Hipkins Chris: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2380. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 Mr Chair— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I call the honourable member Chris Hipkins. 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: So does his mother.  
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Yes that is right. I am happy to take a brief call on the title and commencement clauses of the Crown Entities Reform Bill. I will begin with the title because that is what generally comes first. Actually I think the name of the bill the Crown Entities Reform Bill is misleading because it suggests a wider reform agenda for Crown entities in total. Actually a more accurate title would be the “Crown Entities (Selected Entities) Reform Bill” because it does not actually reform that many Crown entities and it is not actually that wide-ranging as a reform agenda.  
There are a huge number of Crown entities—district health boards the New Zealand Qualifications Authority—and if the Government had some kind of coherent plan for what it wanted to do with the Crown entities then this would be an adequate name for the bill but it does not have an adequate plan. Just to give an example this bill moves the Charities Commission into a Government department into the Department of Internal Affairs which is something that we have debated about quite a lot this evening. If that is going to be the Government’s overall agenda for Crown entities will we see the New Zealand Qualifications Authority merged into the Ministry of Education? Will we see— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Good idea.  
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Trevor Mallard a former Minister of Education thinks that it is a good idea. Will we see the Tertiary Education Commission—I think that would be a Crown entity—merged into the Ministry of Education? Will we see the district health boards merged into the Ministry of Health? These are questions— 
Hon Annette King 
: That’s not a good idea. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is not a good idea. If this bill genuinely was a Crown Entities Reform Bill it would actually have a coherent— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It’s sort of a “Crown Entities Minor Tinkering Bill”. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right: “Crown Entities Minor Tinkering Bill” I think would be a more accurate description for this piece of legislation because it does not actually present a coherent plan for what the Government is trying to do in State sector reform in so far as it relates to Crown entities.  
To move on to the commencement of this particular piece of legislation it comes into force at the moment—all of this from what I understand—on 1 July 2012. Can I congratulate the Government on at least being clear about the date of the commencement for this piece of legislation. Quite often there is uncertainty around when a bill comes into force because it says it comes into force on the day after which it receives the Royal assent. There can be any number of variables that can impact on that so quite often in legislation that we debate in the House there is no certainty around that because in fact there are factors that can prevent a bill receiving the Royal assent. For example there is technically a reserve power for the Governor-General to refuse to sign a piece of legislation and so therefore when a commencement clause says that it is the day after which it receives the Royal assent that technically could be quite some time.  
In New Zealand we are relatively fortunate. The Governor-General will typically sign all legislation without too many issues. But take for example the Belgian Parliament where the King refused to sign a piece of legislation because the King disagreed with it. This was one of those bills that would come into force the day after which it received the Royal assent but the King refused to sign it. So the Government in Belgium effectively removed the King from office for a day in order to enact the legislation— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: What was the legislation about?  
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: —and then restored him. It was a moral issue; it might have been legalisation of prostitution or something like that. It was something that was a conscience issue and so the Parliament in Belgium basically said: “Well if the King won’t sign it we’ll remove the King for a period of time in order to give the Prime Minister the power to enact the legislation.” That is what happens in Belgium and that is what it did. The bill then received the assent—what would have been the Royal assent but the King had refused to sign it—and therefore it became law. But because— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: But you know what we do in New Zealand in those cases? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: What is that? 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: We send the Gov offshore and get the Chief Justice to sign it. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. In New Zealand as Trevor Mallard has just pointed out if that situation were to occur and the Governor-General was uncomfortable or refused to sign something the Governor-General could be sent out of the country and then the Chief Justice could sign the law. So that would be the New Zealand equivalent of the bill receiving the Royal assent to what I was just talking about with regard to what happened in Belgium. But in this bill— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Did you know that I’ve been in the Executive Council in the past? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well that is a very concerning thought. That is a very concerning thought. But in this bill there is no ambiguity at the moment as to the date on which this bill will come into force based on the current wording of it—it is 1 July 2012. However the Supplementary Order Paper put forward by my colleague Trevor Mallard would change that. It would say that instead of the bill coming into effect in its totality on 1 July 2012 Part 3 would come “into force on the day 3 years after the date on which this Act receives the Royal assent.”  
Actually I think Trevor Mallard made a mistake. I actually think he should have been specific in the date that he wanted it to come into force rather than this whole concept of 3 years after the date on which it receives the Royal assent because as I just outlined that can be very uncertain. There can be confusion and there can be complications whereas if a specific date is specified there is a lot more certainty. So I actually think Trevor Mallard probably should have said “1 July 2015”. That would have avoided any ambiguity.  
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Why didn’t you say so at caucus? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. I am normally hanging off every word that Trevor Mallard says at caucus but in this particular instance I have to confess that it slipped past my usually very accurate radar.  
Trevor Mallard has suggested that Part 3 should come into force 3 years after the rest of the Act—with all of the things that I have just said about how it might not be exactly 3 years but more or less 3 years after the rest of the bill comes into force. That is because we in the Labour Party believe that the Charities Commission which is a relatively new entity has not been in existence for particularly long and should not be disestablished until a proper process has been gone through with the charitable sector which has bought in to having the Charities Commission through a pretty collaborative and consultative process. This Government is simply doing away with it because National knows best—or National thinks it knows best.  
Actually in the charitable sector I think it is important that the sector is involved that it gets a chance to have its say and that it gets a chance to feel some ownership of whatever decision is taking place or is finally made. I think that delaying this Part 3 of the bill by 3 years in order to allow the charitable sector to get involved in that to have a proper review to allow the Charities Commission to actually prove what it is capable of doing and to preserve that independence of the Charities Commission in the meantime is really quite important. That is why a delay of 3 years seems eminently sensible. It would allow a proper review process to take place. It would allow the Government to finally work out what its agenda for Crown entities is to come up with a slightly more coherent plan for State sector reform around what it is trying to do with Crown entities and to resolve the issues of whether all of the Crown entities now are going to be put up for review and treated in the same way as the Charities Commission—merged into Government departments where Ministers can fiddle around and play with them.  
We know that some of the Ministers fiddle around and play with things even more. Can we imagine for example if Murray McCully was made the Minister of Internal Affairs? Murray McCully would be in there boots and all telling the Charities Commission part of the Department of Internal Affairs exactly what it should be doing. The independence would be totally compromised and therefore the buy-in and the support from the sector and from the public would be quite badly compromised. I think that preserving the independence of the Charities Commission is quite an important thing. It is something we in the Labour Party are strongly in favour of. I doubt that the Department of Internal Affairs will be able to manage this as well as the Charities Commission can manage it at the moment.  
It is time to take a breath. It is time to actually go back and have a proper review rather than just the approach of “National knows best. We’re going to do whatever we like.” It is time to review it properly and have a collaborative process with the sector where the sector will get to have its say. Then once that is done I imagine we will be getting up towards the 3-year time frame that Mr Mallard has specified in his Supplementary Order Paper and that would be a good time for Parliament to revisit the issue. Thank you.