Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's my pleasure to rise on behalf of the New Zealand First local government spokesperson the Hon Ron Mark in support of the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. You know that the National Party is taking this bill very seriously when they bring out the hard hitters—Denise Lee and Joanne Hayes—to take the first two speeches. When Joanne Hayes takes less than five minutes to try and explain how good the legislation that the National Government put through in 2012 was and only complains about earthquake-affected Christchurch and that's it—that's the only example in the second speech that was given about arguments why we shouldn't be supporting this bill—you know we're on the right track in being in the Government on this side. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually I don't need to know anything. DARROCH BALL: We all know that we're on the right track being on this side in the Government. It is quite clear to me that just in the two speeches that we heard from the National Party they're just not listening to the ratepayers. I've only really just picked up this bill today when the Hon Ron Mark couldn't make it in to speak on this bill because he was absolutely desperate to. I have looked just very quickly through the regulatory impact statement (RIS) and the bill itself and it is quite clear that there is an absolute need and want from the ratepayers themselves and from the local authorities to get this changed and to put it back to where it was prior to 2012. One of the things that did surprise me was the fact that the four well-beings were removed. When I dug a little deeper into what those well-beings were it was actually about the entire purpose of local government. Having been in this House over the last four years I understand what one of the most important things is in any piece of legislation and it is the absolute purpose of the legislation. So for any decision maker or anyone that's making decisions on behalf of someone else or managing whether it be an organisation or a local authority we all know that the most important part is the foundation and that foundation for any decision-making process is the purpose and why one is doing what they're doing. So in order to dig a little bit deeper into when why and what for the National Party—and the then National Government back in 2012—wanted to take out the well-being clauses—it was amazing to me because the purpose of local government that we want to be reinstated is to promote the social economic environmental and cultural well-being of communities. I just can't see what's so wrong with that. In fact I think that is absolutely fundamental to the running of a community that has well-being as its focus. I suppose if the National Party doesn't want a community to have well-being as a focus then they would take it out and I guess that's what they did in 2012. The four of them are the social economic environmental and cultural well-beings of communities and ensuring that local authorities take a sustainable development approach—a sustainable development approach. When you look into the regulatory impact statement to have a look at a couple of the policy problems it is clear to me that Denise Lee didn't read the regulatory impact statement because there are a couple of examples in there about how the current legislation as it's written or the current laws is and has been a problem for local authorities. One of the things that she said was If it ain't broke don't fix it. There's nothing wrong with it whatsoever." but that's not what I found in just a couple of minutes of reading the regulatory impact statement. The overarching policy problem that this legislation is trying to amend is to obviously "restore reference to promoting the four aspects … This reflects a broad empowering approach to local government and enables local authorities to shift their focus to 'should we do this?' from 'are we allowed to do this?' " If you just take a second to think about the fact that for the last five or six years local authorities and local governments have been worried about whether they should do anything because they wouldn't be allowed to do that because of legislation that is entirely restrictive to any progressive local government. Obviously it's vitally important for any successful local government to be able to have the freedom and the boundaries to be able to put the well-being of the community at the heart of any of the decisions that they have. Here's a couple of examples that the RIS goes into. One of them is that "A number of local authorities that have considered paying their staff the living wage have faced challenges based on [that] purpose". That's one of the examples and the reason why they haven't challenged it is because it contradicts the "most cost-effective" elements of the legislation as it's written now. At the moment it states that there must be the most cost-effective manner or way that local government manages things and that would restrict local government or a local authority being able to pay their staff a living wage. It goes on: "Another consequence could be that 'buy local' policies [of the local government or local authority] whereby local authorities give some preference to local businesses could be challenged on similar grounds." So when Denise Lee stands up and says in her first speech that there's nothing wrong and that no one's complaining and that all of the local authorities are happy then perhaps she needs to read the regulatory impact statement. So I said that I was a little bit surprised about the well-beings being removed from the legislation back in 2012 but what I wasn't surprised to find out—if I was told correctly—was that Dr Nick Smith was the local government Minister at the time. That's something I wasn't surprised about with this happening. So basically what I read from the legislation the intent of those changes in the legislation in 2012 was that the National Government wanted the councils—and we actually heard it again today especially from Jo Hayes—to only focus on infrastructure and on infrastructure only. Back in 2012 New Zealand First was in Parliament and we spoke on this bill. Andrew Williams actually spoke on this bill and he was a former Mayor of North Shore City. He said something about those changes which was actually quite succinct and apt for those comments from Jo Hayes. He stated that "this latest reform"—back in 2012—"of the Local Government Act 2002 is basically taking the councils right back to where they were maybe 20 or 30 years ago where they simply had a town clerk who fixed some potholes did some footpaths and maybe fixed up the roads and patched up the local hall. Well the days of that have gone and the days of local communities expecting much more from local councils are here." But you see New Zealand First took the approach back then in 2012—and we're still taking it here—that expecting a council to only have a local clerk to fix up the potholes in the roads fix the local hall and fix the footpaths is a bad thing. It's not a good thing. We need the local authorities to have the entire well-being of their local community at the heart of any decision making. But what Joanne Hayes was saying was that that was exactly what the National Party wanted—exactly what the National Party wanted. What she didn't mention was that back then all the submissions on the bill from the local authorities were against what the National Party were trying to do. They were against what the National Party were trying to do. So why did the National Party do this in the first place? Because they were listening to the business communities. The business communities in the local communities all they wanted—they complained about the rates that they were paying. They complained about where those rates were being spent because they didn't want them spent on arts and culture. They didn't want them spent on anything else apart from economic development. And that's who National listened to. Well New Zealand First back then made some promises and so did the Labour Party about listening to the local communities about listening to those local authorities and about ensuring that when we got into power we would turn back the clock and bring this back into legislation. That's exactly what we're going to do. Thank you."