools have it but private schools don’t. 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: Private schools do not have that requirement. That to me is an inequity and should be remedied. Private schools should be required to put out their complaints procedures to parents so that if there is a complaint they know the procedure to go through so that little complaints do not get blown up out of proportion. I think this is just an extension of the requirement that disciplinary procedures be put out to parents and to students. 
Something else I will add is that a student’s disciplinary record should be put out too. When dealing with the misbehaviour of students as a principal I know that in the case of a lot of parents we would notify them when their child misbehaved but when the child got to the point that he or she was going to be stood down or suspended the parents came storming in and said that they had not been informed. We would be able to pull out a record of the times we had informed the parents by way of letters and phone calls that their child had misbehaved. That requirement could also be included somehow so that parents have the complaints procedures first of all they have the disciplinary procedures and they have their child’s disciplinary record. 
New section 35R itself is I believe unfair on State schools. Subsection (2) states: “Unless the student is within a reasonable time reinstated at the school or enrolled at some other registered school”—this is if they have been excluded—“the Secretary must … (a) arrange for the student to be enrolled at some other reasonably convenient registered school that the student can attend; or (b) direct the board of a State school that is not an integrated school to enrol the student at the school;”. I find that a bit unfair. As a State school whenever we sadly excluded students from our school we did not have the facility for them to have the Secretary for Education direct the board of a private school to enrol them. It is really unfair that private schools can dump their unwanted kids on State schools and the State schools then have to manage them as best they can within the resourcing private schools have. Really that is a bit of discrimination in my mind towards State schools in that they have to deal with the students that have been excluded or expelled from private schools. 
With that I say that Labour will not support this bill. Going back to the reasons that I started off my speech with my personal feeling is that the five main parts of this bill do not actually address what we really need to address in education. I would hate to see us come back for a third education bill at some stage in the near future. I would hate to come back in a few weeks or months in the new year and debate further issues that will not really make a significant difference to raising the achievement of the critical mass of our students. Kia ora. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to clause 6 be agreed to: 
to omit subclauses (1) and (2) and substitute the following subclauses: 
(1)Section 11F(1) is amended by repealing paragraph (d). 
(2)Section 11F(1)(e) is amended by omitting “fifth” and substituting “fourth”. 
(3)Section 11F(2) is amended by omitting “or fifth”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 38 
New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 5. 
Noes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to clause 11 be agreed to: 
to insert the following sections after section 35R: 
“35RAProcedural requirements for suspension and expulsion 
“(1)When a student has been suspended the student’s parents have the right to request that the suspension be lifted or varied and to make submissions in support of their request. 
“(2)Before expelling or excluding a student schools should be required to— 
“(a)give adequate notice of the proposed expulsion or exclusion to the student and his or her parents: 
“(b)provide the student and his or her parents with a reasonable opportunity to attend and be heard at a meeting.” 
“35RBPrivate schools’ disciplinary procedures available on request 
“(1)Any student who is facing suspension or expulsion from attendance at a school registered under section 35A or the parents of that student may request details of that school’s disciplinary procedures. 
“(2)When a request under subsection (1) is received the school must provide details of its disciplinary procedures within 5 working days.” 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 38 
New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 5. 
Noes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to insert new clause 12DA and to clause 12E be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 33 
New Zealand Labour 33. 
Noes 71 
New Zealand National 58; Green Party 5; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendments not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to insert new clause 12DB be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 33 
New Zealand Labour 33. 
Noes 71 
New Zealand National 58; Green Party 5; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 186 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to insert new clause 12DC be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 38 
New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 5. 
Noes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We now come to the Minister’s amendments as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 176 and Supplementary Order Paper 177. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 38 
New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 5. 
Amendment agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 177 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to clause 12 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 1 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 66 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 38 
New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 5. 
Part 1 as amended agreed to. 
New Part 1A Amendments to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 This is the path that I think we have finally come to and if we had come to the agreement earlier than we have come to now we probably would have come to it on 9 December rather than 11December. 
Chris Tremain 
: We’re still on the 9th aren’t we? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: We might be on 9 December on the wall and the member might be living in the past but outside it is Saturday. I think it is fair to say that we are here today unnecessarily as a result of the failure on the part of the Government to reach a compromise on this bill. I think all members in the Committee know that it has been my strong personal view and the view of Labour that the removal of police checks for adults looking after children in gymnasium and shop creches was an error. There was a lot of debate about whether that removal was intended. The Minister on the first reading of the bill indicated that that was not the intention but it then became clear that the papers she had received earlier had made the fact clear that that was occurring. 
The fact is that wiser heads have intervened and we have reached a point now where we are reinstating police checks through the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. I frankly do not care what the legislative vehicle is. The key thing as far as I am concerned is that the law of New Zealand is the law of New Zealand. If the law of New Zealand says that people who are looking after children in that situation have to have police checks—as it currently does—the idea that those checks will be withdrawn is not acceptable. I do not mind at all which vehicle is used to ensure that children are protected. 
I emphasise that this is not a total protection. I think all of us know from the cases that go before the Teachers Council that a lot of people who have been vetted end up offending against children. In fact some of the most sickening conversations I have had in my life have been with chairs and directors of the Teachers Council and have related to cases where people in positions of trust have abused children. This bill will not stop that happening. It will not stop it happening in limited-attendance centres but it will give the opportunity for the police to indicate the times in the past when there has been a conviction or even when there has been an investigation or a suspicion. The police quite often in these situations deal with a lot of cases that do not go close to prosecution because of the age of the child or the quality of the evidence. But a flag is still kept on an individual’s record which would mean they would fail when getting a check. I also say that a lot of people will not have been caught. There is a possibility of their getting through the system so people should be very careful about relying on it. 
My view is that it is always better whatever sort of early childhood centre it is for it to have a lot of glass in its walls. I think there is a very big protection in having children and adults being able to be viewed from other rooms at all times so that there is no temptation and so that kids cannot be in corners or in cupboards. Unfortunately the sorts of creches that are set up too often in gymnasia and shopping areas do not have that sort of openness. They are more likely to have ad hoc arrangements. I do not want to describe them as cupboards but I have seen converted storerooms which I think are not good places in which to keep kids. 
Although we covered the issue in Part 1 I am sure the Chair will not mind if I go back and say I accept that some of the regulation in that area went too far; we have removed that. But with the removal of police checks we went further than we should have. In particular I thank Gerry Brownlee and Simon Power for their work in this area because I think we have now got to a reasonable situation. It shows that we as a Parliament are determined not to weaken the law around the protection of children. 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I agree entirely that it is sensible that police checks have been put back in the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). The fact is that police vetting has to occur for employees working in creches. I doubt that there is a parent who would go off to do their shopping with their child in hand and wanting to leave their child at a limited-attendance centre who would ask employees whether they had been police vetted and whether they had any convictions for child abuse because nobody would say yes. So I think that is a necessary protection. 
As has been mentioned it will not totally eliminate untoward things happening to little kiddies in those limited attendance centres but it is a measure of protection. It will give parents a lot more confidence in leaving their children in places such as in shopping malls. So I am grateful that this has occurred and that there has been some sort of compromise so that this protection has been given back to these kids. 
I also agree that there needs to be the type of protections that the Hon Trevor Mallard spoke about such as for glassed-in areas. As a former principal I used to instruct staff male staff in particular not to put themselves in compromising situations or be left in a room with girls on their own. It is an unfortunate fact but we had to provide those protections for our male staff to make sure that there would be no opportunity for anything untoward to happen and no opportunity for any accusations to be made about them. It is good that this measure has been reversed so the parents of these kiddies in the limited-attendance centres in malls will have confidence that their kids will be looked after. 
This is a short call just to say that I think it is good. It is appropriate. It was a silly part to overlook in the original bill and it is great that this has been remedied. As I said parents can take their kids to those limited-attendance day-care centres and have just that extra measure of faith that their kids will be well looked after. Kia ora. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to insert new Part 1A be agreed to: 
Part 1A 
Amendments to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 
14APrincipal Act amended 
This Part amends the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. 
14BInterpretation 
Section 2(1) is amended by inserting the following definitions in their appropriate alphabetical order: 
“ 
limited child care centre 
 means any premises used regularly for the care of 3 or more children (not being children of the persons providing the care or children enrolled at a school being provided with care before or after school) under the age of 6 none of whom attends for any period exceeding 2 hours per day in circumstances where the children’s parents or caregivers are— 
“(a)in close proximity to the children and are able to be contacted; and 
“(b)able to resume responsibility for the children at short notice 
“ 
limited child care service provider 
 means the body agency or person who or that operates a limited child care centre”. 
14CPurpose 
The purpose of this Part is to ensure that only suitable people are employed to supervise children in limited child care centres. 
14DNew sections 13A to 13E 
The following new heading and sections are inserted after section 13: 
“Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 
“Duties of employers in relation to Police vetting of employees at limited child care centres 
“13ALimited child care centre employees must be suitable 
A limited child care service provider must take all practicable steps to ensure every employee employed to care for children in a limited child care centre is suitable for that role. 
“13BPolice vetting of employees at limited child care centres 
The service provider of a limited child care centre must obtain a Police vet of every person— 
“(a)whom the service provider employs or intends to employ in a position at the limited child care centre; and 
“(b)who is to work at the service during normal opening hours; and 
“(c)who is not a registered teacher or holder of a limited authority to teach. 
“13CPolice vetting of contractors and their employees who work at limited child care centres 
“(1)The service provider of a limited child care centre must obtain a Police vet of every contractor or the employee of a contractor who has or is likely to have unsupervised access to children at the centre during normal opening hours. 
“(2)In this section  
contractor 
 means a person who under contract (other than an employment contract) works at a limited child care centre. 
“13DPolice vet must be obtained before person has unsupervised access to children 
“(1)A Police vet required under section 13B or 13C must be obtained before the person has or is likely to have unsupervised access to children at the centre during normal opening hours. 
“(2)The service provider of a limited child care centre that is required under section 13B or 13C to obtain a Police vet of a person must apply for the vet no later than 2 weeks after the person begins work at the centre. 
“13EProcedures relating to Police vets under section 13B or 13C 
The service provider of a limited child care centre that applies for a Police vet of a person under section 13B or 13C— 
“(a)must ensure that strict confidentiality is observed for Police vets; and 
“(b)must not take adverse action in relation to a person who is the subject of a Police vet until— 
“(i)the person has validated the information contained in the vet; or 
“(ii)the person has been given a reasonable opportunity to validate the information but has failed to do so within a reasonable period.” 
New Part 1A agreed to. 
Part 2 agreed to.  
Clause 1 agreed to.  
Clause 2 agreed to.  
Clause 3 agreed to.  
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley be agreed to: 
to cause the enacting words clauses 1 2 and 3 and Parts 1 and 2 to be a separate bill to omit the Part 2 heading and to substitute for the enacting words clauses 1 2 and 3 and Part 1 heading the following enacting words and clauses: 
Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 
The Parliament of New Zealand enacts as follows: 
1Title 
This Act is the Education Amendment Act (No 2) 2010. 
2Commencement 
(1)Sections 15 to 17 come into force 6 months after the date on which this Act receives the Royal assent. 
(2)The rest of this Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. 
3Principal Act amended 
This Act amends the Education Act 1989.; and 
to cause Part 1A to be a separate bill and to substitute for the Part 1A heading the following enacting words and clauses: 
The Parliament of New Zealand enacts as follows: 
1Title 
This Act is the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2010. 
2Commencement 
This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. 
The Committee divided the bill into the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill pursuant to the amendment in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted. 
Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 
Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill 
Third Readings 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. 
The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) amends the Education Act 1989. The changes in this bill will enable the establishment of secondary-tertiary programmes reduce the compliance burden on limited-attendance centres protect the sustainability of New Zealand’s export education sector improve the law affecting private schools make minor changes to school enrolment scheme priorities and make changes to help the Teachers Council safeguard children and maintain teacher quality. 
The first significant amendment will introduce secondary-tertiary programmes enabling the establishment of this Government’s ground-breaking trades academies from the beginning of next year. Trades academies will provide students with clear pathways giving them a head start on training for industry-related qualifications and smoother access to employment. Trades academies will motivate more students to stay engaged in learning and training by providing them with a greater number of options for study. 
Secondary-tertiary programmes are particularly important because they allow students to remain enrolled in school while also studying towards a full qualification with a tertiary provider. The framework introduced by this bill makes sure that secondary-tertiary programmes will be high-quality and that accountability for the delivery of these programmes is clear. 
The second significant amendment in the bill will reduce the compliance burden for limited-attendance centres by exempting them from the licensing standards for early childhood education. Although they will no longer be subject to early childhood education regulatory requirements for education plans qualified teachers and space and ratio specifications they will now be subject to requirements by the operators of the facility and to legislative requirements to ensure the safety and welfare of the children. But parents also have a responsibility to make sure that their children are in a safe place. 
Thirdly the bill will enable the relevant Minister to set through a notice in the  
New Zealand Gazette 
 refund provisions for international students enrolled at private training establishments for courses of 3 months or more. These changes will minimise the undesirable consequences associated with international students changing provider shortly after they arrive in New Zealand. The bill will reduce the financial incentive for students to change provider in this way. 
The bill updates and clarifies the law affecting private schools in response to the Law Commission report  
Private Schools and the Law 
. It also amends the enrolment scheme priorities for out-of-zone students by giving some priority to children of board members and children of former pupils recognising the heritage of many of our schools and the strong family links formed in many communities. 
The legislation also makes some changes to the legislation affecting the Teachers Council. I am grateful to the Education and Science Committee for including these changes to the legislation and to the House for agreeing to a further amendment to ensure that suspended teachers need not be automatically dismissed. 
An anomaly in current law means that the Teachers Council can take a range of actions as a result of a complaint about conduct or competence but not as a result of a mandatory report. The bill corrects that anomaly and allows that these actions include but not be limited to the annotation of the teachers register. This change will ensure that teachers who may be a danger to student welfare or who are otherwise unsuitable can quickly be removed from the classroom while their case is investigated. The current law technically requires boards of trustees to dismiss a teacher who is the subject of an interim suspension and in many cases this may be unfair. This requirement too has been clarified so that an employer of a teacher is not forced to dismiss a teacher who has been suspended while their case is investigated. 
Finally the bill clarifies that the principal adviser to the Government on tertiary education policy is the Ministry of Education. The bill also clarifies the role of the Tertiary Education Commission requiring it to advise the Minister on the implementation of policy relating to tertiary education. These changes will introduce greater clarity in the functions of the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission. I commend this legislation to the House. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 Labour will be opposing this legislation. I say that more in sadness than in anger because it actually contains quite a few provisions that Labour supports. It includes policy that Labour supports but thinks is unnecessary to put into legislation. There is a combination of quite a lot of good stuff in this legislation including the amendments that were made late in respect of the Teachers Council which involved a degree of cooperation. I think it is fair to say there was searching questioning from the Greens at the Education and Science Committee. Those of use who are slightly more familiar with the problems that teachers can cause in schools and sometimes the urgency of getting it sorted were maybe less concerned about process and more concerned about the immediacy of kids. There is always a fine balance and I think it is fair to say we were on one side of a boundary and the Greens were on another. It is not a big division. While I am speaking about the select committee and what happened there I thank again Allan Peachey who chairs the committee. 
