Hughes Gareth: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9844. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak in support of this motion. I think it is right that this should go to the Governor-General. We should see these appropriations and draft budgets be agreed to by His Excellency. It is important that the budgets of the three offices we are talking about the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General and the Office of the Ombudsmen are not set by this Parliament and are set by the Government through the annual Budget. It is important there is independence.I would like to acknowledge the chairmanship of the Officers of Parliament Committee of the Speaker and all the members and I would like to thank the staff and the office holders for all the work they do for our country.I would like to thank the Auditor-General Lyn Provost; the Ombudsmen Dame Beverley Wakem Professor Ron Paterson and the outgoing David McGee; and of course the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Jan Wright and I thank their staff. I guess tonight that no doubt the staff of all those three office holders are huddled around televisions in their offices watching this motion being debated in the House. I guess for them it might be disappointing or even galling that although those office holders are getting automatic remuneration increases through the permanent legislative authority we are not necessarily seeing that for the staff and I do not believe we are. So I would like to acknowledge the hard-working staff who have been working very well in a difficult and constrained fiscal environment.First up on the Vote Audit budget is the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General. There is no change in the appropriation because obviously it can collect fees. There is an increase in the permanent legislative authority. We would like to point out the important role it does within the constrained environment it operates in. As we heard from the member Darien Fenton it has traditionally done two inquiries. However over the last year we have seen six major inquiries into the likes of the Mangawhai waste-water issue Bill Liu former Minister Pansy Wong and the Auckland convention centre. These issues are I believe vitally important. It is important that we get good financial scrutiny of the Government of Ministers and of State-owned enterprises. Given that we have got such a shambles at the moment at Solid Energy I think it is vitally important that this budget reflects the importance this Parliament places on financial prudence and transparency.When we look at the Office of the Ombudsmen again we would like to thank the staff. We would like to acknowledge the incoming Ombudsman Professor Ron Paterson. We think he will do a good job and we welcome him into his role. I guess it is good news because for years the office has struggled with no baseline funding increases and what we are seeing with this motion and appropriation is just under $1 million for six new investigative staff. Six new investigators is a 12 percent increase for the Office of the Ombudsmen. Although we know that the office has been described as being in crisis in past financial reviews and that the number of complaints has literally skyrocketed over the last 10 years we hope the six new investigative staff will make a difference because the issues they are dealing with are important.In 1962 I think it was Sir Guy Powles the first Ombudsman said he was Parliament’s person put there for the protection of the individual. It is still the case but I guess we would expand that to say that the Ombudsman is actually the people’s person. He is New Zealanders’ person and I guess with the incoming Ombudsman we could have a discussion around what the nature is of this office in 2013 and the coming decades. Let us have a discussion around how we get adequate funding so that those complaints can be dealt with in an acceptable time frame because what we are seeing is that complaints are taking an awful long to time to be dealt with. People are not getting satisfaction. I believe that if we had a mechanism in place whereby Ministers had some sort of financial penalty for dealing with complaints the Office of the Ombudsmen might be another area for a funding increase. It might help it to do the important work. So let us have a discussion around the question: what does the Ombudsman look like in the coming decades? Do we even call it an Ombudsman? I do not know whether a Scandinavian term is the correct term to help engage New Zealanders with the office and the important role it plays.Lastly for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment there is a permanent legislative authority increase of $10000—an increase of $100000 in the baseline which had not been increased for 6 years. The report notes appropriately that this is because of “cost pressures”. We note the quality of the commissioner’s reports. Obviously we in the Green Party do not agree with all of them but we do note all the hard work that the commissioner’s team puts behind it. We know that there are some increasingly important environmental issues facing our country that merit the commissioner’s oversight and investigation.I guess the last point I would like to leave on is that it has been widely signalled by the Government that the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is likely to have increased environmental monitoring roles into the future. I think it is right that the baseline increases reflect that so that her office can gear up and get ready for it because we are in a catch-22 situation at the moment where the increased responsibilities have been widely signalled but the legislation has not been introduced so obviously there has not been an increase in appropriations. It is a catch-22 situation. If we value environmental monitoring if we want to get it right—and I believe we do because it is the basis of our economy of our prosperity—I think we should have a discussion on that in future years.The Green Party supports this motion. We would like to thank those office holders those staff and the other parties in this Parliament. Kia ora.