Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well that was certainly not Churchillian. There might have been a number of other labels that former speech from the previous speaker could have got.I'm going to focus on something positive with this Annual Reporting and Audit Time Frames Extensions Legislation Bill. The positive—and I've spent a bit of time thinking about this—I've found in it is that actually at long last we are now in July of 2021 and the Government has realised there are skills shortages out in New Zealand. Their management of immigration and in allowing for skilled people to come into New Zealand—it's finally dawned on them that it's a real issue. The rest of us have been saying this for months. I don't know about other members but it is certainly coming through my door. I've got business after business coming in and saying I can't get the people I need. I can't get the people I need because the Government won't allow these people across the border."So now we end up with the Auditor-General's office that suddenly doesn't have enough auditors to carry out their audits. This won't have happened overnight; this will have been coming for quite some time. Why wasn't it managed properly? Well we'll have to sheet that back to the Minister and it wasn't the Minister that was in the chair previously; it's actually the Speaker of the House who has that responsibility. So that has to go back to the Speaker. One of the tenets of managing anything is to ensure you're on top of all of the resources that you should have to deploy—not you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not the Speaker.STUART SMITH: Any manager does. But this hasn't happened on this occasion and we're now here going through urgency yet again on a piece of legislation that wouldn't have been needed if they had been on top of their game but they weren't.I'll go back to one of the things that I think is really important about this bill. If an entity such as the Climate Change Commission who is about to go to court through a judicial review challenging their processes—if there are delays in their audit I think there could be very serious things that are being overlooked. We just simply don't know of course. I don't have any great suspicions but there could be. What entities are they not going to audit in a timely manner? We don't know. We don't know about a whole lot of things that could actually be very serious for New Zealand. This is a serious issue. In relation to the Climate Change Commission one of their commissioners is also a research fellow with an entity that is a major contractor to the Climate Change Commission. I would love to know what's gone on there. All of—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! STUART SMITH: —the audit procedures would—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Well I was going to bring the member back to the bill but he pre-empted me. Thank you.STUART SMITH: You're welcome Madam Speaker. Well sometimes it takes a little while to fill the story out. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Well not too long. STUART SMITH: But actually all of the processes that go on behind the scenes that is exactly what an auditor would look at in an audit of the Climate Change Commission. Any other entity could be the same. This is something we must have confidence in. It's an entity whose decisions are going to impact everybody's—well not their decisions but their recommendations are going to impact everybody's lives. We have to have confidence in that. How can we have confidence in it if we aren't sure that they've been audited in a timely manner? I've put up a tabled amendment to ensure that they were exempted from this bill but unfortunately it didn't get past the Government who decided not to allow it. Chris Bishop: Very frustrating.STUART SMITH: It's very frustrating and other entities will be the same. You know if we look at the councils which of those are going to go off the list and how does the Auditor-General choose because quite likely the surprises will be exactly that—surprises. It won't be the ones you suspect. Chris Penk: No you don't know until you audit them. STUART SMITH: Not until you audit them. Maureen Pugh: The smaller ones without the staff. STUART SMITH: Well all of the businesses that I have coming in my door can't get skilled staff. There's been a deaf ear turned from Government—"Just pay more." Well perhaps if they'd paid more for the Office of the Auditor-General for staff they wouldn't have lost all their staff to the big four audit companies. It's an essential service that has to be done here. Everybody else has to manage with the resources they have and so should the Auditor-General's office. The Minister responsible has been asleep at the wheel and we're all paying for it."