Brownlee Gerry; Robertson GrantHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): I want to speak to a number of points that are covered in amendments that have been introduced by the Opposition recognising that while the Minister in the chair continues to say this is a simple technical change to the bill a simple moving of dates in order that things might be done more properly that doesn't of itself in any way diminish the importance of a bill that changes the way an Officer of Parliament is required to operate. While I heard a number of people yesterday from the Government's side saying Oh but it's COVID-19" COVID-19 has become code for "Don't look at anything we're doing; just look at COVID-19 and feel fear." I think it's in this case a little unreasonable given that we have had a full 12 months of activity where there has been no nationwide lockdown and there has been an economy growing as the Minister in the chair likes to so often tell us at a huge rate. That doesn't tend to support the view that there is somehow a pressure being brought on the Auditor's Office that was not foreseen. Clearly the Auditor looks at stats the Auditor looks at trends and the Auditor should have known that his staffing situation might have led to a situation like this. I can't in all honesty believe that there was no notification from the Officer of Parliament to the Officers of Parliament Committee or to the Speaker who is effectively the Audit Office's Minister. So there are a number of things here that are a little concerning in that regard.If all of that were to be set aside the bill itself is a blanket bill: the progress that's made with any particular audit is at the choice of the Office of the Auditor-General. I don't think that's particularly acceptable. If the bill had come along and there'd been some negotiation and some better understanding across the House of why the Audit Office has failed in its duties to appoint where they've had to come to Parliament to ask for this particular provision it may well have been that there could have been a negotiation about which entities that would normally have to be audited in the two financial years inside the prescribed dates of the existing legislation could be extended on a case-by-case basis. And that hasn't happened. Instead we've got a situation where the Auditor himself and his office will choose who gets put to the back of the queue and I know that there was at one point a list floating round that looked like a priority but what if there is some sort of a blip in that sort of arrangement? It would have been far better to ensure that the bigger organisations are definitely reported inside the current statutory reporting period and perhaps some of the smaller ones or those that are not of such significant financial impact to our economy might have been put into this category with the extra two months.This part sees an amendment in my name that would amend section 5(a) to add the words "however subsection (5) does not apply to the Christchurch City Council and its council-controlled organisations". What does that mean? It means that inside the statutory period the Christchurch City Council should be audited. And the question will come from some "Well why?" Well it goes back to that point about priorities. This is a council that has inflicted runaway levels of rates on its citizens and has a large portfolio of entities that are not easily seen as adding value to the city. Now I can see some people over there sort of smiling because they don't mind that sort of thing. They think it's OK to go to electorates with substantially fixed-income families and say "Here's another 8 or 9 percent on your rates." That's if you include the regional council stuff as well. Here's some extra charges going on entities' costs. That's unreasonable and it should be reported inside the statutory period.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you Madam Chair. I'll take the opportunity to respond to a number of the points that Mr Brownlee has raised in his most recent intervention firstly to repeat what we talked about a number of times in Part 1 of the justification for this. So Mr Brownlee points to the fact that we haven't had lockdowns and he's obviously correct about that in recent times; however as he pointed out in one of his speeches in Part 1 we do continue to have border restrictions and they are one—but only one—of the factors that the Auditor-General drew to our attention in asking for this extension. The other of those is the global shortage of auditors and indeed the Australasian shortage which we talked about last night which includes over a thousand vacancies in Australia and over 200 vacancies for auditors in New Zealand. Then the third reason being the staff turnover issue within the Audit Office.I do have further information about that for members including the fact that the Audit Office has I am advised advertised for audit roles 11 times since 1 January has recruited eight staff from that advertising—that since the beginning of March they have lost 41 audit staff. In 2020 if you want to compare 18 left at the same period; 41 since the beginning of March. And they have recruited 14 in that period. Forty-one gone 14 recruited in that period of time. So that's the third of the reasons that have been put forward.Hon Gerry Brownlee: What's that percentage of staff?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Their operational staff of 235—sorry there were 235 in February 2021 and there are now 208. There were 235 in February; there are now 208. So that is the third of the reasons that the Auditor-General put forward as his reasoning for wanting us to undertake this work. So that's to respond to that point of Mr Brownlee intervention.In terms of his intervention about whether or not this was known about as I said again last night the information I have is that the Auditor-General appeared before the Officers of Parliament Committee on 11 March and indicated at that time that audit fees which is what essentially pays for the staff that we're talking about would need to increase to maintain the competitive pay structure within the office. I'm not a member of that committee so I'm not in a position to be able to judge what happened or what response came from the Officers of Parliament Committee. What I do know is that as the Minister of Finance I have been asked by the Auditor-General and Cabinet has agreed to put this legislation up to make a modest and small change to allow all audits to be completed in a robust fashion by the end of the year.My final point in response to Mr Brownlee was his urging for a cross-party way of dealing with this and indeed that is precisely the process that we went through. It's what led the Auditor-General to write on 2 July to myself and Mr Bayly beginning his letter with "Thank you for indicating your support for legislative change to address the current shortage of auditors." So that's a letter to me and Mr Bayly thanking us for the indication of our support; obviously things changed along the way. In that same letter the Auditor-General runs through the prioritisation process that he intends and we covered this last night as well but I'll mention it again. He has said that within the normal statutory deadlines he expects all essential Government entities to be completed with their audits including the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and other large organisations all of the financial markets conduct reporting entities—and for the benefit of Mr Brownlee larger councils; for example Christchurch City Tauranga City Wellington City Dunedin City and others. So the Auditor-General has given an assurance that those entities are the ones that he will be prioritising.Again to recap last night's discussion I simply do not believe it is appropriate for Parliament to be at that level of detail deciding which entities get audited and don't and I again put to Mr Brownlee and others the counterfactual that given the majority that the Government holds in this House if we were to start deciding which entity we wanted audited or not there would be a considerable reaction to that. We should have trust and faith in the Officers of Parliament. This piece of legislation should have been able to go through the House reasonably rapidly last night but instead we have had an extended debate which I think members may choose to reflect on in the future about how they are talking about and how they are treating an Officer of Parliament. This has come to this Parliament because the Auditor-General has asked us to do that. There are questions that rightly the Officers of Parliament Committee may well ask but actually this debate is a relatively simple one to extend the time frames."