Sage Eugenie: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17235. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the alterations to the 2013-14 appropriations and the draft budget for 2014-15 for the three Offices of Parliament: the Office of the Ombudsmen the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Office of the Auditor-General.I endorse some of the comments my colleague Grant Robertson made. In relation to the Ombudsman Mr Robertson pointed out that there had been a 29 percent increase in complaints. But if you look at complaints around the Official Information Act and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act there has been a 92 percent increase in complaints in relation to those pieces of legislation so the Ombudsman now has the highest ever number of complaints about the failure to release official information in a timely manner—some 2374 complaints. And as the Ombudsman noted in its annual report there has been a significant increase in complaints about delay because the Government’s strategy to make sure the public does not get timely access to information is just to delay and delay and delay and then when information is released to release the minimum. We have seen a very worrying trend too that requests for official information made directly to departments and ministries are routed through the relevant Minister’s office quite routinely so you get political interference in those decisions about whether to grant access to information. So we need greater resources than this budget is providing for the Office of the Ombudsmen given the major increase in requests for reviews of decisions not to release information.We would also like to focus on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. That office was established in 1986 and its role is to investigate environmental issues processes and public agencies. It has got a critical role in providing independent advice to Parliament on matters that affect the quality of our environment. Its advice helps improve the quality of decisions about both law and policy. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Jan Wright has noted as environmental issues become ever more complex the work of her office becomes even more complicated because there are no easy answers. We owe her and her office a significant debt of gratitude. She appears often in front of the Local Government and Environment Committee to make submissions on legislation and tobrief us on her reports such as the one on land use and water quality. I would like to repeat the call that we have heard from others and that I made in the appropriations debate earlier this year that the Government open its ears and listen to the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and act on her advice.One of the major recommendations was a submission released yesterday on the Government’s Environmental Reporting Bill. That submission identifies significant flaws in the bill and one of the most serious flaws is the way in which the bill purports to restrict access to information on which the state of the environment reports are to be based. It overrides the Official Information Act and would fetter the special powers that the Offices of Parliament such as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have under their legislation to obtain information. The bill as drafted would fetter the ability of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to hold decision makers to account so that clause really needs to be changed. It is deeply troubling because of the importance of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the Ombudsman and the Auditor-General in promoting transparency and accountability in our parliamentary democracy.Another flaw in the legislation that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment identified is the way in which the bill undermines the independence of state of the environment reporting by having Ministers being able to choose the topics on which reporting should occur or not occur. We need the public to have faith in any system of state of the environment reporting. If we have Ministers choosing the topics we risk the same sort of political interference we had with the last state of the environment report in 2007 where the Government suppressed the final chapter and it was only the Green Party through using the Official Information Act that got that chapter released.It is very pleasing that this budget provides for a $450000 increase in the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s budget for the next financial year. That is to provide for its role in reviewing and providing an independent commentary on the state of the environment reports. It will allow it to boost the number of staff in its office by just over four as well as provide some funding for expert consultants and overheads. That is really important because the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment operates on a really tiny budget of $2.4 million. Our understanding in the Green Party is that the budget will be reviewed in subsequent years to ensure that this increase is actually adequate to cope with the increased responsibilities in analysing the state of the environment reports and providing some commentary on them.Another issue where the Government needs to listen to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations given the large amount of research and the independent advice that are in those reports which are tabled in this House is on the issue of stewardship land. Stewardship land makes up at least a third of the land that the Department of Conservation manages and it has got the weakest form of statutory protection despite it having high ecological landscape and often recreational values. A very comprehensive report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment highlighted that the original intention when the Department of Conservation was established in 1987 was that the protective status of this land be reviewed yet successive Governments have failed to do that. That has meant that the land has never been reclassified and given the appropriate protective status that its values merit. The forests of South Westland are stewardship land when they deserve to be a national park. So the Government is losing the opportunity to create quite significant additions to our national parks and to give proper protection to stewardshipland. It needs to act with urgency on that report and the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.We have seen better progress in relation to her report on long-finned eels with the panel set up to review the technical information on their threat status but we need more action because of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s conclusion that the long-finned eel is on a pathway to extinction.Finally just commenting on the third of Parliament’s offices the Office of the Auditor-General I record our thanks for the major work that the office and Lyn Provost do. There was a very complex and comprehensive investigation and report late last year into the Kaipara District Council and the major failures in governance and decision making in relation to the wastewater scheme for Mangawhai. The report highlighted a lot of lessons for councils in the detail with which it examined that issue. There have been a lot of letters and emails to members from the Mangawhai community in relation to the way the council performed. Reading through that report is a good lesson for a lot of local authorities.We need to increase the budgets. There has been a small increase in the budget for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We hope that it is adequate; we suspect that it may not be. We thank and endorse the thanks that other speakers have given for the work of the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the Office of the Auditor-General and the Office of the Ombudsmen. They strengthen our democracy. It would be further strengthened if the Government listened to and took seriously their recommendations. Thank you.