Hipkins Chris: Inquiries Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Inquiries Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 July 2009. Volume:656;Page:5205. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Inquiries Bill another bill that was introduced by the previous Labour Government that now seems to have attracted support from both sides of the House. I suspect that at some stage in the next 2½ years the Government having been elected at the last election will work out that it has a responsibility to write some legislation of its own but there does not appear to be any risk of that happening anytime soon. The House continues to debate bills introduced by the previous Labour Government. 
It is probably fair to say that although this is a Labour bill and we support it it is not something we would be debating in the House had Labour been re-elected. A re-elected Labour Government would have been focusing on the major issues of the day. It would have been focused on what Kiwis are really concerned about which is jobs. We would have been looking at what the Government could do to create jobs and save jobs. Unfortunately this Government does not seem at all interested in people’s jobs. 
The Inquiries Bill aims to reform and modernise the law relating to inquiries. It is another good example of some of the excellent work the Law Commission is doing to modernise some of our laws. It creates some new forms of inquiry that are less formal than for example a royal commission of inquiry. That is a good thing. In the modern era there is more pressure for us to be open and transparent and to look into a variety of issues. The creation of additional forms of inquiry is very welcome. 
I thought about some of the inquiries that have come before the House in the past. Perhaps the most famous and notable inquiry that I am aware of that Parliament was ever involved in was the wine-box inquiry. It was investigated by Winston Peters. I was much younger back then and I recall watching on TV Winston Peters coming into the House. He was blocked several times from tabling all those documents in Parliament but finally he managed to table the documents that triggered the wine-box inquiry. Of course it was not Winston Peters who carried all of those documents into Parliament. He had a very loyal servant following behind him carrying those documents. Who was following Winston Peters with all of the wine-box inquiry documents? It was none other than Tau Henare. I know that was probably three or four political parties ago and he cannot remember as far back as that but it was Tau Henare who was carrying the wine-box inquiry documents into Parliament—one of the biggest inquiries we have had. 
A more recent inquiry was the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. The commissioners produced a very substantive volume of reports on governance in Auckland. A large number of the recommendations produced after all the hearing of submissions and all the scanning of research—a whole chunk of those recommendations—were simply ignored by the National Government. Rodney Hide John Key and Bill English said “No we will do whatever we like. We will come up with something completely different that bears no resemblance to what the royal commission recommended because we are the Government and hey we can do whatever we like now.” They basically ignored the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance and simply came up with what they had wanted to do in the first place. When one comes to discuss the Inquiries Bill it begs the question as to what is the point of an inquiry if the Government will just turn round completely ignore the recommendations and do whatever it wanted to do in the first place. What is the point of having an inquiry where people can come in make submissions and have their voices heard if they will be completely ignored by the Government? That is what this Government seems very willing to do. 
I thought that by way of illustration we might consider some of the things that could be considered by one of the new forms of inquiry: a public inquiry or a Government inquiry. Those are slightly further down the pecking order than a royal commission of inquiry but none the less they are important. 
I think we could have an inquiry into Paula Bennett’s clumsy and vindictive release of the personal information of individual beneficiaries in order to silence her critics. That is the disgraceful behaviour that we have seen in the past few days and it was appalling to watch the Minister try to justify it in the House today. She admitted at question time that she took no advice before releasing that personal information. She looked at a website. She did not check out the legal ramifications of releasing the information. She did not consider the Privacy Act. That is why we should have an inquiry into why Paula Bennett did that using the new forms of inquiry in this bill so that people can have their say on it. They can come along and say to Paula Bennett “Actually we do not think you should be abusing your position as a Minister to get people’s personal information and release it to the news media.” That was exactly what Paula Bennett did. She should not be using that information without the consent of the individuals involved. That is also why we should be having an inquiry into that matter. It is extremely poor judgment on the part of the Minister to do such a thing and to completely compromise the individual privacy of the people concerned. 
We could have an inquiry into the Government’s lack of action on jobs because 1200 extra New Zealanders—that is a net increase of New Zealanders—are joining the dole queue every week. That means the dole queue is growing by 1200 more people per week and the Government is not doing anything about it. We should have an inquiry into that and we could have an inquiry using the new powers provided by the Inquiries Bill. In that inquiry we could ask why the Government’s Job Summit did not come up with anything more than a few very small initiatives which are creating very few jobs. John Key promised the people of New Zealand that his Job Summit would be a “do-fest” not a talkfest. In fact we have seen very little evidence of that because 1200 New Zealanders are still signing up for the dole queue each and every week. The Government is doing very little to help those people or to keep people in jobs. We could have an inquiry into that issue and I think that would be a very useful thing for this Government to initiate because it certainly does not to seem to have any ideas of its own about how to deal with that particular problem. 
We could have an inquiry into tax. That has happened before. We could start with the National Party’s pre-election promise to give New Zealanders tax cuts could we not? Did the National Government deliver on that promise? No it did not. It legislated for the tax cuts and then took them away again. That is a reason why an inquiry on tax could well be a very useful thing. It would also highlight the fact that the National Government’s tax cuts took tax relief away from the New Zealanders on the lowest incomes and gave it to those on the highest incomes. It was a disgraceful move by the National Government to do that. We could remind National members of some of the comments they made when they passed tax cut legislation in this House in November. They talked about giving people certainty when it came to personal income. Well people do not have certainty any more because increasing numbers of New Zealanders—40000 I think it is—do not even have jobs now. They had jobs when National became the Government and now they have lost those jobs. We could have an inquiry into the National Government’s lack of action on jobs its broken promise on tax and all of the other broken promises on the National Party’s pledge card. For example the National Party spread a massive hoax around the country saying it would cap not cut the Public Service yet 1500 public servants have found themselves out of jobs already. We could have an inquiry into National’s other big hoax at the last election: that people could have all of the things that National was promising them with no cuts to social services. We know that is not true. 
This is a good bill. I commend it to the House but I would like to see something from the Government that focuses on the things that really matter to Kiwis at the moment.