Point of Order: Hobbling the lobbyists – the PM calls it “transparency”....

.....but what is being done to make ministers comply with the OIA?

The Prime Minister’s proposals to hobble political lobbyists were the big headline-grabbing announcement on the Beehive website when we checked this morning.

Chris Hipkins yesterday announced four measures to put lobbyists on the same footing as any other citizen who might want to contact the inhabitants of the Beehive.

But one of those measures is a call for advice which he won’t receive until next year and two of the others are requests for someone else to take the action he wants taken.

Peter Dunne: The Ombudsman, The Controller and Auditor-General

The offices of the Ombudsman and the Controller and Auditor-General are two important independent statutory agencies charged with protecting aspects of the public interest against excessive or unnecessarily coercive actions by the government and its departments.

The Ombudsman’s office has the power to investigate approximately 4,000 public sector agencies across New Zealand. It does not have executive authority, but Ombudsman’s recommendations are normally taken very seriously by the government and rarely ignored.

The Controller and Auditor-General’s role is two-fold – responsibility for the annual financial audit of about 3,500 public bodies, including schools and other public bodies, and ensuring that government funding is both spent for the purposes for which it was appropriated, and in the best possible way. Like the Ombudsman, the Controller and Auditor-General is an officer of Parliament, meaning they report directly to Parliament, rather than the government of the day.

This week, both offices released separate highly critical reports on unrelated aspects of the government’s response to the pandemic.

Bryce Edwards: Public sector bosses must be held accountable for undermining transparency

Public service bosses earn mega-salaries, yet oversee bureaucracies that frequently undermine transparency and frustrate public and media scrutiny. The obvious answer is to start docking the pay of chief executives for the failures of their agencies.

This is the upshot of an investigation by the Chief Ombudsman’s Office into the performance of government departments in releasing public information under the Official Information Act (OIA). The Chief Ombudsman, Peter Boshier, found that although there are some things to celebrate about how agencies are fulfilling their obligations under the OIA, there are also very concerning ways information is being illegally buried or constrained.

Bob Edlin: Ombudsman invokes the Treaty and declares his aim to be fair – particularly to one group of citizens

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. This was the declaration of the pigs who control the government in George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm – a tart comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens but gives power and privileges to a small elite.

This country’s chief ombudsman – of all people – has tweaked this and declared that, for the purposes of his office, all citizens are equal but some are more equal than others.