Chris Hipkins 
: He should’ve been the Minister. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think it is fair to say that he does a good job of sorting out what is contentious and what is not getting rid of the non-contentious stuff identifying any room to move where things are contentious and if there is not making it clear. Members accept that. The process generally works well. I have never heard people who have come to that committee say that they have not had a fair hearing. That is not something we could say about all select committees. It does not mean that people always agree with the results but that is politics and that is life. In current circumstances I wish Allan Peachey well. 
There are some things that Labour disagrees with in this legislation. In the earlier stage Chris Tremain referred to the inherited rights to attend a State school. It is just a straight question of what one believes in. Labour does not believe that people should inherit their rights to attend a State school. We think that the priority should go to people who live closer to those schools and the idea that some people must go further away in order to give up their places to others who have rights based on who sired them or who their mother was is wrong. 
There is an acceptance that the limited-attendance centres legislation that Labour introduced fairly late when it was in Government went a step too far because it treated those early childhood education centres areas as being for very short-term care with no pretence of education. The changes that have occurred now come closer to getting a balance. I want to place on record at the third reading that Labour campaigned to ensure that police checks are maintained for people who supervise young children at limited-attendance centres and those checks have been maintained. We will support at the third reading the changes to the Health and Safety in Employment Act but we will be opposing the changes to the Education Act. 
There are some other matters and I want to focus on the Law Commission’s report  
Private Schools and the Law 
. Through the debate this issue probably has not had the focus that it should have and I think many people work on an assumption that all schools publish their disciplinary procedures and that all schools including private schools follow due process in implementing those disciplinary procedures. But unfortunately that is not the case. There have been a number of examples recently. I know quite well a couple of examples where schools have not followed the process. I can accept the fact that I was ignorant in the area. I was the Minister of Education for 6 years and I sat on the select committee for a couple of years but I was not aware that we had a vacuum in the law on the rules until the Law Commission reported on it. I accept that the current Minister of Education picked up a couple of the recommendations but I do not think she provided a good explanation for not picking up the rest of them. When a Law Commission report recommends draft changes it has to be a question of whether we will implement the changes and if not why not. The Law Commission conducts very thorough research and the assumption is that its recommendations will be implemented. That is not always the case and clearly the Government can take a different point of view but the Minister has not provided us with any reasons why the recommendations are not to be implemented. 
The next point I make—and I will put myself in some relatively dubious company here—is that I support Cameron Slater in the comments he has made— 
Grant Robertson 
: They don’t even support Cameron Slater. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No Cameron Slater hardly supports National any more but I will support the comments he made on the way that teachers’ names are suppressed when there is no good reason for that to happen. The Teachers Council rules are currently drafted—and I am not blaming the Teachers Council—so that there is a $1000 fine. It could draft all the rules it likes but if the maximum penalty for a breach is $1000 then media organisations will breach. The point that Cameron Slater makes is absolutely correct—that is there are a lot of teachers whose names are blackened as a result of the activities of a very few. Having a presumption of openness for the hearings and the ability to suppress the names of the victims currently does not exist. The cases are either opened or closed and there is no suppression ability. If we could have that sort of arrangement—it probably would not satisfy Cameron Slater who might want to have all of the details—it would go a long way as far as most reasonable media is concerned in order to not have names blackened in those particular cases. 
Seeing that the Minister of Justice is in the House and he is bringing in legislation I presume to deal with the courts he might like to note that I have a question relating to those organisations that have rules so out of date and much poorer than those of for example the medical legal and accounting professions. I ask whether as he changes the rules for the court he can consider mirror legislation and create a package where all of those professions are considered together rather than separately. I think it is fair to say that the principles are very similar. In fact the principles that he has outlined are so good that I picked them up and incorporated them into a Supplementary Order Paper that the Committee decided not to pick up. 
Hon Simon Power 
: It’s part of the Criminal Procedure Bill so it’s actually tacked on to another piece of legislation. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well I am sure that the Business Committee would be quite supportive if the member wanted to consider an omnibus bill. I am not sure whether the Clerk of the House would be entirely supportive but I am sure that the Business Committee would be supportive of an omnibus bill in order to get all of those related matters out together. I think having consistency through that legislation would be a good idea. It might be the last refuge of fools but having different rules especially when we are doing a total rewrite in both areas does not seem to me to be logical. It might actually help the ministry to get on with its basic redraft of legislation as well. 
I thank the House for moving to accept the maintenance of protection of little children who are in care. We will all be voting for that part at the third reading because it is a separate vote but we will not be supporting the bill because there is too much that is wrong in it. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a brief call in the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I will focus on one particular area and it is a point that was well made by the other side of the House. Quite often we have too much regulation around education. I direct that comment particularly to new clauses 31A through to 31L. My experience in respect of the secondary-tertiary programmes is that there is a considerable push-back within the curriculum and academia largely to do with the people who want to spawn grow and develop programmes that will aid people who are hands-on learners. I disagreed with Trevor Mallard when he said that these things can happen already. The truth of the matter is that there needs to be direction from the Government to make sure that the seeds of these initiatives are allowed to develop and grow. 
On that basis it gives me great pleasure to support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) so that we can see a lot more growth and diversity and innovation and it is not stymied by the difficulties of fitting within periods and structures of the academic curriculum of today. I certainly support this bill’s passage through the House. 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
:  
Mr Deputy Speaker 
tuatahimaku me whaiwahiahau ki te mihi atu ki tera o ngatuahine a te Honore Hekia Parata kuatohua hei Minita o te Karaunaiterawikikuapahureakenei i te wahanga o te tautohetohe. Kuawarewareahau ki te mihi atu ki a koe Hekia. Na reira tenara koe moteneihonoretanga hei rungai o pokowhiwhi me ki hei rungai a tatou te iwi Maori. Na reira tena koe tena koe tena koe. 
[ 
The first thing for me to do Mr Deputy Speaker is to set aside a moment in the debate so that I can acknowledge that sister politician of ours the Hon Hekia Parata who was appointed a Crown Minister just last week. I forgot to do that Hekia. Congratulations on this honour placed upon your shoulders—let us say upon us the Maori people. Well done congratulations and good on you 
.]  
Labour will not support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) aside from the part Trevor Mallard has just mentioned that protects children in day-care centres. I am glad about that because I believe that the bill will do very little to raise achievement whereas I believe that all education legislation and education policy should be targeted at raising achievement. 
I think we spend too much time focusing on peripheral issues such as whether children should have hereditary rights to attend the schools their parents went to. I think that is a total waste of our time. Perhaps when we have covered all the other main issues in education which would take a number of decades I believe then we might finally get to that issue which might be at the top of the priority list but right now it is in my opinion way down at the bottom of the list. We should be focusing on the core issues that will raise achievement. 
I have already spoken a couple of times in the House about making sure that teachers are given the conditions in which they can weave their magic. It is up to us in this House to create those conditions as politicians and as policy makers. We need to make sure teachers understand that they have to account for the effect size on the strategies they use. They need to know and prove that what they are doing in classrooms in tertiary institutions or in early childhood centres is making a difference. They need to question their practice and they need to have those skills. That is what we need to be legislating for and it is what we need to have policy on—making sure teachers can question the efficacy or otherwise of their practice challenge their assumptions and go on to make changes where necessary. 
We should aim for 100 percent of our students right across New Zealand to leave school at the end of year 13 with a National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 or university entrance on top of that. I do not think we do enough to engage kids in school. That is something else that teachers need to be able to do—engage students at school right through until the end of year 13. Research states that the success of students in their adult lives is not so dependent on how high their qualifications are but rather on the length of time they spend at school. So in other words if a student stays at school right until the end of year 13 and achieves only NCEA level 1 they have more chance of being successful as an adult then if they got NCEA level 1 in year 11 and then dropped out. So we need to encourage students and create the conditions where students will stay at school right through to the end of year 13. 
We need to work with parents as well. It is about engaging parents in the education of their children so that they set in their children’s minds at the very earliest age and consistently apply the expectation that their kids will stay in school until the end of year 13. A student would be better off eating their lunch for 13 years at school than dropping out in year 9 year 10 or year 11—but I do not want people to think that is what I am encouraging students to do. 
We really really need to support our teachers with professional development. This morning I was up just north of Wellsford at the opening of a marae and I heard a story from Bishop KitoPikaahu. I thought it was the perfect metaphor to describe the place of professional development. He told us a story about two men who were given an axe each and told to go and clear a hill of scrub. One guy had to clear the left-hand side of the hill and the other guy had to clear the right-hand side of the hill. The guy who was clearing the left-hand side of the hill was known to be a hard worker who could work from dawn to dusk without stopping. The other guy was not quite so athletic and he decided that every hour he would take a 10-minute break. At the end of the day when they came back down the guy who worked his guts out without stopping had cleared three-quarters of the hill. The guy who took a 10-minute break every hour had cleared the whole side of the hill. The guy who worked his guts out could not understand why that had happened so he asked the other guy: “Why is it that you were able to clear the whole side of the hill?”. The other guy said: “Well every time I sat down for a 10-minute break I sharpened my axe.” 
That is a metaphor for always making sure that teachers have regular time to sharpen their tools and to hone their skills. There is no point for them to just go on working and slogging their guts out for 10 15 or 20 years without having regular professional development where they can sharpen their axe their tools. I think we need to create the conditions where teachers are able to do that. We need to support teachers; we do not need to keep hammering away driving them like slaves. 
I already said in the Committee stage that this bill looks at secondary-tertiary programmes and I think those programmes do have merit. I know there is no evidence to say that they will definitely make a difference to a student’s education but I think there is a perfect opportunity for researchers to follow them for the next 5 or 10 years in order to determine whether they actually make a difference. I really hope they do work because they change the context in which students are learning. 
The programmes give an element of choice to students who are not comfortable or not succeeding in the traditional school setting. Those students have the opportunity to go off and to work in a tertiary setting. The programmes are mainly apprenticeships which is great. We need to encourage students to follow different avenues. But I do have a concern that those students who have the brains particularly if they are difficult students to teach may be encouraged to head off down a trade-type line instead of being encouraged to stay in school. Regardless of those side issues I think it is an opportunity worth exploring and one I think we should take further in terms of changing the context in which students can learn. 
We should set up specialist schools or perhaps a pilot in an inner-city area where parents have the choice not to send their children to just a regular school where they do maths science social studies and English but instead to say an arts school. The children still learn to read and write but they would do that around the theme of art. They could learn about art history they could practise different types of art they could learn dance they could learn drama or they could learn to sculpt. The students could do whatever. The school would be based around a particular context and a particular theme so that the children hopefully are engaged in their learning. For example if we wanted to teach a child in a regular school how to play the violin we would have to hope that someone who could play the violin got a job there as a music teacher whereas if we had an arts school where music was part of the curriculum the school could apply especially for a violin teacher and we expect that teacher who could play the violin would have an intense passion and flair for what he or she was teaching and a love of that subject. We would hope that having that teacher would get better results because he or she could bring that passion into the job. 
Again I say I am glad. We will vote against this legislation other than Part 1A which protects kids in day-care centres in malls. I think that is a sensible thing to do. It was a dangerous oversight I believe to omit that provision in the original bill and I am glad that that provision has been returned. Kia ora. 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on this legislation. I acknowledge the work that my colleague Catherine Delahunty has done in terms of the Education and Science Committee and of generally maintaining awareness of the way this legislation has been going. 
It is undoubted that the education sector is in need of change and possibly some legislative reform is required to facilitate changes in that sector but we do not see that the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) in total delivers much of value or engages with the very serious real and substantive issues of the day that affect the sector and the people in it. There is a considerable atmosphere of distrust in the entire education sector at this time. To us this legislation seems to be just tidying-up or messing around at the edges rather than going to the heart of and addressing some of the more substantive and indeed more urgent issues. It is never a bad thing to tidy up some of the small shortcomings of legislation or of practice but it seems to be an opportunity lost and time not well spent to be dealing with the lesser issues and leaving the larger ones untouched. 
It is clear that the education sector as a whole the ministry and—dare I say it—the Minister of Education seem to be almost in a state of war. Something of a battle is raging out there particularly over the issue of educational assessment. The Principals Federation the teachers unions several hundred boards of trustees and the Porirua City Council have had opinions and many parents groups are clearly concerned about the absence of any trialling of the national standards that are being imposed. 
A perceived threat is hanging over the early childhood education sector as it is forced to cut quality. That sector is being put in the unenviable position of either raising charges or cutting the quality of the service it delivers and it simply ought not to be put in that situation. 
The tertiary education sector is in some disarray as enrolments for study are capped. In the meantime instead of dealing with very substantive issues we are focusing on the rules about people leaving their children somewhere while they go to the gym and shopping in malls. 
Some reasonable objectives are contained in this bill connected to refunds for international students. There is some useful spelling out of the relationship between schools and tertiary providers in terms of trades training. There are changes regarding teacher registration. We have challenged those changes in terms of the process undertaken to achieve them but we see some value and benefit in the content of those changes. 
We are voting against this legislation despite the fact that there is some good content. Some valuable changes are accommodated in it but overall the bad changes in this legislation certainly outweigh the good. The parts of this legislation that we cannot support are clearly ideologically consistent with the Government’s overall philosophy about the myth of choice and the belief in protecting the privileged. 
The clauses relating to limited-attendance centres were bizarre. They were very strange in that they reduced the protection for children in order to facilitate some undefined convenience for parents. We are not disputing that those creches are limited to childcare rather than education; we agree that they do not need the same level of educational scrutiny audit or regulation. But it is an absolutely critical responsibility to ensure the safety and the protection of children and we are pleased that that matter has been attended to. We acknowledge the determined campaign that has been led by Mr Mallard in order to effect that change. We will be very happy to support that amendment which has become a part of the new legislation. 
The Green Party remains fundamentally opposed to the idea of the proposed changes and the priority settings for enrolments of out-of-zone students. These changes do not accurately reflect an egalitarian approach to education nor do they sufficiently acknowledge our mobile and diverse population. They clearly offer privilege to those with parents who once attended a school or to the children of members of boards of trustees which creates a sense of entitlement among certain groups for no really robust or sound reason. Public schools need to maintain the integrity of the open access and the lack of special privilege that our education system was built upon and we think that philosophy is certainly worth maintaining. If parents are determined to maintain some sort of dynasty or some continuation they have the option of going private or they can simply stay in the zone. 
We see the clauses relating to private schools as an opportunity lost. The Law Commission review of private schools provided some useful recommendations—some relatively light-handed recommendations—some of which have been included but too many of them have been ignored. The human rights of all children need to be protected in law and we agree with at least one submitter that that has not been achieved in this legislation. 
As has been noted we are on record speaking against the late amendments brought to the select committee relating to the powers of the Teachers Council. We listened to the teachers unions which were summoned at the last minute to comment on changes to the suspension rules. The New Zealand Educational Institute said that as representatives of a large professional body it did not support the changes to the working conditions and rules governing its profession without appropriate and adequate consultation with its membership. We think that is a reasonable stance for it to take. There was no substantive argument in favour of this change being rushed through. It may indeed be a good idea but it is important that a robust process be put in place; without such a process we cannot agree to this part. 
