Jones ShaneHon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Kia ora anō tātou—Māori Language Week goes on. I want to just focus on three things. Obviously we support this bill. Number one it is a challenge to attract talent into the broader Civil Service when they feel that their prospects could be compromised if we are too constrictive in terms of their entitlements and opportunities to develop as senior executives but the Public Service is called the Public Service for a reason. Inherent in the word public" is the notion of "service". We after all are public officials ourselves and it pains me that the level of scrutiny that I personally have suffered from time to time does not seem to be equally shared by these grandees in the Civil Service. This is one of the reasons why I support this bill and our party supports this bill in giving the commissioner of the State sector greater powers to discipline the appetites that have grown out of control—certainly over the last nine years.I think at one level our experiment with the Civil Service right back to Geoffrey Palmer when he introduced this notion of Darwinism—and that's led to great pillars or silos—has actually gone too far. We've debated this obviously as politicians on our side of the House and I'm glad to hear Mr Hudson say that broadly speaking they share our concerns. But it should be seen that there is an element of service that is not fully monetised when you take a role like a parliamentarian or a senior executive in the broader Civil Service. If you don't like that go and get another job. Go and work for Graeme Hart or Peter Talley and see how much money they are willing to pay you. Don't come with an unrealistic set of expectations as to what is your worth. First start from a sense of "What is the service that I'm prepared to develop and bring forward within my own ethical framework?" We feel very strongly about that.Now it might be said that we're going to chase away talent from some of the more peripheral entities that comprise the Civil Service. Well go away and work somewhere else. I think it's high time that those of us—as parliamentarians we should stick up for that. We've come out of our private lives into the culture and the code of public service. The people who execute our decisions or who challenge from time to time our decision making to ensure that it's robust and compliant with the law—in my view this is the new reality for that cadre of fellow travellers in the broader Civil Service.The other point that I think is important for all of the parliamentarians and that we most certainly support is the ability for the State Services Commissioner (SSC)—let's call him Mr Peter Hughes; he's the current holder—to undertake inquiries that give him greater scope to uncover what has actually happened. Now we have had—and just bear with me; I'm not going to stray too far off the script—obviously a particularly colourful set of issues over the last six weeks dealing with a senior police officer and the inquiries that have been engaged in in relation to how he got his job and who he might have yelled at and various other matters that unfortunately have been trivialised by the Opposition in the business of the House. But an inquiry ought to be based on natural justice. An inquiry should have the ability to cause people to tell the truth certainly where information has been shared that has a direct impact not only on the ability of us to exercise our accountabilities as members of Parliament but also on the leaders of the State sector to root out elements that actually undermine the ability.Now I hear the last speaker Brett Hudson. He talked about not going too far and about ensuring that not only you don't make the inquiries process excessively expensive and cumbersome but we don't trip up in terms of other processes that the State has in place. But this is an opportunity to tidy up a part of our governance culture that has been screaming out for attention. I'm sure I speak on behalf of a lot of the members in the House: I personally have had a gutsful of seeing the perquisites the excessive emoluments the excessive remuneration culture creep into the upper levels of our Civil Service at a time where it's being inversely treated for us as parliamentarians. We should never forget that we are only a small body of people—120-odd—and there are thousands and thousands of fellow New Zealanders holding these roles and I feel very strongly that this law should curb any expectation they have at the top of the tree for ever-rising remuneration packages. The sooner that we see the rear end of that type of personality in the Civil Service the louder I will clap.The final thing about this bill is that it's something that we should all be joined in as parliamentarians. If we don't build a law that improves accountability who is going to do it? Are we going to rely on the media to do it? Are we going to rely on people using the powers of the judiciary and the court to do it? No. We should be passing legislation that enables us as parliamentarians to demonstrate in the pyramid of influence that we the elected people of New Zealand are up the top of the pyramid and we trust the agencies to carry out their legal mandates in such a way that we can defend not only in action but in remuneration. I hope that this bill shows that there's a conjoining of all of us that the days of disproportionate appetites to what the role really is are coming to an end.Now I accept that the SSC has a view that the best thing to do is to appoint generalists and not appoint people that are technically proficient. I personally prefer an option where we encourage as many people that have technical proficiency to roles and teach them to be general managers rather than get general managers and teach them to be technically proficient in what are demanding roles. But I'm a New Zealand First MP—I'm a long way from ever being the State Services Commissioner and I gave up on that prospect at about the point I started to go to school. But whether they are technically adept at a certain area or whether they're generally proficient the time has come for us to empower Peter Hughes to ensure that their salary expectations and their remuneration packages don't stray too far from what we put up with as parliamentarians and Ministers and if they don't like it then the sooner they go out in the private sector and try and earn a living there the better. Thank you very much."