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OFFICES OF PARLIAMENT
Address to Governor-General
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): I move, That a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General commending to Her Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2022/23 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Estimates and capital injection for the 2023/24 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
This is an annual event for the House. It concerns the appropriations for our three Offices of Parliament: the Controller and Auditor-General, the Ombudsman, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. As is described in the motion that I've just moved, it sets out alterations for the year that we're in now for inclusion in the Supplementary Estimates bill and sets out the main appropriations that will be included in the main appropriation bill that I will introduce on Budget day. The reason we do it this way round is to emphasise the independence of these Offices of Parliament from the executive.
The proposals in the address have been examined by the Officers of Parliament Committee, which has the Speaker as its chairperson. I want to thank all members of the committee for their careful consideration of these matters, which they did with some advice available to them from Treasury officials. The committee's report explains the issues behind the numbers proposed in the address, and I've no doubt that other members of the committee may choose to address some of those matters in their contributions in the debate.
All three Offices of Parliament are reporting an increasingly complex, changing, and demanding environment that puts additional pressure upon resources. The Auditor-General is facing larger-than-usual deficits over the next three years, which the committee informs us is due to increasing audit complexity—mostly relating to COVID-19—pressure on auditors' capacity and availability, and audit costs rising faster than audit fees while Audit New Zealand works to increase its staffing. The committee therefore have agreed that a non-recoverable capital injection, totalling $16 million over three years, of $2 million in this financial year, $7 million in the next, and the remainder in the following year are appropriate. Audit delays because of COVID-19 and higher staff turnover are an issue. The committee has told us that the Auditor-General is addressing these issues with approaches that include raising fees and seeking greater financial efficiencies.
COVID-19 also continues to have a significant impact on the work of the Ombudsman, whose responsibilities have expanded in recent years, including the managed isolation and quarantine facilities, the protected disclosure Act investigations, and enhanced oversight of Oranga Tamariki. Legislation that has just come into force has also expanded the Ombudsman's jurisdiction to cover providers of care and custody under Oranga Tamariki. The Ombudsman has welcomed this change, though it will increase work for the office. The Ombudsman's also forecasting an increase in complaints driven by Cyclone Gabrielle and flooding in 2023. Again, as similar with the Auditor-General, retaining trained staff and experienced staff is also an issue, and the committee tells us that they support a one-off targeted payment for high-performing staff.
Issues around staffing were also raised by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who faces a growing need to source external, legal, and scientific advice as well. The Parliamentary Commissioner has not sought an increase to his appropriation in this Budget round, though he foresees a need for additional funding in a Budget round in the near future.
The three Officers of Parliament continue to provide excellent work on behalf of New Zealanders and make a strong contribution to our democracy. I want to reiterate that it is my job here today to move this. This is the report of the Officers of Parliament Committee. They make their decision independent of the executive, but we need to do it now, tonight, so that it gets into the Budget processes that start next week. So, on that basis, I commend this motion to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. I just note that the motion includes the words "of expenses", which the Minister did leave out on the fourth line.
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Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to follow the Hon Grant Robertson in speaking to the alterations of the 2022-23 appropriations for Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. And at the risk of repeating almost word for word what the Hon Grant Robertson has already said, yes, the Officers of Parliament Committee did examine and receive submissions from each Officer detailing, in their words, the proposed alterations to the 2022-23 appropriations, but also their budgets, their draft budgets for 2023-24 and out-years. We did receive advice, and thank you to Treasury officials who came to the committee on three separate occasions and provided advice by way of answers to questions and also offered their expertise and assistance with the committee.
We did recommend to the House, and do recommend that the House commend these alterations, essentially, which have been already outlined to the House and also—so alterations and Estimates—to the Governor-General for inclusion in the main appropriation bill for the coming financial year or, as it may be, in the appropriation bill dealing with the Supplementary Estimates for the current financial year.
So turning first to the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, I will focus my comments on their draft Budget request, and a couple of comments on the context by which these requests were made. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, as is common with so many other Government agencies, were disrupted by COVID-19, and the Auditor-General's work programme was significantly impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. As well as that, there has consequently been an increase in public expenditure and also in the complexity of audits as a result of the pandemic, alongside that, for them, issues such as staff turnover have caused audit delays, and also they acknowledge inefficiencies in Audit New Zealand. So there are a number of deficits which Audit New Zealand and the Controller and Auditor-General are facing. And so the proposal by the Auditor-General is to increase audit fees at the rate of 8 percent per annum across all sectors and contract cycles until 2025-26 when increases will reduce, then, to 5 percent per year.
I was particularly concerned and I did ask the question around how that increase in audit fees will impact on local government, because all of us in this House are aware of cost pressures on everyone but also on local government. However, it is what it is and that is the proposal that was put forward to us and, perhaps, we might not like an increase in audit fees—in particular, for smaller councils—but, none the less, we feel compelled to support that.
Turning to the Office of the Ombudsmen, I won't go into the budget transfer, I don't have time. However, I will note for the Office of the Ombudsmen that part of the response to COVID-19 included the establishment of managed isolation and quarantine facilities throughout the country. These facilities now fall within the Ombudsman's Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment oversight role. This of course consequently imposes a cost and timeliness. The Office of the Ombudsmen also seeks additional resources to maintain remuneration levels. He too, or the office as well, is experiencing a period of wage growth and the need to be competitive in today's job market.
Turning finally and briefly to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton told us that, no, he didn't want a budget increase, which is laudable and, quite frankly, Simon Upton is a commissioner—the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—who works within his budget and works well and produces good works. None the less, he did signal to the committee, and therefore to the Crown, that he would in future be seeking a budget expansion. Again, the committee supported this request, as do I.
