Dyson Ruth: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17241. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am very pleased that you recognise me. I would be very disappointed if you did not after all the time that we have been in this House together. I am very pleased to speak in support of the motion that is before the House at the moment. But like others I want to raise some concerns that certainly the Leader of the House in his opening remarks did not even acknowledge let alone address. That in itself is a bit of a reflection on how this Government treats all matters of public interest all matters of concern that are raised by Opposition members and matters of concern that are I guess in a way more important raised directly with the Government by members of the public.Government members personify arrogance. They are so out of touch with what ordinary New Zealanders are thinking and feeling and they are adding to the frustration of many ordinary New Zealanders particularly members of the public in Canterbury by refusing to engage in grown-up conversation. They think they are above it. They think that it is belittling for them to listen to and talk with ordinary members of the public. I find that immensely frustrating and I know that the Office of the Ombudsmen the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Office of the Auditor-General—although of course given their roles they cannot directly say that—understand that people use their services and access their services more because people are driven away from ordinary conversation by the arrogance of John Key and his Ministers in this Government.We have just heard from my friend and colleague and fellow Cantabrian MP Clayton Cosgrove about the way that the Earthquake Commission as an organisation is talking to people is treating people and about how the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission has made that significantly worse by his deliberate considered politicisation of the commission and how that then is reflected in the frustration and despair that our constituents in Canterbury feel. Not long ago my colleagues and I went with David Cunliffe our leader to the home of Dorothy Boyd—Dot Boyd—who was told months and months and months ago that she should pack up her home because any minute now the Earthquake Commission was going to send into her home some builders to repair her damaged home. She was very happy that she was going to be able to move out and have some repairs done. Then the commission said: “Oh look we’ve changed our mind. We might have to rebuild your home so we’ll have to demolish your home and rebuild it.” She was accepting of that although pretty distressed given that she has lived there her entire married life. Months and months and months later this elderly woman was living in her home surrounded by packed-up contents. She had packed up all her belongings in boxes because that what she was told to do by the Earthquake Commission people and she had no idea what was happening. That is a small example of the frustration that people are feeling. When we raised that matter with the Minister he did nothing. He did not care enough to get his officials into the room and say: “Get some action on this case.” So we went to the media and oh suddenly it became quite important. The only thing that seems to trigger Minister Gerry Brownlee’s engagement with the public is media exposure. Well I do not think that that is good enough. That is so arrogant and out of touch.But then although directing his officials to do something about it the Minister came into this House and attacked Labour members of Parliament for raising that issue in the media and falsely accused us of not representing our constituents. He was wrong again. It showed not only his arrogance but also his laziness—that he actually took theincorrect information from the Earthquake Commission and used it to politicise the issues of Canterbury which we have been at lengths to avoid doing. Well we got an apology from Gerry Brownlee not for politicising it but for providing incorrect information to the House. But we then got two subsequent apologies from the chair of the Earthquake Commission and also from the chief executive of the commission—apologising not just for the incorrect information but for inappropriately providing that information to the Minister. The Minister was wrong to ask for it. The chief executive and the chair of the board both say that the commission was wrong to provide it. So the Minister owes us another apology. He was wrong to ask for that information.Instead of getting in touch with the issues in our region and doing something about them as has been recognised by the Ombudsman the Privacy Commissioner and the Auditor-General—the organisations whose votes we are considering in this motion—he should get in touch with what they have been reflecting in their annual reports and start addressing the issues rather than blame those who raise them.I am in admiration of those Officers of Parliament who have had the confidence and the understanding of the issues that they are dealing with day in day out to raise them directly with the Officers of Parliament Committee and make Parliament as a whole aware of them. I remember last year when the Chief Ombudsman came to our select committee and talked about the fact that the office was funded for 1000 to 1500 cases to be dealt with each year but it had received over 13000 cases. How is it possible for an organisation to deal with that? She talked about the stress that that was causing for staff because unlike the National Government her staff care about people and are in touch and understand the concerns that are being raised. She said that it was causing physical and emotional damage to her staff to have to deal with the huge workload they had understanding the dramatic concerns that some people felt and their need to have those concerns addressed in a timely fashion. The Ombudsman said that it was just not possible for the staff in that office to be able to deal with those concerns appropriately given the resources they had. I remember one of the National MPs saying: “Well you’ve raised a serious issue but your office isn’t in crisis is it?” to which the Ombudsman said: “Yes actually the office is in crisis.”I am very pleased that that situation has been responded to but let me say from another perspective that it is really frustrating that the Government is prepared to put additional money into funding the increased workload for the Ombudsman and so it should but is doing nothing about what is causing the additional workload to the Ombudsman and that is the incompetence of the Minister and the Government’s inability to see that its lack of engagement and responsiveness particularly in Canterbury earthquake matters is driving people to use the Ombudsman’s office. They use Official Information Act requests they go to the Ombudsman and they go to anyone who they think will listen because they know that the Ministers in this Government are not listening to them at all.In relation to the motion that we are dealing with the other Officer of Parliament that I would like to comment on is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We have had some very high-quality reports produced by the commissioner and I just want to put on record that Labour values very much the independence and the robustness of the reports that are issued from that office. It gives us a very good politically neutral high-quality basis on which to have the debates that are really some of the most critical facing our nation: the vulnerability of species; contentious issues like the use of 1080; the issues of clean water fresh water; and the vulnerability of our rivers. There are a large number of reports that the Parliamentary Commissioner’s office has raised and I think they give all of us in Parliament a very good basis for well-informed and robust debate.The Parliamentary Commissioner just yesterday released her submission on the Environmental Reporting Bill and raised significant concerns. Again I say that all members of Parliament all political parties should be listening. Those concerns are in two specific areas but one really drives at the heart of many concerns that Labour has raised in the past and that is one of political interference. It is very clear from the Environmental Reporting Bill that the Minister for the Environment wants to direct what is in that bill. That goes against every recognised standard for best practice for environmental reporting. The basis of environmental reporting the robustness of it has to be political independence. It cannot be for the Minister to say: “Those numbers aren’t looking too good. I don’t want them in the report so I’ll direct whoever is doing the environmental reporting to take them out that year.” That is the intention of the current legislation. It is something the Parliamentary Commissioner has raised as a concern. It is something that Labour shares as well. Thank you.Motion agreed to and Address agreed to.