Hipkins Chris: State Sector Management Bill — First Reading 
Hipkins Chris: State Sector Management Bill — First Reading 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 The previous speaker Colin King spoke absolute nonsense. I cannot actually believe that he compared Archives New Zealand with two meat-inspecting State-owned enterprises. I am absolutely staggered that he thought that was a legitimate comparison to make. AgriQuality and Asure are about meat inspection whereas this bill talks about our Archives New Zealand and our National Library and amalgamating those organisations into the “mother of all departments”—the Department of Internal Affairs. In fact historians have raised some very legitimate concerns about that transfer and what it could mean. The Government should definitely be taking those concerns on board rather than trying to compare them with meat inspectors which is entirely inappropriate and something that clearly suggests a very thin understanding of what this bill does. 
In a debate about the public services of New Zealand it would at this time be appropriate to acknowledge the outstanding work that our public services are doing down in Christchurch. The Minister of State Services said this bill streamlined and improved the delivery of front-line public services. What we have seen in the last few days is that the New Zealand Public Service can rise to the challenge when it needs to put the resources into the front line. 
We should remember that the civil defence agency is actually very small. It is not large; there is no huge army of people waiting to work in the case of a natural disaster such as the earthquake in Christchurch. Civil defence pulls together the resources at very short notice and it does an outstanding job. I think it has been doing very well in Christchurch and that is an example of how our State sector serves New Zealanders very well. 
When we talk about focusing on the front line and talk about improving public services we should never forget that our public servants already do a very good job and they are already focused on the front line. In fact broad descriptions such as “front-line public services” can in fact be very misleading. At most times civil defence is not a front-line public service. It is largely doing back-office planning and so on and contingency planning. It is only when there is an emergency that civil defence is pushed out on to the front line. If we make these bald distinctions between back office and front line I think that can be very misleading and potentially very damaging to the quality of the public services that New Zealanders have access to. 
It is worth examining that issue in the light of the debate about red tape which we often hear about when we are talking about public services. In fact red tape has protected Cantabrians. A high level of building standards has protected Cantabrians. It is one of the reasons we did not have the huge death toll that has happened in other countries and in other parts of the world in an earthquake the size of the one they have just had down in Christchurch because we have very high building standards in New Zealand. That may be regarded as red tape by some. I think that is very important and it is why we have a quality Public Service that can come up with these high-quality laws rules and regulations. I do not think that is nanny State I do not think that is red tape. I think that is protecting New Zealanders and is something we should all be very proud of and support. 
I shall talk a little bit about the abuse of the parliamentary process that we see with this bill and we see it time and time again with bills put forward by the National Government. When the Government moves a referral to a select committee it gives that committee the power to meet at all times whenever it feels like it even when Parliament is sitting. That is incredibly damaging to our democratic system. The parliamentary process is designed so that members can attend select committees and put the effort into understanding and hearing the submissions on a bill without the distraction of having to be in another place at the same time such as the parliamentary debating chamber. Unfortunately this Government does not respect that distinction. It expects MPs to be dividing their time between select committees and the House or actually not dividing the time but doing both simultaneously. I do not think that is fair; I particularly do not think that is fair on the smaller parties in Parliament. For National with its 58 MPs and even for Labour with our 42 MPs it is a little bit easier to cover those things but for the parties with only five or nine MPs actually dividing time between select committees and the debating chamber if those things are running at the same time can be incredibly difficult. I know that for the small parties if all the select committees are sitting at the same time it can be a difficult challenge without also having to worry about the House. 
So I am concerned that with bills such as this one where there is no pressing need for urgency there is no need to push this through in a hurry the Government is abusing the parliamentary process and is abusing its majority to force this through without giving all parties in Parliament an adequate opportunity to hear submissions and to hear what the public have to say. We know that this bill will be contentious although not the part about research and development—because generally speaking from what I have seen there is a high level of support for that part of the bill—but when it comes to Archives New Zealand and the National Library it does appear that that will be controversial. It appears that a lot of people will want to have their say. Therefore truncating the select committee process which is what the Government is effectively proposing to do with its referral motion is quite outrageous. That is something we will strongly oppose. 
I shall talk about some of the concerns that will arise during the select committee process particularly around the merger of New Zealand Archives and the National Library under the Department of Internal Affairs. That move will not save very much money and will not lead to much greater efficiency but will potentially significantly undermine the independence of those institutions. The Chief Archivist needs to be in a position to enforce the law that requires other Government agencies to keep and deposit their records. That will be compromised by a merger into the Department of Internal Affairs. It was one of the reasons that it was separated out in the first place so that it would have that independence and would be able to negotiate with some mana with other Government departments when it came to the storing of critical records of national significance. They should be in the archives and they should be protected by the independence of those archives. 
When the National Library was taken out of the Ministry of Education one of the reasons for doing so was that it had struggled to have a voice when it was subsumed under the Ministry of Education. The separation allowed it to develop a voice to be a strong advocate. That is something we should really protect and defend. A merger into the Department of Internal Affairs is not appropriate for organisations that have very specific roles in the transparency of our Government and the protection of our history. The next thing we know we could have the Government suggesting that the Ombudsman for the sake of administrative efficiency should be merged into the Department of Internal Affairs because we would save about the same amount of money as we would save in doing these mergers. But that would be an absolute outrage because it would clearly impact on the independence of the Ombudsman. It is something we would not do. The Government is not proposing to do that. I cannot understand why it is proposing to do it in this case particularly when we are talking about savings of about $165000 a year—not very much at all. When I think about the fact that 15 jobs will go out of this exercise I am not sure that it will save much money at all. So there are a lot of concerns. 
I will now turn to some of the concerns that have been raised about this already before the select committee process has even begun. The New Zealand Historical Association president Catharine Coleborne—and I apologise if I pronounced that name wrongly—said that historians were concerned that the merger could lead to political interference at Archives New Zealand the agency tasked with collecting Government and community records. I will quote her: “We’re very uncomfortable about the threat that this could mean for the autonomy of national archives and also of the Chief Archivist’s role within Government … To just create a new ruling that merges these institutions is very dangerous and unsound without the opportunity for comment and consultation.” 
Of course as I have outlined already the Government is abridging the select committee process for comment and consultation in what I think is quite an outrageous abuse of parliamentary process in the referral motion that it is putting forward. 
The New Zealand Society of Authors has raised serious concern. Maggie Tarver who is the chief executive officer is quoted as saying that this is obviously a cost-cutting exercise on behalf of the Government and the society questions the validity of such a move especially when it is clear that no significant savings will be achieved in the short term. 
Tony Simpson the president of the society talked about research facilities being important not only to historians and writers of historical fiction but also for the protection of our history. I think that is something that is really important. It is really important that we look after our history. Do we want to go back to the days when the Treaty of Waitangi was left in a basement so that rats could eat it? Is that what we want to go back to? No we do not want to go back to that. So I think the protection of the importance of these departments— 
Jacqui Dean 
: Oh that’s just silly. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It is not silly at all. I say to Jacqui Dean that it is not silly at all. When Archives New Zealand and the National Library are subsumed within the Department of Internal Affairs they will not have a voice and their budgets will be prone to cuts. When they have a Minister who is as ineffective as the Minister of Internal Affairs at the moment who just refers any decision to the officials in the department and does not seem to know what is going on in his department New Zealanders will have absolutely no confidence that the independence of our archives and our National Library will be preserved and will not be subject to unnecessary funding cuts. It is a bad bill.