Martin Tracey: Urgent Debates — Teachers and Support Staff Payroll—Ministerial Inquiry into Novopay SystemText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Urgent Debates — Teachers and Support Staff Payroll—Ministerial Inquiry into Novopay System[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10649. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. This would be a comedy of errors if it was not so serious. This is not funny and it is a shame to have Ministers stand up in this House and as has been said several times already pass the buck. They passed the buck to officials. They passed the buck to the Labour Government. They passed the buck to school staff. I think that was the lowest lowest part of this conversation. Part of the problem has been that this was a money-saving exercise. We have not seen the end of it yet. I agree with my counterpart Mr Hipkins that this is the third time or fourth time that Mr Joyce has mentioned the complexity of the pay scale structure inside our schools. Can I just say that when an IT system is developed the machines serve us. The machines are supposed to serve us. We are not supposed to change how we do something to make it easier for the machine. When we move to that part of the world then I hope I am not in it.So one of the suggestions at the beginning of this process was that it was actually the front-line payroll staff who were too dim to actually input the data correctly. Not only was no training offered to payroll staff not only did they then halfway through this process show up to training and have to teach the Talent2 people what they were doing but the suggestion was made in this House by an elected Minister that it was payroll staff who were the problem. Yet ultimately the reason why a Minister stands and answers questions as the Minister responsible is that they are responsible. The buck stops there. That is why they get paid all those bucks. The buck stops there.When I first stood for election one of the things I said in a public meeting was to elect somebody who reads the stuff. Elect people who read the documents that they are going to make decisions on. Then elect a person who when they do not understand something that is written in those documents has the courage to ask: “What does that mean?”. Elect someone who has the courage to say as a Minister: “Explain this to me again. That doesn’t make sense to me. Bring in somebody else who can make this clear to me.” At the end of the day this is ministerial responsibility. There are Ministers here who need to take responsibility. They need to do that for the New Zealand public and they need to do that for the staff who have been insulted through this process. They need to do that for the staff who are like the young first-year teacher down in Tauranga who lost her flat and had to move back in with her mum and dad because she did not get paid for the whole first 6 months of this year. Ministers need to take responsibility for the staff member who has a $17000 accumulation of overpayments sitting over here waiting for the debt collector to bang on his door while his wife has not been paid for 3 months. The Ministers need to take responsibility for that stress. It is very easy to do that and to say: “It was my call and I was wrong. I was wrong. I apologise. I am sorry.” We did not hear Mr Joyce say sorry. We heard Mr Joyce say thank you. He said: “Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your time. Thank you to all the people working hard behind the scenes to put the patches on.” But we did not hear him say sorry. We have not heard an unconditional apology from anybody. I know it is the hardest word to say but it actually gets you the furthest along the track and that is all the staff want.This Government is exceptionally lucky that teachers love children and love their jobs and are committed to their work because any other industry would have walked off. Any other industry would have thrown it in and said: “Until you pay us properly we’re not going to do this any more.” But these people did not do that. These citizens stayed in the classroom and all they ask for now is first for somebody to take responsibility and truly say sorry; secondly that you do not muck around with their payroll system until you get this one right; and thirdly they want recognition that it is still broken. The bank staffing which Mr Hipkins referred to is not going to wash out for another 12 months. When the headlines over this issue have gone it will be another 12 months before schools may have to end up fronting with cash to the ministry because of the payroll stuff-up around this and the ministry will have to take it from their operations grant.There are several several things wrong with what has gone on and we know it and we need to move on and we need to move forward. But there is obviously something wrong with the relationship between the Ministers involved here and the ministry and that is probably more serious. If the ministry does not feel confident or brave enough to say to the Minister that “This is wrong and we can’t do this any more.” and that “Yes we’ve spent $10 million but to spend another $23.9 million trying to patch up a system that is terribly broken would be a mistake.” then we have got an issue. The Minister must allow people to come into his or her office and give him or her the truth. Whichever Minister it is must be able to let those officials come in and provide the truth even when it is bad news. Then we need to take the steps to make it right for the mass for the citizens inside our schools.There are many recommendations inside the report and it will take some time to digest. I hope that most of the recommendations will be listened to but I would strongly urge the Minister who now has oversight for this issue to please talk with the sector stop fixing it away from them stop siloing it off and actually go and see them and have them input into the solutions. Do not use it as a doorway to change the pay scales. Do not use it as a doorway to save more money. Do not use it as a doorway to change anything else because you do not have a lot of—I beg your pardon Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister does not have a lot of trust now and any attempt to change the structure of pay to hide what are actually fundamental errors with a base computer system will do nothing to restore it. We have patch upon patch upon patch on this program. So even when we fix all the backlog problems and we are running at say only about 23 errors per pay period it is full of patches. We are going to have to do this all again. This is not a clean program. This is not going to be the end of the issue. We now have a base program with several errors that is being patched over the top. It is not the best practice when it comes to an IT system and I would suggest that in the next 5 years we are going to be looking at another one.