Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to add our support to this Public Service Legislation Bill and a fairly substantive bill it is too—190-odd pages. I commend Minister Hipkins for bringing this forward—a very busy Minister. I note I'm on the Education and Workforce Committee and there are waves of legislation coming before us. It might suggest you need a hobby Minister. But no this is—Hon Chris Hipkins: This is it!MARK PATTERSON: —a substantive—ha ha! Unfortunately it may be for you. So we've heard the importance of course of the Public Service as the foundation stone of good effective and efficient Government and you know the three tenets of this bill: creating a modern agile adapted Public Service; affirmation of the constitutional role; and the democratic imperative of it being apolitical. And I think that is the strength of our democracy and also I think for continuity particularly if you've got a change of Government if you've got that institutional knowledge that comes with it and is able to come with it without fear or favour I think that's incredibly important in terms of the continuity of good Government through electoral cycles.I note that it repeals and replaces the State Sector Act 1988 and amends the Public Finance Act. The State services Act seems to have been amended some 13 times which does mean that it is now quite convoluted. It does add a degree of flexibility which appears at face value to make a lot of common sense for staff to be able to move easily between agencies and to cross-pollinate their ideas. Of course technology and systems development has moved on a lot from 1988 and it's how do we utilise that for the efficient delivery of public services—this bill does provide the framework for that to happen more readily across the various Government services.Actually the four previous speakers I note have been former or current Ministers and they have sung the praises of the quality of our Public Service that they have up to their level of experience. As a relatively new member I must say that I'm constantly blown away by the quality and the depth of experience that we're able to call upon within our Public Service. I guess coming into this my perception was around that Yes Minister model where befuddled politicians were bamboozled by clever public servants who actually ran the Government. I'm not sure that that's totally the case but you can see that we as politicians do have to be on our game where we do have to be able to put up arguments against very well resourced and capable public servants who have in the main or I'm sure exclusively New Zealand's best interests at heart.I note that this legislation also does look to update the Crown-Māori relationship and Treaty of Waitangi issues and of course that's appropriate. It's important that that's consistent across Government.There are two new organisations formed with this. The interdepartmental board where CEOs can work together and it does have some capacity to employ staff so that appears at face value to be a positive step. And the mechanism for Public Service joint ventures so there's the ability for joined-up Public Service delivery and others have referenced this in their contributions. It requires the State Services Commissioner to establish a leadership team and it establishes a role of a Deputy State Services Commissioner.Increasingly we are as a Government facing significant large multigenerational public policy issues—and we had of course the zero carbon bill go through the other day—and referenced also earlier how we deal with intergenerational poverty and large social issues like that. And having joined-up mechanisms to deal with that outside of those silos will be incredibly important to modernise our public services so that we can respond in a nature that is proportionate with the scale of the problems that we're dealing with. Even within my own sphere in the agriculture sphere I had just before coming into the House a meeting with a group of high-country farmers in terms of tenure review and issues around that. While ostensibly you would think that was a Ministry for Primary Industries issue it's actually a conservation department issue a Land Information New Zealand issue. More and more we're looking when we talk about the agricultural space with an environmental lens over it. So we need to make sure that we do have the ability to respond as a Government and that our Public Service has the mechanisms in place to be able to respond in a joined-up manner to those multifaceted issues that we are increasingly facing.So I look forward to the progress of this bill through the select committee. It is a substantive piece of legislation and they will have some work to do to make sure that it comes out the other end as intended to make it the positive step forward to futureproof our Public Service hopefully for the next 30 years as the previous legislation has done in the past. So without further ado I commend this bill to the select committee on behalf of New Zealand First. Thank you.