Curran Clare: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7250. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): This is a very simple bill. It is a very simple bill. It is very straightforward. It is a very common-sense bill. It is a bill that fixes an anomaly and takes us in an important direction which this Government—a member of which just got up and opposed this very simple and common-sense bill—says that it is headed in the direction of but actually it is not. I think this is a classic example of paying lip-service to democracy. In fact one could go as far as saying that it is actually faux democracy—f-a-u-x.The Official Information Act is one of the incredibly important mechanisms that this Government has that this Parliament has and that this country has for democratic accountability and for public information to be made available. Unfortunately the refusal by this Government to allow this bill to go forward to a select committee is really just putting a big block in the face of that. It is actually blocking transparency. It actually impacts on New Zealand’s integrity and international reputation.We supposedly pride ourselves on being a First World nation a democracy based on the Westminster system which holds accountability and the ability for public information to be made available in high regard. Well I think there is something drastically wrong in our system. That member Sarah Dowie talked about a slippery slope. Well this is a slippery slope which is anti-democracy.I would like to remind the Government that in 2013 the then Minister of Justice Judith Collins in her initial response to the recommendations in the Law Commission’s review of the Official Information Act and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 made an announcement around improving the legislation and processes that govern the openness and transparency of public agencies. Well 2 years on where are we? Two years on where are we with the recommendations on the improvements to the Privacy Act? We are no further on.I would also like to remind the Government that it signed us up to the Open Government Partnership and put forward an action plan between 2014 and 2016 that actually compares very unfavourably with the other Open Government Partnership members. The average number of actions in their commitments was 41. In New Zealand’s commitment the number of commitments we have is four and two of them are pre-existing Government policies. It has been described as being the least ambitious.One of those commitments was to look at the 60 recommendations in the Transparency International New Zealand Integrity Plus 2013 New Zealand National Integrity System Assessment report. Another one of those commitments was to look at the introduction of “systematic proactive release of official information” and the promotion of “enhanced compliance with and understanding of the Official Information Act 1982”. Well I would say that what this Government is doing today is completely taking the opposite approach. It is saying one thing—it speaks out of both sides of its mouth. On one hand the Government says it is committed to transparency and open government and signs us up to these commitments but the reality is that it is not interested in making more information available to the public.The appointment of a parliamentary under-secretary is a function that should be able to be scrutinised under the Official Information Act. There should be information available. Unfortunately this Government does not practise what it preaches.