SpeechDr JIAN YANG (National): This legislation is a once-in-a-generation update of the legal framework governing the foundation and operations of the Public Service in New Zealand. I was very much impressed at State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes' stories about the evolution of New Zealand's Public Service. I shared a vision of many people for New Zealand Public Service and that is a streamlined modern agile and adaptive Public Service. Make no mistake: New Zealand Public Service still performs very well by international standards. Nevertheless we believe the State Sector Act 1988 has its limits. So we need a new Act which will be able to serve us not only for today but also for tomorrow. So that is why we are having these particular bills.National supports many changes to the legislation to update basically the legal framework. For instance National supports the changes to enable public servants to move more easily between department agencies. We also support provisions that enable departmental joint ventures so as to better tackle challenges that transcend individual Government departments.Now we say that we support many changes including the cultural change that would enable public servants to feel that they belong to one particular system they are part of one particular system regardless of which agency they work for. So this bill will have far-reaching implications for our Public Service. And there is a strong public interest in this. For that reason we should not have rushed the process. Because we really rushed the process we now have concerns. National members of select committee tried time and time again to extend the report-back date so that we would be able to fully scrutinise this particular bill. However Government members of the committee declined our requests. Now our concern is because we do not have time to fully examine all the provisions this legislation will not be able to serve what it is supposed to achieve.I'll give you an example. A good example is New Zealand Human Rights Commission's concern. They are so concerned that the chief commissioner Paul Hunt wrote a letter to me saying that they are deeply concerned about this particular legislation in terms of the impact on human rights. Now I'll read the letter. This particular letter says As it should this bill expressly recognises the human rights of public officials. However it does not explicitly require or even encourage public officials when performing their duties to take into account the national and international human rights commitments repeatedly affirmed by New Zealand over many years." Originally they thought the committee would be able to make an amendment. But because the committee was not able to report on the bill and therefore the committee could not do anything then the chief commissioner wrote to the Minister asking for a Supplementary Order Paper. But then the Minister declined. So if the committee had the time to consider the bill more fully then we might be able to consider issues like this. But because we did not have time therefore we were not able to consider all these issues.So this is a good opportunity but we missed the good opportunity to make these bills better bills. For that reason I oppose the bills."