Seymour David: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11292. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill. Let me just give you a bit of the background as to why that is. This bill is completely pointless and it also blurs in quite a damaging way the constitutional lines within New Zealand’s arrangements. None the less I have decided to support it because I have far better things to do than waste my time persuading my colleagues to vote against a bill that will make no material difference to the operation of this Government or this House but that none the less does waste an enormous amount of the Labour Party’s time. If you doubt that let me help you with some of the research it might have done if only it had been the Labour Party of old and we will come to that a little bit later.This is an education report dated 22 January 2015 responding to a request for official information on partnership schools kura hourua which says “Mr David Seymour will receive official information on Partnership Schools” and that he will also receive and sign out Official Information Act (OIA) requests. You may think that this is some sort of secret but like many of the documents I am going to show you tonight it is publicly available and I would love—actually I seek leave to table this document which is widely available on the internet.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will not be putting that leave.DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh Mr Deputy Speaker I cannot even table this document because it is on the freaking internet!Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just in case there is any doubt I am not putting that leave. I take it the member is now continuing with his speech and is not contesting my ruling on that particular matter.DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Deputy Speaker I would never contest your ruling.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good.DAVID SEYMOUR: I cannot table this document in Parliament because it is on the internet but it has none the less escaped the Labour Party.We have been very clear about the process and actually I have already been signing out OIA requests according to a document that has been available on the internet for at least a year. Not everybody missed this fact because not only have I been able to sign out Official Information Act requests but also I have been doing it including to one Ben Cunliffe researcher in the office of the Leader of the Opposition: “Dear Mr Cunliffe thank you for your email. You asked for I have considered and here are the documents. [signed] D. B. Seymour.”—i.e. me. So there is an actual OIA request that the Labour Party has already made to my office that we released and I signed out.But it gets better. It is not only the Labour Party that has figured that out; Andrew Little should have told these members that. Here is an Official Information Act request from “Te Green Party o Aotearoa” which I also signed out and which it has received. So I am already signing out these OIA requests. Then we thought: “Actually I’m committed to open and transparent Government.” So we started proactively releasing documents that pertain to my portfolios and here they are. The documents—I will not try to table these Mr Deputy Speaker because—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good.DAVID SEYMOUR: —they are widely available on the internet thank you. This is the amount of official information under my portfolio that I have already released. I would stack all of it up but if I were to do that I might not be able to see you Mr Deputy Speaker over the pile of documents. So QED this bill is completely unnecessary. There is no public interest in my having the OIA applied to me because we are already highly transparent already releasing documents proactively and already responding to OIA requests but the Labour Party members could not quite figure that out or maybe Andrew Little’s office did not tell them.There is actually a more serious matter to this bill which is that the Official Information Act was set up to ensure that the executive of Government—those with actual official information and decision-making powers—could be held to account by the public. It will not surprise you that every document I have that contains official information is copied to the Minister of Education or the Minister for Regulatory Reform depending upon the portfolio that it pertains to. I do not hold any official information exclusively that the public would gain access to. That is why this is an entirely futile bill which none the less breaches the line between executive responsibility on the one hand and the rest of Parliament and civil society on the other.Some people would say that Adrian Rurawhe and this bill are a waste of space but I actually think this is quite useful because once upon a time the Labour Party was a grand public policy - oriented reforming party. There was a period in Labour’s history when in 6 short years it introduced the Constitution Act the State-Owned Enterprises Act the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act the Education Act the State Sector Act the Public Finance Act and so it went on—a party that had bold plans and good ideas for New Zealand and that actually shaped this country in a way that no Government Labour or National has sought to change in the 26 years since. Ruth Dyson can remember this because she was there for much of it even if she did not understand all of it. Today we see a Labour Party so diminished that it is reduced to introducing members’ bills that will have no material effect on the way New Zealand functions whatsoever. What a tragic day for the Labour Party for this Parliament and for New Zealand.To borrow a phrase from that hallowed period in the Labour’s history I have been thinking. I have been thinking if we are prepared to breach the basic line between the executive with official information and the decision-making power then why would we not be prepared to breach it a bit further? There are actually many groups in the political arena in which the public has a great interest in what information they have in whom they talk to and in what meetings they have. These are all things that are of great interest to the public.I would say that in the eyes of the public there is not a big difference between members of the executive and members of the Opposition. If the Leader of the Opposition has access to a Crown car then I think there might actually be some interest in being able to make him subject to the OIA. But what about all MPs? Who do they talk to? Who is influencing them? They have decision-making power in this Parliament. Now that we have breached the difference between the executive and Parliament why not go the whole way? But why stop there? What about you Mr Deputy Speaker? You have influence in this House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not bring me into this debate.DAVID SEYMOUR: OK Mr Deputy Speaker I will not bring you into this debate but the point is made. What about the members of parliamentary press gallery? They can set the agenda. They can influence public opinion. Who influences them and should they not be subject to the Official Information Act?So I have been thinking now that the Labour Party has pointlessly breached the division between the executive with official information and the decision-making power I think we may just—how does it go—be hung for a sheep as a lamb. In the Committee stage of this bill—which I am looking forward to because I am voting for the second reading—I am looking forward to putting up a number of amendments to make this bill apply to a wide range of people in Wellington. If the Labour Party thinks there is a point in applying it to parliamentary under-secretaries then why not parliamentary private secretaries why not Leaders of the Opposition why not members of Parliament why not the parliamentary press gallery which after all has access to space in the gallery—why do we not just burn the whole thing down?I am supporting this bill because it is going to be a lot of fun. It is going to show us what a silly and diminished little force Adrian Rurawhe and the Labour Party are and how those members quibble over such tiny matters when they used to be such a grand reforming party. I am going to enjoy every ounce of the remaining debate on this bill. It is a pity that the Labour Party is wasting the House’s time but it is a wonderful thing that it is wasting its own time because if it got serious again it might actually do some real damage.I support this bill wholeheartedly. Thank you very much.