Hayes John: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHayes John: State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11608. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa):The last speaker the Hon Phil Goff who was jumping up and down and thumping the table needs to realise a couple of things. First of all when you train a body of men to go and kill people and defend our country you are not training them to write letters—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. Order! Whatever the member says must be related to the content of the bill. I will ask the member to come back to it. He can comment on what the previous speaker has said but it must be in relation to the State Sector Act amendments in Part 1 which we are talking about.JOHN HAYES: This bill is about delivering better public services to New Zealand and that is one of our priorities. If we were able to develop and ensure that better services were being delivered as this bill proposes then we would not find ourselves in the situation that we inherited from the last Government where we had a military that was trained to kill people not to write letters. The amendments in this bill create a range of public sector management tools to foster an innovative efficient public sector that will I think deliver far better identified results for New Zealanders. I think the last speaker would realise and understand and has been around this House for long enough to know that all the legislation in the world no matter how carefully constructed does not force management to write letters of a particular sort. So I think we have to have some latitude in these bills that we are considering here tonight.I particularly support those comments made by colleagues in the Labour Party and also in the Green Party who talked about our working together in the Finance and Expenditure Committee because certainly that was the case in preparing this legislation that is now before us this evening.One of the important things I think in the legislation is that it will strengthen the State Services Commissioner’s role in leading the State sector. That is really really important. I think it is also important in this legislation that it will extend chief executives’ responsibilities to consider the collective interest of Government and long-term sustainability rather than operating in silos as happened under Mr Goff’s tenure as a Minister of the Crown. What we are trying to do is rather than focus on a single department encourage much less of a silo mentality and a much more inclusive Public Service.We also want to provide for a new organisational arrangement—departmental agencies—so that options are available for delivering better public services. These operational agencies will be set up within a department to carry out specific functions and the chief executives of these organisational arrangements will report direct to the Minister—a much more inclusive system which I think will improve governance across the system. I feel that this is a good piece of legislation. I think it will ensure that the State sector is modern is flexible is fit for purpose and will deliver far better outcomes for all New Zealanders. Thank you.