John Hayes ONZM

Parliamentary Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs

Media statement: 2 July 2012

John Hayes attending Pacific Islands Forum Economic Ministers' Meeting

John Hayes MP yesterday left for Kiribati to attend the Pacific Islands Forum Economic Ministers meeting in Tarawa.

As the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Hayes is representing Finance Minister Bill English at the meeting, which runs from July 2 to July 4.

Attending are 14 independent states from the Pacific, including New Zealand and Australia.

The Forum Economic Ministers meeting is the only regular meeting for economic ministers in the Pacific region to meet and exchange ideas on how to increase growth and sustainable economic development for the region.

“New Zealand places significant importance on the region's continued growth and development,” Mr Hayes says. “Discussions cover how to improve public finance management, development co-ordination and revenue collection across the region.

“We are very keen to hear other ministers' views on how we can lift sustainable economic growth in the region, ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum in August.”

Mr Hayes served as high commissioner to Papua New Guinea for three years during his time with the New Zealand Foreign Service. As well as being the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr Hayes chairs Parliament’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Public Address Link:
A (Sweary) Analysis Of Urgency Abuse And
The Consititution

Keith Ng: You’re looking at the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. Basically, the courts said that the Government had to pay family members who looked after people with disabilities (because not doing so was discriminatory), so the Government passed this law to say: “Yeah nah.”

The RIS isn’t just redacted for the public – it was redacted for MPs. *Parliament* voted on this, with all the relevant facts blacked out.

Sure, it’s understandable, right? If you’re passing a law that’s really dodgy, you don’t want advice from civil servants saying “uh, this is pretty illegal” to be public. But actually, that’s not really a problem here, because in the same piece of legislation, THEY SAID THEY CAN’T BE TAKEN TO COURT. More>>