Robertson Grant: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16275. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 We move now to the parts of the State Sector Management Bill that the Labour Opposition has significant concerns about. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It’s the controversial bit. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: It is controversial and it makes quite a significant change to very important parts of our democratic and constitutional infrastructure. Part 2 obviously deals with the National Library’s merger into the Department of Internal Affairs and Part 3 deals with the Archives New Zealand merger. 
I turn to Part 2. This is where Labour has a particular concern about why this is being done. Obviously when we come to debate clause by clause there is no clause generally that will answer that question but I think it is an important place to start our debate. The National Library is regarded by most people in the public sector and most of the stakeholders who work with it as a high-functioning well-regarded organisation. I am sure the Minister in the chair the Minister responsible for the National Library would agree with that. In fact Audit New Zealand has consistently over the last few years noted what a high-functioning organisation the National Library is. 
The question is why on earth we are here today on a Saturday morning debating merging a high-functioning nimble organisation such as the National Library— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I’ve got an answer for that. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I would be interested to hear that in a moment I say to Mr Cosgrove. Why would we be merging a high-functioning nimble organisation like the National Library into a large organisation with multiple responsibilities such as the Department of Internal Affairs when we heard that the financial savings from this merger for both Archives New Zealand and the National Library could be as low as $160000 a year—$160000 a year—with about 15 jobs lost? 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: It costs more than that to run Parliament. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right. As the Hon Ruth Dyson said it is probably costing more than that for us to be here today. If financial saving is the justification from the Government then it is indeed a very very poor justification. 
Part 2 begins by defining a number of terms and these are quite significant. Although a particular Minister we are told by the National Government will still hold the portfolio for the National Library we now see that the National Librarian immediately becomes subject to the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. The chief executive will act as the employer for the National Librarian who is in charge of our National Library. So immediately the Government’s claim that this bill—this particular part of the bill—does not dilute the independence of the National Library is called into question. When we get into the interpretation we see that the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs now has that power. 
In the remainder of Part 2 of this bill there are some mitigation measures around how the National Librarian will still be able to perform his or her role. But that does not get us away from the fact that we are reducing the independence of the person who heads our National Library today let alone—and I will come back to this in later calls—the head of the Alexander Turnbull Library. 
In the midst of the exercise that we did the Department of Internal Affairs released the organisational design for the new department with the merged Archives New Zealand and National Library in it. We saw that in this case the National Librarian will be a third-tier manager in the Department of Internal Affairs—not even part of the executive leadership team and not able to influence directly the overall strategy of the Department of Internal Affairs. Immediately again the independence and the influence of the National Librarian is taken out and reduced by this bill. 
We ask ourselves to what end. This organisation is achieving well—though admittedly facing budget cuts as my colleague Moana Mackey said in the second reading of this bill. The funding for the school library service has been cut from the National Library. But still it is performing well as an organisation. We ask ourselves why we would dilute that influence. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: What’s the answer? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: We do not know because throughout the select committee process we got no answer to justify why this was being done. In the end it came down to some kind of ideological view about reducing the number of Government departments and possibly cutting the chief executive salary bill. That was about as good as we got. There was no justification for how this change might actually improve the services New Zealanders get. There was no justification for how it might actually enhance our historical and democratic infrastructure. It was almost as if it was about solving someone else’s problem—a problem that we could never actually identify. 
As a consequence I have put forward a typescript amendment in my name to insert a new subclause in clause 25 which amends section 9 of the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Act so that we can actually ensure that the National Librarian has some influence. At the moment there is no guaranteed access to the Minister for the National Librarian. I am sure that Minister Guy will undertake his job seriously and he will want to talk to the National Librarian from time to time. But it will be Mr Guy’s prerogative to decide. He will decide whether he should meet the National Librarian; it is not guaranteed in this bill. I have an amendment that would give the National Librarian the ability on his or her own initiative to advise the Minister and to report to the Minister and to acknowledge that the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs is not necessarily the conduit through which they have to go. 
This is the only way that we will be able to ensure that the National Library retains the degree of independence it needs as part of our system. The history of an agency—and we will come back to this matter in Part 3 which is around Archives New Zealand—subsumed within the Department of Internal Affairs and how it actually gets access and influence in the process is a very important matter. I urge the Minister to take a call and tell us whether he is prepared to support my amendment because we on this side of the Chamber believe that the National Librarian needs that ability to speak directly to the Minister. 
The other element missing is how we mitigate the measures that are in here. Obviously I want to make it clear that from a Labour point of view we believe that it is wholly unnecessary to merge the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs but as we are here debating these clauses we want to try to improve them and ensure that there actually is the degree of independence that the National Librarian requires. 
The other new clause we propose is clause 29A which requires the National Librarian to prepare annual reports. At the moment that requirement has gone because the library is subsumed within the Department of Internal Affairs. Yes there might end up being a section in the department’s report where the National Library’s activities will be covered but New Zealanders will now have a lot less information available to them about the activities of the National Library. So I am suggesting new clause 29A which requires the National Librarian to publish a report for tabling in this House and the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library—which as I say I will return to in a future call—will also have an obligation to prepare such a report. These things are extremely important because this is the only way that we will know that New Zealanders’ faith and trust in the National Library can be upheld. We need to have that requirement within this bill. 
Those are two mitigation measures but overall the position of the National Librarian is diminished by this particular part of the bill. We had submissions in the Education and Science Committee from people from bodies such as the Library and Information Association of New Zealand and the Friends of the Turnbull Library. All of them came to us and said that we needed to ensure that the National Library had status mana influence and independence. All of those things are important. Although the National Library will never make the headlines and it will never be the thing that people immediately refer to at their summer barbecues it lies at the heart of—[ 
Interruption 
] Judith Collins will. Quite often Judith Collins at her summer barbecues talks about the National Library. In between talking about Clayton Cosgrove she talks about the National Library which is obviously important to her. The independence of the National Librarian is a subject that New Zealanders should be concerned about. 
The committee was told by officials and press reports from the Minister that this change represented a reasonable practice internationally. Well that is simply not borne out by the evidence that we have found. In actual fact a national library is regarded in most countries as a key core element of something beyond the administration of Government which makes it incredibly sad that this National Government has reduced the National Library to being a mere part of the bureaucracy a department that could be placed anywhere. Quite frankly under the logic being applied in this bill the National Library could be merged into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. It really would not make any difference because it is all about back-office efficiencies. We are all in favour of back-office efficiencies but I ask why we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. We could have a high-functioning organisation supported to continue that work rather than being subsumed alongside other parts of the Department of Internal Affairs that quite frankly are not relevant to its work.