The first piece of legislation Parliament is looking at in 2024 disestablishes a Crown entity that MPs all agreed has been doing great work. But they don't all agree that it should go.
The first piece of legislation that Parliament has been looking at in 2024 is the Productivity Commission Act Repeal Bill, which is being debated under urgency. It found some MPs scratching their heads at the end of an independent Crown entity whose work they applaud.
Since its inception in 2011, the Commission has conducted research and inquiries in order to provide recommendations to government on ways to improve productivity - not so much regarding workplace or individual productivity - it has more of a focus on the effectiveness of laws, policies, regulations and institutions.
The Commission, which has around twenty staff, was created as a condition of the ACT Party supporting the National Party government led by John Key on confidence and supply. Now ACT wants to disestablish it, although its leader David Seymour was at pains to point out that "this is not, in any way, an indictment on the quality of the work of the Productivity Commission".
'Tremendous work'
"The Productivity Commission has done some tremendous work over the past decade or so, and that work will remain available as an asset or a taonga for New Zealanders to be a guide for policy formation," Seymour said while introducing the bill last night.
"I just make the case that if you look at the five most prominent inquiries according to Treasury, they are things such as housing affordability. I remember reading that report as a young staffer in a ministerial office here in Parliament when it came out in 2012. It remains very good advice for any Government wishing to improve housing affordability. Another one... regulatory institutions and practices; more effective social services, 2015; new models of tertiary education; New Zealand firms reaching for the frontier.
"If you look at some of these subjects, they are clearly areas where, despite the best advice, Governments over the past decade, including those members opposite who have recently been retired from the Government benches by the voters, have failed to implement the policy process. The case I make is that we are much better at this point in time to retain the assets that the Productivity Commission has generated in its various pieces of policy advice and make sure that we do a better job of implementing them."
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