Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party. It will be no surprise to this House that National will oppose this bill. We opposed it the last time this legislation came to the House. Can I just acknowledge my parliamentary colleague Rino Tirikatene a fantastic member of Parliament for Te Tai Tonga. I just acknowledge Ngāi Tahu a very powerful collective in Canterbury and Ōtautahi and as Mr Tirikatene mentioned a strategic partner who we are very lucky to have and a cornerstone of our history a cornerstone of our present and a cornerstone of our future ahead. I'm going to outline some key points about why the National Party does disagree with this bill. The first thing I'd ask probably procedurally is why is it a local bill and why is this not a Government bill? I mean the reason we are here again today with pretty much the same bill is that things have changed from the 52nd Parliament to now the 53rd Parliament. Democracy has spoken and we are now in a one-party State and the Labour Party are able to pass this bill without needing the support of any other parties. So that's why it does come back in from the 52nd Parliament to the 53rd Parliament and it's very clear—it's been introduced by a Labour member of Parliament—that it will pass its first reading today. There was the proposition put forward: Well has National forgotten its history because they appointed commissioners to ECan several years ago." Well that's right. Environment Canterbury (ECan) was an appallingly performing regional council—probably the lowest ranked in league tables in New Zealand—and quite rightly the National Government of the day appointed all the commissioners. But I must remind the Labour Party that it was them who screamed black and blue that appointments were to be made and they asked that democracy be restored. What I would say in this bill is that if you do look at the wording—because we are parliamentarians and we need to scrutinise the words in this bill—what I disagree with in this bill is that in the commentary it says "wishes to reinstate direct Ngāi Tahu representation at Council level." I would argue there is representation at council level. Ngāi Tahu do have observers in the council who will be part of the conversations now and providing input and no doubt influencing decisions. The issue here of this bill is that what it changes is it gives those observers voting rights and there's something ironic there that we're not asking the people who will have a vote to be selected through a voting process. So on this side of the House we do stand on the principle of democracy. There is no reason why Ngāi Tahu representatives can't be elected on to ECan and as actually Mr Tirikatene pointed out—and I was actually going to point this out as well. It does astound me that in clause 11 it doesn't prevent the council going through the process of setting up Māori wards. So we will end up in a position of having 14 elected councillors plus two appointed from Ngāi Tahu and potentially more from Māori wards. Why did it not exclude that in the law? Here's another point: why did it not reduce the number of elected councillors on ECan so that it was still capped at 14 reduce it to 12 and add the extra two appointees? There's a lot that doesn't actually add up here legislatively. This is actually a radical change to local body electoral laws that have stood the test of time for 150 years. We do have also a quote in the commentary on the bill that says that if ECan does nothing "it would deprive mana whenua of a voice at the Council table and continue to deprive the Council of that direct input at the highest level." but I do come back to the point that we have representation at the moment. This bill is about the ability for those current representatives to actually cast a vote so they do have representation at the moment. This is supposed to be a local bill and I'd ask some of the Labour members of Parliament who are potentially going to be seeking a call on this local bill from Canterbury: I would like you to talk about the public consultation that has gone on with this bill. Many of you will know that there are a lot of people in Canterbury that are concerned that there was no public consultation so why was there no public consultation? Even ECan said—and I think it's passing the buck a bit—"Oh well there'll be an ability to make a submission at the select committee hearing." Well that's fine at a central government level but where was the public consultation done at an ECan level? It's interesting in the wording and sometimes wording says a lot where I think people don't realise what they're saying when they write things. It says in the commentary "For that reason the Council prefers direct appointment" as the option. Well what does the public prefer? Well we don't know because there was no public consultation. So here we have a local bill that is not about representation. It's about enacting voting rights but it's actually bypassing the democratic rule of being elected to come in to cast that vote on behalf of people and then there was no consultation. I come back to my original point: why was it not introduced as a Government bill and what precedent is this going to set? I think it's actually a very confused precedent for the rest of the country and it actually says that. When I asked for and got some advice from the Clerk's Office on why it was a local bill—because my belief was that you can't amend primary legislation with a local bill—in fact the answer was that the bill doesn't amend the Local Government Act 2002. Instead it creates a new stand-alone local Act that requires the Local Government Act to be applied in certain ways. So what we're actually creating is a workaround which I don't believe is fundamentally good law. Look as I've said this bill was clearly going to be passed at its first reading. It's a bill that is back to the future because it has been to the House before and it was defeated and it poses a very good question: are we going to start appointing people at local body level that haven't sought or gone through the electoral process—who haven't been elected? Where is the view of the public and where is the mandate of the public in this bill? This is concerning. This will change 150 years of electoral law. We'll hear it today won't we? We'll be told why and about the basic principle of election and democracy and that is actually the fundamental point of what we are debating today. I don't think anyone disagrees with representation of Ngāi Tahu on ECan because they're there now. What we're talking about is: should those representatives have the ability for the right to vote? That poses the question of who then is appointing the representatives and why shouldn't people who haven't been appointed by Ngāi Tahu have the ability to stand up and put their hand up in an election? Why can't they do that? These are the questions that I'm looking forward to hearing answers to from the contributions this afternoon and I'm also looking forward to hearing from people who will make submissions through the select committee process. Thank you Mr Speaker."