Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): The Green Party is very pleased to support this motion. The three Offices of Parliament serve our public our democracy extremely well and as Mr Iain Lees-Galloway has noted this is a major increase in the appropriation to invest significantly in the work of the Office of the Auditor-General and also to invest in the Office of the Ombudsman.I noticed in the report that the work that the Office of the Auditor-General is doing they noted that performance audits including of some quite significant organisations—some of those hadn't occurred for five years. So some of this additional $5.5 million will be used to undertake those performance audits and also to increase the timeliness of that work from the current period of about 10 to 11 months to undertake one of these quite comprehensive audits and reduce that to about nine months. It will be used to also develop new good practice guidance because the most recent guidance that the office had issued was in 2012—that will improve public engagement and the understanding of the agencies—and to invest in technology recognising that the current database for audits' status that the office uses is at least 10 years old.Similarly with the Office of the Ombudsman there's quite a significant $6 million increase in the appropriation. One of those key roles is in relation to human rights protecting human rights particularly through the Ombudsman's role in monitoring places of detention whether that be prisons Department of Corrections vans or private locked aged-care facilities. The Ombudsman's responsibility for that work was initiated in 2018 so it has been a significant increase and I think 17 new investigators will be appointed in the 2019-20 year and then another 18 in the subsequent two years. That role is really important. I noticed on the Ombudsman's website a media release reporting on the investigation at Hawke's Bay prison. The Ombudsman was noting that there had been significant progress as a result of that investigation in improving prisoners' safety but there's more work to do in relation to improving the conditions for remand and at-risk prisoners.Also of course the work of the Ombudsman's office in relation to the operation of the Official Information Act—one of the linchpins of our democracy one of the linchpins of good and democratic Government and ensuring that people are able to participate in decision making have good information about what decisions Government is making and therefore have respect for our democratic institutions. The role of the Ombudsman here in investigating declines by agencies and Ministers to release information and ensuring that our Government is responsive is efficient is effective and is accountable is a very important one. I think this increase in resource will go a significant way to improving the capability of the office there given that it has overcome the backlog that the Chief Ombudsman Mr Boshier inherited and he is now working with a target of ensuring that 70 percent of complaints are dealt with within three months.In terms of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment we have had three very good Parliamentary Commissioners for the Environment and a fourth good one now in the Hon Simon Upton. It's the smallest of the Offices of Parliament. It has the smallest budget but it has been responsible for some very significant reports. The Department of Conservation is about to embark on the largest ever predator control operation—over nearly a million hectares of conservation land 12 percent of the conservation estate—targeting rats and stoats and possums. It was a landmark report by the former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in 2011 which evaluated the use of 1080 and found that it was an effective and really critical tool and the former parliamentary commissioner called for greater use of that.Recently Mr Upton the parliamentary commissioner has done a very useful report on biodegradable and compostable packaging and again that highlights the invaluable role that the office provides in improving our system of environmental management providing independent advice to this Parliament and ensuring that our environment is in a better state. So I commend the work of all three of the offices and support the appropriation motion. Thank you.Motion agreed to and Address adopted.