Donald Rod: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Donald Rod: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17847. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting this bill in the second reading the Committee stage and the third reading. I say that with some relief because if substantial changes had not been made to this bill at the Finance and Expenditure Committee we would definitely have been opposing it in this House. 
The process that this bill is now undergoing mirrors I believe the bad process that has occurred from the outset. Here we are on Wednesday night—Wednesday night as far as the rest of the world is concerned but Tuesday night as far as the parliamentary timetable is concerned—dealing with a bill that is 500 pages long under urgency in a fashion that I think is totally inappropriate. We are having the second reading debate then we will have the Committee stage—and this bill has something like 18 questions to be debated. The third reading debate will immediately follow the Committee stage. So there will be no opportunity for appropriate consideration of this bill no opportunity to reflect on its detail during the Committee stage and no gap between the Committee stage and the third reading in which to consider introducing last-minute changes as a result of the Committee stage debate. I think that is very poor lawmaking. 
That I am afraid epitomises this bill. When it came to the select committee in the first place it was a shambles. It was a dog’s breakfast. I have to say that the original bill exposed both the ignorance and the arrogance of the executive. The bill as introduced significantly undermined the status and role of Parliament. I am not asking members to believe me when I make that statement although members ought to because we are now supporting the bill; I would just recommend that members read the submission of the Clerk of the House David McGee. His submission was scathing. I have never seen a submission from the Clerk quite like that one. Even his criticism of international treaties was moderate compared with the way he completely demolished the content and structure of this bill. To give members an indication of the depth of his concern I point out that his submission was 24 pages long. It contained 6 pages of recommended changes including some most significant ones. 
The bill as introduced removed the terms “estimates” and “supplementary estimates” from our legislation. It allowed for the aggregation of votes. It reduced parliamentary consultation. It reduced ministerial accountability to the House. It removed obligations to present and publish departmental annual reports. It restricted the supply of information to Parliament and it allowed for capital expenditure to occur without appropriation. I will just dwell on that for one moment; Mr McGee’s comment was “Parliament should regard with inherent suspicion any proposal to appropriate permanently.” and we totally agree with that. Last but certainly not least he raised concerns about excessive delegation of power and the one that we in the Green Party are particularly concerned about is the one that to quote David McGee amounted “virtually to an open-ended power to require Crown entities to comply with international treaties to which New Zealand is a party.” I will not go though everything in David McGee’s submission because it was not the only one that was extremely critical of this bill. Even the usually mild-mannered and reserved Controller and Auditor-General’s submission raised a number of concerns as did many submissions from members of the public and key organisations such as the Vice-Chancellors Committee. 
I am happy to say that the bill has been extensively rewritten hence its length. It has been rewritten because of those concerns but I have to ask the Government why it ever brought a bill to this Parliament in the first place without thoroughly consulting key interested stakeholders such as the Clerk of the House the Vice-Chancellors Committee the Public Service Association and all the other organisations that will be intimately affected by this bill and such as the Controller and Auditor-General who is in conventional terms Parliament’s man and is there to look after our interests. It is simply bad lawmaking for a select committee to have to spend months wading through report after report to fix up a mess that should not have been created in the first place. But thank goodness that people like McGee did make strong submissions because in the end he did win the day and what we have before us is a considerable improvement on what we started with. 
It is still far from perfect. A number of people such as Sue Newberry believe that we should unwind many of the changes that originally came in in 1989 such as the move from cash to accrual accounting. I know that the vice-chancellors want to remove from this bill any embrace of universities under the Crown entity category and to have them put completely under the Education Act. I would say to both groups that I understand their concerns but I think in both cases the bill as reported back addresses many of them. One has only to look at Supplementary Order Paper 315 on the Table to see that the Government has to a large extent capitulated to the requests of the universities by removing a number of the requirements under schedule 6B that apply to universities to keep them onside. Mr Mallard was right when he said in a recent interview that the status quo remains because the Supplementary Order Paper for example removes the application to tertiary educational institutes of sections 174 175 199 210 and 212 of the Act. That goes some way to addressing the vice-chancellors’ concerns. 
But there are other improvements that could be made to this bill. I foreshadow a set of amendments which I will be putting on the Table that do a number of useful things from our point of view. I will listen with interest to John Key’s comments on whether he supports particularly the addition of contingent liabilities to the requirements under section 26J in clause 8 so that the Government’s long-term objectives with regard to contingent liabilities are set out in a Fiscal Strategy Report. We also want to see an extension of the requirements under section 26P in clause 8 to cover overseas trade in goods and services reserves of natural resources social well-being and environmental quality because we want the Government accounts to move to a triple bottom line. We also want to see more transparency with regard to securities derivative transactions investment and guarantees. We want to bring that into section 27 in clause 10. I am sure that many members of the House particularly Matt Robson will be keen to see that we want the Security Intelligence Service to have to present its accounts to the House. At the moment it is let off. For all those Labour members who are concerned about workers’ rights we want to bring in employee representation for Crown entities and a pay and employment equity programme. Second to last but not least we want building societies to be treated on the same basis as banks as far as their being a place where Crown entities can invest their money. 
Ultimately we are keen to accommodate what the Government Superannuation Fund Authority wants which is to be treated equally with the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation but our solution is to turn the New Zealand Superannuation Fund from an autonomous Crown entity into an independent Crown entity. That should not keep either of those bodies happy and that is exactly what we are keen to do because we want them to— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I think National will vote against that too. 
ROD DONALD 
: I am sure National would. It is the old two-party club situation. Both of them have the same attitude when it comes to many aspects of the economy which is why this House needs the Green Party here to present an alternative perspective to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.