Bill to end Ministry of Works

Press, 25 February 1988, Page 6

Bill to end Ministry of Works

By

OLIVER RIDDELL,

in Wellington

Legislation abolishing the Ministry of Works and Development was introduced in Parliament-last evening. The Government’s intention is to rationalise the functions of a multifunctional department. Its commercial functions will be performed by a new State-owned corporation, to be known as “Works.” Some of its policy functions will go to other departments and those policy functions not required any longer will lapse. Opposition speakers said that the Government appeared to have no real reason for the Ministry of Works and Development Abolition Bill other than a wish to reshuffle public servants.

Mr Warren Cooper (Nat., Otago) said the reason for the bill was that the Ministry had poisoned the lawn, the garden and finally the dog of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer. “If his dog had to go, the Ministry had to go,” Mr Cooper said. “Some dog.”

He accused the Government of “turning Pandora’s box into a mess of potage.” Dr Bill Sutton (Lab., Hawke’s Bay) accused the Opposition of gloating over the Ministry’s demise.

Mr Cooper sid that he supported the direction of the bill because it gave private enterprise "a

fairer go” than the old Ministry had done. But reshuffling Ministry of Works officers who had already been obstructive for years to other Government departments to do the same job as before was not progress. “Where is the guaran r tee that these underachievers and paper-shuf-flers are going to be more productive?” he said.

The Associate Minister of Works, Mr Neilson, said that the Immigration and Public Works Department had been set up in 1870. Its job had been to promote settlement of the colony by opening up new land through the establishment of a national infrastructure of roads, bridges, railways, flood protection schemes, and sources of power. New Zealand now had largely developed its basic infrastructure and the Government no longer needed to perform this role, he said.

Mr Cooper said that if the new Works Corporation really was set up in a neutral environment there was no way it could compete with private enterprise for works and development projects.

The bill contains 360 clauses, but most are machinery clauses altering legislation for which the old Ministry was responsible. An interested spectator at the introduction of the bill was the former National Minister of Works in 1975-81, Mr Bill Young. He said the proceedings were “very sad.”