We believe that the sector and the Government need to work together to deal with some of the substantive problems that are obvious and that have been mentioned but the current climate is such that there is not the degree of engagement or trust needed to enable or facilitate that open and necessary conversation. We will continue to be available and will continue to work with and within the sector to advance the debate that we ought to be having in this House today instead of the rather lightweight and disappointing discussion that is occurring. We will continue to oppose this legislation. Kia ora. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I am always proud to stand in this House to support education reform and legislation. I spoke earlier today about two of the priorities of this Government and this legislation adds the third priority to the list. This area is a strong reason that the Prime Minister is so widely supported up and down the country. This legislation maximises participation and keeps students engaged in education across all levels. 
I was quite shocked to hear the analogy that one of the Labour members raised which was probably a plagiarism from Stephen Covey. Most of those of us in business would understand the concept of sharpening the saw. Businesses up and down this country would love to have the luxury of 14 weeks a year in which to sharpen the saw which is what our teachers get. I know that many businesses would dearly love to have that opportunity but unfortunately they do not have it. 
The specific point that I will make about this particular legislation which I am immensely proud of is the changes to enrolment schemes. I had a member’s bill in the ballot on this point and that is now part of the legislation that we are passing today. I remind the House that the focus of members on this side of the House is on students being engaged in their learning. One of the strong aspects of having students engaged in their learning is their connection to the school and their parents being connected as well. If we talk to parents at the moment who are getting wonderful reports at home from their school we find that it is a fantastic opportunity for them to engage with their children their schools and their learning. That is why I am enormously proud to support this legislation. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 It is extraordinary that that member Louise Upston cannot pass up the opportunity to put the boot into teachers. There is such an enormously long queue of people waiting to become teachers just to enjoy their 14 weeks’ holiday! I am sure that the teachers who are listening to the debate will be saying: “Oh goodness me! Not again. This National Government does not understand what we do and the importance of our role.” 
One really interesting point in the OECD report that came out in the last few days is that it put New Zealand very high on the educational ladder but behind Finland. The Finnish society values its teachers much much more than we do here in New Zealand. They are paid more they have better conditions there is a queue of people waiting to become teachers and schools choose from many more people who apply than are actually selected to be teachers. As a result needless to say no surprise Finland has a better-performing education system than we do. We could take a leaf out of Finland’s books in order to improve our education system. I think the member Louise Upston has got it dead wrong. 
As has been said Labour is not supporting this legislation but it does do a number of things in terms of tidying thing up. I have mentioned in an earlier speech that there are the good the bad and what I would describe as the ugly parts of this legislation. I think the ugly parts have been removed but there are some parts of the legislation that are not so good. 
As I said in the Committee stage I believe that the secondary-tertiary partnership option that has been selected is a good one. I think it provides more opportunities—particularly as it has been trialled in South Auckland—for Pasifika and Maori kids to go on to tertiary education. Many of those kids may not have performed so well in a secondary environment and this provision might provide a more amenable environment for them to be able to take on trades particularly in the industry and manufacturing sectors. 
The legislation also makes some changes to international students and their obligations towards institutions here in New Zealand. By notice the  
Gazette 
 sets the period during which international students on courses of 3 months’ duration or longer can withdraw from their course and receive a refund on their course fees. Basically that means that private training establishments will be able to retain more money and to recoup more money that has been sunk into recruiting an international student if the student pulls out of the course much earlier than he or she would have. It means that the students will face higher financial costs if they want to pull out of the course. That amount has not been reviewed since the early 1990s and I think it is overdue for change. It will mean that there will be a lot less of the waka-jumping that we have seen up until now and it will possibly also have the effect of deterring students from coming to New Zealand on the pretence of joining an educational institution and then leaving their course shortly after they arrive here and staying on in New Zealand. This is a tidying-up part of the legislation but I think it is a useful and good part of it. 
I turn to the aspect of private schools that both Mr Mallard and David Clendon have spoken about. I think it was 90 years ago that this legislation was last looked at. The Law Commission has made a number of recommendations and most of them are very sensible. Some of the recommendations have been taken up and others have not— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No good reasons given as to why not. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: I think the point I say to Mr Mallard is that many of the Law Commission’s recommendations were pretty sensible. I do think that the commission could have tightened up a lot of the regulations around private schools but that will not happen. Our disappointment on this side of the House is that there could have been a more rigorous examination of some of those recommendations and a fuller uptake of them in this legislation. 
I will also mention Labour’s position in terms of the enrolment scheme priorities. Again David Clendon and my colleague Trevor Mallard talked about this. I think what we will end up doing with this type of legislation if we are not careful is rewarding continuing privilege. I would like to think that all children have an equal opportunity to go to a school in their area rather than if their father or mother is on a board or their parents attended the school some time previously. I would like to think that we have a system whereby children are able to attend a school on the basis of merit and geography rather than on privilege. That is something that I believe pretty much all New Zealanders other than the ones who have attended schools of privilege would agree with as well. 
I spoke on the issue of limited-attendance centres in the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I thought this was an anomaly—and more than an anomaly. It could have ended up being something that we as members of Parliament would want very much to distance ourselves from. There was a lot of empty reasoning for why we could not put police checks into limited-attendance centres. I could not for the life of me understand that reasoning other than that it was bureaucratic and there was always some way around it. We have found a way around it. We will now have police checks for those people who are involved with creches gymnasiums and shopping centres etc. It means that the parents who bring their children into a shopping centre and decide to leave them in a creche for a couple of hours can have some confidence that the person working in the creche is not a paedophile. That was the real issue we were facing before this amendment was agreed to. It shocked me that we could not come to an agreement on that point because it was so obviously in the interests of both children and their parents that that should be the case. 
I do not think the provision gives 100 percent protection for kids—we are always going to have exceptions—but it goes some way along the road. I remember that in some of the submissions that we looked at there were recommendations for example that children should be able to be seen in creches that they are open and that if the person in charge of those children has to go to the bathroom for example there is some means by which they would be supervised. Also basic first-aid treatment should perhaps be available. I thought that was a pretty obvious feature that should be an obligation. We will not be arguing for that. We recognise that this is a lighter hand of regulation but I think the most important point is that making sure that the police checks are now mandatory is a real step forward. 
A number of speakers tonight have spoken on the fact that they believe that a lot of this legislation is unnecessary. If Paul Quinn wakes up he will recognise— 
Hon Simon Power 
: What is the member doing to assist him to wake up? 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Well I would like the camera to focus on Paul Quinn and his enthusiastic participation in this debate. I have to say that in some ways I am starting to miss Mr Quinn. I am starting to miss his random interjections those volcanic eruptions that happen from time to time—thoughtless and meaningless but nevertheless loud. I have not heard them for some time. A number of members who have contributed tonight have talked about the fact that this legislation is not addressing the real issues. I acknowledge RichiePoulton from Otago University in Dunedin who is head of the longitudinal study. He picked up the Frank Josef prize of 1 million Swiss francs in Zurich last week. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Mr Quinn can multitask. He does show he has a softer side. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I thought I would have a go at waking up Paul Quinn as well. I can tell members that after this debate I will get the video clip of Louise Upston saying she thought that teachers had 14 weeks of holiday a year and I will send that to every teacher in the country because I think when they see National’s view that teachers have 14 weeks of holiday every year they will all come flooding to the Labour Party in droves. Teachers will be so outraged at that. I know that Louise Upston may think teachers have 14 weeks’ holiday but she does not seem to allow for the fact that in order to be in a classroom and teach students they actually have to have time to prepare the lessons they will deliver and to mark the assignments of the students. It is not holidays that the teachers have for 14 weeks. Perhaps if that member visited one or two of the schools in her electorate she might have a bit of a—Anne Tolley seems to be shaking her head. She seems to think that teachers have 14 weeks of holiday as well. I think that probably just confirms what most teachers in the country think about the Minister of Education already. 
I am happy to take a call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and I particularly acknowledge the work my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard has done in regard to the drop-off early childhood education services and limited-attendance centres—I think that is the term the Government uses for them. I think the amendment that has been put forward in the name of Trevor Mallard and passed with the Government’s support is a particularly important one. I think it is vitally important that when parents leave their children with an early childhood service if people in that service have access to those children without any other form of supervision there should be adequate safety measures in place to ensure those children will be safe regardless of where it is and the duration of the stay. I think the amendment put forward by Trevor Mallard will help to ensure that that happens. 
I also think it is good that the Government has finally come to the party on that amendment after spending weeks and weeks denying that there was even a problem with what it was trying to do as we have seen at question time over and over again. It is very good that my colleague Trevor Mallard supported by the other members of Labour’s education team has not let this issue go and has continued to push it. We have dragged the Government kicking and screaming to what will be a sensible outcome in that regard. However there are many other things in the bill that will result in Labour finally opposing it. 
Before I move on and stop talking about early childhood education I will pick up on some of the comments that have characterised the debate in relation to limited-attendance centres. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Two minutes! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: The more the Minister interjects the longer I will speak. 
Hon Simon Power 
: No he won’t. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is an invitation; I ask him please not to hold back. Some of the debate about limited-attendance centres has characterised the uglier side of the debate in relation to early childhood education in general. It really gets my back up every time I hear Government members referring to early childhood education as babysitting. We hear that far too much. We have heard that description in this debate about limited-attendance centres. [ 
Interruption 
] I can go back and find quotes from Government members of Parliament talking about limited-attendance centres as being no more than babysitting facilities—no more than babysitting facilities! I tell members that the teachers who work in early childhood education get really annoyed when they hear the Government talking about early childhood education as being nothing more than babysitting. The Government does not understand the difference between early childhood education and babysitting and this misunderstanding has often characterised this debate. A number of MPs on that side of the Chamber do not understand the difference between what a child in a limited-attendance centre will be doing and what a child in an early childhood centre will be doing. They actually do not understand the difference. 
I had a National Party candidate show up in my electorate in the last election and stand up in front of a whole lot of early childhood teachers and kindergarten teachers talking about babysitting. I do not think the National Party got a single vote out of that room—the member was practically booed out. There are members on that side of the Chamber—too many of them—who do not know the difference. They do not understand what quality early childhood education is all about. I suggest that they might want to take a little bit of time to learn the difference and to gain some understanding of that. If they did then perhaps they would not be making the other changes in early childhood education such as cutting funding for centres to have fully qualified staff. The kindergarten association in my own electorate has lost half a million dollars in funding because the Government does not understand the importance of quality early childhood education with fully qualified and fully trained teachers which is what kindergartens have a proud tradition of having. But that has been compromised by this Government’s changes to the funding system for early childhood education and it is absolutely disgraceful. 
Anne Tolley is shaking her head and no doubt she will be saying: “Oh the centres can just increase their charges.” 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: I’ve never said that! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Rubbish—absolute rubbish! Rimutaka Kindergarten Association will lose half a million dollars in funding next year; where will it get that from? Where will it get the half a million dollars in funding it is going to lose? 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: How much do they get? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: The Minister of Education cannot give an answer about where the Rimutaka Kindergarten Association will get the half million dollars in funding it has lost because of her Government’s budget cut. The Government does not understand the importance of qualified staff in early childhood education. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Yes we do! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Why have they cut the funding for it then? It is trimming everything the Minister said. That is right. The Government knows the dollar cost of everything and the value of nothing particularly when it comes to early childhood education. 
I will move on to some of the other provisions in the bill before I run out of time. I want to talk particularly about the inherited privilege provisions in the bill that deal with the enrolment schemes for schools. The provisions basically give kids whose parents or siblings have gone to a school the right to enter that school even if they live outside the zone. The provisions give them preference. How is that fair? It is inherited privilege—nothing short of it. If the Government wants to have that debate in an election year and go and tell people in my electorate why they cannot send their kids to the school they live closest to—because it thinks people with an inherited privilege should have a higher priority—then I will happily stand on the campaign hustings and say that I think National is totally wrong in that. I will tell them that for the people who live the closest to their local school their kids should have the priority of access to that school and they should not be pushed out because of inherited privilege. That is good old-fashioned Tory inherited privilege which is what the provisions in this bill will protect and deliver more of. I think that stinks. I definitely will not be supporting that and I will happily have that argument with National on the campaign hustings at every available opportunity. 
Finally I will talk about the pathways between school employment and further education which are covered by this legislation. The workforce has changed and the range of available training opportunities for young people has changed significantly over the last couple of decades. In the Schools Plus initiative that the previous Labour Government was putting forward before the last election we recognised the need to continue to build on programmes like Gateway the Secondary Tertiary Alignment Resource and Young Apprenticeships which were all programmes introduced by the last Labour Government. We recognised the need to continue to build on those in order to ensure that every kid under the age of 18 was in some form of education or training and leading towards a more qualified workforce. We also recognised the need to invest in upskilling the current workforce. We have to recognise that most people who will be in the workforce in 20 years’ time are already in the workforce and we need to invest in upskilling those people as well. 
Hon Simon Power 
: What? Most of the people? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Yes. That member should go and do the demographic analysis. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Most of the people in the workforce now will be in there in 20 years? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Yes that is dead right; that is exactly what I said. I tell that member to go and do the analysis now. Most of the people who will be in the workforce in 20 years’ time are already in the workforce today. So we have to think about how we will provide them with upskilling opportunities. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Will the member be old enough to get a real job then? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Oh! I do not know what that comment says about Mr Mallard. If I do not have a real job I am not entirely sure what that says about him seeing that he has been here since he was about—well for the last couple of decades. He has been here since they were publishing  
Hansard  
on stone tablets. That is how long Trevor Mallard has been in the House. So I am not entirely sure that to say that members of Parliament do not have real jobs reflects particularly well on him. 
Grant Robertson 
: This is not helping Trevor! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well he opened himself up to that. 
Overall Labour will not be supporting this bill because there is too much in it we oppose so we will be voting against it. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. 
Ayes 62 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; United Future 1. 
Noes 40 
New Zealand Labour 35; Green Party 5. 
Bill read a third time. 
Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill read a third time. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I call on Government order of the day No. 12 which is the Committee stage of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. Members as I require a temporary Speaker I have asked Chris Hipkins—[ 
Interruption 
] He is to babysit for me while I move into the Chair for the Committee stage. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want to know whether it is appropriate for Minister Hide to have taken his position in the chair before you have put the House into Committee. 
The TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Chris Hipkins) 
: I can resolve that issue. I declare the House in Committee for consideration of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. 
New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill 
In Committee 
Part 1 Preliminary provisions 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to speak on Part 1 because although it is headed “Preliminary provisions” it contains some very important matters. 
The first matter is in relation to the interpretation of “productivity-related matter”. I think that provision was improved before the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill was introduced. The reason it was improved was to try to narrow the focus but in narrowing the actual wording of the interpretation we were trying to expand what could be considered by the Productivity Commission. Leaving the interpretation as “ ‘productivity-related matter’ means any matter relating to productivity or improving productivity in the private sector the public sector or the economy as a whole” enables an incredibly broad brush to be applied to the definition of the word “productivity”. The last thing anyone on this side of the Chamber wants is a narrow approach to something that hopefully will be an important feature of our political and economic landscape for the future. I really hope the Government of the day takes an equally broad-brush approach to the definition of productivity. 
