Sio William: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16608. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere):Let me just acknowledge my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor for ushering through an issue that is obviously very important to the people of his particular electorate. It is also an issue where nobody wins at the end. Sure we are validating this bill the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill to allow the Tasman District Council to rectify a mistake it made. If we did not do that however the council would still need to find the money somehow and the council would still need to depend on ratepayers.In saying that I have to say that from what I have heard from colleagues in this Chamber most of us are reluctant participants in this affair. Most of us support the bill with a great deal of reluctance particularly when we are validating a mistake made by a council. I can imagine how the ratepayers who brought this mistake to the attention of the council and to this House must be feeling at this particular point in time. I would just say to the council that despite the authority and the power that it will be able to wield with this particular piece of legislation it is still charged with the care of and responding with some responsibility to the people who brought this wrong before the council.I am not going to try to dictate to councils what they ought to be doing but they do need to recognise that their ratepayers the people in that city in that town area who are dedicated to their council—if they were not dedicated to it they would not have brought this to their attention—will have a right to feel some sense of grievance about the wrong that has been done here. I think that the council needs to not be just holding up this piece of legislation once we sign off on it and say that this is what it is going to do but has a responsibility to meet with the ratepayers concerned and try to accommodate the circumstances they face.Despite my name being on the committee report I unfortunately did not get the opportunity to hear a lot of the submissions that were presented there. I did not get an opportunity either to meet the ratepayers who had brought this to our attention. So I simply say to my colleague and the council listening that I think they still have a responsibility to meet with the ratepayers concerned and to attempt to find some accommodation in the concerns or issues that they have raised as a result of the mistake made by the council.I want to turn to the technical amendments and ask my colleague this. The technical amendments suggest that the committee looked at clauses 5(a) 6 and 9. However I would like to know whether my colleague and the council—which is his council—are OK with clause 9. The committee did consider it and it was advised that that was outside the scope of the bill but I am wondering why it was raised in the first instance anyway.I want to respond briefly to the comments made by the previous speaker Jacqui Dean about Better Local Government. This is not the time to be promoting a policy—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I apologise. I got a little bit confused as to where I was and I gave the member a 1-minute bell. It was my mistake. I have been under pressure lately. I apologise. You have 1 minute.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: I accept your apology Chair and thank you for giving me that 1 minute’s notice. I would say to the previous speaker that I would be very careful about promoting Better Local Government because as I go around the country and meet up with mayors what they are saying to me is something very very different from what the previous speaker said. In fact some have said to me that the Better Local Government policy is really quite deceptive because it is more about removing democracy from local government. At a period of time when local government is under attack these kinds of bills just do not help the cause of local government. Just briefly this is a period of time when local government is under constant attack by the reform that this Government is driving. It was only the other day that mayors felt that they had to meet in secret to try to force the Minister of Local Government to come and listen to their concerns. That is not a good sign. It is not a good sign when local government mayors have to try to force the Minister of Local Government. It is her job to be listening to mayors and I understand that she did not bother.Hon Ruth Dyson: Who is the Minister?Su’a WILLIAM SIO: The Minister of Local Government now is Paula Bennett but I think she is just the face of local government. I think there are probably others behind the scenes who are trying to drive this undemocratic what they call Better Local Government.Coming back to the bill though these kinds of bills do not bode well for this House and for local government in particular particularly at this time because I suspect that members of this Government would probably be going around the country holding up these bills as examples of why they feel vindicated by not trusting local government more and more.Anyway I commend my colleague again the Hon Damien O’Connor. What a wonderful member of Parliament he is championing the cause of ratepayers and recognising his duty to those voters in the district of Tasman and may I wish him all the best in the coming election on 20 September.