McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. Needless to say we support this bill to the select committee. During the 18-odd years that I've been floating around in public life you come to realise pretty quickly the value of the Public Service in whatever form it takes. I think it's essential that we have a very strong Public Service not the least reason of which is to make sure that when we elect various people to positions of power the Public Service is there to control them. It's not such a bad thing at times because it's necessary—and you certainly see that in local government. The Public Service is hugely important to us in New Zealand and I like the previous speakers have great admiration for them.I did want to come at this from a slightly different angle though because it's interesting—with the exception of my cricketing colleague and I note that England are under a bit of pressure today again—all the speakers that we've heard from have been Ministers. You have a very different perspective of the Public Service as a Minister than you do as a backbencher in this place. I suppose I just wanted to issue a ward of worming—that was an interesting term wasn't it?—a word of warning to those backbenchers amongst us who have a penchant for attacking members of the Public Service when they come before select committees: you've got to remember that one day you might be on the other side of the fence and the Public Service will take a very different view of you. I think it is something that people tend to forget in this place and I've seen one or two of our current members of Parliament have that problem.This Act replaces the State Sector Act that was put in place somewhere in the 1980s. As we've seen recently again in this Parliament things that have been around 30-odd years or more do tend to date a bit. I think it's necessary that it is brought up to date—and I guess I think the changes are positive.I did want to touch on one change that I think is going to be tricky to deal with and that's—and I know the terminology is very general at the moment—where it talks about forming boards of State sector chief executives. I think those State sector chief executives are going to come to those boards with the best of intentions but they're going to find themselves from time to time compromised. I think we've seen this on all sorts of boards that I've been around in my lifetime where you have representatives of a group on a board it's very difficult to then become part of the whole and represent and take back to the bit of the whole the pieces that are important to make the whole work. I think that's going to be very testing. I admire the aspiration of it because I do think it's good. But I do think it's going to be very tempting to get that to work as it's intended. I hope it does work because I think if it does it will add a whole lot of value to what we're trying to do here as parliamentarians.A couple of other things that interest me as well are that it mentions in the course of this legislation the ability to restructure—or rationalise the nature of our district and regional branches and the boundaries that apply to them—of some of our State sector organisations. That really interests me particularly in the Rangitīkei because when you go to Taumarunui you go out of Taumarunui for health to the Waikato for social services to New Plymouth for the police to Whanganui for the regional council to Palmerston North and blow me down you've got to go to Taupō to do your shopping. It's extremely complicated and very confusing for people that live in those parts of rural New Zealand. We don't realise in this place quite the challenges that they have and I'm sure that the State sector departments have in delivering a joined-up service or structure to those smaller communities that are more isolated in New Zealand. So I hope that that's able to come out of this bill and work as well as it works—obviously in built-up areas and cities it's much easier to operate these services and I think they work differently in my experience in cities than they do in the regions but none the less it's important. There was one other thing that intrigued me about this which was that in the build-up to it and in some of the work that's been done before it talked about a lack of public interface in this bill. Well the State services have a massive influence on what happens to us as people and there might not necessarily be much public interface between the Public Service and what happens in Parliament but what they do is hugely important because it impacts everyone in New Zealand and it impacts on all of our lives in some form or other. So it's very important that members of the public peruse this bill and make sure that when it finally comes out for its third reading or ends up in its third reading and comes out as law it's actually in a form that's going to work for the rest of New Zealand. I think that's very important and I think it's important that the people of New Zealand understand how the system works and why it's established to work in the manner it does.It's no small piece of legislation. It's a very important piece of legislation and it will I think come in for quite a lot of scrutiny at select committee even though it is operating under a shortened time frame. So I look forward to the progress of this bill. I admire I guess the idea of it and the thought that's gone into putting it together and I'm sure it will get great scrutiny as I've said and come out the other end in good shape. Thank you Madam Speaker.