Brownlee Gerry: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2016/17Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrownlee Gerry: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-GeneralYear 2016/17[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10324. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move That a respectful Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor-General commending to His Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2015/16 financial year in respect of Vote Audit and Vote Ombudsmen and the appropriations and information for the 2016/17 financial year in respect of Vote Audit Vote Ombudsmen and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.These three offices are known as Offices of Parliament and they serve as independent statutory authorities with specific roles to play. The Auditor-General as everybody knows is an office that superintends all public expenditure in New Zealand. It makes it very clear that its role is to independently assess the appropriateness of Government expenditure measured against the statements given to this House about how that expenditure will be spent effectively. That office is to ensure that the probity around any public spending is at the highest possible level.Can I skip for a moment to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is a very important role in a country like this. Dr Jan Wright has proved the office to be very very scientific in its approach to things and the reports that come out of that office are certainly considered valuable by many many New Zealanders. It provides a good interface between the scientific views that form policy and the sometimes more colloquial views that are expressed by communities about some of these matters. It is a valuable office and serves New Zealand well.The Office of the Ombudsmen is an office where New Zealanders are able to go if they think they have not had a fair go for one reason or another. This is an office that deals with all Official Information Act requests and it has made a request to the Government for additional funding in the years ahead in order to make sure that it is able to meet the requirements under its Act. We can look forward to an increase in that funding in the years 2016-17 2017-18 and 2018-19 in order not only to clear some backlog that exists there—some of it going back some very very many years—but also to get on top of what is in front of it at the moment.I would make this one comment though and I have thought very long and hard about making it because it is not always appropriate for this House to express views about independent commissioners who basically are the people who lead the organisations we are speaking about today. But I did see an interview on television on 19 March with the Chief Ombudsman that I thought did have one or two matters raised and suggestions made by the Chief Ombudsman that should cause us all concern. The ombudsmen’s role is to make sure that people are treated fairly inside our democracy not to determine the bounds of that democracy; nor is it the role of the ombudsmen to start determining what a relationship should be for example between a client and a legal representative a lawyer etc.; nor should they stray into areas that are most appropriately dealt with by the courts particularly when it comes to the rules that allow us to live a free life in a country like this. I know that that is possibly a fine line but that interview gave me quite some cause for concern.However I am pleased to commend this report to the House and welcome the debate that will now ensue before we vote later in the afternoon.