Faafoi Kris: Ombudsmen (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Ombudsmen (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5418. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on this Ombudsmen (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. It is also a pleasure to follow Mr Auchinvole as it always is. He is a member whom I could be charitable about and say that he usually has good judgment but in this case he has misjudged the importance of this bill and the impact that it will have. He has misjudged it. He has talked about the other legislation that the Hon Shane Jones has shepherded through this House and the enormity of it. He has said that this piece of legislation might be rats and mice—rats and mice—in comparison with that legislation. But that shows a complete lack of judgment from Mr Auchinvole about the enormity and the importance of this bill. 
The Office of the Ombudsmen does have a very important constitutional function to make sure that all our Government agencies are acting as to the laws that are passed in this House and their own internal standards and processes. So to ensure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is correctly resourced is a very important constitutional function of this Government. To make sure that it is funded properly is also a very important function of this Parliament and of the Government. 
The Hon Shane Jones the sponsor of this bill said that the 2011 financial review of the Office of the Ombudsmen said that the office was “in crisis”—in crisis—due to its high caseload and its inability to meet its demands. So this bill has travelled to this stage as a member’s bill in order to try to rectify the issue that was highlighted in that 2011 financial review where it said the office was in crisis and to make sure that the office is properly resourced so it can carry out its very important constitutional functions. 
Those Government departments those bureaucrats that the Hon Shane Jones was alluding to earlier on in his speech have to be investigated properly when members of the public or maybe the media—the fourth estate—feel that they have not had due process followed. I know that as a former member of the fourth estate when you got an Official Information Act request declined and you did not feel that it had been processed in a fair manner then it was off to the Office of the Ombudsmen to try to make sure that that information—which you thought you were rightfully trying to get your hands on—was investigated as to whether the agency was acting in its correct capacity according to the legislation and its own internal processes. And I will be honest: some of the Official Information Act requests speaking as a former journalist asking for responses from a Minister’s office were requests of this party. But still it is a very important constitutional role that the Office of the Ombudsmen has to make sure that those Government agencies and Ministers’ offices have followed the proper procedure as is prescribed in law and also in their own internal processes. 
Just last week I had a constituent contact me who had come to the end of their tether with a Government agency. They had spent a couple of years dealing with this agency. They had felt they had come to the end of the process that they could with that agency which I will not name. The advice that I gave to that constituent was that the Office of the Ombudsmen was the only fair and reasonable place left for them to go. But I did caution them that if they did decide to go down that road it could be some considerable time before they got a response. I say that out of experience. On this side of the House we know that we have put forward requests under the Official Information Act and there have been attempts to—I think I will use a word that John Banks has used—gerrymander the process in order to delay the release of that information or to not release that information at all. 
I think we need to make sure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is resourced properly. That is what this bill tries to do in order for them to recover some costs from some of these agencies so that very important constitutional role of the Office of the Ombudsmen can be carried out in order for the average Joe Citizen for members of Parliament for agencies dealing with Government agencies and of course for the fourth estate to try to make sure that those legislative roles are adhered to.