Pham Lan; White Helen; Brown SimeonLAN PHAM (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. I really wanted to pick on the transitional arrangements for local authorities and I mentioned earlier in the previous readings about how important these long-term plan conversations are for councils particularly as they are often the most significant conversation that councils will actually have during their three-year term. So this is really timely for them and the uncertainty is a real drain. So I want to get some clarification from the Minister of Local Government. I want to pick up on the provision for local authorities where it says that where they have already started their long-term planning consultation under the previous policy settings before this repeal goes through they are able to do so—put their plan through without reconsulting. I just want to hear from the Minister: what are the potential implications for those councils who expected that the assets and associated debt would be moving and may now be looking at funding those water services improvements themselves? Does the Minister think that it's appropriate that rates may be significantly raised without adequate consultation and what does he propose the justification could be that councils use when they're responding to these disgruntled ratepayers which is essentially inevitable?The second aspect of this is with the transitional arrangements and it's permitting local authorities to have unaudited long-term plan consultation documents. Now I'm interested as to whether this pertains to the entire long-term plan consultation document which we know can cross so many areas because councils deliver on so many wellbeing assets services and projects for their communities. Does this just pertain to water services or is this about long-term plan consultation as a whole presuming that the intention initially is just to allow flexibility for the water services part of the long-term plan? The third aspect that I'm really interested in hearing more from the Minister on is about the provisions allowing local authorities to actually defer their entire long-term plan by a year and be replaced by what's been called an enhanced annual plan" for the next financial year. What advice if any has he had about the implications for this? Because again really important conversations and really important work for councils and it's just not quite clear where this information—how it will actually be applied in the setting. Thank you.HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to ask about clause 14 and the relationship it has to the rest of the provisions there because I can see that you've talked about how there was only one employee but I can see that there's a board there. So I'm assuming that they are not employees in the same way? What we have is a provision relating to employment which says that there'll be an honouring of terms but it looks like an entire breach of any terms that relate to those board members. It looks like they get no compensation even if it's agreed that they will etc. I'm wondering about the reason for doing something so drastic.This is a Government that I understand talks a lot about property rights. These are contractual rights and it just doesn't seem at all necessary to go so far. I presume people who are appointed to a board have turned down other positions—they probably took this very seriously it's probably had an impact on them and they probably have some form of stipend etc. So I wonder whether that advice has happened. I'm also concerned about the employment. I'm not entirely satisfied with the Minister of Local Government's answer with regard to the obligations under employment because usually it wouldn't be a case of redundancy and rights; it would be a case of good-faith consultation and redeployment and then maybe redundancy and triggering crystallising termination rates. So I'm concerned about what the Minister has said with that and I'd love some fleshing out of that but also the justification as to why such a harsh approach would be taken. I also wanted to talk for a moment about the point made by the Hon Phil Twyford and just give the Minister a little bit more fleshing out there. I was also on the committee when we were talking about the strains that were in the urban areas and the lack of really a practical solution for people in the floods last year when a lot of debris was brought down those little streams and the streams were blocked. So there were real flooding issues as a result of that. I also had one in my area where the lack of maintenance of the water system meant that there were things over one of the big filters and we ended up with a whirlpool on that street and quite dangerous situations. So I was really impressed when we were going through this at the collaboration of all the parties in terms of coming up with a solution which was a lot more practical in terms of the responsibility being with the councils for those streams. It seemed really unfair and unreasonable to expect a private party who happened to back on to one of those areas to be responsible for the clearing of that when in fact they hadn't even produced the debris. So why would we be throwing—and I'm going to use a pun here—the baby out with the bathwater? Why would we leave aside all the things that we got to as a collaborative group which is exactly what the New Zealand public wants from us? Why would we do that and get rid of everything when my friend the Hon Duncan Webb has put to you a proposal which was to suspend that piece of legislation so at least you could catch the things that were useful out of it and adapt it? Obviously that has a huge benefit for the public in terms of not having to reinvent the wheel. This is really helpful when we've actually had those discussions we've toughed it out we've talked about those issues we've had the submitters in we've talked about the realities of those floods close to a time when they're impacting on people yet the Minister seems to want to chuck that out.So what I would like to know is: will he consider suspending that bill which has been so much good work? I do see it as very consumer friendly very applicable in any situation where we're redesigning the situation. I'd also like an answer to the question that I have about the board members and the employees and why when we do these things we have to cut out rights which I understood were sort of sacrosanct in the National Party faith anyway because Mr Seymour talks about property rights all the time.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to thank the members for their questions. A number of questions in regards to the transitional provisions around the long-term plans (LTPs) and the choices that we are giving to councils. I just want to note that what we're providing to councils is a range of options and flexibility in terms of setting their long-term plans as this change in legislation obviously happens at a time when they're setting their LTPs. All of the things that we're putting in place are simply about providing flexibility and choices to councils around the consultation requirements around the time frame in which they need to finalise their LTPs and whether they wish to delay that by one year but also some protections in terms of the annual plan to ensure that if they were to delay by 12 months their next annual plan would have the right information that it would need to have in place around all of the issues including water services roading and other services that councils provide.Helen White made a number of comments in relation to what I've already answered in terms of the Duncan Webb's points relating to why we're repealing that other piece of legislation. I believe I've already outlined our reasons as a Government. In terms of the question around the establishment boards they are not employees so they are not entitled to redundancy. They are appointed based on normal procedure. In terms of the CEO the role becomes redundant due to the fact that the entity won't exist. That CEO had a redundancy clause in the contract and that redundancy clause has been honoured."