Offices of Parliament—Address to Governor-General

Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) on behalf of Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this

I move, That a respectful Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor-General commending to His Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2006/07 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the appropriations and information for the 2007/08 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Offices of Parliament.

The need for this motion arises from the special arrangements that Parliament has for dealing with the budgets of Officers of Parliament under the Public Finance Act 1989. The officers concerned are the Auditor-General, the Ombudsmen, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. In terms of the Act, the Speaker is the responsible Minister for those officers, who have a special relationship with this House and carry out independent watching roles concerning the executive’s activities. Section 26E of the Public Finance Act 1989 provides that before an appropriation in a vote administered by an Office of Parliament may be included in an appropriation bill for a financial year, information must be submitted to the House on estimates of expenses, capital expenditure, and other matters.

The Officers of Parliament Committee, on behalf of the House, has considered and made recommendations concerning proposed alterations to the 2006-07 appropriations and also the 2007-08 draft budgets for the Officers of Parliament. The committee’s report was presented to the House on 2 April 2007.

The House is now being asked to commend to the Governor-General by way of an Address the estimates concerned for each Officer of Parliament, with the request that those estimates be included as a vote in an appropriation bill. This procedure for the presentation of an Address to the Governor-General reflects the relationship of Officers of Parliament, as statutory persons separate from the executive, to the legislature. The Address anticipates the forthcoming Budget.

NATHAN GUY (National) Link to this

In speaking to Government motion No. 1, I think this is an opportune time for me to acknowledge very briefly the Bolger conference held here on the weekend. The reason I do so is that Mr Dick Denton, a resident and very long-standing citizen from the Horowhenua, was down here on Saturday and he had a major heart complication. He was resuscitated by the security staff at Parliament and is now recovering well in Wellington Hospital. Mr Denton is a well-known JP who does a lot of court work in Levin. We were recently speaking about the senior citizens card, and Mr Denton may qualify. I just wanted to put it on the record that Parliament wishes him all the best in his recovery. I also thank the security staff in Parliament for the very good work they did.

This motion is all about the budgets of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Office of the Ombudsmen. Parliament has been seeking candidates for the new position of the third ombudsman, and applications closed on 27 April. It is a very, very important position in Parliament, and we hope we have attracted some very good candidates, who will be shortlisted by the Officers of Parliament Committee very soon.

The Office of the Ombudsmen has come under a huge workload, and it has taken a while for it to churn through a lot of its work. I think everyone out there listening would agree that ombudsmen play a very, very important role in New Zealand and we need to ensure that we get the right candidate for the job in that office.

With the whole debate that is raging at the moment about the environment and climate change, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is doing a very, very good job as well. This position sits under the Officers of Parliament Committee. The central focus of this position is all around environmental sustainability. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment does not report to a Government Minister, but reports to Parliament through the Speaker, and also through the Officers of Parliament Committee. So these officers are separate from any political interference. The job of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is to hold the Government to account over its environmental policies and actions. This position was set up in 1986. The commissioner, Dr Jan Wright, has been appointed for a 5-year term and she is doing a very good job.

The other important role we are speaking about today under debate on this motion is that of the Controller and Auditor-General. This position is also independent of the executive branch of the Government, and it has very important roles around its statutory office. People who are listening would be all too aware that Mr Kevin Brady did a great job around some of the spending by the Labour Party through the last election, and Labour has just repaid that $800,000-odd of taxpayers’ money, which was not well spent. The job of the Auditor-General is very important because, once again, he sits away from political interference. He does a whole lot of work around audits—the annual audits through the Public Audit Act 2001—and gives very good advice to MPs and to Parliament. He has a very good, strong liaison role and he is seeking some more money to get the Audit Office up and running. National supports this motion.

DARREN HUGHES (Junior Whip—Labour) Link to this

Madam Assistant Speaker, I know that you have already put the motion, which puts us in a bit of a difficult technical position, so I seek leave for Hone Harawira to be able to make a contribution to the debate on this motion and for the vote to be put immediately after he has concluded his contribution.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) Link to this

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Mr Hughes. Kia ora tātou katoa. The Māori Party is very interested in the Officers of Parliament Committee. This is not just because it is a committee meeting that we have not been invited to attend. We have looked over the operations of the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to see whether they can carry out their duties independently of political interests. Of course they have wide-ranging powers of investigation, independent of the Government of the day, and report to Parliament through the Speaker of the House, rather than through a Minister of the Government.

