SpeechIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. I learnt something from Simon Watts when he spoke earlier and that's to point out to the House that I come from Rangitīkei in case they didn't know. He made that point I thought I'd just remind you. Interestingly the Rangitīkei electorate has bits parts or part of seven different councils and so consequently we have quite a few differences of opinion amongst those councils and some very different ways of doing things. One of the objectives of this piece of legislation and I'll read it out is: The broad single policy and purpose of this bill is to improve processes by which individuals and communities are represented through and can participate in local government elections." And we've got frankly a pretty dismal record of getting people to participate in local government elections. There are a number of reasons for that. One in my view has been the very divisive nature in which Māori wards have been established or not established since 2002. So in other words the process has always been flawed and I guess this Government's had a bit of a crack at tidying that up. I don't know whether they have tidied it up but we do have at least some consistency around the introduction of Māori wards now because running a referendum to establish a Māori ward was complete nonsense when you think about it. That was brought in of course by the 2002 Act which was instigated by a Labour Government. I think the issue of Māori representation has been well canvassed in the House tonight and the issue of how those are established and the rules around them are also well discussed in the House tonight. So I won't go into that any further other than to say I don't think we've got on top of this issue yet and I think there's some work to do on it. I do support Tangi Utikere and his comments about the Palmerston North City Council because having observed that in action over many years I'd have to say it's in the best state I've seen it in perhaps forever as a result of where they've got to with this last election. And they do have an outstanding deputy mayor who was appointed through this system. A bit has been said about the Auckland Council tonight and the truth of the matter is that unless alterations were made to this piece of legislation the Auckland Council wasn't on the same footing as every other council when it came to appointing Māori wards for instance. But also their number of councillors didn't enable them to do what other councils can do in that respect. We were assured actually during the select committee stage process by the Auckland Council that it was highly unlikely they'd get to 29 councillors. I hope it is because imagine a council meeting starting on a Monday and getting through to about Friday afternoon and they haven't all spoken. Wouldn't be much good to Auckland I don't think. I think that was the point made by one or two of the earlier speakers. So there is a risk that you end up with an Auckland Council of 29 councillors and frankly it would be very hard to manage I would have thought. But none the less I think the reasons behind the Auckland Council—other than the fact it takes it out too far—were relatively logical. The issue of recounts is quite an interesting one. Again tonight many people have talked about the fact that the toss of a coin decides who ends up on a council and who doesn't. I think there was some logic in trying to ameliorate that situation because it certainly isn't practical and wasn't a constructive way or a tidy way of getting through what could be a difficult situation in the event of a tie. Of course those ties under the old legislation went to a toss of the coin and then you could get a recount if you needed to if you wished to or if you were going to pay for it actually. That's no way to do something. So this is a better method of doing it than that. I guess I'll just touch quickly on the flexible electronic nominations which I think is also a pretty sensible move particularly in rural parts of New Zealand because it's not always so easy to get into the council to do what you need to do. One of my mayors in fact did attempt to put an electronic nomination in only to be told it's not legal. So it just shows that there were some grey areas in that piece of the legislation which frankly are pretty untidy. So that's been tidied up. The National Party can't support this piece of legislation. I think the reason we can't support it aside from the issues raised by both Paul Goldsmith and Simon Watts earlier on is the fact that local government in New Zealand has some massively challenging problems; these weren't among them. I think the real problems that we're going to have to assist Local Government New Zealand in addressing are issues around funding the infrastructure deficit that we face in some parts of New Zealand—not all of them—and that relates to the history of how those councils are being run. So you get vast differences in the way councils are run in different parts of New Zealand. In fact if you looked as I said earlier at the Rangitīkei I have seven different mayors in one form or another—by one form or another I mean either large bits or little bits all of those council areas—and vastly different performance around their three waters infrastructure for example where some of them are completely established and in good order some are not. So that's one of the big challenges local government faces and this bill does nothing to address that sort of a challenge.As I said earlier the other challenge that local government faces and in fact we might well face it in central government too in the future is the lethargy—there's probably a better word for it than that—of the voting population. The fact that we have several different methods of voting different systems of counting the votes is very confusing. So whether it's single transferable voting or first past the post or MMP or whatever else we might want to invent it's very confusing for the average punter when they go to vote. I think the other thing that needs to be tied up with respect to voting is—I think if people know they've got to go to a polling booth they're going to vote. Anyone who's spent time like most politicians have delivering mail around mailboxes in town will know about a third of those mailboxes never get opened and if they do they're set on fire or the stuff in them's burnt. So frankly about two-thirds of people get their ballot the other third don't and that'll be a fact. And actually there's quite a chance that the third that don't a third of them are nicked as well and then filled in by someone else. So the whole system is fraught—Simon O'Connor: Wouldn't happen in New Plymouth—IAN McKELVIE: Wouldn't happen in New Plymouth; it absolutely definitely wouldn't. But the whole system is fraught. I think that these are issues that we should be addressing in this Parliament around local government; not so much some of the issues that are addressed in the course of this bill.When you think of the time we spent in the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill which fiddles around the edges of some things and then think of the time we spent on the bill that's about to come back to the House on Thursday—which is immensely important to a large part of New Zealand—we spent something like 24 hours on it and we're rushing it back through the House. So this thing has taken about a month or two months to get through the select committee stage and does very little. So you have to wonder whether we've got our priorities right in a lot of these areas. As I said the National Party can't support this bill for reasons that at least two of my previous speakers have talked about—Glen Bennett: Cross the floor. Cross the floor.IAN McKELVIE: I can't—to be fair I can't walk that far. You'll get to that stage too. For various reasons that the two previous speakers have spoken about we can't support this bill and obviously I support that or I wouldn't be standing here speaking. Bad luck. But I do think that that there's some serious challenges in local government and as a Parliament they're going to have to be addressed in the next year or so and if they're not then I think we're going to see the malaise around local government and the participation of our communities in it decrease as we go along. So that's my little contribution to this bill and finally I'll just thank the Governance and Administration Committee and all those people who helped us to get the bill to this point and I wish for good luck. Thank you."