Hipkins Chris: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General 
Hipkins Chris: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General 
[Volume:672;Page:18483] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to speak on this motion before the House today. I am particularly happy to speak on it given the constitutional significance of the role of the people we are talking about particularly the Ombudsmen and the Auditor-General in determining that public money is spent wisely and prudently and that the activities of the Government are transparent. It is incredibly important that the activities of the Government are transparent. 
The Ombudsmen’s role is never more important than at the times we have a National Government. It is never more important than when we have a National Government because National Governments do not like being transparent about what they are getting up to. We can tell that by looking at the Ombudsmen’s annual report and the number of complaints there are about this Government and its failure to release information. 
When members of this Government get a tricky question and when they are asked about tricky issues—about what they are actually getting up to behind the scenes—their gut response is to deny deny deny. That is why there has been such an increase in the number of complaints being investigated by the Ombudsmen and that is one of the reasons the Ombudsmen need extra resourcing which is what this motion is all about. This Government does not like being transparent about what it is getting up to. 
I look particularly at the numbers in that report and why the Office of the Ombudsmen need that extra resourcing. The number of complaints received by the Ombudsmen under the Official Information Act in the past year was 920 which was a 12 percent increase on the year prior to that. The office ended the year with 643 complaints on hand. Fourteen percent of complaints overall were against Ministers of the Crown which is a significant proportion of the complaints received under the Official Information Act by the Ombudsmen. A significant proportion of complaints were against Ministers of the Crown. 
I quote particularly from the Ombudsmen’s report: “People usually require official information for a specific purpose and often it will lose value over time. Overall we took on average 120 working days to complete OIA cases”. That is 4 months or more before people are getting the information although there is no guarantee they will get the information at the end of that time. It is 4 months in which the office will investigate whether the people should in fact get the information. 
This Government is using the provisions of the Official Information Act to deny the release of information; it is using those provisions as a blanket rule. If the information is tricky or difficult or if the Government does not want to release it the Government simply refuses the request for it. A complaint then goes to the Ombudsmen and Ministers know they have 4 months. They know they have another 4 months. By basically not complying with the law they can buy themselves 4 more months in the hope that the issues will go away. That is not democracy in action and we as a Parliament need to make sure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is adequately resourced to investigate complaints adequately and thoroughly and ensure that transparency and democracy and the principles we hold dear in this House are upheld. They are not being upheld under the current National Government. 
I also quote from page 31 of the Ombudsmen’s annual report: “the impact of an increased workload is visible in the age profile of open investigations.” The Office of the Ombudsmen aims for 80 percent of Official Information Act complaints to have been completed at the end of a year yet in the last year only 45 percent of the Official Information Act complaints it received had been concluded. That means that more than half of the Official Information Act complaints received by the Office of the Ombudsmen had not been finished—had not been completed and had not been fully investigated within the year in question. That figure is of significant concern to this Parliament because it says that the activities of this Government are not being transparently scrutinised. The information about what the Government is actually up to is not making its way into the public domain. Of course that is not surprising when we find out what Government Ministers are getting up to and why they do not want to release that information. 
There are other avenues of course under which members of Parliament and members of the public can obtain information apart from the Official Information Act but that Act is critical because it is independent of Parliament. Often we have an issue with the interface between written parliamentary questions for example and the Official Information Act. This Government refused to release huge amounts of information under written parliamentary questions in situations where the information would have been released by the last Labour Government. Therefore the only recourse we have to obtain that information is through the Official Information Act. Of course Ministers use other excuses as well. John Key’s latest one is to say that an issue is a security issue and he will not therefore comment on anything at all. Particularly if it is to do with him it is just a security issue. 
The Office of the Ombudsmen is the body we can go to if we do not agree with something and if we want a matter investigated. We need to make sure that the Office of the Ombudsmen is adequately resourced to do that. That office for example is looking at the moment into whether information about Cabinet Ministers’ conflicts of interest should be publicly released and publicly disclosed. 
Grant Robertson 
: That is an interesting topic. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is a very interesting topic at the present point in time because the Government has refused to release information on Ministers’ declarations of conflicts of interest. Therefore the Ombudsmen have to investigate whether that information should be released. The most recent advice we had from the Ombudsmen—and I am talking of August 2010—was that they thought the information about a Minister’s perceived or potential conflicts of interest should be released. Yet the Government still has not done that. In August 2010 the Ombudsmen said that yes in principle they believed that some information about ministerial conflicts of interest and declarations of interest should be released. But the Government has still not done so. 
We can say that we want the Office of the Ombudsmen to be resourced adequately and we can vote it more money but if the Government then turns round and continues to ignore the office democracy is not being served. The public of New Zealand have a right to know whether Ministers have interests in the business entities they are dealing with in their ministerial capacities. The public have a right to know that; this Government does not seem to think they should. The reason the Government does not think they should is that John Key set the bar incredibly high for that declaration. He did not declare that he had an interest in Tranz Rail when he was a member of Parliament and was asking questions about Tranz Rail so that is the standard the Government has adopted: there can be conflicts and there can be private interests but Ministers should not tell anyone about them and whatever they do they should not release information about them. That is the standard that has been set by John Key’s Government. 
We have seen it time and time again whether it concerns John Key trying to hide his interest in his so-called blind trust which can actually be seen through by just about anybody with an interest Bill English trying to hide the money he was receiving in his housing allowance; Tim Groser having shareholdings in a South American farming company; or Chris Finlayson and matters to do with the judiciary that I will not go into in any greater detail. Clear conflicts of interest exist yet this Government does not want to tell the public of New Zealand about them even though the Office of the Ombudsmen said that in principle it thought information in relation to conflicts of interest should be released into the public domain. Pansy Wong is another example of a potential conflict of interest. Members of this Government do not think that that information should have to be released by this Government. I think they are wrong and the Ombudsmen think they are wrong yet the Government continues to ignore that advice. 
The Office of the Ombudsmen does an absolutely fantastic job on behalf of the people of New Zealand in ensuring that our democratic institutions function properly in upholding the Official Information Act in particular. I am disappointed that members of this Government seem to think they are above the law when it comes to honouring Official Information Act requests. They seem to think they can simply ignore Official Information Act requests and wait until the Office of the Ombudsmen has time to investigate. That process takes 4 5 or 6 months; therefore Government members buy themselves time. They are making decisions on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer that are potentially worth tens or hundreds if not billions of dollars. 
This Government wants to hide what it is up to by denying the public the right to have access to that information and by declining Official Information Act requests and leaving it to the Ombudsmen to determine whether that information should be released. I think this Government should set itself a lower bar than that for the release of information. I think the presumption should be that information is released unless there are very good reasons to withhold it. That is what the Official Information Act says. It is not the principle being applied by members of this Government but I think they should start adhering to it. Thank you.