Boyack Rachel; McKelvie IanRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Speaker. Thank you. May I begin by acknowledging the member in charge of the bill my class of 2020 colleague and former intermediate school colleague Tangi Utikere. I also want to acknowledge you in particular Mr Speaker as chair of our committee. I do hope that at some point you may be able to take a call on this bill. I do come to this particular bill having been the daughter of a former Deputy Mayor of Palmerston North City—a role also held by Mr Utikere—who will be visiting this House tomorrow so we might have to ensure that he gets an opportunity to say hello to you. These pieces of law are important and I just want to acknowledge as well all the members of the Governance and Administration Committee—a big acknowledgment to the officials who provided advice and support as this bill has gone through the House particularly as we did make quite a significant number of changes to the bill and their advice and support throughout all stages was very helpful. Like my colleague Mr Utikere has already stated I want to thank the submitters who came to the committee particularly those who helped guide us through some of the changes we made that led to a more pragmatic bill I believe and piece of law in terms of ensuring that we got the balance right in some areas. I'll talk about a couple of those further on in my contribution.This bill will likely become law in time for the upcoming local body elections which are being held in October this year. I'll just acknowledge the comments from the previous speaker Mr Simon Watts about how important it is for people to put themselves forward for local body elections. For those watching this late at night I do encourage people to consider standing for local government. They are important roles. That means that this bill while it will take effect in law will actually take effect in practice a few months after—120 days after—the election in October. So we will see the effect of it quite shortly—in less than a year. Following that the committee decided that the members would follow a similar process to those of us elected here to Parliament—that those interests would be declared on an annual basis following that. I'm really looking forward to seeing the bill have its practical effect very shortly and it's good to see that happening.The bill specifically amends the Local Government Act to require local authorities to maintain and publish a register of pecuniary interests for members of those authorities. I do just want to make a quick note about the distinction between this register that we are introducing through this law and the process which is already outlined and followed under the Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Act (LAMIA). The interaction between these two pieces of law—we had discussion throughout the select committee process but towards the end of that process we did have some further conversation. One of the challenges often for the public—and sometimes for members of elected authorities—is actually understanding how those two things interrelate and the fact that you have a register which declares your interest. An interest may be on the register but may not actually apply when it comes to making a decision and then there may be an interest that is registered as a conflict for the purpose of decision making under LAMIA but isn't actually on your register of pecuniary interests. That will probably bear out—I'm going to suggest that there'll probably be some questions from members as we go through this.One of the things I'm really pleased about is that we will have support from the likes of the Department of Internal Affairs to support the local government sector in the development of these registers because there will probably be some questions and that's not a bad thing. It's actually important. I know that for us as members when we're making our declarations of interest we will often have questions about exactly how we do that. So in my view it's a good thing. There are I believe four objectives that we will be achieving through the introduction of this bill. The first which has been noted already tonight is improving transparency and accountability within the sector. I would want to note however—particularly after some of the comments from ACT member Simon Court during the committee stage—that this bill hasn't come about because of any specific concern that's been raised and I think it's really important we put on record that this is not because the sector has been brought into any disrepute. This is just about consistency which is my second point. It's about consistency across the sector whereby we have a lot of local government authorities that already use a register but they are inconsistent across the country. Thirdly the third piece it achieves in my view is some further alignment with central government which I believe is helpful in that there are expectations of us as members of Parliament that we declare our interests and so should there be for local government. Finally I'll talk to a particular change that we made which I think illustrates this well. It is the importance of getting some balance and some pragmatism in the bill. We did hear from some submitters that there would be concern if we for example published every single client of say a lawyer or an accountant or a consultant and that if we were to publish every single one of those clients that would actually be reaching far too deeply into the information that was relevant to that member and I just want to talk about that piece specifically which is around how the bill will focus on people's employment. I just want to make a comment around that because one of the challenges in local government—and I'll put this on record—is that members of local authorities are paid very poorly in my view. Certainly in some of the larger centres—if we look at Auckland and maybe Wellington—the remuneration is a livable income. It might not be very high but it is livable. But in my electorate of Nelson where I have two councils the Nelson City Council and the Tasman District Council many of our councillors are paid between $40000 and $50000 a year. Given that these roles are becoming more and more complex with greater expectations placed on people in those roles the amount of difficult and at times hateful correspondence that those members receive and often without having any form of staffing support it's my view that we do have a job to do which—I know that the Minister of Local Government has her review of local government. We do have a job to do to lift the profile of local government and one of the challenges is that many people who stand for a local government role do actually hold another job. Unless they are retired or are independently wealthy it's very difficult for people to be able to support themselves in a local government role if that is their only form of income. So that was one of the reasons we felt as a committee quite strongly that it wouldn't be appropriate to list every individual client that a person may have. Having said that if a member had a client of a large organisation that was seeking funding from the council or where a decision was being made that was relevant to the council then that could potentially form a pecuniary interest or it could come into the decision-making process under LAMIA. So that was just one of many changes and I hope other members make comment on some of the other changes we made to the bill that were very good. On that note it's a pleasure to take the final my final call—not the final call"—on this bill and commend it to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Oh I call the former Mayor of Westland Maureen Pugh."