Hughes Darren: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hughes Darren: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:12580] 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 I stand to support the motion moved by the Minister of State Services the Hon Annette King that the Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill be now read a first time. This bill amends legislation that we in the Labour Party have taken seriously for a long time: the need for there to be on our law books a legal protection for people who do want to be a whistleblower as it is often called. This legislation had its start in the 1990s when the Labour spokesperson on justice the Hon Phil Goff attempted to introduce a member’s bill to make sure there was a law in this area. That bill was not successful because Labour was in Opposition at that time and the then National Government voted it down. On Labour becoming the Government at the end of 1999 Trevor Mallard as Minister of State Services picked up the idea of having protected disclosures legislation and it was passed into law. Now we are coming back after the law has been in effect for some time to have a look at it. 
I know that students from Kirkwood Intermediate School from Christchurch are visiting Parliament today and I know that they are trying to learn as much as they can about Parliament. One of the great things about our House and our system of democracy is that we put a lot of trust into our elected officials. Through our elected officials we hire the public servants—all the people who work in the different Government departments and ministries across the country and in different areas of importance to New Zealanders. With that has to go a lot of trust because those people obviously have a lot of responsibility over all our lives and the lives of people in this country and all its communities. But we know that sometimes people do the wrong thing; when they are given responsibility sometimes that can be misused. If a person is working alongside somebody in an organisation sees a wrongdoing and thinks that the right thing should be done that person wants to have a way of speaking up about that and making sure that it can be put right. 
This Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill is all about making sure there is a system where people can safely raise the concerns they have but not get into trouble for doing that. The term “whistleblower” is used to describe a member of staff or a member of the public who sees something going wrong in an organisation he or she is connected with and wants to try to make sure that the right thing can happen. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Like a rotten Government. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: I am glad the Opposition member said that because one of the things this bill actually points out is how transparent and free of corruption our Public Service in New Zealand is. I think that one of the saddest things in politics in recent times has been the way in which some National members have thrown the word “corrupt” around this Chamber as though we lived in a country where we cannot trust our Government departments and political parties. I think that that reflected very badly on those members actually. Whenever international studies have come out that benchmark our institutions of State of Parliament and of Government departments against others around the world we are lucky in New Zealand that we always come out at the top of those surveys. I know that just recently the Ethics Research Center in Washington DC ranked New Zealand’s Public Service as the least corrupt in the world. 
That is a good thing but we have always to make sure that we have mechanisms in place to keep it that way—to keep our systems as good as they possibly can be. That is why we have bills like this to make sure that can happen. Also a big global organisation called Transparency International has always rated New Zealand as being one of the countries most free from corruption. I guess that whenever people travel have dealings in other countries and with different systems and try to negotiate their way through different regimes where there is not such an emphasis as the one we place on honesty transparency making sure that the truth is told and due process—the right thing being done by people—then we can see that because of those other countries where that does not happen to the same extent it makes us grateful that we live in this country. We have a small very robust democracy whereby people when they see things happening want to speak up about them. 
I think that this legislation is a good example of Labour’s quite long record of trying to bring legislation like this to Parliament over the last two decades. It has become very important under MMP as well that this bill can take— 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Spare us the political science lecture and focus on this bill. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: I hear Mr Finlayson interjecting. Well he is not allowed to take a call on this; he is allowed to take calls only on dry-as-dust bills that none of his colleagues want to speak about. So he has come down to the House for the next bill. But he is so self-obsessed that he cannot wait 5 minutes for someone else to speak in Parliament because the “Chris Finlayson Show” is about to start and he wants everybody to focus on that— 
Hon Annette King 
: On TV. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: —now that it is on television. But he will be so disappointed because he will have to wait a little bit longer while I speak about the virtues and the merits of this first reading of the bill. I am sorry to put the member through so much misery. 
Clearly the bill has two key parts. The first is to extend the number of people who are defined under the legislation—those who will be covered by it. I think that that makes it much clearer. Probably a fair criticism in the review that Mary Scholtens undertook was that people were not always sure how to use the legislation. So although it sat there on the statute book as a good idea and as something people would probably consider worthy it was not always apparent to people how they could access and use it or how the internal procedures for all the various forms of Government agencies were using it. Extending the legislation in the way the Minister is proposing will bring in a broader range of organisations and Crown entities and that should—hopefully—make it clearer for people. 
The other thing that is very important too is the expanded role of our Ombudsman. That is particularly important given the great role of trust Ombudsmen play from a parliamentary point of view appointed as they are as Officers of Parliament. My colleague Mr Jones made reference to the fact that we have just appointed a third Ombudsman in Dave McGee who will be taking up that position after he leaves his role as Clerk of the House next Thursday. A number of members of course will miss him in his current role but in moving to the new role of Ombudsman and in being an official Officer of Parliament he is taking on very important responsibilities on our behalf just as Ombudsmen do with regard to the complaints of prisoners. Ombudsmen receive a lot of complaints from prisoners who feel that some of their treatment while they are incarcerated is not within the spirit or intent of the law— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: No P and stuff like that. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: Sorry Mr Woolerton? 
R Doug Woolerton 
: No P. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: Ha ha!—and so Ombudsmen play that role now. We are expanding that role further along with their longstanding role under the Protected Disclosures Act and we are making the role much clearer in terms of what they can do. I think that is something that people would have to say is a worthy thing for our Ombudsman to do. I suppose the Government Administration Committee will look over some of the technical amendments in the bill and go through those roles the Ombudsman will be taking. 
The definition of “serious wrongdoing” is also an area the Minister outlined during her first reading speech. We could get into a situation I guess where an allegation of serious wrongdoing is made but when it is investigated it may not stand the ground for that test. So where does that leave people who are trying to invoke the Act? That is something that needs to be considered as well as also does the role of the New Zealand Defence Force which is coming into the bill for the first time. 
I think overall that the legislation will continue to develop and be of use to people. It had its origins as I said earlier with the situation at Lake Alice Hospital when Neil Pugmire as an employee saw things happening in the 1990s in the health system that he did not think were right. He attempted to bring those to the public’s attention and suffered as a result. That is what brought the issue to prominence when Mr Goff was interested in this issue which led Labour on becoming the Government to bring through legislation. 
Finally I guess that the other thing for us to reflect on as members of Parliament is that we are often in our constituency clinics in a similar role to that of the topic under discussion this afternoon. People bring to us examples of things they see happening in their communities their organisations or their workplaces—somewhere where they see taking place something they are concerned about. Of course we have the protection as members of Parliament in our elected capacity to be able to make inquiries which means that we can often act in this way. But in a complex system like the State sector there are obviously lots of things taking place that would not be reasonable for an elected member of Parliament always to know about. There are people who work far more closely and intimately in the State sector who may see situations where they feel they have to speak out—to “blow the whistle” so to speak. The amendment bill we have put forward to the House this afternoon on the principal Act will now just take that a step further and make sure we have protections for those people to ensure we have good government in New Zealand. I wish the Government Administration Committee well under the fine chairmanship of Shane Ardern and the deputy chairpersonship of Darien Fenton. 
Bill read a first time.  
Bill referred to the Government Administration Committee.