Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (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 appropriations and information for the 2009-10 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
The Public Finance Act provides for funding for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—all to be determined by Parliament through the Officers of Parliament Committee. As part of this process the Officers of Parliament Committee examines submissions for each officer to reach a decision on the funding required for the officers to carry out their duties. The committee then makes recommendations to the House, which are in turn fed into the Budget process.
It is worth noting that this motion is moved today by the Leader of the House rather than the Minister of Finance, as would normally be the case for appropriations. That is because it would be inappropriate for the Minister to deal directly with these budgetary requests, as these officers are not members of the executive, nor are they departments of State. They are, in fact, quite independent, and therefore are extended that higher status of Officer of Parliament.
Today the National Party will be supporting these appropriations. It is important to realise that these officers are not beholden to any political party, but only to Parliament itself.
I thank the Officers of Parliament Committee for its ongoing work in assisting these important statutory officers to do their duty. Once this motion is passed, the remainder of the process to ensure that the appropriations are enacted will be put in place.
H V ROSS ROBERTSON (Labour—Manukau East) Link to this
Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, kia ora tātou. Nō reira te Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. E ngā iwi, e ngā reo, e ngā hau e whā.
[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to us assembled. So to the House, greetings to you, greetings to you, and greetings to you all. Acknowledgments to the people, the languages, and the four winds.]
When one looks at the make-up of the Officers of Parliament Committee, one sees that the members certainly come from the four corners of the political spectrum. The Labour Opposition will support this appropriation. As deputy chair of the select committee, I find it a challenging and rewarding position to be in. There is much experience and expertise on this committee. There are various luminaries on this committee. [Interruption] Mr Henare is not one them, I am sorry. But we certainly have some very good people on the committee. We have the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith, the Hon Steve Chadwick, the Hon Sir Roger Douglas, Craig Foss, Dr Kennedy Graham, and Chris Tremain, who has been replaced by the Hon Peter Dunne. There is a very good set of individuals on that committee.
The Officers of Parliament Committee report contains a summary of the appropriations, and details on each agency. There were relatively few changes to the budgets, and the report makes them quite clear.
Firstly, we recommend two main changes to the appropriations and baselines for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General—an increase of $17,303. But the office also sought some additional funding; it sought another $50,000 for the cost of audit services for smaller entities. The committee did not support the provision of additional funding.
Regarding the additional funding request to cover the costs of providing audit services to smaller entities, these entities included cemetery trusts and reserve boards, of which there are currently 145 in New Zealand. In considering this, the committee looked at the issue of accountability and at ways in which the job might be better serviced. The report states: “The office said that while there is nothing wrong with the current auditing and financial standards, applying these standards to smaller entities can be difficult.” The Controller and Auditor-General informed us that he was now working with the Ministry of Economic Development and the Accounting Standards Review Board. So the office is identifying areas in which improvements can be made. We are looking at increasing efficiency and increasing productivity in this particular organisation. We said: “While we appreciate that the office has difficulties in providing audit services to smaller identities, we do not support the provision of additional funding at this time. We note that the office will have to deliver its activities within its existing budget.”
There is also the issue of the co-location of offices. If we look at the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General and Audit New Zealand, we see that these two organisations are looking at coming together as a way of conserving costs and performing better. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General estimates that additional capital of $4.27 million is needed—quite a considerable sum of money. We have said that the office should recognise that, in the current financial climate, requests for additional capital should be considered very seriously. We have asked the office to focus on keeping additional expenses to the absolute minimum.
Further, we have the Office of the Ombudsmen. The original appropriation was for three Ombudsmen, but we have been informed that there is no need, at this stage, for a third Ombudsman. Therefore, we agree with that particular consideration. Kia ora.
KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this
The Green Party will be supporting this motion. It is good to see, for example, that Audit New Zealand and the Auditor-General are getting extra funding. We see their performance every year, most recently in the financial reviews, and obviously they are skilled in making their financial case, given what they do in life.
The Green Party would like a little bit more money for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Office of the Ombudsmen. The previous speaker referred to the fact that there was not the need for the third Ombudsman, although if members read the Ombudsmen’s annual report, they will see that the ombudsmen are doing a lot of work and that they are very concerned about their particular function, which I think most MPs uphold—that is, of implementing the Official Information Act. They note: “In recent years we have observed an increasing tendency on the part of some agencies and some ministerial offices to ignore the provisions of the Official Information Act in terms of the timing of the responses to requesters.” I do not think that that is good enough; possibly they should have done a “name and shame” in this report, on matters in which Ministers and officers are falling short. They also note a regrettable tendency, which I think is quite longstanding in certain sectors, to “game the system”. Sometimes that means to delay the provision of papers until the end of the acceptable period rather than providing them at its beginning, or to keep asking for extensions. We need a well-funded Office of the Ombudsmen to try to control that.
The office also has a need for plenty of funding because it is just coming to grips with its new requirement under the Crimes of Torture Act, where it is the national preventive mechanism—that is, the body monitoring prison institutions to make sure there is no ill treatment or torture under the convention against torture. The office states: “We are now in a position to begin our programme of inspections.” The Act was passed in 2006; this is 2009, so I think the office will need plenty of funding and resourcing to carry out that task properly.
The third area I wish to mention, which comes out of the report, has quite a horrific figure relating to the office’s important mission of dealing with prisoners’ complaints and conditions in prisons. The report notes: “We estimated about 15 percent of all inmates should be receiving mental health care.” The Minister of Corrections came up earlier in the day with the figure of 8,000 prisoners in total. If we take 15 percent of that, it means that a lot of people are needing mental health care. But the Office of the Ombudsmen is doing very good work, and the Green Party certainly supports what the ombudsmen are doing.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Jan Wright, and her team are doing very good work, as well. Most recently—in this current month—they have come out with a report Change in the high country: Environmental stewardship and tenure review. They have considerable concern about the separation of land into Department of Conservation land and private land that is taking place as part of the tenure review. They talk about life block settlements around iconic sites, and the intensification of agriculture around high-country lakes—lakes that have been fairly pristine in the past. But the report states that the clarity of high-country lakes should not be taken for granted.
The commissioner and her team actually support the setting up of a high-country commission to deal with some of these problems, including the vegetation problem. They say that weeds such as broom, gorse, briars, lupins, and conifers are spreading into the high country and upsetting the balance. Those weeds are also upsetting the natural gradation from alpine vegetation down to lowland vegetation, and affecting the drainage into some of the lakes our hydroelectricity comes from. That is of concern. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is playing a very important role in bringing these matters to our attention so we can legislate on them.
The Green Party will be supporting this motion, although we would like a little bit of extra funding for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in particular. Thank you.