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DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party today to speak to the motion and the Estimates for Officers of Parliament. It's a great day for the ACT Party in the sense that we're now the third-biggest party and we get to speak in advance of other parties, so that's good.
So in terms of the three areas that we're discussing, the Auditor-General is forecasting serious deficits in the future years—$8.5 million in 2022-23; $9.1 million in 2023-24. So this requires significant action by the House. We agree with the recommendation to increase funding. So for 2023-24, there will be an increase from $30 million to $38 million. Central and local government spend more time on audits. We have $170 billion worth of public money annually that has to be audited. The Office of the Auditor-General needs to be strengthened as Government prepares its agencies. It includes schools and local governments consistently that failed to deliver on public trust, and the ability of the Government to deliver basic public services has been eroded.
Also, in 2021-22, the highest number of discretionary reports were published by the Auditor-General in its history. These publications included working on the cost of living payments, water services reforms, the central COVID-19 response, the city rail project—in which the Government learnt a lot, from the Auditor-General, which it didn't know—and the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme. It is vital and important that the Government programmes are being held to account by the Auditor-General.
Similarly, the Ombudsman is under pressure, and the recommendation to increase appropriations in 2023-24 will go from $45 million to $54 million. Dealing with increasing numbers of Official Information Act complaints has been occurring in the era of what we were told was the most transparent Government ever. Over the 2021-22 year, we now have set a new record for expenditure, and it's up 31 percent on the year before. These include silly things like Mr Willie Jackson's saga over the trend of human errors when his office should have been not blaming process but blaming the Minister himself; the Stuart Nash emails; and the latest saga, which we find out today, from the Minister of Education is that the attendance figures—when asked why they didn't want to reveal them, they just didn't want to release them. So this is the sort of stuff that has to be stopped by funding these organisations to do their job absolutely proper.
We note that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) is not asking for much at all, and as my colleague said, $3.9 million to go to $4.3 million a year, which, considering the insights and leadership of the PCE, is good value and shows considerable financial discipline from the PCE that other agencies can learn from and should emulate. We don't always agree with what comes out of there, but even though it does make sense, it's an important intellectual contribution to New Zealand's environmental and climate policy, and it seems to be the agency that can do it most effectively. It is regarded as a credible and independent agency unlike any other commission. And Simon Upton has been reappointed to another five-year term, and it's very pleasing he will get to continue to guide the agency, so $4 million is very small for such an influential agency.
So this expenditure has risen because of lack of Government transparency, lack of ability to cost up its projects properly, and it's called on extra resource from these agencies at a time when we have a cost of living crisis. So we're especially interested in supporting this tonight. Next year may be different, but it's important that the Government recognises that this is not just a set of agencies that can be used; it is a set of agencies that have real teeth and will hold them accountable in the future.
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JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to rise and take a call on the appropriations for the Offices of Parliament, which includes, as others have covered: Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE). And these three—just for people who kind of don't get their heads around Offices of Parliament and what these agencies do—are central parts in our system of scrutiny and accountability of Government to make sure that Government is using money wisely. They provide advice through the Vote Audit in terms of select committees to enable Parliament to do its job, as well as auditing in detail the agencies. They also provide advice—the Ombudsman—around legal accountability for Government agencies, and Ministers, indeed, about whether they are doing their job according to the law. And, of course, PCE has oversight around the environmental protections and standards across the country.
And because some of their findings may be uncomfortable to Governments—and I'm not talking about this Government; I'm talking about Governments generally—the possibility always exists that Governments could choose to run down their funding to lessen scrutiny and accountability. The funding for these agencies, the decisions about it, go to a committee that's chaired by the Speaker and includes every party in this House. And as you'll see tonight, they came to consensus around the funding of these organisations. I think it's one of those really important moments to note, of our Parliament collectively standing by the importance of scrutiny. I look forward to the day when the funding for our Parliament also goes to that committee, because if we believe in the concept of scrutiny and the importance of de-politicising that, then I believe that the funding for this place should also go to that committee on the same principle.
We don't want to see that situation—just one other point about taking it out of the normal Budget process; the importance for me is I wouldn't want to see this being put up against, you know, funding for nurses or teachers and there being a trade-off because scrutiny is not a publicly appealing idea. You talk Ombudsman, most people have no idea what the Ombudsman does—sorry, Justice! But that is the reality—and most people have no idea about the audit process either. But it's absolutely essential to the checks and balances of power. So it's great that we avoid that trade-off.
So this—and this has been canvassed a little bit, so I'll go over it fairly quickly—will deliver an increase in funding for the Auditor-General, because they have been experiencing significant funding pressures in the impact of COVID. Delays and audits kind of creating a backlog, an increase in the requirement for audits with new funding streams coming on board to deal with the impacts of COVID and the challenges we're all facing, and the complexity of those audits as well. At the same time, they've been experiencing a real pressure on auditors' capacity and availability, which has meant that more audits have needed to be contracted out to the private sector, which has an additional cost to it. So audit costs have increased faster than fees. So it was an agreement that we would cover that.
Also, the Ombudsman has had increased roles around the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which is really important; and included roles in managed isolation and quarantine and ensuring safety of people; protected disclosures; oversight of Oranga Tamariki—quite controversially, we didn't support that but we do support them being able to do the work that they've been given well; and projected complaints related to the cyclone.
And then PCE, who didn't request an increase but it is noting they will be in the future, because they're really struggling in terms of the increased complexity of the environmental regulatory system and the struggle to get the right qualified people. Really, really important work. Good to have Parliament's commitment to the continuation of this work.
Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General
Sitting date: 9 May 2023This page displays your selected transcript.