Smith Nick; Hipkins ChrisPart 4 Government workforce policyCHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That brings us colleagues to Part 4 debate on clauses 95 to 102 Government workforce policy".Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I'm interested in engaging in this important Part that deals with the process of Government workforce policy statements. I've heard the debate in Parliament for 30 years that if only the Public Service was able to plan how many nurses and doctors and teachers and all those things that we perfectly required we would end up with a better quality Public Service. National is of the view that you do need some level of workforce planning. We're also of a view that there will always be a level of uncertainty. New Zealand doesn't control how many New Zealanders come home or leave and there are many other elements of technology and others that affect pressures on the Public Service and the number of staff. We've long seen the trend that when the New Zealand economy is very strong we tend to get a drift of people from the Public Service to the private sector and then during times of economic hardship you get a greater degree of flow the other way where those that work for the Public Service have a greater degree of stability. Now one of the concerns and the first question I want to ask of the Minister is when do we expect to see the Government produce its first Government workforce policy statement under these provisions? The reason I ask that question is a number of submitters said that there should be a requirement for the Government to in the law have such a workforce policy statement and to update it at regular periods. So my question to the Minister is: what assurances can he give about the timetable for producing workforce policy statements when would he expect the first one to be delivered and if they really are going to be grunty and contribute to a more effective Public Service what is his attitude to those proposals that said there should be a legal requirement to produce them with this particular time frame? We have all sorts of statutes on our book where public servants particularly our control agencies like Treasury and the like can do things but unless they have statutory requirements to do them within a particular timetable they can drift forever. So firstly a question on workforce policy statements timetables and whether we should statutorily require them by time.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of State Services): I think the member raises a good point in his early part of the contribution that you know I think all Governments would like to think that we could do a better job of forecasting the demand for certain types of skills. Governments have not always been able to do that in a particularly reliable way and I don't think we should pretend that there's some magical answer to that. There's always going to be a challenge there about getting the right balance of skills across our public services. We'll always I think strive to do better.With regard to when a public workforce policy statement may be produced that will of course be a matter for the next Government. It's not my intention or the Government's intention to produce a statement under this legislation—assuming it gets passed in the next 24 hours—before the election but I would envisage it would be a reasonably high priority for a new Government after the election. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The question I asked the Minister was: should there be a statutory requirement to both deliver a Government workforce policy statement within a particular time frame and for it to be reviewed at a regular level not necessarily religious as to whether it be three years or five years—that's what a number of submitters have said. I note he has not picked that up even though it was strongly submitted on at the select committee that such a requirement should exist and so my question to the Minister: why not have a specific timetable for delivering a Government workforce policy statement and isn't there a real risk that unless there is a requirement to do so it won't happen?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of State Services): In very brief answer to that the current Government's position is that there shouldn't be a legislated requirement around the timetable for that. That's a matter for different Governments to make decisions on and different Governments will have different views upon that so the law should be flexible enough to allow say an incoming Government to usher a new workforce policy statement if they wished to. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The second important line of questioning is that the Minister's Supplementary Order Paper excludes a significant agency. It's very important for this Parliament that in clause 101 and in respect of clause 97 the Office of the Ombudsman the Office of the Auditor-General the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Parliamentary Service are specifically excluded. Now I support those. In my view these are very important separation of powers. It's not for the Government of the day to be telling the Parliament and the important Offices of Parliament what they do. In my view you had a risk with the bill as introduced by the Minister that you had the Government of the day intruding on the independence of those agencies. So National is supportive of maintaining the constitutional separation of those. Here's the question though: there are a large number of other agencies that had an independence from the Crown; why has the Minister drawn the line? So for instance if we look at the New Zealand Police in my view actually one of the most important protections that we must jealously guard is the independence of the New Zealand Police and the Commissioner of Police around issues of investigations and prosecution. We all know what happens in countries where that process gets politicised. So what I'm interested in testing the Minister on is in making the decisions that his original bill was wrong—that it should not have included the Clerk of the House of Representatives the Parliamentary Service the Ombudsman Auditor-General and Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner—why has he included others that do have independence and what is the justification for the new line that he has drawn around the appropriateness of these workforce policy statements and the powers it gives to the State Services Commissioner to have a role in those agencies? Why are there still quite a large number of agencies that have statutory independence? I make the differentiation—I excuse if the language is not perfect. There's the constitutional separation between the Parliament and the State sector but there is what I would call a statutory independence of a large number of other agencies. Is it really necessary for them to be included within the parameters of what the State Services Commissioner does and the application of these workforce policy statements? Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of State Services): I think the member answered his own question in his very last contribution there. There is a distinction between a constitutional separation if you like and a statutory separation or statutory independence. Constitutional separation says that the Parliament and the executive are different and should be treated differently. These provisions weren't my provisions. They are carried-forward provisions from the State Sector Act. As we got into this discussion the Clerk of the House and the head of the Parliamentary Service in particular raised questions about whether they should be removed. The Speaker wrote to me and indicated his view that they should. I did consult extensively with parties in Parliament through the Parliamentary Service Commission because I don't think the executive should make these decisions unilaterally; I think they are rightly decisions for the Parliament. I would not have inserted these provisions into this bill had I not been convinced that there was effectively unanimous support for them across the House because of the constitutional nature of the changes that we're making here. So we have consulted extensively with the member's party to ensure that these provisions are broadly supported across the House—and they are.The governing conventions that apply to the police and the Defence Force are not changed by this legislation so excluding them would effectively change the conventions by which they operate at the moment. It's not our intention to change those existing conventions that already apply.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I wanted some clarity. Is the Minister saying—when he responded to my question he said that Government workforce policy statements including the Clerk of the House of Representatives and these other offices were already in the State Sector Act. Is that what he is claiming—that for workforce policy statements the original bill was consistent with State Sector Act?"