O'Rourke Denis: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 24 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2504. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First supports these various bills arising from the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). The most important one for me concerns Official Information Act requests. Amendments were made to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 and to the Official Information Act 1982 which would allow official information applications to be made orally. This is important for people who are not comfortable doing things in writing—it can be a huge barrier for many people including the elderly dyslexic people and people who can express themselves orally but struggle doing anything like this in writing. It can be a barrier for people for whom English is not a first language. Often they cannot write English very well but can usually make themselves understood orally. Also it is a barrier for sight-impaired people—and the list goes on.The point here is that access to official information is an important human right—a very important human right—so it must not be compromised by official bureaucracy or obstructed in any way. Indeed Government agencies and local government need to be proactive in assisting people to get the information they need. I am sad to say that I do not think that that is the case often enough in New Zealand at the present time. I would also have to say sadly that local government—some but not all councils—is in fact the worst offender.Like many other people I have had personal experience of this. Christchurch City Council has been one of the worst offenders. My personal experience relates to information that I tried to get perfectly reasonably concerning that council’s recycling operations a couple of years ago. It was perfectly clear that it had something to hide and it was going to use the rules under the legislation to try to avoid giving the information that was being requested. It went to extraordinary lengths to do that.That leaves people in the position of having to take the time and effort to go to the Ombudsman but the Ombudsman of course has only relatively limited power which is I think far too easily disregarded by councils. The Ombudsman’s determinations are not properly acted upon in many cases. So I want to use this occasion to say how disgusted I have been with the Christchurch City Council over its handling of official information requests in the past. We as members of Parliament need to take a great deal more interest in this because far too many people in this country have too much difficulty in getting the information they are entitled to. The whole area needs more review and people need easier ways to hold both Government agencies and local government to account over the many and various ways they have of avoiding their official information obligations.This legislation by its nature is limited in how far it can go for that purpose but it does make a minor yet very worthwhile step forward by making it clear that official information requests under both of those principal Acts can be made orally and must be acted upon. But the amendment also now says that local authorities or agencies may then request that oral requests be put in writing. So again councils and agencies may just always do that as a matter of course. They may abuse that provision. Thus a request for a written version would be open to abuse if a local authority or agency actually did want to be obstructive. As I have said too many do just that.I am glad to see that one of the amendments in the legislation now makes a request for an application to be converted into writing conditional allowing the request for a written version only if it is reasonably necessary for the purpose of clarifying it. I am glad to see that is now in the legislation. Putting a request in writing should be necessary only in an extreme minority of cases. I for one will be watching and listening to see whether Government agencies and councils actually obey the clear intent of the legislation so that when applications are made orally there is a request to put them in writing only for the purpose of clarifying the question not for the purpose of conducting some kind of exercise in delaying or obfuscating the request.I expect the Ombudsman will be watching that closely too. The message to Government agencies and local government has to be to watch out—the first step is being taken to avoid this kind of abuse and people are watching. Those agencies and those councils need to toe the line. But as far as this legislation is concerned there is now a satisfactory balance between unclear applications and the right of the applicant to rely on an oral request. That is the way it is in the law; we now want to see that that is operated satisfactorily in practice.Finally as for the dozens of other minor or technical changes made in this pretty large piece of legislation and the various Acts it concerns we in New Zealand First think they are all sensible changes and so we will be happy to vote for the legislation as a whole.