McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I am a bit slow to rise Mr Deputy Speaker. It takes me a while to get up because of my age.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was thinking that.IAN McKELVIE: Well the slow legs—that is a bit of a problem. Anyway—Hon Nanaia Mahuta: We needed that information.IAN McKELVIE: Yes; do not pick on me. I have a great deal of pleasure in rising to speak on the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill. In 2010 the Government intervened—I suppose intervened" for want of a better word—in the Canterbury Regional Council and put commissioners in place. I would have to say that the commissioners they put in place in my view were extremely competent but that is beside the point.I think the issue that I have with this—and I have some experience of local government having spent a bit of time there. I think one of the challenges regional councils have is that the agenda they are set as councillors is extremely complicated. I think one of the problems that Canterbury had as a regional council and I am sure many other regional councils in New Zealand have had as well is that that agenda when set was extremely difficult for those councillors to get their heads around. I will go on to that in a minute. I am not criticising the councils because I think if you look at the way we elect our councils throughout New Zealand being elected to a district council is a whole lot more of a different issue than being elected to a regional council or for that matter to a health board. A district council is all about people and people are—well for those of us who have spent our life managing people—not that difficult. They are things that are easy to manage—well not easy to manage necessarily—but they are things that we can get our heads around. But the issues of health and the environment are much more complex. I think that one of the challenges our regional councils throughout New Zealand have had in their time or particularly since they started to merge plans—in fact since 1989—is that the issues have been very complex. So I do not blame the people elected to those councils for not necessarily getting their heads around what was going on and I guess at the end of that then holding up progress from an environmental perspective and from an economic perspective I suppose but for me the environmental perspective is a lot more important.I ask why a local hearing commissioner for example—who used to be elected to a district council; nowadays they are slightly more professional—has to undertake onerous training to sit on hearing panels. They undertake examinations. There is quite a difficult threshold for a hearing commissioner or a person to be appointed to a hearing panel on a local council or wherever. We then elect people to the regional council and expect them to come with all the skills. Sure we do some councillor training and stuff like that but it is not that easy. I think that the reason there were challenges in many of our regional councils throughout New Zealand was the fact that it was extremely difficult for the average person to be elected to a council and then have to deal with the very complicated environmental and scientific issues that they are faced with. When you are elected to a local district council to a community board or whatever else you do not generally face those very complex issues and if you do they are pretty easily resolved—whereas in my experience of regional councils particularly around scientific water and environmental stuff it is very complicated. So I can understand why Canterbury had some challenges with their council. I can understand why we have had challenges in other parts of New Zealand with I guess the progress and the progression of regional plans and things like that because it is a hugely complicated issue to understand.So although the member has had her bill drawn and I wish her every success with her bill—as I said earlier in the day I do not have any success in having bills drawn. In fact I am pretty sure my bill is missing from the ballot. I would like to go and test that one day just to see whether in fact it is in there. But it is not; I am sure it is not because it has never been drawn. This bill really is not relevant any longer simply because the Act has been changed and the progress towards restoring democracy has started. It will be interesting to see how that progress goes.I just want to touch on health boards for a moment. For quite some time now we have had a mixture of appointed members who then create the expertise and elected members who give the community vision to the health board. A very similar sort of thing in my view exists for the Canterbury Regional Council. I think history will prove this model to be a very successful model for something as complicated as a regional council. Thank you."