McNair Craig: Third Readings 
McNair Craig: Third Readings 
[Volume:622;Page:17954] 
CRAIG McNAIR (NZ First) 
: 
 By the looks of it the Government has the numbers stitched up with the United Future party in this third reading debate and this legislation looks as though it will be enacted. As we all know by now these bills are supposed to cover the main legislation that governs public finance and the management of the State sector. The legislation is the culmination of a review of public sector management and has been questioned from time to time in the second reading debate the Committee stage and in this third reading debate. The Review of the Centre suggested initiatives to support better integration greater flexibility and an increased focus on results without losing the system’s current strengths of transparency accountability and financial management. Like all members on the Finance and Expenditure Committee I had to ask whether this legislation would achieve the transparency the accountability and the better financial management that this Government said it would. At the end of the select committee process after looking through the legislation tirelessly after looking through the submissions and after the submitters had talked to us and we had also asked them questions the answer I came up with was a big fat resounding no. 
I found that to be quite sad. New Zealand First always wants to support good legislation. We will always oppose bad legislation. Unfortunately the make-up of this legislation was too far from what we would call good. The New Zealand First members wanted to see whether the legislation did what Michael Cullen said in a press release quite a few months ago now that it would do. We also wanted to hear submissions on whether the legislation would achieve its goal. Sadly as I have just said I do not believe that it does achieve its goal in any way shape or form. The legislation amends the Public Finance Act and the State Sector Act and creates a new Crown Entities Act as we all know. It is said that that Act will improve all the transparency and accountability around that legislation by bringing in the Public Finance Act the Fiscal Responsibility Act and so on. Unfortunately given the way that the legislation has been drafted and so on I believe it still needs to have a lot of work done on it. 
This legislation represents more State control. If one asks what the legislation stands for and represents at the end of the day one learns that it represents more State control from this Government. That is clear and simple; there are no two ways about it. In respect of clause 212 in Part 6 of the original 500-page bill I shall read out something that concerned me greatly. Clause 212(1) stated: “The Governor-General may by Order in Council make regulations for all or any of the following purposes:”—members should listen to this—“(a) requiring Crown entities to include information in a statement of intent or annual report that is additional to the information required by this Act:” 
That clause states that after the Crown entity has fulfilled all its requirements after it has fulfilled everything it has been asked to do and after it has dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s a million times the Government still wants to be able to delve into its life and get additional information from it no matter what and no matter what the Crown entity thinks. That is what clause 212 stands for—that is what it means. There are no two ways about it there is no way through it and there is no way over it. The fact is that the statement “requiring Crown entities to include information in a statement of intent or annual report that is additional to the information required by this Act:” means that the Government wants to be given additional information—it wants to have extra information. The entity may have done everything required of it and everything set out under the law but the Government wants more than that. 
That is what this Government stands for in this legislation. That is what the legislation does and it is one of the many reasons why I am fundamentally opposed to it. The Government wants to have a stronger grip on anything and everything in our society and that is what it is slowly doing little by little in legislation such as this. It wants to have more State control over our taxes our education system and our other organisations. There is one issue that I want to speak to the United Future members about which is the whole area of academic freedom. I say that United Future’s supporters and voters would want their party to stand up for what they believe in and for what they voted it into Parliament to represent them on. We all know how scary it can be if academic freedoms are not upheld and I believe that this legislation opens the door to the stifling of those freedoms. Representatives of our educational institutions came to the select committee and they were very concerned about this legislation in terms of academic freedom. They were very uneasy about Part 3 of the original bill. I admired the way the tertiary sector stood up against the bill. Overall the Government has changed a few things in this legislation but the legislation has ultimately kept the same shape that it had at its first reading. That is why New Zealand First will have to vote against this legislation.