Goff Phil: State Sector Amendment Bill Public Finance Amendment Bill (No 2) Crown Entities Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: State Sector Amendment Bill Public Finance Amendment Bill (No 2) Crown Entities Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11931. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]State Sector Amendment BillPublic Finance Amendment Bill (No 2)Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):When we were last debating this legislation I made the point that the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill as introduced raised some serious concerns from the Labour Opposition. We opposed the first reading of the bill. What we were concerned about was how the bill as it was introduced would impact on employees. We are at a time of quite rapid change within the Public Service. That means that many people who had been loyal and devoted public servants have been at risk and have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and the bill as introduced had redundancy provisions that would have risked seriously disadvantaging people placed in that position. We raised concern too about the differential in terms of how people were treated if they were on a collective contract as opposed to an individual contract and we raised concerns about the Government’s proposal for workforce policy orders which would have had the impact of effectively being Orders in Council.I am pleased to report back to the House that as a result of the very good and very clear submissions made by stakeholders on this bill and the good work done in the Finance and Expenditure Committee—and I acknowledge the work done there by David Cunliffe—the committee actually listened to the Labour objections took those objections on board and altered the bill significantly. So we have a situation now where employees have retained their rights to redundancy payments when they are displaced from their employment other than when they are offered a job that is no less favourable than the one that they are currently in.We have a situation where with the sunset provisions those on collective contracts will have the same rights as those on individual contracts—they will not be disadvantaged—and we have a situation where the workforce policy statements as they are now known will allow existing legal and bargaining rights to be protected. I do welcome the flexibility of the select committee and in this case of the Minister in taking on board those points so that this legislation can receive wide support as it goes through the House. I only wish that that sort of flexibility and rationality was replicated on a lot of other bills that we have been considering.The principles set out in the legislation are fine but my question is given experience whether the principles set out in the legislation are actually just words on paper and the practice will be quite different. If you set out in the legislation very good provisions about how the Public Service will operate in future that is fine. We want a flexible innovative creative Public Service that is effective and efficient. The public servants themselves want that we want that and New Zealand wants that. We should acknowledge that we have a very good Public Service one that is politically neutral one that is effective and efficient and non-corrupt. But to maintain that you have to maintain the morale and you have to acknowledge the value that those public servants provide.It is all very well for the purpose clause to talk about a State sector system that meets its obligations on the part of the employer to the employees. But we have seen inpractice the exact opposite of that happening. Think back to the debacle of the reorganisation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade probably the most effective ministry that in 15 years as a Minister I have worked with. That ministry was gutted people unilaterally had stripped from them their rights and their working conditions and that sense of disillusionment resulted in a 19 percent attrition rate the highest in the history of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in the latest financial year.Think of the Defence Force where a thousand people have left the Defence Force—they have voted with their feet. Look at the way in which the civilianisation project was handled where people who had worked for the Defence Force for 25 years got these form letters saying: “We have measured you as having low potential.”—in capital letters. That is an absolute and gross insult to the people in the Defence Force and the cost we have paid is having the worst morale and the highest levels of attrition in the country. So let us put our principles into practice because that has not happened in the past.The other point that I would make is that this legislation talks about having the objective of clarifying the responsibilities of chief executives to their Ministers. I want to ask the question of the next Government speaker: what about the reciprocal responsibilities of the Minister to the chief executives? Why is it that Murray McCully can blame his chief executive who cannot argue back for the total botch-up in the reorganisation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade? That was ordered by the Government and the chief executive was hung out to dry. What about the Ministry for Primary Industries where the export of meat to China was jeopardised because the restructuring was again botched? And what do we have Nathan Guy doing? Blaming his officials. Once upon a time there was a principle of ministerial responsibility in the House. Let us get back to that. Let this Government take some responsibility. Let it put the principles of this bill into practice.