Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Speaker. It sounds awfully as though peace has broken out. I'm sure it's a good—Hon Grant Robertson: Ha ha! It won't last.Hon Chris Hipkins: It won't last.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: There's no chance of it lasting that long but it might last out for this bill. Anyway I'd like to echo a few of the words particularly of my colleague on this side of the House regarding the political neutrality of the Public Service and how important that is. I think many of us know that the—let's take the US federal system where a new President comes in and 5000 senior public servants lose their job that day. That's not possibly a system—not that I'm ever about to criticise other countries' systems—that's going to embolden someone to be politically neutral when they're making decisions. I think it makes it very difficult for those who work in the levels under those 5000 to maintain any sense of political neutrality when they have that sort of situation happening. That's just simply that our Public Service has moved on over the years in a slightly different way from some other countries.There has been an awful lot of talk about the excellent work of the Public Service and my experience as a former Minister has been that I have been consistently impressed by the decency the hard work and the commitment to fulfilling Government priorities over the years in almost every case. I think when I look—and that's probably like my colleague the former Minister Nick Smith—at when we can have actually good friendly relations with people who now serve another Government that's a very good indication as to the strength of the political neutrality that there is in fact no patronage no appointments to the senior Public Service based on you know political parties or personal friendships.I think one of the things that I would like to say is that it has not always been quite like that. It may shatter the general peace that's broken out but I do want to acknowledge that a former chief executive Christine Rankin was extraordinarily badly treated by an Opposition in the 1990s. I think one of the things that we should always think about is that these public servants who do the jobs that we as either former Ministers or Ministers ask them to do have an accountability to try and do their best to follow Government policies and to do their best to do so. It's not OK to take them aside and to take them apart frankly in a public way. That happened to Mrs Rankin.When we look at working across agencies the big issue is always around budgets actually and also priorities for those particular agencies. Certainly when we were in Government we brought in in the justice sector a working arrangement between the Ministers of Justice Police Corrections and the Attorney-General. I'm not sure that the current Government does that but we certainly found that a very useful way so that we could actually encourage—because our Ministers worked together—the chief executives to work together accordingly. That reached its pinnacle really frankly in the Justice Sector Fund. That was a fund that each of those agencies—and certainly the Crown Law Office never had much to give in I must say—could put any money that they hadn't used from their last budgets in together so that other agencies could use that those other agencies being in the justice sector. That was all around bringing down crime which we had some very good success with and also about looking at innovation.Trying to get any innovative actions through the Public Service processes particularly around Treasury can be quite difficult and so sometimes it needed something that we could actually try without having to prove it would already work which is really hard with innovation. It's very hard to prove it will work when you haven't actually tried it. So we found that very useful.I think too though that there needs to be another issue that we deal with in the select committee and that will be the issue of accountability. It is very easy to say Well we've all got to hold hands and work together in the Public Service. We'll all just you know be happy with a common goal." It is difficult to do that when someone is the chief executive of an agency and that agency then has to be held accountable for its performance which is where targets actually are quite useful. It is important with that that the Government and the Parliament itself in the select committee looks at this and says "So how do we have a situation where everyone can work together for the common goal? But by the way we want to make sure we can hold agencies accountable to do their part." I do always have a little concern with all this holding hands and singing "Kumbaya" together that we make sure that agencies do have accountability because you can end up with situations where everyone is accountable which means nobody is accountable. That's the problem. So that's going to be really interesting teasing that out in select committee. I think that's one of the issues we see with attempts that have been made in the past. It's going to be really important that that accountability function is robust.So in general we support this bill going to select committee. The Opposition will be taking a very constructive and helpful role in this. I think it's something that we can all agree on. We can be proud of our Public Service but we can also be awake to the fact that times change technology changes needs change and there's nothing wrong with being able to look to the future as well."