Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee): I move That the House take note of long-term trends risks and opportunities affecting New Zealand.It is a pleasure to take the first call on today's special debate on long-term insight briefings as chair of the Governance and Administration Committee in order to introduce the briefings and the associated debate to the House.The long-term insights briefings were introduced during the 53rd Parliament following the passing of the Public Service Act 2020. The Act requires a chief executive of a department to give a long-term insights briefing to the appropriate Minister at least once every three years. A critical component laid out in the Act is the requirement for these long-term insights briefings to be established and delivered independently of Ministers. These briefings are designed to be truly independent of the executive and the Parliament and to enable Public Service departments to provide their own lens across the big issues affecting their department that are relevant for the long term of New Zealand.The Governance and Administration Committee is tasked with essentially being a clearing house for all of the briefings that are presented to the committee and we are required to refer them to the appropriate subject matter committee who must consider the briefing and report to the House.The Governance and Administration Committee also engages regularly and receives briefings from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet which is the agency that is tasked with oversight of the briefings. Throughout the term of the 53rd Parliament when I was a member of the Governance and Administration Committee we engaged regularly with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on updates around the briefings how they were tracking and the process that had been undertaken in order to deliver the briefings. During that time we produced two interim reports outlining the committee's observations of the briefings and advice from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet about how we could make improvements to the briefings going forward.Today we will hear from committee chairs and members regarding three of the briefings that were prepared by Treasury the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. In total there were 19 briefings that were prepared during the 53rd Parliament and departments are now tasked with preparing briefings for the 54th Parliament that I hope will shortly come to the Governance and Administration Committee so that we may refer these on to committees for further insight.I want to focus on some commentary that the Governance and Administration Committee made during our report. I just note that in the last month we have also had a report from Victoria University authored by Malcolm Menzies Andrew Jackson and Jonathan Boston called An Experiment in Governmental Futures Thinking: long-term insights briefings. I want to particularly thank the academics from Victoria University who have engaged with the committee early on prior to us receiving the briefings to put their lens across what they were looking to see. So I would encourage members across the House and I would encourage agencies to read this report because it sets out some analysis as well as some concerns that our committee noted in our interim report. I'm just going to touch on those in the short time I have remaining.One of the concerns raised was that some of the reports didn't necessarily focus on the big issues. Another issue was that there was at times an inconsistent approach to consultation. I want to note that for one of the reports that our committee touched on by the Public Service Commission we thought there wasn't enough depth of consultation with migrant rural and Māori communities.One of the big issues was the need for more cross-agency briefings and for there to be a systematic approach for agencies to work together using an approach where they actually go through some criteria to look at where they might be able to add value to briefings together. We note that there have been around four briefings where there was cross-agency work where you could see that there was scope for two agencies or departments to actually work together to bring together a briefing. That is one of the biggest pieces of advice that our committee and these authors have suggested going forward.Finally the most important thing is that these briefings need to be for the long-term strategic issues rather than the day-to-day work of the department.So I'm looking forward to the debate today; I encourage members to engage with it. I commend the debate to the House. Thank you.