SpeechDr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to speak to support the Local Government (Customer Focus) Amendment Bill. Just now the Hon Nanaia Mahuta talked about public consultation and said that it may be part of the customer focus but it cannot replace customer focus. They're somewhat different. Customer focus is something that companies organisations and Government agencies frequently talk about. If we visit home pages of companies we'll see customer focus for these things. We all agree it is important and it is a culture that we should have in dealing with customers so there is no dispute in that sense. However it is often easier said than done because when you implement this customer-focused culture you'll find that it is not so easy. Now we all experience this kind of customer-focused culture in different ways. There are various experiences I would say. Because of the modern technology we now have maybe a modern understanding of the customer-focused approach. We have a different standard in terms of the customer-focused culture. Now local government plays a very important role in our daily lives. We all have some sort of dealings with local authorities but developers—as the sponsor of the bill the Hon Jacqui Dean mentioned in her speech—are often frustrated when dealing with local authorities. I have talked to many developers and they do express their frustration from time to time for example in terms of resource consent or in terms of inspection. Very often an inspector will come to inspect one particular part of a project and then there will be a change in specifications and then a change of standard so there are at least three variations or change of requirements. It has financial implications for these developers so how do you deal with these sorts of issues? It is important for councils and for local authorities to understand the frustration and also understand the financial implication and also economic implications and for that reason I think this bill can help promote a customer-focused culture in local authorities. It gives customer focus some kind of legal status to make sure the local authorities will indeed have this kind of customer-focused approach in delivering public services and also regulatory functions. At the moment there is no requirement under the Local Government Act 2002 for local authorities to do so so it is important to have this kind of bill to make sure the local authorities do understand that it is their responsibility to promote a customer-focused culture in their agencies. So for that reason I think this bill has its importance and for that reason we should support the bill and it is also feasible to do so because we do have what we call the State services framework which actually promotes the customer-focused approach. So if we applied that to this particular bill to make sure that local authorities understand and really do something it can be done. So very specifically as the sponsor of the bill the Hon Jacqui Dean mentioned actually we could have a case manager to follow this particular project as we often do. In a bank you have a case manager and then you follow this so that you don't have to deal with different kinds of people at different times. If people do not understand your case you have to repeat what you have said before and in the end no progress. So it's a waste of time. A waste of time means a waste of money and financial cost and this is particularly important of course for small businesses in this particular time of post - COVID-19 recovery. I do believe this is a useful bill. This is an important bill. I support the bill. Thank you Mr Speaker.