Donald Rod: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Donald Rod: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17889. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I appreciate the opportunity to speak and will just comment that I was disappointed in the previous Chair for taking a closure on Part 3 as quickly as he did because he did not give some of us the opportunity to contribute a second time to that debate. Although Part 3 is short it is a significant part and I will briefly take this opportunity to promote my amendment to Part 3; it relates to the list of Crown agents in schedule 5. 
The Government Superannuation Fund Authority took the unusual move of making a submission to the Finance and Expenditure Committee asking to be reclassified as an autonomous Crown entity. I guess it wants the same status as the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation. My amendment certainly gives it the same status but through the process of shifting the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation from being an autonomous Crown entity to being a Crown agent. In the Green Party’s strong view if that fund is to continue then it needs to give effect to Government policy rather than to have regard for it as it does now. We have real concerns that the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation will rush off and make investments in public-private partnerships that it sees potential profit in but that do not deliver the whole-of-Government outcomes that we believe our taxes should be invested in. That is why it would be preferable for it to become a Crown agent. 
The other matter that should have been traversed to a much greater degree given the concern of the tertiary education institutions is the very clear clause 47B(2) which states categorically that with the exception of the provisions set out in schedule 6B “… Parts 3 to 7 of this Act do not apply to tertiary education institutions and their Crown entity subsidiaries.” I found it extraordinary that Opposition members from National and ACT having waxed lyrical about how bad this bill is for the autonomy of tertiary education institutions then proceeded to vote against Supplementary Order Paper 315 which actually removed some of the constraints that the Government was originally going to place on those institutions in the bill. They actually voted against the very thing they were calling for. But then again we cannot expect intelligent input from some members on the Opposition side especially on a night like this when it is the press gallery party and some members are clearly “tired and”—what is the phrase? 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Spirited. 
ROD DONALD 
: I think “tired and emotional” is actually the point. I move to Part 4 quickly and say that we offer a very constructive—[ 
Interruption 
] Some members would like to go to the press gallery party. Well in approximately 49 minutes they will be able to get back to that party. My colleague Nandor Tanczos has been monitoring the party and apparently it is still flowing very well—indeed it is. 
Turning to Part 4 I invite members of the Committee to look at my very constructive amendment to clause 71(2)(b) which is simply to insert the words “and employee representation” after the words “promoting diversity”. If Mr Key is concerned about Part 4 being terribly politically correct we can make it even more so for him if he likes by saying that we think it is in everyone’s interest but particularly in the interests of those people who work for Crown entities for there to be an employee representative on the boards of those entities. We are not requiring it; we are making the suggestion in the spirit of clause 71(2)(b) which would then state that “… in appointing or recommending an appointment must take into account the desirability of promoting diversity and employee representation …”. That would be a step toward a more cooperative model of governance which is something the Green Party has long stood for because we are strong advocates of workers’ cooperatives. In fact many of us have a business background in workers’ cooperatives and we believe that those same excellent governance principles that work effectively in the private sector could be adopted in the Crown entities of the public sector.