Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Well that's a very hard act to follow—not. So we have before us today a very simple omnibus bill. It does create some minor changes to the Acts that local government works with. It's simply just keeping up to date and ensuring that the Acts that local government work under are easy to work under and are of course fit for purpose. We've heard some great examples today of where the Local Government Act and the various Acts that they work under probably do let us down in this modern day and age.Over time there are various tweaks made to all sorts of Acts and that creates an inconsistency sometimes between the Acts—that they're all working together. But actually working on the coalface of this legislation it does create a bit of complexity and this bill simply aims to tidy up some of that complexity. It is actually in response to the Productivity Commission's report of 2014. They did mention the challenges of time and the political constraints in getting legislation through the parliamentary process. So this omnibus bill is just a collection of some of those recommendations that came out of that Productivity Commission report and we're tidying it up starting from today.There may have been some delays in getting the legislation into the Parliament but it seems that this hasn't been the case in the last year. In fact in the nine years before that it was difficult because there was so much legislation before the House. But there seems to be a gaping hole in the workload now and so I just say thank goodness that the National-led Government left so much work piled up that it's filling the gap in the workload of this House.The omnibus bill makes changes to the Local Electoral Act 2001 the Local Government Act 1974 the Local Government Act 2002 the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 the Rates Rebate Act 1973 and the Dog Control Act 1996. It also makes changes to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 which we all know as LGOIMA. But I do note in the drafting of the bill that even though we are attempting to become more modern and use electronic means there's no mention in this amendment to LGOIMA of using electronic means for holding meetings and I do hope that the select committee turns its mind to that.I have a particular interest in this from my time in local government when if you needed to call a council meeting together and you needed a quorum some of the people available actually lived four hours' drive away. For them to come to the council meeting to rubber-stamp say the adoption of an annual plan or an annual report a four-hour drive or a 4½-hour drive each way seemed a nonsense when we could have perhaps Skyped and used electronics.In my experience in local government there were always two areas that you didn't ever want to mess with without raising the hackles of the ratepayers and they were libraries and dogs. I always remember the largest turnout of submitters to an annual plan would be if we ever threatened to make any changes to the fees for library books. In the end we decided that actually we'd make it free and that did away with that problem.It is good to see some changes being made to the Dog Control Act and we've heard from Gareth Hughes earlier today about some of those changes. But I do recall another issue that came up in local government which was raised around search and rescue dogs and whether they should have some special mention in the Dog Control Act. So perhaps the select committee may turn its mind to that in its deliberations. The changes to the Dog Control Act include a schedule. That schedule is amended by Order in Council by the Governor-General so that that list can be adapted as is seen fit.Also mentioned by my colleague across the House before was around the—Simeon Brown: The only sensible point he made.MAUREEN PUGH: Well it was a sensible point—thank you Mr Brown. It was around the Local Government Act 2002. It does mention—and I know this from working with the team at council—whether something was submitted on a day and it had a month" ahead. So was that a calendar month? Was it four weeks? In different Acts they refer to the different terms so in some Acts—under the Resource Management Act it will be "1 month". Is that a calendar month? Is it four weeks? I think we still have room to build some more consistency around the language that is used.It's good to see them putting these definitions around some of the working days as well and actually spelling out the exclusions of working days and they are mostly our public holidays and also the Christmas break period. I still believe that there are some tweaks that could be made and I do hope that the select committee will turn its mind to those. We do need our regulatory systems to be flexible and we do need them to keep pace which is very common-sense but we also need them to keep up with the technology—hence my point about LGOIMA—and with the expectations of our communities and our communities do expect now to be able to access council information and council notices via electronic means as well.So these changes are minor as we have said. They do bring about the modifications that are needed to tidy up the Acts within this bill. I look forward to the bill making its way through this Parliament and I commend it to the House. Thank you."