Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): It's my great pleasure to rise in support of this bill and I want to start by paying tribute to my colleague and friend the Hon Chris Hipkins. This has been a very large piece of work and—in reference to the member Dr Nick Smith's comments that he's just made—it's one that's already had extensive consultation. I think Minister Hipkins would have been about the same age as the pupils from Akaroa who are up in the gallery today when the 1988 bill was passed. I think he might have submitted on it even at that point such is his interest in the State sector. But what Minister Hipkins has brought to the House today I regard to be one of the most significant legislative changes that we'll be making in this term of Government. It is the complete rewrite and modernisation of our State Sector Act and Minister Hipkins deserves a lot of credit for the work that he has done here. Equally as he himself noted in his speech there have been changes to the State Sector Act over the years including by the last Government and some of those actually have been particularly useful for being able to make advances on what I regard as the core issue that lie behind this bill—that is the ability to break down the silos of Government. All MPs will know that as we travel around the country one of the things that is raised consistently with us is the issue of the siloing of Government. When people—as Minister Hipkins is fond of saying—wake up in the morning they don't think to themselves I'm going to deal with the Ministry of Social Development followed by the Ministry of Health followed by Work and Income followed by Oranga Tamariki."; they think about their interactions with the Government and what we need to do is create a Public Service system that responds to that. Now I want to be clear: there were some excellent things that occurred as a result of the 1988 legislation and my particular area of interest here comes from its companion legislation the Public Finance Act (PFA) which was passed the following year. Those two pieces of legislation did bring a lot more sharpness in the focus around accountability and in particular in terms of the PFA around expenditure accountability and authorisation but also around the State Sector Act around transparency of objective-setting within Government who was responsible for what—clear lines of accountability and reporting. Those are good attributes of the State sector legislation and we want to maintain those. However where the State Sector Act has proved to be inadequate and indeed in some cases beyond inadequate to actually being obstructive is in trying to meet the complex challenges of the world that we face today. If we want to address issues like climate change or like inequality then we have to have a more joined-up Public Service. We have to have a Public Service whose objectives are clearly focused on those outcomes rather than on the inputs that each agency might put in place. This came into stark relief for this Government when we tried to do something different when it came to the elimination of domestic and sexual violence. Now again previous Governments had undertaken coordinated work in that area but it wasn't fulfilling I don't think what any of us would want in terms of the objectives that we have around the elimination of that scourge in our society. So the Government set about putting together a single organisation or entity that comprised of eight different Government organisations to work together towards one set of goals and one set of outcomes and that's the work that Jan Logie has led as Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Justice and she's led it tremendously well. But just as an example to highlight the difficulty in doing this when we came to do this there was no name for the entity. We couldn't find anything inside the Public Service system that we could call it. We ended up calling it a joint venture because I guess that's what it is. It's a joint venture of eight different Government agencies and there are parallel NGO bodies that work with it but that to me is a symbolic example of the fact that the system and the organisation and the legislation is not currently facilitating agencies working together on that way. So as Minister Hipkins has already said the legislation actually now allows for those forms to be properly recognised and to be supported by a structure that actually incentivises agencies to get in there and help solve those complex multifaceted issues. Through this bill that's in front of the House today we'll make some further amendments to the Public Finance Act to support this. Essentially what that means is that these new organisational forms like the joint venture will have the ability to administer appropriations and report against any assets and liabilities that they may manage on behalf of the Crown. That is important because right now if you go to the Government accounts and go looking for the joint venture on the elimination of domestic and sexual violence you won't find it. You will find it in eight different appropriations and that just doesn't make sense and it acts as a barrier to cooperation and collaboration. So that change facilitated through this bill is I believe a significant and important one in allowing the Government to get on with the job of meeting the expectations of citizens around how their public services will work together and that they will be focused on the outcomes that they desire. So those changes are important. I want to reiterate we have kept in place within the Public Finance Act and indeed within the State Sector Act that clarity of role and clarity of accountability that the 1988 Act brought but we are opening up some more flexibility for how that can be delivered in order to do it in a more coherent way. Beyond that I believe that Minister Hipkins has outlined in some detail what he's been trying to do here. This is effectively to my mind a significant modernisation of our legislation in an area where that's been needed and—Minister Hipkins has mentioned it—that is around the way that the Public Service thinks about issues related to Māori. It's fair to say that probably in 1988 we were just at the point where those issues were becoming more prominent and it's timely 31 years on to be able to say that actually in a cross-party way across this House we share an understanding of the importance of the relationship between the Crown and Māori and we need to reflect that in our Public Service legislation. So the clauses in this bill that go in that direction are important and they reflect I think where modern New Zealand sits today. The other point I'd just like to make—and it's to pick up on the comments made by former Minister Nick Smith—is around what actually is meaningful change in the Public Service. It is absolutely true to say that the system we have at the moment means that we have entities that are created not necessarily for the best reasons. Former Minister Smith used the example of the Ministry of Social Welfare. I would use the example of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE). I don't believe the creation of MBIE was actually built on how the agency should best work together; I think it was built on how Steven Joyce wanted to build an empire. It has ended up—I have to say—as a fairly unwieldy entity although it's being well managed at this point in time. But we do actually need to make sure that the way we organise the Public Service is based around the outcomes that we want and the expectations of New Zealanders.I want to just make a slightly longer reference to the point that I made at the very beginning of my speech around the report-back time for this bill. This is a piece of legislation—and the policy principles within it—that has been extensively discussed since we came into Government. There has been significant consultation including with the Opposition which is as is appropriate and I do believe that the report-back time that the Minister has put in place is the correct one. We have heard from a lot of stakeholders both inside the Public Service and outside of it that they want us to get on with the job when it comes to this kind of legislation. We've done a lot of talking. We've done a lot of consulting. The issues are clear. I look forward to the select committee process and the feedback that we'll get in there but actually this is an issue where we have done enough work to be able to just get on with the job and make sure that we get some legislation back before us within a few months' time.So I am very pleased that this bill is before the House today. I think it represents for this Government the kind of legislation we want to put forward: one that emphasises the importance of collaboration within our public sector; that emphasises the importance of public services being responsive to the needs and interests of our community; that emphasises our commitment to making sure that Te Ao Māori the Māori world view is understood and is part of how our Public Service operates.I also want to finish on a final point and that is to say that despite the fact that this legislation is significantly changing the way we organise the public sector it is by no means any kind of statement against the public servants who serve us today. We are incredibly well-served in New Zealand by our Public Service who act without fear or favour—whomever the Government is—in the best interests of the people of New Zealand. We should be incredibly proud of our Public Service. Today we've talked a little bit about where we stand in the Transparency International ratings and where we stand in the ease of doing business ratings in the world. A lot of that is down to the hard work and the ethics of our Public Service. They deserve our congratulations. This piece of legislation will support them in everything that they do. I commend the bill to the House."