Rurawhe AdrianDr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Tēna koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. It's a pleasure to be back in the House after a few weeks of virtual sessions to speak on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill in the name of my colleague Tangi Utikere. This bill amends the Local Government Act 2002 to provide for the establishment of a register of pecuniary interests and other specified interests of members of local authorities such as directorships business interests employment and property. Before I go any further I want to acknowledge the member Tangi Utikere who has a good understanding of the issue having been a councillor and then Deputy Mayor of Palmerston North and now a much-liked MP from the area. While Mr Utikere has moved from local government to central government there are a lot of similarities between his old job and new job. One of these similarities is that both the roles are democratically elected and people expect transparency from decision makers at these levels. I also want to acknowledge Ian McKelvie who has chaired the select committee which this bill has come through and again his experience of being the Mayor of Manawatu District for I think about nine years—which is significant experience—and his leadership in the amendments that came through when the bill came through the select committee. In addition to that we've just heard from Paul Eagle the former Deputy Mayor of Wellington City and a member of Parliament again having had great experience both in central government and local government. It is important for ratepayers to understand any possible influences on these people who are elected to represent them and the purpose of this bill is to improve transparency and strengthen public trust and confidence in the decision making of local authorities. The bill will better align transparency requirements of members of local authorities with those of members of Parliament and the Executive Council. This bill will provide greater transparency of interests of members of local authorities improve public trust and confidence and contribute to robust decision-making by local authorities. Currently the information collected and published on members' interests for the purpose of managing conflicts of interest is inconsistent across local authorities. While some authorities have registers which collect information required by this bill and make them available to members of the public the vast majority of local authorities do not. When councils are making decisions about funding opportunities for community groups often it is very very unclear as to what the nature of the relationship is with someone who is sitting around the decision-making table and the group that's seeking funding. I know some of the local politicians have publicly spoken against the bill. I know that the Mayor of Palmerston North Grant Smith and the Mayor of Tararua District Tracey Collins have both argued that central government politicians are full-time politicians and therefore are much better remunerated than local body politicians so the same level of scrutiny should not apply to local body politicians. Now I just want to give an example. In Hamilton West a few months ago I had somebody get in touch with me because they were worried about a decision that the council had taken in regards to their dealing with a private vendor and the claim was that somehow there was some sort of underhand technique going on because the council member's house was on the same street as the person who was the private vendor. This was a significant claim and it came to me as the member of Parliament to get some guidance on this and obviously the whole discussion went through the council and obviously they had the time to express their concerns. But I think that situations like this prove that there are times when the public can be concerned about what's happening at a local level and I think more so at a local level because that's where you know the community very well. At the grassroots level if you've got those community connections people can ask Is there is a conflict of interest there?" In many ways I think this bill also protects the elected representatives themselves who may find that the bill puts more trust in them through people because now they know that there is a pecuniary interest that's been published and it's hard for people to say that there is some backroom dealing going on especially because it's all out in the public. So I think if anything it helps those local members as they move forward especially in an election year. I know there are council elections coming through. If anything I think it will help people make a better decision about what's going on. Chris Bishop: Are you running? Dr GAURAV SHARMA: I am still a member of Parliament. I'm not running for council. One of the newspapers mentioned that no local government entities in the central North Island have pecuniary interests registers available to the public but there are councils that do publish a register of pecuniary interests. Often it is done so late that it is almost redundant. So if you're looking at the Christchurch and Tauranga city councils their last published returns were in January 2020. On the other hand you've got councils who have very strict criteria and they expect their members to report in. So for example at Auckland Council the code of conduct requires that if they get gifts of over $300 they do need to be declared. So there is a wide inconsistency between councils especially in the North Island where there are very few councils that require any sort of interest register which makes it difficult to have that transparency at the council level. The purpose of this bill and the original bill was to standardise this so that the local representatives from all local authorities are subjected to the same scrutiny but I have to say that Parliament's Governance and Administration Committee has gone one step further in flagging that this would exclude those elected to local or community boards. This is again important because these local or community boards do make significant decisions at that grassroots level. So it is important that they have the same scrutiny as members of Parliament and the other local authorities councillors and mayors. I think the bill in its original format was really good but then obviously there were concerns that in small communities what happens if you release the pecuniary interests register and it causes any harm to somebody who is on the council? So my understanding is that there were some changes made. For example initially the bill said that if you had 5 percent of the voting rights of a company you should put that on a pecuniary interest return. After the bill has gone through the committee the advice is to change it to 10 percent. Similarly the original bill said that members should not disclose where the property is that they own which is fine—obviously you don't want the members to be targeted in any way if somebody knows where they live—but then again there are properties which are owned under a trust. So the recommendation is now that if you do own a property under a trust you do need to disclose where the location of the property is. Thirdly there was the question was around what happens if you are making some money from a different organisation. You do not have to actually disclose how much money you get but you do have to disclose that you are getting funded from a different source altogether. So in some ways it's a balance between greater disclosure and the privacy rights of individuals particularly some elected members who work in quite small communities and obviously have a lot of connections and relationship in those communities. But as I said I have been approached many times within Hamilton where people have shown concerns regarding elected members. None of them have been held up—I just wanted to say that clearly—but they have been investigated and it just is another step in making sure that the public has full trust and faith in elected members and similarly that the elected members have faith that they can continue to do their job without somebody pointing the finger at them. Similarly somebody from the ACT Party just talked about whether it should be extended to other agencies or other people at the high level. Again that's something that maybe should be looked at because there are other decision makers as well who are responsible for these contracts including local body contracts and Government contracts and adding more transparency wouldn't hurt. My view is that if you are running for this sort of position you should have nothing to hide. There should be no reason for you to worry about hiding something and we do understand that people at a local level have multiple jobs—you know they might have another part-time job—but it would be good for people to make that connection and see if there is a conflict of interest in a very open and public way. I just want to congratulate the member for bringing in this bill because it will have a huge impact especially as we move into the council elections and the local body elections in the next few months. So I would like to commend the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill in the name of Mr Tangi Utikere to the House. Thank you. DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is split call. I call Maureen Pugh—five minutes."