During the Commerce Committee process it was very interesting to hear from Gary Banks who heads the Australian Productivity Commission. He talked about the history of the development of the commission and gave some background as to why its legislation focused on a quite specific but actually quite broad range of items. When one looks at the Australian Productivity Commission legislative provisions one sees that there are environmental regional and social dimensions to its definition of productivity. I think that is because of the background of the commission which has come through various stages in its life. Gary Banks talked about the legislation originally coming from the Tariff Board which is where the industry focus came from. The modern form of the commission came in under the Whitlam Government in 1973 and that was the Industries Assistance Commission. Finally the Productivity Commission took over from that commission. That description helped me understand why it was better to go down the track that we had agreed prior to the introduction of the bill which was to leave the definition very broad and open rather than seeking to define every aspect of productivity that we would want to see applied. But that being said the definition is not an open invitation for the other side to take a narrow view of productivity. If one of the early tasks of the Productivity Commission is to focus on regulatory matters compliance costs and all of those sorts of narrow issues then we will be very disappointed. We want the Productivity Commission to achieve good things for our country. That is why I have tabled a new purpose clause but I will not speak to that now because it comes into Part 2. 
The second thing I want to refer to under Part 1 is the definition of “responsible Minister”. I see that the Minister for Regulatory Reform who is not the responsible Minister is sitting in the chair. I am disappointed that he is not the responsible Minister—[ 
Interruption 
] I knew that was going to excite concern from my colleagues but I do think the Minister for Regulatory Reform ought to be the Minister who takes responsibility for this particular legislation. Then again there are those who argue that the Minister of Finance has a broader sweep and that the reason why we shifted the regulatory impact analysis unit from the Ministry of Economic Development to Treasury was to bring about that whole-of-Government approach. We also wanted a department that was capable of monstering other departments into doing stuff that perhaps they did not want to do so it made sense to shift the unit to Treasury. Maybe that does mean the Minister of Finance is the correct responsible Minister. 
I want to use the opportunity to comment on a couple of things that the Minister for Regulatory Reform has done while he has been the Minister even though deeply involved in the discussions that we had prior to the introduction of this bill—and this bill does come from the agreement between the ACT Party and the National Party in forming the Government. That is to put on record again my deep concern about the decision that the Government took—and the responsible Minister is included in this—to remove regulatory impact statements from the pages at the front of the bill. I find that incredibly disruptive to the process of analysis. It also means that my first reading speeches are nowhere near as good as they would be otherwise because I have always found the regulatory impact statements to be a great source of information about the nature of the problem analysis of the different options and stakeholder engagement as part of the consultation process. Those have all been really important features of regulatory impact statements. Having to find them on the website and download them separately I find very frustrating. I understand having had discussions with the Minister about it why that particular approach has been adopted but I still feel that including even a modified form of the regulatory impact statement that reflected any changes Cabinet had made to the final set of decisions would be preferable. If that analysis were appended to the end of the regulatory impact statement and included with the bill then the issues that the Government has grappled with in this matter simply would not be an issue. I would be very keen to see regulatory impact statements come back into the published versions of bills. I think a very short analysis at the end of the regulatory impact statement to identify any differences that had occurred as a result of the Cabinet process would certainly be extremely helpful. I think it would add to the quality of the debate in the Chamber and certainly to the quality of my own personal contributions to these debates. 
There are a couple of other things that I want to mention in relation to Part 1 because even though it is a very short part it is very very significant. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I spent the entire dinner break reflecting on what I had said before the break and I have decided that it is correct that the Minister of Finance is the Minister responsible for the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. I came to that conclusion because if the Minister for Regulatory Reform undertook the role that would shift the primary focus of the New Zealand Productivity Commission to regulatory matters and Labour does not agree with that. I discussed it with several colleagues over the dinner break and I think we are now of one mind that the Minister that the Prime Minister has selected to be responsible for the bill is in fact the right Minister. 
But it is good to have the Minister for Regulatory Reform in the chair because I know that he and his party were significant driving forces behind this measure. Although I do not agree with the emphasis on regulatory matters I do think the emphasis on growing New Zealand’s productivity enhancing our productivity and looking at all the different aspects of our productivity in order to improve New Zealand’s economic development is good. So it is important to acknowledge the role that Rodney Hide has played in this matter and it is good that he can debate the bill from the chair. It is only Thursday night after all according to the calendar on the wall and I have to say that the House being in urgency does reflect a significantly higher level of productivity than is normal in this place. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Are you sure? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It depends. If people have taken advantage of it and have used the approach my colleague took on the previous bill the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) which was to get the Government to finally concede that the point he had been going on about for quite some time was correct and to fix that little problem then it is amazing how much more productive Parliament can be under urgency; otherwise there is a high risk of a little bit of filibustering. But that is not what Labour members are doing on the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. We think it is very important we do want to see it passed and we do want to see the current Government utilise it in the way that we intend to utilise it to get the productivity gains for New Zealand that we need. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a—sorry about that noise. It takes me back to my old death metal days at university—a bit of feedback. 
Chris Hipkins 
: He doesn’t like feedback. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: No I do not mind feedback; not usually from Mr Hipkins though. 
We strongly support in principle the notion of having a productivity commission as my colleague Lianne Dalziel has said. From my perspective as the spokesperson on State services for the Labour Party it is a good thing. Some eyebrows might be raised on the other side of the Chamber at that statement but I think that productivity in the State sector is a big issue. Obviously I believe that we need a strong healthy State sector that provides high-quality services to New Zealanders and one issue it struggles with from time to time is productivity. 
It is a conundrum for New Zealand as to why we have consistently not been able to lift our productivity rates. Throughout the last 20 or 30 years we have struggled to see productivity rise we have lagged behind other OECD countries and questions have been asked. Productivity was at the heart of the agenda of the fifth Labour Government which aimed to raise skills and improve innovation in order to do the things that we thought would help lift our economy and improve our productivity. I think that a commission like this one is useful. If we look at Part 1 these are obviously the preliminary provisions and the bill goes into more detail in Part 2. 
The particular matter I will discuss is the definition of “productivity-related matter”. As my colleague Lianne Dalziel has said a difficult balance needs to be struck between a definition that enables plenty of scope and one that at same time is not so broad that we cannot have a good mandate for the commission. The definition of “productivity-related matter” in Part 1 is “any matter relating to productivity or improving productivity in the private sector the public sector or the economy as a whole”. It is very important that we have managed to break out the private sector public sector and the wider economy in that interpretation. Members on this side of the Chamber are very attracted to the kinds of reports that the Australian Productivity Commission has made. It has made a very wide range of reports including some on issues that people might not have traditionally seen as being about productivity but about how the Australian economy and society are developing. We think there is potential for the New Zealand Productivity Commission to do that. 
“Productivity-related matter” in clause 4 “Interpretation” has been defined pretty widely. From our point of view that is a good thing but the issue with our having done that with regard to the commission is that each Government that comes along may have a different view on exactly how it will interpret a definition that is fairly wide. 
Obviously Labour has its own concerns—which we will be raising in Part 2 when we come to talk about the Productivity Commission in detail—including the fact that we already have someone appointed to run the commission at this time. That person is Murray Sherwin. He is a respected public servant of many years’ standing but in all honesty from a personal perspective I do not see his appointment as being particularly ambitious for this commission. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Not very exciting. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Not very exciting at all I say to Mr Mallard. That is correct—not ambitious not exciting. Murray Sherwin is a competent public servant; he is not the kind of person in my opinion who would drive the Productivity Commission to be the thing that it could be. It has the potential to harness a lot of different views from across the community the private sector and the public sector and to bring them together to face the challenge. My colleague Shane Jones has often asked what it is about the New Zealand economy that needs to be picked up and kick-started and I am sorry to say that Murray Sherwin—as competent a man as he is—will not be doing that leaving aside the question of whether having someone appointed before we have even gone through this process is appropriate. 
I would like to think that what will come out of the House tonight will be an enduring agreement about the importance of having a productivity commission. Certainly in terms of National and Labour there is consensus that this is a good idea. Mr Hide has been championing it as part of the coalition agreement between ACT and National. Its time has come but the interpretation clause tells us that there is a lot of room for manoeuvre when it comes to what constitutes a productivity-related matter. Members on this side of the Chamber certainly look to the Australian Productivity Commission. We look to some of the issues it has looked at including issues in the environmental space which are very very important. I am not so sure that Mr Hide would see those things as being quite as important but Labour can support this part. 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora anotatou Mr Chair. Such is the importance attached to the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill that it requires attention that is likely to take us into Sunday which will still be Thursday. This modest contribution is to reward the hard-working members on this side of the Chamber and to alert the members on the other side of the Chamber that when they play loose and fast with the rules of the House they can expect to suffer. 
I direct members’ attention to clause 3 “Purpose” which states that “The purpose of this Act is to—(a) establish the Commission as a Crown entity for the purposes of section 7 of the Crown Entities Act 2004;”. A number of commissioners will be created under the Crown Entities Act 2004. My colleague Grant Robertson has already drawn the Committee’s attention to the fact that one of the favoured sons of the failed ideologues of the 1980s and 1990s has already been appointed to lead what runs the risk of turning into a discredited organisation in very much the same way as Don Brash’s exercises with Dr Bryce Wilkinson and others have brought a great deal of opprobrium to those who are associated with trying to sensibly and credibly boost productivity and lessen the gap between us and our Australian cousins. 
The Productivity Commission derives its powers from the Crown Entities Act and it is evident from a cursory glance at that Act that commissioners are able to secure additional assistance—that is through associate commissioners—or secure resources to undertake studies or examinations that might be called for from time to time. When we think about the purpose of the Act we need to think about the people who will be there to give life meaning and form to the purpose. Under the current administration it is evident that the narrow cast of ideological activists that it will draw from makes us doubt whether this organisation will achieve very much at all. At the end of the day productivity is about people and to date there has been a huge degree of disinterest on that side of the House in actually investing in people. 
We have seen cuts—I mean hypothetical—but I ask whether productivity can be increased at the same time as starving the most vulnerable group of New Zealanders—that is the future workforce and their families—of the resources to ensure that they are suitably educated. How can we advance productivity whilst at the same time squeezing and starving resources from those avenues of the State’s resource base that are directed towards giving very good literacy and numeracy skills civic skills and social relations skills? All of that is actually being deprecated at the moment. It is a joke to think that we can create the Productivity Commission whilst at the same time not focusing on the building blocks of what is the greatest asset our country has. There is no productivity unless we invest in people. 
The nature of our people is changing. The school-age population is getting browner with more Pasifika tangata whenua Maori kids and Kiwis of Maori descent. There are also more children of Asian descent and more children from other ethnic minorities. I only hope that when the Minister moves forward with the Productivity Commission—fortunately it will be for a mercifully short period of time; the results of the next election will rescue us from this narrow-mindedness—he will take into account in terms of the qualities of the appointees such things as ethnicity and the experience of working at different levels of the economy not just at the big end of town. It is the big end of town—characters who thought they were masters of the universe especially in the financial community—that has brought us to our knees. When I hear the media raging about the most recent lapse of judgment in our world the Maori world I like to remind them that the last time I checked the $7 billion worth of wealth meltdown I did not see any runanga or hapu involved in that. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Did anyone say sorry? 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: No. Well they are unlikely to utter that because that requires a level of humility and modesty that we do not ordinarily associate with that end of town. 
Anyway I come back to isolating the point that when we establish a commission we have to focus on the quality and the range of skills that those people have. We need those who know about the emergence of entrepreneurialism and how to feed the culture of entrepreneurialism. We need those who are skilled in capital formation but most of all we need those who are skilled in what enables people to find a reservoir of enthusiasm eagerness and tenacity to continue to learn. 
When we look at some firms and companies—because we will need to take a micro look not a macro look—we will see that productivity-related matters will go down and we will have to consider the culture that exists between the owners of the firm and the providers of the capital. When we have a set of toxic labour relations and a set of rules that are squeezing further and further and increasing the pain on the labour force whilst not focusing on the obligations and the duties of the owners of the capital or the directors of firms we cannot perpetually make more miserable the providers of labour and imagine that we are to grow wealthier. 
We have seen a level of belligerence and hostility towards the leaders of the labour movement in New Zealand. We have seen it recently in terms of the treatment dished out to Helen Kelly in the recent episode to do with the give-away to the Hollywood billionaires. It is a timely reminder that a Productivity Commission will only be as good as the spread of people who occupy the positions. They must command respect in the eyes of the Ministers of the future. 
It would appear that the Savings Working Group comprising a number of notable New Zealanders has already lost a fair degree of confidence in the Minister of Finance the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers of the current Government because issues that it ought to be looking at—that is notions of compulsion types of obligations etc. in savings—have already been written out of the script. This suggests that this Government hears sees and senses something that does not immediately fit with its plan—and of course we all know that there is no plan. 
The Prime Minister I acknowledge was a successful currency trader and a pragmatist. So there is no coherent plan; there is just a haphazard set of disconnected events where the Government takes a position closes out and rapidly moves on to the next position. Unfortunately exercising stewardship over the economy as Mr Mallard and other members more senior than me will point out requires an overarching vision a strategy a narrative and whether or not we like it a plan. 
This commission will not advance any plan because we already know that the types of things it will look at come from a very narrow ideological straightjacket—that is that the State is bad and it must be shrunk. How do we shrink the State? We know that the Productivity Commission will be charged at looking at whether the State should be shrunk by shrinking revenue. Then once revenue in a macro sense is decreased the State has fewer options to take an activist role where the economy might be suffering from market failure inject a degree of public investment or ensure that the public interest is addressed. 
If the people who come into this organisation are disconnected from the way the vast bulk of small to medium sized firms operate and the way the vast bulk of New Zealand families live then we can rest assured that it will be a continual story of a narrow range of ideas being forced upon us and our families and that will just not do. 
In relation to what defines a productivity-related matter the Productivity Commission will look at private sector productivity issues public sector productivity issues and the economy as a whole. Well the economy as a whole cannot be understood by focusing just on economic rationalism because people are not just economic utility-maximising rats. At the same time they are social creatures so it is important when we look at productivity—and this will depend on the quality of the people coming forward—to take account not only of human capital but of natural capital. 
Part 1 agreed to. 
Part 2 Substantive Provisions 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Debate on Part 2 includes the schedule. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to start the contributions on Part 2 of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill for a number of reasons. Obviously I have been involved in the discussions on the legislation establishing the Productivity Commission and I chaired the Commerce Committee and had the opportunity to hear submissions. 
I place on record again my disappointment at the number of people who actually submitted on the bill. Everyone on both sides of the House has agreed that this legislation is quite important yet 13 submissions were received and we heard seven of them. I was very disappointed that Business New Zealand did not want to be heard because I had asked the select committee clerk to arrange for the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand to get half an hour each one after the other so that we could actually engage with both and get a real sense of where their points of commonality are. They had been working very closely together on productivity for a number of years when Labour was in Government and I felt that that work would flow through into a really good discussion at the select committee. Then I found out that Business New Zealand did not want to be heard. Unfortunately I have to report to the House that it gave quite a narrow submission. I was disappointed. The Council of Trade Unions gave a very good submission and really talked about what made a difference in terms of looking at productivity. 
