Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Chair and thank you to the Minister for answering some of my questions. The one that she might just come back to is around the strangulation support a cross-agency initiative of $20 million which was supposed to support 870 cases a year and has so far supported only 38 but this Budget has given another $8 million. The question I had was: how on earth could we be confident that this would help deal with what is a very significant problem and help victims but also help prosecution cases and why is there not much more progress being made? On the electoral law my basic question there was why she thinks it's a good idea that taxpayers should put in an extra $10 million for policy advice for the Ministry of Justice on a bill that is a partisan bill in our view which doesn't have widespread support in the House in relation to electoral finance given the fact that that applies to all parties and usual practice is to try to make some attempt to be more bipartisan when dealing with these issues.Some extra questions that she might also consider in relation to victims of crime—my colleague from the ACT Party Nicole McKee referred to the Victim Assistance Scheme. The real concern I had was that this initiative which in this Budget has $9.5 million provided by Victim Support and victims of crime—the information from the Ministry saying that By deliberately under-promoting the scheme the Ministry has worsened access to services to victims who already face other barriers". And I don't think I'd ever seen in my time in Parliament quite so baldly expressed notes from officials saying that we have a scheme that we know is no way large enough to cover all those victims of crime that could use it. Unfortunately there are a hundred thousand victims of crimes and unfortunately right here right now there are more victims of crime being created. The best thing we can do for them is to have effective justice and law and order policies that reduce the number of victims of crime. But when they are victims to have a scheme set up and then to underfund it and then to deliberately under-promote the scheme as Government policy—to deliberately under-promote the scheme—I thought was outrageous. I want to have an assurance from the Minister that she will change that approach forthwith if she hasn't already and that she will come up with a more effective way of ensuring that people are aware of the support that is available to victims of crime.Another final point that I wanted to make in relation to justice was that I was disappointed that out of the $39 million allocated for policy advice there doesn't appear to be any towards any review or update of the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). Given that the Prime Minister announced back in 2017 in the Speech from the Throne that she was interested in strengthening transparency around official information and we've traversed this earlier in the House I think it's relevant for the Minister to ask whether she thinks it is appropriate use of the OIA for Ministers to be saying that written material sent to them can lead to undesirable outcomes under the OIA and it's better to talk rather than write things down. And then we've had the Chief Ombudsman who's responsible for keeping an eye on these matters being concerned about media reports there. So my question there is—I do want to have some kind of assurance from the Minister that she is confident that the legislation currently in place is appropriate and if it is is it really just a matter of practice that is the issue? And we could come back to that.Finally I was a little bit concerned about her response to my question around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting processes for the two bills the Rotorua bill and the Canterbury bill which both had moved away from that basic democratic principle of equal voting rights for all New Zealanders. Part of our problem has been that the Government has refused to really front on the issue and explain it—they'll put out Rino Tirikatene and a fine man that he is but he is not a Minister—and it is the Ministry of Justice that writes those vets and so I'd like some answers from the Minister of Justice as to how good she thinks they are.Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Yeah thank you to the member again. Look whilst he might not be satisfied with the way that the process works it is a fact that the Attorney-General is responsible for New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets; therefore it's appropriate that he responds to that question and I'm sure you'll have the opportunity to ask that of him and I'm sure he will oblige.The member also raised a series of questions. Turning first to the Official Information Act (OIA) issues one of the things that the Prime Minister did say is that we would be ensuring that there are further and additional transparent processes by which the Government reports and ensures accessibility of information. I provided a range of different sums to the House during question time which I won't go over that do show that there has been a substantive uplift in terms of responsiveness and that in terms of timeliness I think it was in excess of 97 percent of questions that have been answered. Very few are coming back from the Ombudsman or have been found to be deficient. That's been a real focus of this Government and I went through a range of the different measures.With respect to that question on whether it's appropriate that a member of a parliamentary party who has dual roles ministerial and member of Parliament speaking with colleagues about how the OIA works—I consider that completely appropriate. There are times when members of Parliament caucus colleagues may not understand the delineation of ministerial and legislative roles. I don't think that that's an issue that's confined to either this individual Minister who is also a member of Parliament who is also a caucus colleague. I don't think that's a different position than any other party takes. That was confirmed by Nicola Willis this morning but I don't think we need confirmation of those types of things.I do think there is a genuine—from this side of the House and I think from both sides of the House but I know definitely from this side of the House that principle of accessibility for people to access information is a very genuine responsibility that each of us undertakes to uphold. It's certainly one that I've hoped that I've diligently upheld; it's something that we ensure that we do very diligently across Government. So I would not like to think that there were any aspersions cast upon correspondence to colleagues saying "Come and have a yarn if you don't understand how things work." And I don't think that is an issue to snigger at; I think that that's an important—Hon Michael Woodhouse: I'm not sniggering at it.Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: I'm just saying I don't think that that would be refuted in any political party. Come and have a yarn let us help you understand how things work because it's a genuine fact: not everybody understands what to do. That is our role as senior colleagues to assist others.With respect to—oh gosh I think it was the question you raised; you've asked me lots of questions and I'm taking poor notes—the political issue the $10 million for policy advice with respect to electoral law reform. One of the questions you asked was whether it was appropriate to allocate funds for electoral law reform where there wasn't unanimous agreement within the House. This particular reform has been the subject of Electoral Commission advice over many many years. We think it's completely appropriate where constitutional issues have been found where there has been a lack of any Government that's been willing to address those issues of access and equity for the reform of these electoral laws. I think it's a pity that the other side of the House aren't supporting these particular reforms because they do and will ensure that there is greater accessibility for people to participate in understanding the transparency of our political donations and those laws. And I would have thought particularly on the back of the member's questions about transparency of the way that we operate that there would have been greater consensus and agreement on these issues."