Eagle PaulPAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Ngā mihi nui o Te Tau Hou Pākehā. Happy New Year Mr Assistant Speaker and it's my pleasure to take a call on this bill. Can I start by saying that local government is a bit of a strange beast and usually—and in my experience—local government is used to getting hospital passes from central government be it psychoactive substances or the Easter trading hours. But this bill however isn't one of these strange beasts. This is strange in the sense that the title the Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill is misleading and the word I was thinking of when having a quick read through this is that it's actually deceitful. It's deceitful in that it's anti-freedom: anti-freedom of speech and anti-democracy. It's anti-protest but most of all and the crux of this is it's anti-occupation and I think what this is really about is an attack on a particular type of protest and that is occupation.Look I was told and I won't say by who—but this even originated from Nelson that beautiful sunny I guess holiday town or city as they would like to call it. But it originated out of there and when I got it told to me I then quickly thought about other occupations and Minister Mahuta has talked about Moutoa Gardens and Pākaitore from the mid-1990s. What would New Zealand be like if they couldn't have the opportunity to express their concerns? No Occupy movement. So a global movement yes came to New Zealand in 2011 or thereabouts and I'm even thinking you know the five days—well it seems a long period of time but in fact when you've had lifelong issues five days is simply nothing.I want to reflect on Wellington City Council for example where the Occupy movement was. And yes I think this was more about that people just didn't want to see this side of life; they didn't want to really confront the issues. But isn't it interesting when an urban local authority like Wellington managed it in a way where those people were there for nearly a year if not more? I couldn't find the exact reference but my point is this: was Wellington as a city worse off by having a group of people—and there were roughly 20 at the end there in 2012—who yes occupied a piece of grass on civic land on public land there in our Civic Square because they wanted to get across a certain point. How was Wellington for example impacted by that? Was it any worse off? Did it look a bit ugly? Yeah it did. From a branding perspective you know there were things not quite right but the city didn't lose any jobs over it the GDP didn't drop we didn't lose any major conferences or venues. In fact people were proud of Wellington when they knew that it had reached little old New Zealand—the Antipodes dare I say it—and they were given the opportunity to make their point.So I'm a little miffed around what the real purpose of this bill is. I think it's just something that people just don't like seeing. A couple of comments were made about Ew! We don't want to see that." but actually when we look back at the history of Aotearoa New Zealand we are a country that's been built on protest that's been built on giving people the opportunity to have their say and I'm proud to be part of a party that's going to say "No this is inappropriate considering the Local Government Act already gives officials the power to do what they need to do." And we will continue to see the not so nice. It doesn't look good. But the fact is and the point is that their messages about lifelong issues for some of them will be able to be articulated and communicated in public spaces. So I support this bill as does our party. Kia ora."