McKelvie Ian; Williams PotoIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Speaker and I apologise for not waking up early enough this morning. Ha! The Speaker will know what I'm talking about.SPEAKER: I do. And I don't want any inference taken from it.IAN McKELVIE: Ha ha! Exactly. Thank you. I'll just make a brief contribution to the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. It's a pleasure for me to do that and of course I was a former participant in local government for a number of years before I came to this great place and I can understand the frustrations of many in the sector as they go through a process of I guess local government and governance and then find that there's regulations that are either outdated or are difficult to interpret that cause trouble. Of course in this House in the last few years we've had a number of occasions where we've had to go back and amend legislation to enable rates and things like that to be set because the regulation that governs those things has not been adhered to by local government and often—well I wouldn't say in those cases but often—it's not the fault of local government because some of the regulations that we expect local government to deal with are quite difficult. They're outdated and there are some quite interesting examples of them actually. I just want to talk about—going back to the Local Government Act of 1974 there's an alteration to that that deals with the requirements around designating a road as a pedestrian mall. So if you go back to 1974 it's unlikely there were many pedestrian malls. Manners Mall might have been there but there wouldn't have been many pedestrian malls in New Zealand at that time. So at that time those sorts of regulations weren't thought of. So it's really quite interesting that things get put in legislation and then a number of years later they're clearly outdated. Also in the clauses of this bill there'll be some changes to the Rates Rebate Act. That relates directly to provisions around the eligibility of residential villages and things like that which again in those days weren't thought of basically. So a lot of these things get outdated quite quickly and we've got to readjust them and bring them up to date.The other thing that really interests me was that Gareth Hughes talked about something that I was actually going to talk about—he's almost taken the very words out of my mouth—because I think the dog issue is really interesting because there's a much greater use of all sorts of animals for companionship. As our population ages there's going to be a much greater desire for older people—and I'm one of them—to take our dog round the park and of course a lot of councils have regulations that prohibit dogs from going into public places and—when you think about our history—with good reason. I fully support the issue that Gareth Hughes raised because I think it's going to be very important in our future and I think you could stretch that as far as looking at residential homes and council-owned housing and things like that where companion animals of one kind or another will be necessary. So I think we're going to see some changes in that sort of regulation too and this is just the start of that.I want to make a couple of other comments about local government in my brief contribution because these changes won't really make any difference to our rates or the cost of local government. One of the real challenges I think we're facing as a country is how we manage costs of local government—costs of all sorts of government—and the impact that those sorts of standing charges have on people with fixed incomes. Again as our population ages that cost is going to increase significantly. So we're going to have to look at alternative forms of funding for all sorts of things and local government's one of them.I think if you look at the fact the Minister of Local Government's got an inquiry into local government funding at the moment—I've seen two of them in my time in public life. Both of them produced quite comprehensive reports and were taken no notice of at all by this place. I hope this latest one is taken some notice of and I hope it comes up with something that will serve the purposes of local government in a good manner.The last thing I just want to say in the short contribution—I might just say a couple more things but the last thing I want to say in this short contribution I was going to make is that every three years we elect people to local government throughout New Zealand probably almost thousands of them. These people go into local government to make their communities a better place to live and we've got to give them the tools that enable them to do that. In some cases—I think if you look at district councils and city councils—that's relatively a people-related issue. But if you look at our regional councils our health boards and things like that they're much more complicated issues than we face in the course of local government dealing with people and so some different skills are required. But I do think we need to give our councils the tools to enable them to get on with life and once elected to get a little bit of pleasure out of the little bit of work they do to assist their communities.I think that that's pretty much all I want to say but I do think that the review of these regulations is really important and adds a great deal of value to what we do as a country and hopefully it will make life simpler for the participants in local government throughout New Zealand. I've got a great deal of pleasure in commending this bill to the House and like Gareth Hughes I look forward to the discussions we might have on dogs in the select committee. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. You have five minutes—Jamie Strange.