Indeed, this is the model we have been looking at for the role of Treaty Commissioner—someone independent of Government, charged with protecting and promoting the rights of the Treaty as the very foundation of our nation, to honour the vision of those who signed the Treaty, to promote the Treaty’s commitment to partnership, to raise awareness and understanding of the Treaty, to review any decision made in respect of the Treaty by the Government, to consider new ideas and new responsibilities in the proper application of the Treaty in legislation, and to give value to the Treaty as our nation’s most important constitutional manuscript, independently of the meanderings of fickle Governments.

It was with those thoughts uppermost in mind that we noted some interesting points in the Budget report before the House. In Vote Audit, the biggie of course was a massive increase of $18 million for audit and assurance services—an increase that even the committee called a “significant variance”. Apparently, the money is so that the Audit Office “can forecast audit fees more accurately”. Not being on the committee makes it a bit hard to understand what that means, but if the Audit Office is planning on working with Treasury to “develop an appropriate level of disclosure”, then might I suggest that some basic disclosure of what exactly it wants another $18 million for might be a pretty good place to start.

The amount of $18 million is a heck of a lot of money, particularly given that the Māori Party has just been told that $1.5 million is too much to spend on Treaty education and cultural competency lessons for immigration advisers. In terms of both Ombudsmen, when the proposal to appoint an additional Ombudsman came before the House last year, the Māori Party supported it because the Ombudsmen’s office gets up to 6,000 complaints a year, and Māori see the independence of this office as helpful in holding boards of trustees, social service agencies, prisons, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, and heaps of other Government agencies to account, as well.

In fact, Ngāti Kahungunu academic Moana Jackson has even suggested that the Ombudsmen might also be a good start for Māori dealings with the police. I note that in the wake of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct, both Ron Mark and Nandor Tanczos also spoke in favour of an independent Police Complaints Authority—a position well overdue.

In respect of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Māori Party is keen to see the office building on the development of educators of progress towards sustainable development, factoring in the social and environmental costs and benefits of growth—an area we have long supported, to help provide a measure of comprehensive, sustainable, and inclusive advancement.

One recent example, of course, is the landfill at Hokio Beach. On the one hand the Horowhenua District Council says that it is happy to take waste from other regions, as a means of generating revenue, and on the other hand we have a long process of dissatisfaction about the landfill site from both Muaūpoko and NgātiPareraukawa, because of its proximity to the Ngātokowaru Marae, and other wāhi tapu in the area, the impact caused by building a landfill on a highly porous base such as sand, the refusal to recognise the iwi kaitiakitanga, and the pollution already being caused by sewage discharge into local streams, affecting the marine environment and killing off local tuna stocks. The Resource Management Act requirements were undermined, consultation was flawed, alternative sites were never investigated, and there is major dissatisfaction from local iwi, local residents, environmentalists, and conservationists.

Another current example is in Cable Bay in the far north, where a developer wants to build an overbridge down on to a public beach, rather than use a footpath like everybody else. The developer already has a very poor public record in other areas in Tai Tokerau, yet the council seems happy to continue to deal with him. As in Horowhenua, major concerns have also been raised about the lack of consultation, and non-notifiable consent procedures being used in the face of petitions from locals opposing the development. Opposition to the overbridge is huge from local residents, conservationists, and local hapū and iwi as well. In fact, local support for the overbridge is almost zero, yet still the council continues to support the proposal.

These are exactly the kinds of issues we would want the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to give priority to, but given that the office received only a one-off payment of $50,000 for sustainable development projects, we doubt that it can do much to help. Because of that, we wonder whether the Government is serious about supporting the concept of genuine progress and helping Parliament to understand how to achieve environmental sustainability if it will not back the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to do her job effectively.

Finally, we support the independent roles of these three offices of Parliament to be guardians, advocates, auditors, educators, and advisers to Parliament and the people. In that light, we support the motion. Kia ora.