Wilkinson Kate: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Wilkinson Kate: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15070] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 I thought I would preface my speech this afternoon by reminding members of what the Department of Labour’s primary role is and that is to improve the performance of the labour market. The report noted that the department has identified workplace productivity as the key to lifting New Zealand’s living standards and wealth. 
I would like to concentrate for a moment on those issues of productivity. It is alarming to find that the report states: “Despite the department’s efforts to improve productivity it was noted that New Zealand’s labour productivity growth in the measured sector has markedly declined since 2000;”. Today’s  
Independent 
 talks about productivity in an article headed: “Productivity: It’s a hard road to hoe” and we have heard that Statistics New Zealand is hiring 1½ people to work for 2 years on a feasibility study to determine whether it is even possible or feasible to measure public sector productivity. New Zealand appears to be deciding whether it is feasible but we know the answer to that. The report says that a good start might be to measure productivity at the Department of Labour. 
The Department of Labour has a website that includes references to workplace productivity. That website was last updated last year on 6 December. The department’s website was last updated over 4 months ago and I do not think that is a wonderful example of workplace activity. The Department of Labour seems to create groups. It had a Workplace Productivity Reference Group. Then it had a Workplace Productivity Working-group. But that working-group was established in 2004—4 years ago—and we still cannot measure public sector productivity in the Department of Labour. In fact the most recent news item for the reference group was in April 2007—over 12 months ago. 
If we measured productivity by the number of productivity work groups or productivity reference groups set up by the Department of Labour then maybe the department would win the productivity prize. It is a sad state when the very department that is responsible for workplace relations is not bearing up to what it should be doing. 
The Department of Labour is responsible for advocating good workplace practices. If members look at the financial review they will be horrified to find that the number of personal grievance claims in that department alone has nearly doubled in 12 months. In fact last year the cost of settling employment relations problems was $97500. The year before the cost was $7000. That is a massive $90000 more to settle the department’s own personal grievance and employment relationships problems—and this is the very department that is supposed to be advocating good workplace practices. One might like to suggest that it should be practising what it preaches. 
Labour has spent so much of our taxpayers’ money but it cannot tell us whether it has been effective and sometimes it cannot tell us what it has spent it on because it just does not measure that productivity. This is not a new phenomenon. Back in 2005 the report to the incoming Minister—and I appreciate that it was not the Minister in the chair this afternoon the Hon Trevor Mallard—cited productivity as a major concern yet the numbers are absolutely dismal. Labour productivity growth has averaged a mere 1.4 percent per annum. By comparison between 1990 and 1997 it averaged 2.6 percent per annum between 1997 and 2000 it reached an average of 3.4 percent per annum and now it is a paltry 1 percent. New Zealand’s productivity growth has markedly declined and that is a tragedy.