As a result of that submission I have three amendments to Part 2 one of which relates to the purpose of the commission. The first amendment is to rewrite the purpose clause. I do not know why—and I actually kick myself now because I cannot understand why—we used the word “principal”. Clause 7 states: “The principal purpose of the Commission …”. I have rewritten it to say: “The purpose of the Commission is to facilitate policy development practical activities and research which will boost productivity on a sustained basis in order to support the overall well-being of New Zealanders through the development of a high wage high skill sustainable economy that delivers benefits on an equitable basis to New Zealanders having regard to a wide range of communities of interest and population groups in New Zealand society.” 
Anyone who has read the original bill will know that that amendment not only picks up a lot of the language we had within that clause but also starts to define what we are trying to achieve. There is no point looking at productivity in a narrow sense if we do not get that benefit shared on an equitable basis. We might see a productivity improvement and a greater disparity in terms of the sharing of wealth in our nation and we know that that would minimise or reduce our productivity over time because the outcomes would be so inequitable. I think we have to recognise New Zealand for what it is and what communities of interest make up New Zealand. We also have to recognise that productivity has a very broad definition. 
The second set of changes relate to subclause (1) of clause 9 “Commission’s functions”. This provision extends the commission’s functions. The two functions in the bill as reported back are “(a) … to hold inquiries and report to the referring Ministers about productivity-related matters; and (b) on its own initiative to—(i) undertake and publish research about productivity-related matters; and (ii) promote public understanding of productivity-related matters.” Going back to my amendment in terms of the purpose I have talked about practical activities and research as well. 
The practical activities that I am seeking to add under clause 9(1) are: “(c) support initiatives which develop practical productivity projects and provide an overview of the range of tools/models available to maximise multifactor productivity in workplaces;”. I did think after having reflected on what the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions said in its submission that workplace productivity is an important component of the total view. If the Productivity Commission is to provide some grunt in this area it really needs to lead the way. A range of tools are available and they differentiate between the public sector and the private sector. There are different drivers in both sectors and I think they need to be reflected in the way in which the Productivity Commission operates. I think that part of the reason for specifying these initiatives as an activity of the Productivity Commission is to ensure that it becomes the single point of entry—the Government portal to productivity. I think that is a hugely advantageous position in terms of the credibility of the organisation long term. That is the first paragraph of the amendment. 
I seem to have called the second paragraph of the amendment “(e)” instead of “(d)” but that is just a little typo. It states: “(e) run inclusive events/workshops on productivity and have educational tools and other information on its website;”. Again that kind of brings it together as a portal where people can go for a one-stop shop approach to productivity. 
The next paragraph of the amendment states: “(f) organise events and activities as appropriate with the Australian Productivity Commission;” Everyone knows that I am a huge admirer of the Australian Productivity Commission and I have this hope that one day it will be an Australia - New Zealand Productivity Commission. The idea of putting it in legislation so that those events and activities are authorised by statute appealed to me so I thought that was a very good amendment. 
The final paragraph is to “(g) produce an annual report on productivity”. Unless we actually require the Productivity Commission to annually report on these matters where are the benchmarks? Where are the measures against which we will look for the success that we believe this model could bring? 
My final set of amendments is on the terms of reference. I would specifically put into the terms of reference in clause 12 a new (1B) which states: “In setting the terms of reference for an inquiry the referring Ministers must first consult with Business New Zealand”—it does not deserve that consultation because it did not front but there we go—“and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions to ensure that the concept of social partnership is embedded in the work of the Productivity Commission.” 
I think that language signals a really important aspect of the difference between the 1990s and today. In the 1990s the concept of social partnership was completely lost. The Employment Contracts Act took the word “union” out of legislative being so industrial relations were to operate without the word “union” being included. Collective bargaining was around contracts not agreements and there was no real understanding of how important these things were to the concept of productivity. Without embedding that relationship into the work of the Productivity Commission I cannot see any other way of ensuring that we get to the best in terms of our workplace contribution to that productivity growth. 
I played with the idea of locking this concept of social partnership into workplace productivity issues but the more I thought about it the more I thought that I would take workplace productivity out of it. The social partnership is fundamentally critical to all issues relating to productivity. I hope the Minister looks at that amendment and thinks very carefully about whether it might improve the way in which the Productivity Commission may operate. 
Finally I propose to add to clause 12 a new subclause (4): “Ministers and the Commission shall ensure that terms of reference require a range of models to be used in any research and analysis.” The Minister may well say that that is taken for granted in the way in which we have changed the legislation as it has gone through the Commerce Committee. I would really like to know as a matter of law that the commission will be required not to take a narrow focus on various models of measuring productivity and productivity gains over time. 
The final thing will say in this contribution—and I may want to come back to it after listening to my colleagues’ contributions—relates to the process around selecting the members of the commission. I follow on from a comment that my colleague Shane Jones made. I do not believe that the selection of the chair-designate was a very good process. We were informed by letter on the Thursday before the appointment was made finally and we were advised that this was the appointment the Government was going to make. It is not an appointment that I would have chosen but that is by the by; I am talking about the process. 
I hope that going forward the Government thinks very seriously about getting a more balanced approach to the commission. I think that would sustain it through changes in the Government over time. I also think that if this process is adopted it will not be sustainable over time. I hope the Government takes that particular comment on board in determining who else will be on the commission. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government) 
: 
 I will respond to those amendments proposed by the member. I thank the Hon Lianne Dalziel for her work as a Minister and her commitment to improving New Zealand’s productivity and also her work as the chair of the Commerce Committee and the contribution that she made there. I pick up first of all her proposed amendment to clause 7. The member will appreciate that the purpose clause is couched very broadly to enable the Productivity Commission to conduct inquiries and research into any productivity-related matters that will improve the welfare of New Zealand. It encompasses everything that the member’s proposed amendment includes. The proposed amendment is just another way of skinning the same cat; it does not actually change anything and therefore the Government will not be agreeing to that. 
Let me now deal with the Hon Lianne Dalziel’s suggested changes to clause 9(1) which relate to the functions of the commission. The first of these subclauses would appear to give the Productivity Commission new hands-on support for workplace productivity improvement projects. That would fundamentally change the character of the Productivity Commission which is to provide independent analysis and advice on productivity-related matters. I should also note that this is specifically not a function of the Australian Productivity Commission. It would be a new and novel approach. Proposed paragraphs (e) (f) and (g) of clause 9(1) would appear to specify activities that the Productivity Commission is already able to undertake through existing clause 9(1)(b)(ii) which is to promote public understanding of productivity-related matters. The Government does not see any need to provide this level of specification in the bill. 
In respect of the proposed amendment to clause 12 the bill enables the Productivity Commission to consult widely. Clause 13(1A)(b) states that the commission may “consult with any persons bodies organisations and agencies it considers necessary to ensure that a wide range of views is available to the Commission to assist it in preparing its reports.” The expectation is that as an independent body it will identify those who are likely to have a particular expertise or contribution that may assist it in relation to specific inquiries referred to it. Identifying two specific bodies in the bill such as this proposed amendment would do is not consistent with the philosophy of widespread consultation and engagement. 
In relation to proposed subclause (4) of clause 12 the Productivity Commission model is predicated on the commission having the requisite expertise to make a call on the appropriate methods and the models for its inquiries and the approach that it takes will be amply tested through consultation that the commission may undertake including through consulting on draft reports. This is an aspect of the bill that was strengthened by the select committee for which I do thank the honourable member. I thank her very much for the contribution. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 In recent times I have come to the House and railed against bits of legislation. I have been saying in particular that this is no way to run a country. The New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill however I am really pleased to speak to because I think it is a good way to run a country. I think the bill will provide for the possibility of independent and contestable advice being given on one of the issues that has dogged us for at least the last decade and a half as we have wrestled with New Zealand’s underperforming productivity. 
This is an area that I have been involved in intimately in my life before I came into Parliament. We were constantly looking at how to make the provision of services in the health sector in that instance more efficient and effective and more productive by the association jointly of employers and employees in the workplace: by the association of professional health practitioners service providers and the managers of the district health boards or the entities that preceded them. 
The issue of productivity has been vexing this country for some time and no Government has been able to crack it in a sustainable way. That is why we are pleased to join with the Government on this bill especially as it has now had its purpose expanded by the work of the Commerce Committee. I commend all members of the select committee including my colleague the chairperson who has put a lot of work into making sure that this legislation hits all the right buttons. This model is a very good one for working through issues that are beyond political tribalism. I can be as tribal as the next person. I know where my politics come from; I know what I believe. But this is one of those things one of those moments where it is entirely possible and not beyond the wit of this Chamber to come up with a system and a process that benefits New Zealand and has the fundamental well-being of New Zealand at heart. 
The fact that the purpose of the New Zealand Productivity Commission was expanded by the select committee is a good thing. Notwithstanding the Minister’s comments just now on my colleague Lianne Dalziel’s amendment to clause 7 it is good that the purpose has been expanded to include the words “having regard to a wide range of communities of interest and population groups in New Zealand society.” I think also that there is merit in my colleague’s amendment that states: “in order to support the overall well-being of New Zealanders through the development of a high wage high skill sustainable economy that delivers benefits on an equitable basis to New Zealanders …”. I think the addition of those words would simply strengthen the legislation and strengthen the purpose of the commission. 
Beyond that given that I understand that the Minister has signalled that that amendment will not succeed I ask that he looks at my colleague Lianne Dalziel’s amendment to clause 12. Here we come to the heart of the matter. Lianne Dalziel has proposed a new subclause (1B) which states: “In setting the terms of reference for an inquiry the referring Ministers”—not the commission I say to the Minister but the referring Ministers—“must first consult with Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions to ensure that the concept of social partnership is embedded in the work of the Productivity Commission.” This is where we get to why this is a particularly good model. If we have peak organisations in this country that equally have a vested interest in productivity why do we not combine their efforts and their common interests in what has been since the 1980s called social partnership? 
The previous Labour Government attempted to embed a modus operandi in our 9 years in Government of social partnership. I commend it to the National Government not because it is something we supported but because it is something that would benefit and create some stability for all New Zealanders. There are some issues where we do not need to have policy swings from one end of the spectrum to the other with any change of Government and this is one of them. We are as concerned about New Zealand’s productivity as the members opposite. I do not doubt their concern about it and I hope that they do not doubt ours. If we are to ensure that the greatest productivity can be extracted for the best possible outcome—that is the well-being of and the equitable distribution of the benefits of productivity across New Zealanders for the sake of everybody’s advancement—then this legislation is a tool that will allow that to happen if we understand that it does embed principles of social partnership. 
The principles of social partnership are very easy. They are simply respectful ones. They involve the recognition that there are communities of interest in New Zealand that deserve to have representation at the highest level. And in that representation they deserve to have their views and their interests spoken about and to be engaged with so that areas of commonality can be found as there were over the 9 years that we were in Government. There were substantial areas of commonality between Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions. Let me give one example of that: skills training. This Government abolished the Skills Strategy and has done very little in that space since it came into office but the Skills Strategy is exactly the area of common ground that one could characterise as the best kind of social partnership. So embedding the notion of social partnership has very practical outcomes. Not only can it be applied in the upskilling of the labour force which is clearly required by all evidence to date and clearly required if New Zealand is to become more productive but it can also provide greater stability for moving forward in this country. 
Productivity does not need to be something that is addressed by tribalism; it can be addressed jointly. If we are mature enough in fact to have a Productivity Commission that will provide contestable and independent advice to Ministers then we are mature enough to embed in our processes and our legislation the notion of social partnership. This is not a quaint left-wing notion; this is about moving modern mixed economies forward and whatever pedigree the notion may have had does not matter now. What matters is that this bill and the amendments that my colleague Lianne Dalziel has put forward really serve to embed the idea of a cooperative social partnership that can benefit in this case the productivity of this country. 
There are extremely practical issues here that would have very practical effects. Upskilling is one of them. Also the promotion of the idea that events and workshops on productivity and educational tools and things of that sort might be paraded around the country in a jointly sponsored effort by the major social partners in this endeavour to increase New Zealand’s productivity is a very sensible suggestion directed towards achieving that end. 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I will take a short call on Part 2 of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill and echo the comments that have already been made about the way our Commerce Committee has worked on this particular bill. There was a lot of agreement as to the direction of productivity in this country—one of the major issues certainly that our country faces going into the future. 
I will refer specifically to the amendments from the member Lianne Dalziel. Although I agree with most of the comments of the Minister in the chair the Hon Rodney Hide I must say that Lianne Dalziel’s amendment to clause 7 would fundamentally change that purpose clause. The amendment adds the words “the development of a high wage high skill sustainable economy that delivers benefits on an equitable basis to New Zealanders”. I contend that we cannot have that type of provision because she is suggesting by this amendment a guaranteed equality of outcome. I suppose that one of the fundamental differences between members on that side of the Chamber and those on this side is that this is not about guaranteeing equality of outcomes; it is about guaranteeing equality of opportunities. There is no way that we can guarantee that all the benefits derived from certain productivity advances will deliver benefits across the board so I think that that amendment goes too far. 
We made an amendment to clause 7 in order to have regard to “a wide range of communities of interest and population groups …”; I think that that was sufficient to suggest that the commission did not take on board one particular model of productivity. I thought we worked well on that clause. I do not think that the additions to the clause add anything; I think they actually detract from that purpose clause. 
I move to clause 9(1). As the Minister has already said some of the member’s suggestions for new paragraphs (e) (f) and (g) of clause 9(1) can actually happen regardless of whether they are inserted in a clause. I do not think it is appropriate to insert those specific provisions in the clause because the role of the commission is not to run workshops. I do not believe that the commission will have the resources for those types of operational matters. If we go back to the first principles of the bill we see that the role of the commission will be to promote research do the research do the analytical work work according to the terms of reference and produce work that will advance productivity and policy-making both in the private and public sectors so that amendment would not be helpful to that. 
Finally the amendment that would insert new clause 12(1B) requires Ministers to “consult with Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions …”. Again there is specificity in the clause but what happens if the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions no longer exists? What happens if Business New Zealand no longer exists? 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: That will always exist; don’t worry! 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA 
: That is the member’s contention but I think that if we start demanding or at least requiring in a clause that a Minister consults directly with certain organisations it makes that clause unworkable. We should think again about whether we should demand a social partnership. That is not to say that we disagree with a social partnership; I think that that is important. But to require it in legislation specifically I think is going too far. 
