Fenton Darien: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call in the Committee stage of the Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill. It is an excellent bill. As my colleague Grant Robertson said it was introduced in the name of the wonderful Minister of State Services in the Labour Government David Parker. 
I acknowledge the Government Administration Committee which considered this bill. For the benefit of the previous speaker Paul Hutchison I say that the bill spent some time at the select committee. That committee was chaired by Mr Shane Ardern. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: He did his best. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: He did a very good job and I think he would be fairly insulted to hear the member talking about it languishing. In fact it took a Labour Government to bring in any sort of protective disclosures in the first place after what happened in the 1990s to Neil Pugmire at Lake Alice Hospital. It took a Labour Government to do something about that and to recognise that a climate of fear had developed in the 1990s and that there was an appalling culture in the public sector where people were afraid to speak out. This amendment bill and the Protected Disclosures Act have an underlying principle of fair and reasonable treatment for those who seek to speak up about serious wrongdoing and who in doing so are potentially putting their jobs at risk. 
The issues that gave rise to the original Act are particularly important in today’s circumstances with the economic downturn. As my colleague Grant Robertson observed the Government is hell-bent on taking the knife to our Public Service jobs. I particularly want to mention the 6000 workers in Auckland who work for local government who are fearful for their jobs who have enormous uncertainty and who have a Government that is not following previous examples of rolling them over to be employed by the new local body for a decent period of time so that things can bed in. I think we will see some real fear. I hope they will be brave enough to blow the whistle if corruption emerges particularly if we have the sort of— 
Grant Robertson 
: What if your job’s going to go? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Well that is the problem. That is the thing that really worries me about it. I think it is worth recording again the roll-call of job cuts that we have seen and the impact that they have on people who have been prepared to speak out: 86 jobs at the Ministry for the Environment 88 at the Ministry of Justice 250 at the Inland Revenue Department up to 500 at the Ministry of Social Development 22 at the State Services Commission 32 at the National Library and 76 at the Tertiary Education Commission. Those job cuts are just the beginning. This Government is just getting started. We should add to that the sinking-lid policies particularly in the district health boards across New Zealand. The number of hospital administration staff being employed is capped at the level in December 2008. A lot of workers—a lot of whanau—are facing a miserable winter because this Government does not believe that public sector jobs are worth saving. 
We have had 120-odd jobs saved in the private sector because of the 9-day working fortnight and thank goodness for that. It is a good thing those jobs have been saved and that is thanks to the unions which negotiated a fair deal for those workers. But around 1000 jobs in the public sector are not worth saving. They do not qualify for any Government assistance. There is this nonsense about backroom workers—bureaucrats—who are ineffective and do not do anything. The National Party really pushed that throughout the election campaign. It is not fair and it is not right. The Government needs to recognise that people are the most important asset of organisations and that the skills and knowledge of public sector workers are as much a part of public infrastructure as roads hospitals and school buildings are. I want to know where the investment in them is. 
Protected disclosures in this environment will be difficult for workers. Speaking up will be frowned upon. When jobs are up for grabs keeping one’s head down will be the best approach. I am fearful for the Public Service and for New Zealand’s reputation for being No. 1 in the international transparency stakes. I am fearful about where we are heading with our very very good Public Service which after all is about providing services to the public. It is not about providing jobs for people though that is important; it is about providing services to the New Zealand public which needs them even more in this economic climate. That is why Labour supports this bill and the boosting of protections in Part 1. We think it will make it easier for whistleblowers to bring serious wrongdoing to light.