Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Thank you. I am very pleased to stand and support the Ombudsmen (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. I think that the speeches we have heard from Government members show a fundamental misunderstanding of the bill and what it will achieve.The Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier recently described the Official Information Act as the linchpin of openness and accountability. Yet under this Government we have seen a politicisation of the Act. We have seen the Prime Minister describing how his Ministers will help ensure that departments wait until the 20-day deadline for the release of official information just to slow down the whole system. We have seen large redactions in documents that are released. We have seen journalists and members of the Opposition routinely denied information. When the former Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakem did her report Not a game of hide and seek in December 2015 she concluded that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the Official Information Act but that it was the way in which the Act was being executed that was the problem that there was gaming of the Official Information Act going on that departments were putting off releasing information until that 20-day period and that information was not being provided in a timely way. While she concluded that there was no evidence of direct political interference there was certainly an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust amongst those working with the Official Information Act both inside and outside the Government. It is this problem that this bill will actually go some way to redress.It has been quite surprising that the Government has rejected the notion of the Ombudsmen's office being able to recover costs from Government agencies because of course under the Resource Management Act (RMA) Nick Smith changed that Act so that councils have to discount the cost of processing resource consents to applicants if they exceed the 20-day processing time that is set out in the Act. Can I quote the Minister for the Environment: I know some councils are uncomfortable with these financial penalties for lateness but if it is good enough for the goose it is good enough for the gander. Councils put penalties on rates if they are paid late so it is fair enough that when councils are late they too face financial penalties." So if this Government has put in place penalties on councils when they are late in processing resource consents under the RMA why is it not supporting this bill which would do something similar in allowing the Ombudsmen's office to recover costs from Government agencies when they miss that 20-day deadline which is in the Official Information Act to ensure that information is provided in a timely way?The presumption at the heart of the Official Information Act is that information should be released unless its release is prejudicial to New Zealand security an individual's personal privacy a company's commercial position or those constitutional conventions that protect free and frank advice by officials to Ministers. But it is the Government that is undermining that presumption that information should be released by politicising the way in which the Act is implemented by ensuring that chief executives and senior staff game the system effectively by delaying release and putting those big slabs of blackness through documents that are eventually released.Yes this is a small step; yes the Ombudsmen's office is making substantial progress in reducing its backlog of complaints; but this bill is about ensuring that Government agencies comply with the timelines in the Act. It is not as members opposite have tried to suggest dealing with the issue of how the Ombudsmen's office is actually performing because with that extra funding that the Parliament voted the office has been able to employ additional staff and has been able to get on top of the backlog.But there are still problems. In terms of Government agencies the statistics that were released for the first time earlier this year about compliance with the Act did show that at least a quarter of Government agencies were not able to provide official information on time for at least 80 percent of the time. So that is a quarter of Government agencies that are not meeting the deadlines under the Act. This bill will go some way to encourage them to do that by their having to ensure that the Ombudsmen's office can recover costs."