Cosgrove Clayton: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cosgrove Clayton: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 November 2012. Volume:686;Page:6926. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) 
: 
 This bill the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill is a serious piece of legislation. I begin by referencing the last couple of sentences of the previous speaker Todd McClay where he talked about the need to improve financial flexibility by encouraging innovation. That of itself is a worthy principle until you look at the other parts of this bill. 
My colleague Chris Hipkins has talked about the truncation and contraction of parliamentary scrutiny. That is about financial flexibility all right. That is about innovation. That is about this Government trying to be innovative with the figures and flexible with the truth and to contract the right of Parliament and select committees to scrutinise how public funds are spent and the financial performance of departments and to cut it down. 
Chris Hipkins referenced a very interesting point that normally these changes—where you change how select committees operate—are made through the Standing Orders Committee. Why are they made through the Standing Orders Committee? Well I will just reference that eminent book by David McGee  
Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand 
. The reason you have a Standing Orders Committee unlike a Chamber process where we are partisan and we do divide is that “The committee”—that is the Standing Orders Committee—“operates by endeavouring to find a consensus on its proposals rather than these being merely the recommendations of a majority of the committee.” By that David McGee means that when proposals go to change the Standing Orders the processes of the Chamber and by definition its select committees there is buy-in generally by the overwhelming majority if not all the parties in this Parliament. We buy into it because it is an appropriate thing to do. 
I want to take the people of New Zealand who might be listening through a little bit of the parliamentary process because not many people are au fait with what we do on select committees. There are two opportunities to scrutinise a department and a Minister on how they appropriate and for what purpose they appropriate public funds and then through a financial review process to examine that department as to how it has utilised those funds and how it has performed and met outcomes and objectives. Normally a select committee—and members on this side of the House from all parties will know this—gets about an hour in the Budget process in the appropriations process. It is about an hour because the majority rules. Normally you get an hour to examine those appropriations when the Minister who is responsible for them is in the chair. You get an hour. That hour is normally made up of—and National Ministers are very professional at it—a good 10 or 15 minutes’ worth of presentation. Judith Collins I remember was fond of coming into the Law and Order Committee with guns and drugs—David Clendon will remember this—and all sorts of paraphernalia including pepper spray. I think she was going to use it on a couple of her colleagues. She would take up half an hour of the process with a sort of sound and light show. So you are left with 45 minutes. Of those 45 minutes the Government takes about a third of that and the Opposition whose day it is to actually scrutinise the appropriations gets about 20 to 30 minutes of the whole process. So for the people of New Zealand who are listening that is all your Opposition representatives get because you know damn well that the Government—apart from John Hayes who has become a specialist on the select committee in asking some very penetrating questions on behalf of the Opposition the few we feed to him and he brasses his chairman Todd McClay off a bit—will leave you with about 20 or 30 minutes to hold a Minister a department and the Government to account. 
Then later in the year around September or October a similar process happens with 1 hour—no Minister because it is the financial review process—to look at what the Government and the department have done with the dough. Again there are about 50 minutes—10 minutes of a presentation then the Government has a crack and there are about 30 minutes left to actually hold the Government to account. So that gives you about an hour in the whole 12-month financial year. What these guys want to do is combine both those processes. Are they saying there is going to be double time to actually examine the votes and combine them into one process not using the David McGee principle of going through the Standing Orders Committee where there is general consensus with a proper process to change the Standing Orders? Oh no they want to create to quote Todd McClay improved financial flexibility and to encourage innovation. Oh yes this is a huge innovation because it allows a Government and every Minister and through the Minister the chief executive and the department to abrogate their responsibility to front up so that this Parliament through its select committee process can examine them hold their feet to the fire ask questions that they must answer in front of journalists and the public and be accountable for the money they spend and appropriate. 
In respect of this Government if you look at say State-owned enterprises and the legislation that Tony Ryall championed we now have State-owned enterprises taken out of public scrutiny. No Official Information Act request is applicable to those State-owned enterprises that are on the block to be sold. There are no parliamentary questions no select committee process and no Ombudsman—a complete lack of parliamentary scrutiny even though at the very least the taxpayer may if they are lucky end up retaining 51 percent of those State-owned enterprises. 
We know also that this Government when it comes to Official Information Act requests has broken every protocol. We know there are a record number of complaints before the Ombudsman. You cannot get out of these geniuses even a list of the reports they have received even the titles. They will not offer those. They will not provide those. The best example is actually Hekia Parata who on the options paper for closing schools in Canterbury simply refused day after day and week after week to release that information because she said it was not germane to those schools. Well those schools and those communities believed absolutely that it was germane because they wanted to know the rationale—or lack of rationale—and logic behind Hekia Parata’s decision to put the axe through them. 
This is very very important legislation and we oppose it on those grounds. We do not as the last speaker said as he sort of sprayed across the House think that if we oppose this we are against efficiency in the Public Service. Rubbish! The way you get better productivity better professionalism and better accountability is through openness transparency and scrutiny and through asking the Ministers the chief executives and the boards of these entities the tough questions on what they did what they achieved why they messed up and how they executed the public funds that the taxpayer provided to them. You get about 2 hours a year to do it and a few questions which they bat around. This crew should stand up and justify why that is and why it wants to halve that process combine it and truncate it so there is less scrutiny. 
We are going to have the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery before a select committee—it is rather an important portfolio for people down my way and for people in New Zealand as a whole—to front up with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority for the financial review. Again we are going to get 1 hour to put him through his paces to try to get some questions answered in respect of what is happening and what is not happening down in Christchurch. If this legislation goes through next year when it receives the Royal assent the following year that process will be truncated and halved. That is not on— 
John Hayes 
: What about question time? 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: What about question time? 
John Hayes 
: What about the Official Information Act? 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: You see there you go. Mr Hayes says “What about the Official Information Act?” and “What about question time?”. Well here is what we have. At the moment Mr Hayes we have question time we have the Official Information Act and we have the added scrutiny of select committees which he may not value. Mr Hayes says: “Halve the select committee process. Halve the scrutiny. You guys should be satisfied as taxpayers. Taxpayers should be satisfied because there is question time and there is the Official Information Act.” Well the problem with the Official Information Act of course as we have said is that the Ombudsman is buried in Official Information Act complaints because Mr Hayes’ Ministers will not front up with information—will not front up— 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Or money. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —or money—and Hekia Parata and her holding back of the options paper on the schools in Christchurch is an example of that. For Mr Hayes a few questions each day in Parliament and the odd Official Information Act request which his Ministers can bat around delay and refuse is enough scrutiny for him. That is enough scrutiny. This is the man of course who said of the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme when his Government lost about $500 million on behalf of the taxpayer “That’s loose change.” These guys have to stand up and we want to know why they want to truncate our right on behalf of the people to scrutinise this Government. 
Denise Roche 
: Mr Speaker—