We do not agree with these amendments. We think the bill as it came out of the select committee was a good bill and we look forward in the third reading to speaking about our bill. 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chairperson. It actually is necessary to inject a wee bit more of a positive tone into this debate after that rather impoverished contribution from the member currently representing Maungakiekie. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: The soon-to-be former MP. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: Well Maungakiekie is a proud tangata whenua name blighted at the moment by—but let me come back to the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. I would like to pick up one of three things that the Minister in the chair the Hon Rodney Hide has said. A key part of the Minister’s narrative has been the reduction of red tape and unblocking the bureaucratic imbroglios that stop firms and investors from achieving the sorts of outcomes that he would like to see. I acknowledge that that is the rhetoric and the political narrative that this Minister has. But to do that it is necessary to focus in a very very sharp way on what some of the problems are and what some of the snarl-ups are. 
How the commission develops its procedures will depend on whom the Minister the Government and the Crown appoint. We are starting with a rather dismal view not really directed in a personal way at the character who is going to be the initial leader of the organisation as we know that he will not become separated or dislocated from this ideological baggage. We know that to be a fact but we are going to have to deal with that burden. But if we are going to consult in terms of clause 13(1A)(b) “consult with any persons bodies organisations …” I think it would be good if the Minister and his colleagues dedicated some attention to finding people who can actually liaise with a wide array of organisations. 
I have in mind here our Maori organisations because this is a Government that is only too happy to parade its rhetoric up and down the country about how the emerging Maori economy represents something of a positive platform to grow the overall economy. That will happen when they are no longer as disengaged as they have become under this Government and its lacklustre partners in the Maori Party. It is going to increase the level of importance that we have the right woman or man capable of building bridges into that area because there are some significant institutional problems there not the least of which has to do with the land tenure system with access to capital and with the importance or forming the right partnerships. 
It seems that the Minister of Agriculture David Carter has presided over the allocation of grants and capital into the agricultural sector in a wretched way. According to my colleague from the West Coast Damien O’Connor it almost looks as if vested interests are being—yet again—rewarded. It is important that the Productivity Commission has people who can turn their attention towards the sector. Without the introduction of science-based capital innovation and clever research that is designed to meet the specific distinctive institutional problems in that small segment of our economy I think the commission could turn into something too ideologically narrow or too full of puffery. 
One of the redeeming features of the terms of reference concerns the commission working jointly with other agencies including overseas agencies. I imagine that is an opportunity for the Productivity Commission to focus on what is happening in Australia. We already have enough of our Kiwis in Australia enriching the Australian economy. We need to get the right blend of people on the Productivity Commission and emulate in our economic thinking what Australia has been able to do. The Australians do not deprecate or marginalise representatives from the labour movement but integrate their perspectives into a broad plan to build the people as they build the economy. The member from Maungakiekie is quite entitled to speak against the very sensible amendment from my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel the chair of the Commerce Committee but what he reflects is a very parched view about the underlying accord that we think is very very important. 
Hon Member 
: Bleached and parched. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: Yes the word parched does strike me at this hour of the night but it is still Thursday—it is still Thursday etc. I think I might need it at about 5 to 12 actually. Anyhow underlying what the member from Maungakiekie was saying was the view that there cannot be meshing together of the perspectives of those who are in control of capital and the perspectives of those who are proxies for the voices of labour—the voices of people. Yes those people who are making investment decisions have to bear in mind the rights of shareholders. We have learnt about and seen a less atomistic approach being taken in Australia. It is less divisive than what we are seeing from our colleagues on the other side of the House. 
So in that sense when the commission may be working jointly with other agencies including overseas agencies concerned with improving productivity it will come down again to who and how many people—people who are not captives or cheerleaders for that narrow range of vested interests who do not want to see a Productivity Commission—challenge the growing gap of haves and have-nots in New Zealand. In that sense when there is a dismissal and a jettisoning by our colleagues over there of that very useful contribution made in the form of an amendment then we have every right to be concerned. 
The commission’s work will actually not deliver any serious change unless the Government or the politicians of the day have faith and confidence in the quality of their work. Although Mr Wilkinson and Don Brash are hewn out of similar ideological matter as represented on the other side of the House they have been tossed aside. So we can see that National is prepared to throw even its own to the sharks. It reminds me of a great white shark coming out of the sea where there is a placid seal moving on the top of the ocean. Out comes the great white shark and snaps open its jaws and down its gullet goes the seal. That is what happens to people such as Helen Kelly who bring forward suggestions and contributions. I think she would be a fantastic contributor in that organisation. It is evident that those prospects are very narrow because personal agendas are likely to intrude in terms of the kinds of characteristics a person will be expected to show and also in relation to the areas of concern to productivity that will be focused on. That is a matter of some concern to us. 
I want to come back to what I said before which is that the commission has the ability to grow beyond three or four members in the sense of appointing associate commissioners. I hope that those discrete projects flow from what firms population groups and communities of interest are telling the commission and that they do not flow from the brainwaves of the current Minister or some of his colleagues. [ 
Interruption 
] I want to be positive. I feel that I will be able to make a better contribution with a negative connotation at 1 minute to 12. I think I will reserve it until 1 minute to 12—on Thursday. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I want to talk about Part 2 of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill and having given a relatively positive speech on Part 1 I will now do the opposite of my colleague Mr Jones and be a little bit more negative about this part. As we have gone through the debate and Lianne Dalziel has put forward her amendments the Minister in the chair the Hon Rodney Hide has responded to them largely in a negative way which has highlighted my concern. We have an agreement in principle that the Productivity Commission is a good thing and we think it will be very useful for the future of New Zealand but its usefulness will be in part about its durability in terms of being able to cope with the changing fortunes of political parties and some of the different agendas pursued by political parties. I think that the changes Lianne Dalziel has brought forward in particular the change to clause 12 are examples of where the durability of the Productivity Commission could be enhanced and that is through the notion of effectively developing the idea of social partnership within the Productivity Commission’s terms of reference. 
On this side of the Chamber we find it quite surprising that the current Government has not chosen to pursue the tripartite work that was going on in the skills area. Obviously the Skills Strategy which Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions have worked on with the Government was a successful strategy. It was an example of social partnership in action skill development and the enhancement of skill. As my colleague Shane Jones has said productivity is about people. One of the key drivers to productivity is enhancing skills and increasing training. Why this Government has chosen not to invest further in the Skills Strategy and indeed in keeping the skills forum going is a great surprise to us. From our point of view this amendment to clause 12 is actually about ensuring that there is some durability and that there is some inclusion and involvement of the key participants—the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand—in terms of in this case workplace productivity and productivity generally in New Zealand. 
It is of great concern to members on this side of the Chamber that the Government is not prepared to pick up this kind of idea. It makes us wonder about the scope of the commission and how it will be used. There is an awful lot of power in the hands of the responsible Ministers. Of course that is as it should be. Parliament is sovereign and Ministers of the executive come to us and we hold them to account. Elected representatives should be controlling the direction of this work. But we want the commission to be able to work as broadly and as inclusively as it can and we want the commission to be able to challenge the Government and to challenge all the ideas and concepts that any Government is putting forward and in particular the Government of the day. So it is disappointing from our point of view that there has not been a willingness in the Government to pick up the amendment to clause 12. But perhaps we should not be surprised. We should not be surprised because the Government has largely ignored things in the skills area where that social partnership programme was working really very well indeed. 
Of course there have been other issues around skill development—the cuts in adult and community education for instance and the restriction on tertiary education places. None of that bodes especially well for a commitment to the core element of productivity which is that of raising skills. But the opportunity is here for the Government to pick up Lianne Dalziel’s amendment and get Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions on board. I do not buy Sam Lotu-Iiga’s argument that somehow or the other this could be difficult because the names might change or something like that. We change things all the time in law when that takes place. This is about embedding social partnership in the Productivity Commission and it is very disappointing that the Government has chosen not to pick that up. 
I want to go back from clause 12 to the whole question of the membership of the commission in clause 10 which has been alluded to by a number of members. I draw on the example of the Treasury board that was recently put in place by Secretary to the Treasury John Whitehead no doubt talking with the Minister of Finance Bill English. There was a great palaver about how this would be an excellent example of how Treasury would be able to reflect the community’s interests and those affected by the fiscal policies and the overall policy framework that Treasury is responsible for. The names of those on the Treasury board came out and it was just the usual suspects. It was the usual board members the professional board members and we had concerns about one of them in particular and that person’s links with the broader National Party. Generally the people who were appointed represented a very narrow range of people. They certainly did not represent the broader community. 
Our concern when we look at clause 10 on the membership of the commission as others have said is that Mr Sherwin’s early appointment does not bode well. He reflects a particular ideological mindset but more than anything else I think he represents a narrow idea of what this commission could do. As with the Treasury board and the commission we should be thinking broadly. I remember thinking when the Treasury board was being appointed “What about appointing someone like Diane Robertson the Auckland City Missioner?”. What about saying that we actually care about the impact of Treasury’s policies on real people as Shane Jones said—not the big end of town; the other end of town? I really would encourage the Minister as we go forward in this process to find a way of getting a commission that is reflective of the very broad nature of productivity that we have been talking about tonight. Again it does not bode well that the question of social partnership is dismissed so quickly because I am quite sure that when we look at the commission’s membership it will be a concern. That has been a concern for a number of members of the Labour caucus. We support the idea in principle but we have concerns about the way it will be implemented and certainly Mr Sherwin’s appointment is a very bad start in that regard. We want to make sure as the commission is appointed in full that it does not fall into that trap. 
I will refer in my remaining time to the other amendments that Lianne Dalziel has put forward particularly on the purpose of the commission. She is correct to identify the area of practical activities and I think that the commission could usefully take that up. There has been some very good work done by the partnership resource centre out of the Department of Labour in the last few years. It was an initiative set up by the fifth Labour Government and has drawn together the skills of people from the union movement and from the private sector around how to improve workplace productivity. 
Jonathan Young 
: There’s nothing on the website though. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I will have to have a look at that. I can certainly introduce Mr Young to some of the people who have been involved in it. There are some private sector outfits. I know that Air New Zealand and one or two others have been involved and have really enjoyed their links with the partnership resource centre. Let us broaden out this definition so that the practical activities which are like pilot projects that the partnership resource centre undertakes around productivity could actually be part of the commission’s work. I think Lianne Dalziel is on to the right point there and—again—with the amendment that comes in under clause 9 on productivity projects. This is where the commission could have a more detailed mandate and a more detailed and practical ability to take on those projects. I think it is unfortunate that the Minister has ruled out accepting those amendments because I think they broaden out the definition. Yes we absolutely want research and obviously we want the inquiries done but we need to start moving a little beyond those to some practical projects that could be taken up. 
To conclude my contribution at this time on Part 2 I say that it contains some very good points but there are a number of clauses that could be enhanced. If we do not get this right then the Productivity Commission runs the risk of being seen as pursuing a particular agenda. I hope it is not Mr Sherwin’s old agenda—it should not be because we all believe that this is a good idea. We need to give the framework to ensure that the Productivity Commission can be durable across Governments and has the ability to undertake practical work in developing social partnerships. That is missing from Part 2 at the moment and that disappoints me because in general this is a very very good idea. 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to go back to the Minister’s comments when he ruled out the changes to clause 12(1B) that I am promoting because I think he has misunderstood what the clause was. He went on to refer to clause 13 of the bill which talks about who the Productivity Commission consults with. The reason I have moved clause 12(1B) is to make sure that it is the referring Ministers who consult with Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions when they are setting the terms of reference for an inquiry. There is a very important reason for this and it goes to the regulatory impact statement which of course I have downloaded off the website now that it is no longer available in the bill as introduced. It says this about the consultation that was done on this bill: “Discussions were held with a small number of New Zealand senior public servants current and past politicians and informed commentators from consultancies and academia. Discussions were also held with the APC VCEC and Australian Treasury.” 
Grant Robertson 
: So that’s John Whitehead Don Brash and Michelle Boag. That’s it. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Is that not a really good start to social partnership! That is the reason I want the concept of social partnership embedded in the setting of the terms of reference. Of course the Productivity Commission will talk to the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand—that is a given. Everyone knows that it will do that. I am not seeking for any parameters to be put on who the Productivity Commission consults with. It will be putting out discussion documents and hearing submissions. It will then put out a draft report as the Australian commission does it will hear further submissions on that and it will be ultimately reporting to the Minister after in-depth consideration and inquiry into these matters. 
If the social partners and if our trade union movement those who represent the workforce and Business New Zealand which represents those who run our businesses are not somehow embedded in the very proposals for the terms of reference for the inquiry then what are we going to get out of it? That is what concerns me. The consultation on this legislation has not been as inclusive as it should have been. In fact we are told in the regulatory impact statement that the consultation confirmed the Australian experience—which is not surprising since more Australians than New Zealanders were consulted—and it was judged that further consultation in New Zealand would quickly reach diminishing returns. I think that is a little bit of an insult given the huge contribution that both the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand made to productivity development in the entire period that we were in Government. For 9 years they were regarded as partners that sat at the table and were engaged in ongoing consultations with a range of Ministers. I was one of the Ministers they were engaged in discussions with. I think it is very unfortunate that the Minister dismisses the amendment on the basis of the commission’s procedures that have nothing to do with the clause that I am seeking to amend. 
The other thing I would really like the Minister to do is talk about the contributions from the different Government agencies that have been selected for contributing to the costs of setting up the commission and its ongoing running. When one looks at the level of contribution the largest contribution comes from Treasury which is not surprising; the Ministry of Economic Development which is not surprising; and the Department of Labour. Why is the Department of Labour the other large contributor? Because workplace productivity is one of the major drivers of productivity. It is not the only one and it is not supposed to be the only focus. But even the contributing ministries make it absolutely clear that the Government itself sees workplace productivity—I mean it is micro and macro but the micro is the workplace and the Government itself has said that this is one of the three top contributors from departmental budgets for the setting up of the commission and its ongoing running costs; it is so obvious that the Government itself sees workplace productivity as a key driver to our productivity gains over time. So why on earth would the social partners not be included as part of the setting of the terms of reference? 
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I think that is a fair question. The question is that the question be now put. Members of that opinion will say Aye of the contrary opinion will say No. The Ayes have it. The question will be put. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Party vote; come on. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I gave the member the opportunity to call for a party vote. I said the question will be put. I declare the vote and if the vote is not challenged immediately for a party vote we move on. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Lianne Dalziel to clause 7 be agreed to: 
to omit this clause and substitute the following clause: 
7Purpose of Commission 
The purpose of the Commission is to facilitate policy development practical activities and research which will boost productivity on a sustained basis in order to support the overall well-being of New Zealanders through the development of a high-wage high-skill sustainable economy that delivers benefits on an equitable basis to New Zealanders having regard to a wide range of communities of interest and population groups in New Zealand society. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 25 
New Zealand Labour 20; Green Party 4; United Future 1. 
Noes 62 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to members there is a very good reason for votes to be conducted in silence. I know it is difficult to constrain oneself when severely provoked. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Lianne Dalziel to clause 9 be agreed to: 
to add to subclause (1) the following paragraphs: 
(c)support initiatives which develop practical productivity projects and provide and overview of the range of tools/models available to maximise multifactor productivity in workplaces: 
(d)run inclusive events/workshops on productivity and have educational tools and other information on its website: 
(e)organise events and other activities as appropriate with the Australian Productivity Commission: 
(f)produce an annual report on productivity. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 24 
New Zealand Labour 20; Green Party 4. 
