Smith Lockwood: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — In Committee 
Smith Lockwood: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17909] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 I will carry on from where my good colleague John Key left off. I ask the Minister in the chair David Cunliffe whether he is hell-bent on bringing Parliament into derision. Some of the clauses in Part 6 are simply derisory. I will give members an example of what I mean. The Labour Government now finds it necessary under clause 186 to put into our law the process for providing the statement of intent to a responsible Minister. The Labour Ministers are so incompetent hopeless and useless that the law has to spell out how a statement of intent is to be provided to them by a Crown entity they are responsible for. 
Is this serious stuff? Here we are debating this under urgency just before Christmas. If it were April Fool’s Day I would say “OK you caught us out. Fair enough we were fools to think you were serious about this.” But it is not April Fool’s Day and clause 186 is bizarre garbage. How hopeless useless and incompetent are Labour Ministers that they have to put that into legislation? It is not simply a set of recommendations. It is the law of New Zealand. We pass the law of the land in this Parliament and Labour finds it necessary to spell out how a statement of intent is meant to be provided to a Minister. For goodness’ sake a Minister worth half a pinch of salt can pick up the phone and say that he or she wants the statement of intent tomorrow and it had damn well better be delivered. Oh no Labour is so useless that its legislation spends great paragraphs spelling it all out. 
But there is worse. That is just the farcical bit. Let us look at some of the serious stuff. Clause 180 “Statement of intent for new established Crown entities” states in subclause (3): “The responsible Minister may give directions to the Crown entity on any matters referred to in section 181(1)(b) to (d) (g) and (ga)”. I have no problem with the Minister being able to give directions as provided in clause 181(1)(b) over the “scope of the entity’s functions and intended operations”. Clearly there is a responsibility to make sure a Crown entity is proposing to carry out functions consistent with overall Government policy. But paragraph (d) states that the Minister can also give directions on “how the entity intends to perform its functions and conduct its operations”. So under that paragraph the Minister can give direction to a new Crown entity as to how it is to perform its functions. He or she can meddle absolutely in the management of a Crown entity. 
That is totally contrary to what Crown entities are meant to be all about. They are meant to be at arm’s length from the Government with a board of directors able to perform independently of Government political interference. Clause 181(1)(d) gives the Labour Government the chance to meddle absolutely in the management—how it intends to perform its functions—of a Crown entity. That is not just farcical but bad legislation. 
While I am talking about statements of intent I want to come to clause 185 which puts in the law of New Zealand under paragraph (c) that a “responsible Minister may make comments on a draft statement of intent”. What on earth does the law need to state that for? I just cannot believe this stuff. I spent 9 years as a Minister and promoted a lot of legislation. If a department had come along to me with a bill with that sort of junk in it I would have told it to take that garbage away and get rid of it. 
Why does the law of the land of New Zealand need to state that the “responsible Minister may make comments on a draft statement of intent”? What dopey dopey dopey stuff! How much more does the Government want to denigrate the laws of New Zealand? It is demeaning our laws. To have this junk in the law simply demeans it.