Copeland Gordon: Appropriation (2006/07 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Copeland Gordon: Appropriation (2006/07 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:633;Page:4586] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I would like to follow for a few brief seconds the theme of the previous speaker and the debate about what it means to be a bedrock Kiwi a mainstream Kiwi or whatever. Basically I suggest to the House that maybe we could go beyond all the definitions that have been put up in this debate and simply look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What is wrong with that document? That document goes back to the mid-1940s. 
I should make it very clear that United Future is a pro-immigration party. We are a pro - population growth party. Therefore we want to see new immigrants come here. In fact the nation has no choice given the net outflow we have seen in recent years but to have new immigrants come in. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is tremendously important and we want people to say as it were that they adhere to that list of rights and values. 
There is one important value in that document that is not in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that I have not heard mentioned in any debate in this House. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes not only freedom of religion but also the freedom to change one’s religion. That very right is the source of a lot of conflict in the world today. When we think about it we understand that we do not have genuine freedom of religion unless we also have the ability to change our religion without the force of the law coming down on us for doing so which is the case in many nations of this world today. So I want to make that point. Why do we not just get people to sign up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to live by that standard? I think these problems would then disappear pretty quickly. 
I want though to devote most of my speech to expressing United Future’s continued great unease with the growth in Government expenditure and the level of bureaucracy that has resulted. I live here in Wellington and we see the results all around us in brand new buildings—brand new buildings to house Government departments. We have one by Bowen House for the Ministry of Health; we have a new building just down the road for the Ministry of Defence; we have a new building on the wharf for Statistics New Zealand. With that if we look at the situations vacant section of the  
Dominion Post 
 on the weekend we see entire pages—and I am not kidding—devoted to the great big advertisements of Government departments that are looking for policy analysts. 
Now policy analysts are important people. But really if we are looking at economic transformation I think the Government is on the wrong track in thinking we will get there by employing an ever-increasing number of policy analysts. It takes me back to the days of the early 1980s before the Lange Government came in when we had the phrase “paralysis by analysis”. If we take that to its logical conclusion and put more and more analysts into the situation we will eventually get paralysis because analysts are not actually built to get things done and to move things forward. We are just swelling the bureaucracy at the public’s expense when we could actually be using that money in better ways. A model that is sometimes put before us in the House is that of the British Labour Government. I advise the House that the British Finance Minister Gordon Brown has put forward specific goals on the reduction of Government expenditure and of the growing bureaucracy in that nation—quite specific goals with targets in mind to reduce the bureaucracy. He wants to carve Stg£20 billion out of back-line—what we might call back office—activity in the bureaucracy and put Stg£20 billion into the delivery of front-line Government services and he has a target to do that by the end of 2008. Right now to the end of March 2006 he has already achieved a saving of Stg£9.8 billion. 
I say to the Government that we should do the same here. We should set out deliberately on a course to reduce the bureaucracy and to get rid of back-office activity which is really a very poor utilisation of scarce resources. By all means let us have good front-end delivery of public services. New Zealanders want that. In turning away by the narrowest of margins from tax cuts in the 2005 election they basically said that they wanted to stick with good core public services. They absolutely want good front-line delivery but I do not think for a moment that New Zealanders actually voted to see a swelling bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is getting out of hand under this Government and there is no precise plan to rein it in. I believe that it is about time the Government got real and set out a plan to rein it in.