Noes 63 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon Lianne Dalziel to clause 12 be agreed to: 
to insert “Subject to section 12(1B)” at the beginning of subclause (1A); 
to insert the following subclause after subclause (1A): 
(1B)In setting the terms of reference for an inquiry the referring Ministers must first consult with Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions to ensure that the concept of social partnership is embedded in the work of the Productivity Commission.; and 
to add the following subclause after subclause (3): 
(4)Ministers and the Commission shall ensure that terms of reference require a range of models to be used in any research and analysis. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 24 
New Zealand Labour 20; Green Party 4. 
Noes 63 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; United Future 1. 
Amendments not agreed to. 
Part 2 agreed to. 
Schedules agreed to. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
Bill reported without amendment. 
Report adopted. 
Third Reading 
Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government)  
on behalf of the Minister of Finance 
: 
 I move  
That the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill be now read a third time 
. This bill establishes a new institution to undertake analysis and provide advice to the Government on matters that are of vital importance to the welfare of New Zealand and New Zealanders. Improving our productivity performance is a necessary condition if we are to maintain current standards of living let alone improve them. Paul Krugman of Princeton University made the observation that “Productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it’s nearly everything.” 
New Zealand’s economic performance over the last 6 decades has been poor compared with that of most other OECD countries. In 1950 New Zealand was ranked as third among the OECD countries in terms of GDP per capita. In 2009 New Zealand’s GDP per capita was ranked as 22nd out of the 32 OECD member countries. This indicates a decline in New Zealanders’ living standards relative to those of people in other OECD countries. Following substantial reform New Zealand’s growth has been closer to but still less than the OECD average since the early 1990s and New Zealand does not appear to have been as badly affected by the current global financial crisis as many other developed countries although substantial risks remain. 
The gap in GDP per capita between New Zealand and wealthier OECD countries essentially reflects a difference in labour productivity which stems from New Zealand’s relatively low levels of both capital intensity and multi-factor productivity. Growth in New Zealand’s labour productivity has generally lagged behind that of other countries although there has been a significant variation in labour productivity growth across sectors and industries. 
Closing the GDP per capita gap with other advanced countries represents a formidable challenge. For example closing the gap with Australia within 15 years would require New Zealand to exceed Australia’s average GDP per capita growth over that period by around 2 percentage points. On the basis of the OECD’s baseline projections that would require New Zealand’s average GDP per capita growth to be about 4 percent which is more than twice New Zealand’s average rate over the last two decades. 
We will not meet the productivity challenge without an injection of new ideas. These ideas must be built on a solid foundation of evidence and analysis. It also requires those who undertake the analysis to engage fully with the community. Engagement with the community is important for a number of reasons. The first is that an evidence-based policy requires a deep understanding of what the real world is like for firms entrepreneurs employers workers and citizens. Second the community can be a source of ideas. Third the significant change that may be required to meet our productivity challenge affects the community and it is important that those who may be affected have the opportunity to have their views heard and taken into account and that the need for change is carefully and fully explained. 
With this bill we are establishing the legislative framework for an institution that will be a credible source of evidence-based policy. In creating this framework we have been guided by Australia’s experience with the Australian Productivity Commission which at the state level has been repeated in the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission. The New Zealand Productivity Commission will meet the key tests for an effective institution as demonstrated by the Australian institutions. The commission will be given inquiries by the Minister of Finance in conjunction with portfolio Ministers. Terms of reference for inquiries must be made public. The commission’s reports must be tabled in this House. Both of these requirements add up to a highly transparent process. As an independent Crown entity the commission will have statutory independence. This will encourage analysis and thinking that is unfettered by the policies and preferences of the Government of the day. It will be headed by three to four commissioners who will lead inquiries as well as set the overall tone of the commission. The commission will conduct its inquiries in public. It must consult widely and it must take a broad range of perspectives into account. It will not be an ivory tower unconnected with the real issues and opportunities faced by New Zealanders. 
An important part of the inquiry process which was emphasised strongly by the chairman of the Australian Productivity Commission Gary Banks is the release for consultation of a draft report. This provides a rigorous test process for the analysis undertaken by the commission. Although the bill does not make this step in the process an absolute requirement there is an expectation that the commission will consult publicly on draft reports. The commission is also able to initiate and publish its own research which is an essential function for an institution that will be seen as a centre of excellence on productivity-related matters. I fully expect that the commission will become a focus for productivity-related research and debate in New Zealand with strong links to Government agencies academics and thinktanks. In effect having a specialist commission should lift the tide on productivity-related research in New Zealand. There will also be cooperation between the New Zealand and Australian commissions further boosting capability and providing a foundation for work on strengthening the single economic market between New Zealand and Australia. 
The commission will be a unique institution in New Zealand that fills a gap in the current sources of policy advice. It meets the three critical criteria of having independence competence and community engagement. It can take the policy debate into areas where Government departments are not able to go bringing new ideas to the table and testing conventional wisdom. It is destined to play an important role in charting the future of New Zealand’s productivity performance. 
Finally I thank the Commerce Committee chair Lianne Dalziel and the other members of that committee for their work on the bill. In some important respects the committee clarified what the commission is intended to be and strengthened the statutory processes that underpin its open transparent and consultative character. I am very pleased and honoured to commend the bill to the House. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Labour will be supporting the passage of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. We sought to make amendments to it during the Committee stage but they were not supported by the Government. I still believe that they would have strengthened the legislation but so be it—you win some you lose some. What I want to do is focus on an important aspect of this law that the Minister of the Local Government just referred to in his address where his comments almost exclusively focused on the role of workplace productivity. 
I refer back to a joint paper that Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions put together on productivity under the previous Government. Under our Government they worked together in a social partnership. They worked in a triumvirate way with the Government. We had the Government at the table we had Business New Zealand and we had the Council of Trade Unions representing the workforce. That triangle approach was a very strong approach because it provided protection for those who work within an industry from the kinds of excesses that we saw in the 1980s and in the 1990s—so I will not reflect on Governments of any particular colour in this regard. It is very easy to think that productivity improvements can be imposed by cutting the cost of production through making the workers carry that cost. That was the experience of both the 1980s and the 1990s and I do not think New Zealand has ever fully recovered from the serious impact that the Employment Contracts Act had on our workforce. 
I will refer to the joint paper where we had Business New Zealand working with the Council of Trade Unions on the definition of workplace productivity and on the issues that accompany it which are infrastructure and education and skills. We cannot get improvements to workplace productivity without talking about the lot. They all go together hand in hand. This is what that paper said. It stated: “At a macro level debates about productivity inevitably weave into the overall drivers for economic growth and therefore include tax inflation capital formation population global connectedness adequacy of infrastructure size of workforce relative to population amount of capital goods relative to the workforce degree of competitiveness research and development incentives as well as the importance of education and innovation.” That is the macro-level perspective. “There is a need to build a consensus around how to grow tomorrow’s jobs based on investment in skill technology and good workplace relations to create high wage employment producing quality goods and services.” That is why I moved in the Committee stage that we change the purpose of the commission to look specifically at boosting productivity on a sustained basis in order to support the overall well-being of New Zealanders through the development of a high-wage high-skill sustainable economy. 
What those organisations highlighted as critical among these issues were “The relative contributions of physical capital financial capital human capital and total factor productivity (or multifactor productivity);”—and that is the one element that the Minister chose to address in his comments. But there are also “Particular capacity issues on infrastructural enablers—physical capital investment in power/energy waste water broadband transport etc;”—those sorts of physical infrastructural enablers as they describe them. “Drivers of high quality physical capital investment at enterprise level;”—and of course we know that productivity improvements can be found through capital investment as well. “The contribution of ICT; Lags between technological progress and productivity increases; Learning across boundaries—networks and clusters;”—that is businesses operating together regions operating together and industries operating together. “Knowledge generation diffusion and adoption in the production of valued commodities; Gaining a critical mass of skills; Literacy and numeracy; Worker scepticism towards productivity proposals based on their experiences;”. Anyone who lived through the 1990s will know perfectly well what that period meant by way of productivity improvement. They paid the price. They paid the price in lower wages. 
Grant Robertson 
: The wage gap extended out as well. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: When did the wage gap extend between Australia and New Zealand my colleague chips me to ask. It happened in the 1990s. Comparative wages between Australia and New Zealand were almost identical at the end of the 1980s. The 1990s were the period that produced the gap. Who was it who said that we could bring that gap down? Well I think the Government engaged Don Brash in a 2025 Taskforce. Did members know that he is so productive that he spent 3 years of his salary in 1 year? That is pretty amazing. The Government set aside a certain amount to fund his salary as the head of the 2025 Taskforce and he managed to spend it all in 12 months. Well that is very productive from his point of view but no one else’s. 
The next question is immigration policy and practice and we all know that that is directly relevant. The there is “Measuring productivity in the service sector …”. That is a serious challenge. How do we measure a teacher’s output compared with that of a dairy worker for example? They are difficult questions but all of these issues were put on the table by the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand when they were working collaboratively with our Government. 
Next are “Productivity and the level and type of employment; The role of intermediate inputs (materials business services leased capital); Links between R&D and commercialisation;”. What did this Government do to research and development in this country? It completely gutted it. It took away the research and development tax credit that Labour had provided and it also destroyed the Fast Forward fund which would have seen some major productivity gains in our primary sectors. 
Next are “The role of institutions; The role of unions; Management styles; Organisational structure; Attitudes to business success and failure; Cyclical factors; Cultural factors; Distribution of productivity gains; The role of social development; and Robustness of assumptions in models.” The point is that the Government simply has not been prepared to listen to the combined voice of Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions because it has this absolute shuttered view of the engagement that is required in order to bring about these changes. 
I put forward three amendments. One was about the definition of well-being being extended into the wider area of equity and another was seeing the Productivity Commission as the portal through which anyone can enter the productivity realm from the micro level to the macro level. I thought the Government would have seen that as a major advantage rather than as a disadvantage. And the final one was to embed those principles of social partnership into the work of the Productivity Commission. I was criticised for the amendments on the basis that they sought to narrow the focus of the commission. But in fact it was the opposite. I sought to ensure that the importance of the workplace was not lost. I have a real fear that the Government only speaks to it and that it never ever is able to deliver on it because it just cannot let go of its old-fashioned view of what is an important part of the equation which is the workplace. 
Process is important. I turn to the process of the appointments so far. There has been only one appointment to this commission. Before the legislation has even gone through we already have a chair-designate of the Productivity Commission. That process does not engender confidence on this side of the House. I will not comment on the individual himself but he is not somebody I personally would have chosen. I hope the remainder of the appointments do ensure balance and reflect that concept of social partnership because I believe that it is absolutely critical to the success of the Productivity Commission. But to receive a letter on a Thursday telling us that the Government will announce an appointment on the following Tuesday is simply intolerable and does not reflect very well on the Government’s process. 
Finally I again place on record my thanks to Gary Banks for travelling to New Zealand and for providing such a good analysis for us to consider of how the Australian Productivity Commission has developed into an independent authoritative voice on productivity. I think his ongoing support and offer of cooperation across the ditch is very welcome and it is welcome on both sides of the House. When Labour is in Government we will take him up on his offer and we will ensure that the New Zealand Productivity Commission works as collaboratively as possible with the Australian Productivity Commission. I still believe that it will be possible to merge the two operations at some point. 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I rise to support the third reading of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. After listening to the previous speech by Lianne Dalziel one would think that member was voting against the bill. The Commerce Committee broadly agreed with the general principles of the direction of the bill although some amendments were proposed tonight that were sent from the union headquarters to Ms Dalziel and went against a lot of what was discussed at the committee. 
This bill is about providing analysis and advice on productivity-related matters in New Zealand. The Productivity Commission will be tasked with bringing that to bear in terms of not just workplace productivity but also issues wider than that. It is about processes and systems it is about technology and it is about people. We listened tonight to the speakers opposite and we heard a lot about social partnerships. But no this is about productivity. We took a general approach to clause 7 “Purpose of Commission” recommending that the clause be amended by adding the words: “having regard to a wide range of communities of interest …”. That would mean that there would not be one model that we would rely on. Everyone agreed upon that yet we had an amendment tonight. 
The committee looked at the functions of the commission and removed the emphasis on regulation. We placed more emphasis on holding inquiries and reporting to the relevant Ministers. The commission will be tasked with more than just workplace productivity. 
The biggest amendment that we considered as a committee was in respect of the terms of reference relating to consultation between the relevant Minister and the commission. It would not include the unions and it would not include Business New Zealand because it is about getting the terms of reference that are important. 
I commend this bill to the House. It will increase productivity and it is another step in the right direction for this Government. Thank you. 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Barker. I preface this 10-minute speech by reminding members on the other side of the House and in particular Tau Henare of a famous proverb from where we both hail from: “Small though the dogfish may be large is its volume and wake inversely related to the multitudes”. 
I speak on behalf of the 20 members. I alert the House and those New Zealanders who were watching the previous speaker Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga that his seat is Maungakiekie. To Ngapuhi “kiekie” is the cry of the morepork. A certain sort of sleepy tired jaded character is reflected in the faces of our fellow colleagues on the other side of the House. 
I see Simon Power sitting there. We know that shortly he will be looking at productivity. I have no doubt that while he is away he will contemplate what can be done to improve Gerry Brownlee’s conception of productivity. What can be done to improve his numeracy in terms of how to count days during the months in the entire year’s calendar so that we do not have this pile-up at the end of the year which is something of an outrage in the context of productivity? 
An important part of productivity which this bill in its far-ranging writ will have the chance to study is the impact on our constitution and its relationship with the economy. This evening the constitution has been upheld as a consequence of members from that side of the House remaining here in Te Upoko o Te Ika Wellington right up to 10 or 20 past 9. I am sure that when future statisticians look at metrics for defining how extensive productivity has been tonight— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Just till the plane’s gone. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: Ha ha! Before I finish talking about the connection between the constitution and productivity I will look at productivity statistics in the airline industry and whether there is scope for the airline industry to delay the departure of flights out of the head of the fish to the tail of the fish. I wonder whether the industry will build into its cost measures a reward for the members on that side of the House who are unwilling to challenge the foolishness of their Leader of the House and have along with a number of us enjoyed a Saturday right into the wee hours since Thursday. That Thursday will always be memorialised by the connection between my relation Tau Henare and a banana. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Ha ha! 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: I want it noted that that laugh is not an accurate reflection on the glum expression from the other side of the House. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Well I think it’s a question of where he put the banana. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: No after my year I will not go in that direction. 
Simon Power just stood up. I want the House to know about Simon Power’s township of Marton. Whenever he misbehaves we will give the Maori name for his township which is Tutaenui and let him know that a lot of his korero and a lot of his behaviour may actually be informed by the Maori name for that township. 
Anyhow I come back to some of the reasons why this side of the House will vote for the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. We want Rodney Hide to take this bill forward and make a success of it because no one on that side of the House is actually generating a fresh set of ideas that will create jobs incentivise investment or pick up the young people leaving school or polytech and place them in the labour market so they can get some practical skills to begin earning a living. Under current policies not only will they struggle to generate enough earnings from a substandard education but they are unlikely ever to own their own homes. 
I have just seen a vision of two mangrove berries in the face of the member from the Hauraki district; that is actually inversely related to productivity. 
Another thing we are hoping the Minister will pick up on is that when the members of the new Productivity Commission are chosen they will have tenacity they will show resilience and they will be prepared to turn up for work day after day hour after hour minute after minute and ensure that the integrity of this institution—the highest court in Parliament—is actually upheld and that speeches are made that consume the last possible minute so that not a skerrick or a sliver of the time allotted is squandered. That is why we will be supporting this bill pertaining to productivity. 
We will also be looking forward to see whether some members on the Government side of the House will actually be looking for jobs on the Productivity Commission after the next election. I am prepared to appeal to Mr Mallard given that he is likely to be the responsible Minister appointing the characters to the Productivity Commission. I am prepared to appeal on behalf of some. [ 
Interruption 
] Well I have to tell the member from the Coromandel district that Hosea’s tongue looks a lot better than that. When he does the haka one can actually see that it is an icon of cultural prestige. 
That member from Coromandel looks as if she is sitting too close to the Minister of Agriculture who needs a dose of productivity. That man has enraged the most powerful and frightening businessman in Auckland who is known as Michael Stiassny. The Minister has gone out of his way to potentially ruin the international meat export industry by focusing his finicky level of interest on unnecessary rules and harsh regulations and he has alienated the community that Michael Stiassny comes from. Not only has he caused the Crown to incur a bill that is somewhere near $400000 or $500000 but he is living proof of why this Productivity Commission is needed. Virtually every agricultural thing he has become involved in—horticultural as well—will need a massive dose of productivity. 
We look forward to working constructively with our colleagues on the other side of the House and being open and candid with them so they know our views about the types of people who ought to be appointed to the Productivity Commission. We do not really want to conceal any information from them. We do not want to obfuscate; we do not want to mislead them so that they may think their prospects are worse or better. All Mr Mallard has done is isolate the number of people who have waited this late in the evening to contribute to the debate. We are suitably impressed to see Mr Quinn and a host of others here at this fatefully late hour. 
Coming back to the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill we look forward to seeing the types of reports that will lie upon the Table of the House of Representatives after they have been commissioned and come via the responsible Minister. We hope a number of those reports are generated from firms and actual investors in the economy because they need an avenue to bring forward their concerns given that the ears of the current Ministers are blocked. They know that jobs are not emerging that debt remains a problem and that capital formation is still a weakness in the economy. 
That may be possible through this Productivity Commission which we have helped to come into being by ensuring that a large number of the Government Ministers and Government members of the House have remained here for this 72-hour Thursday. We are particularly impressed with their tenacity. Although they may entertain rather uncharitable thoughts about how many of us have remained on I just finish by reminding them—in particular my relation Tau Henare—of the korero “Small though the dogfish the pioke may be large is its volume and wake as it makes progress”. Progress does not depend on multitudes of numbers. Kia ora tatou. 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora koutou. I must say it is a pleasure to speak to such a full House this evening and some could unkindly suggest that such a good turn-out from Government members suggests they might have too few opportunities for entertainment on a Saturday night and too little else to do with their lives. But I am sure that that is not the case. 
The New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill is a bill that the Green Party would have liked to support but there are two compelling reasons why we could not. One of those was that the bill particularly in its original drafting was clearly intended to be a tool of the Minister of Finance a creature of the Minister. It was clear from the language about the direction or the frame of the terms of reference that the notion of independence would have not been real. To be fair the bill has improved in that regard considerably. 
For the second and I think compelling reason not to support this bill one can reflect on the last contribution from the chair of the Commerce Committee Lianne Dalziel. In 10 minutes she gave a very succinct and very powerful analysis of many of the reasons for low productivity in this country. The reality is that we actually know the reasons and we know the problems and we also have a handle on some of the potential solutions so arguably the last thing we need is another Government body to do research. That might be a useful addition at some point but there are a great many things we could do in the meantime that do not require $5 million a year 25 public servants and extended investigations to do. 
It has been noted that there is some irony in the fact that the solution to the perceived problem of lack of productivity has been a legislative—or indeed a bureaucratic—solution to what is seen as an economic or social problem. It is just ironic that that has come from the party that is so overtly the party of pro-business anti-Government one might say. 
One of our major concerns with the wording and content of the bill is the lack of prescription about what the Productivity Commission ought to do. That is a two-edged sword. The lack of prescription the very broad-brush statements about the purpose and capacity of the commission could be a form of freedom and it could indeed create an opportunity for the commission to do wide work across a wide range of topics and a wide range of communities; it could do a great deal of innovative and creative work. But in the absence of any requirement for it to do that the very breadth of those statements the very breadth of the purpose could equally as well make this commission the creature of the Minister. 
Nowhere in the bill unlike in the Australian example—and we have heard a great deal about the extent to which this commission and this legislation is modelled on the Australian example—do we see reference to regional development. Critically we see nothing about ecological sustainability which is one of the requirements in front of the Australian Productivity Commission. There are statements in the Australian legislation that talk about overcoming indigenous disadvantage about ecological sustainability and about promoting the understanding of issues bearing on community living standards. 
Those are serious and major issues which could as well be confronted and dealt with in New Zealand as the Australian commission is required to deal with them. It would be a very brave and a very well-resourced commission that would undertake investigation into something like overcoming indigenous disadvantage in New Zealand. It would require significant resources. It would require the blessing of the Minister at least. We feel very strongly that in the realpolitik world no such mandate would be given no such capacity would be allowed to the commission to do that necessary and useful work. 
It is interesting that there is no definition of productivity in the bill and we know that that word is amenable to a whole range of definitions. In the briefing papers made available to the select committee there was a notion that productivity was intended to be defined broadly to capture effectiveness efficiency and innovation. Clearly innovation is a critical factor in turning round our economy in creating more well-being and in getting some sustainable growth. Productivity is one of the issues that will inform that. Innovation can come from large organisations. It very often comes from quite small very tight well-driven and well-managed organisations. There are lots of examples of it within the small-business enterprise sector. 
John Hayes 
: Get on with it. 
DAVID CLENDON 
: I tell Mr Hayes that 10 minutes has been allotted. I understand his enthusiasm to leave but I ask him to please bear with me. 
There are some inspired tinkerers in this country. We have the likes of Mr John Britten the late-lamented Mr Britten. There have been numerous examples where very talented individuals have created opportunities have created work and have created benefits in this country. 
In talking about the need for the commission it is interesting to reflect on some of the statistics about labour productivity that came from Statistics New Zealand earlier this year. It is interesting to note that between 1986 and 2008 New Zealand’s labour productivity overall grew faster than Australia’s to the extent that New Zealand over that time saw something like 2.5 percent growth in labour productivity whereas in Australia it was 2.1 percent. 
When one drills down into those numbers a little one finds the trap of “averaging” of course. We know that New Zealand’s productivity grew 3.2 percent a year compared with Australia’s 2 percent between 1986 and 1996. The situation reversed somewhat from 1996 to 2008 where New Zealand’s labour productivity dropped to 1.9 percent and grew in Australia to some 2.3 percent. We can engage with some of the potential explanations for that turn-round and they have been touched on earlier this evening—for example the fact that in the 1980s we saw massive unemployment emerge in this country. That is one way to increase productivity but it is not a useful way it is not a sustainable way and it is not a way we ought to emulate or go back to. 
Peter Maire former chief executive of Navman one of New Zealand’s major technology company successes has identified the value of and the fact that the old Public Service the old much-maligned Public Service actually had a major role in providing skills for the economy. A great many of the people we now find working on superyachts and in the manufacture of high-quality superyachts in New Zealand owe their basic training to the Navy. There are still people in senior positions in Telecom in Gen-i who did their basic training with the old Post Office. Nowhere in our economy have we got those same large-scale training grounds. That is leading to a fall-off in our skills base especially in the technology area. 
In the 1990s in New Zealand—about the point that the relative growth in productivity changed between New Zealand and Australia—there was a deliberate and sustained effort to drive down incomes in New Zealand to cut salaries wages and benefits. At the same time Australia invested heavily in labour programmes and in easing out and building strength into the economy in a way that did not happen in New Zealand. 
I have made the point that we know what some of the solutions to the problem are already. We do not need long-winded investigations. At this point it is hard to see the necessity to establish an organisation that is dedicated to finding out what the problem is. We already know what many of the problems are. Under-investment in research is a major difficulty in this country. We continue to be burdened. Our education sector has a millstone around its neck which is called the Performance-based Research Fund. It rewards academics who do research that can get published in esoteric international journals but it positively punishes academics who do work that is of practical value here in New Zealand. Academics who undertake practical grounded research that informs practice in New Zealand are not rewarded whilst academics who do esoteric research get published in a journal that may be read by 20 people around the world—that is being rewarded in a way that other things are not. 
I will comment briefly on the appointment of the chair of the commission. We do wonder why the Government would appoint a chair before the legislation has been passed. That man has a long and honourable career; he has a 35-year career in the Public Service. But one wonders why the Government would put at the head of a commission that will require new thinking innovation and engagement critically with the private sector and with the business sector a person who is heading towards the end of his career with 35 years in the Reserve Bank Treasury and briefly in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Where is the skill set that will develop a culture of innovation of challenge? Because that critically is what a Productivity Commissioner will need. It will need someone who will push the boundaries—who will break the boundaries. With all due respect to a long and honourable career in the Public Service that is not where I would have gone searching for such a leader. For those many reasons we will not support the bill. 
HILARY CALVERT (ACT) 
: 
 It is with great pleasure that I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. This bill is a direct result of the confidence and supply agreement between ACT and National. I look forward to seeing this bill pass and the commission begin its work in 2011. 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is with pleasure that I commend the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill to the House tonight. Thank you. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It is an honour to be here in front of such an appreciative audience tonight. It is quite interesting from this side of the House to reflect upon which National members are here tonight. I know that I cannot reflect upon who is not here tonight but it is quite interesting to reflect upon who is here tonight and where they might fit in certain different factions within that party. We also have those sitting on the front bench which is perhaps a window to the future of the National Government. Sandra Goudie finally has been recognised and promoted to the front bench—it has finally happened. At the other end of the front bench we have Tau Henare. Finally his merit and effort have been recognised once more. He is in Judith Collin’s seat on the front bench. He is replicating Judith’s hard-hitting fighting style. No he is actually dead—oh no he is alive. There he is he has come back. 
With regard to the Productivity Commission I must say what a productive Opposition we are tonight. If we look at Labour’s input on this side versus our output we see that we are a very productive Opposition. I am not sure about the Government members over there though; there are a lot of people there. I understand that for those members of the Government who have to stay in Wellington tonight and are not able to get home there is a party at Chris Finlayson’s house. A party is happening at Chris Finlayson’s house tonight as it is every night. That is what is happening tonight. 
I am very pleased to speak on the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: We’ve got families to go home to. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: So have I I say to Mr Henare—so have I. I tell Mr Henare that I can speak very slowly for a very long time. This bill is excellent legislation. On this side of the House we are very proud to support it. I give credit in particular to the Ministers involved Rodney Hide and Bill English and to my colleague Lianne Dalziel the chair of the Commerce Committee. They have done an excellent job in bringing this bill before the House. 
There is much in this bill that I would like to see changed. But in principle the idea that we might have a Productivity Commission in New Zealand is a very good one because productivity challenges have bedevilled this country for a very long time. Despite setting up a Productivity Commission—I ask Mr Henare whether there is any gin in the glass he has just given me; I also ask whether those members over there have blankets—there is still no plan for productivity though is there? There is still no plan for productivity from this Government. There is still no plan to increase skills. There is still no plan to invest in research. 
The Government has managed to get the commission up and running but there is nothing for the commission to do is there if it is about the agenda from that side of the House. Members on this side of the House proposed amendments tonight that would have improved this commission. They would have put a social partnership model in the bill. That would have had Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions at the table but those amendments were rejected tonight by the National Government. The amendments were rejected because those members are not here for a social partnership. They are not here to build the productive economy with those people at the table. It is the big end of town or no one if it is from that side of the House. 
This Productivity Commission deserves a durable model. It deserves to have a model a mandate and terms of reference that will survive the inevitable end of this Government and the arrival of a Labour Government. That is what this Productivity Commission should look like. At the moment it lacks some key elements. It lacks an ability for social partners to be at the table. It lacks the broad mandate it needs to allow it to undertake practical productive projects. 
Hon Hekia Parata 
: We’re talking about the bill now. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I am talking about the bill I say to Ms Parata. That is right I can do this all night. The Productivity Commission is indeed a great idea but it lacks the mandate and the terms of reference that would allow it to undertake practical projects in the productivity area. 
The Productivity Commission also lacks the mandate to spread out to look at a range of issues beyond those that members on that side of the House might want it to look at at the moment. I share the concern that David Clendon raised about the lack of a focus on environmental sustainability. 
Chester Borrows 
: You don’t sound concerned. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: The sow crate is outside I say to Chester. It is OK; the member can go out there now. We on this side of the House also have the concern that the Productivity Commission needs to be able to look at issues of environmental sustainability. The Australian Productivity Commission is the model and that is what it is able to do. It has produced a series of independent reports. That is exactly what the New Zealand body should be able to do. 
Labour has concerns about the membership of the commission. We have concerns about that because as Lianne Dalziel has pointed out the process for the appointment of the chair has not been a good one. Murray Sherwin is a very competent public servant but he is not the person who will be ambitious for New Zealand—he will not be the person to drive the economy forward and close the wage gap with Australia. The National Government needed to be far more inventive than that. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who is? Andrew Little? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Well it will not be Tau Henare. One thing I can say is that it will not be Tau Henare. This commission needs people on it who are reflective of New Zealand and New Zealanders beyond the big end of town bringing the social partners to the table. That is what will make this Productivity Commission work. 
Members on this side of the House can support the bill and say that yes this is a good idea. This is something that Rodney Hide and Lianne Dalziel have worked on extensively together; this is something that we can all believe will do good things for us. But to be a durable model—to be something that will survive changes of Government—it needs a broader mandate. It needs to be an inclusive commission and we will be watching very closely to make sure that happens. 
In conclusion I say that it has been a rare pleasure to be greeted by the National caucus in such great numbers tonight. Those members’ enthusiasm for the Productivity Commission— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Spirited. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: —that is right—knows no bounds whatsoever. Even Paul Quinn has woken up. This has been a fine occasion a fine evening and as the clock ticks past 9 o’clock Labour has achieved its goal. 
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
: 
 I think that a very productive speech should be of high quality and delivered in a short period of time. The previous speaker Grant Robertson failed on both but he did try hard. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House. Thank you very much. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 81 
New Zealand National 58; New Zealand Labour 18; ACT New Zealand 4; United Future 1. 
Noes 4 
Green Party 4. 
Bill read a third time. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Members before I close the House I am sure you would all like me to say thank you on your behalf to the Hansard reporters the Clerk’s officers the messengers Bellamy’s staff security officials and everyone else. On behalf of the presiding officers I would like to thank all members for their good humour and perseverance. I wish you all a safe trip home. 
The House adjourned at 9.05 p.m. (Saturday)