Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): It is a pleasure to rise to take a call on the New Plymouth District Council (Perpetual Investment Fund) Bill. Can I begin by just commending my colleague Glen Bennett. We often have a little bit of healthy competition between ourselves around sunshine—it looks like Marlborough close to Nelson is doing quite well this year so I might claim that. But look I just want to congratulate the member because it's been a useful day today; we've got three private and local bills coming before the House which is very unusual on a members' day. I do want to acknowledge that for the three of us who have had bills today it means that members' bills that would otherwise have been towards the top of the Order Paper do get bumped down a little. I do want to acknowledge that for those members it must be somewhat frustrating. But there is an important process in these bills—for local bills it's very important that councils are able to come to the Parliament and have legislation put through that is going to improve their communities in a way that they may not be able to do through their own policies. So I thank the member Glen Bennett for the explanation of what has come about what has led to this bill and also the PIF fund—the Perpetual Investment Fund—as he called it. It's always good to have a good acronym for a financial mechanism; one of my favourite things is to have a good acronym. So Mr Bennett has explained that a while ago the council chose to sell its shareholdings in Powerco and that the intention of doing that was to be able to bring down the rates that people in New Plymouth pay to the council and that the fund was supposed to be sustainable and be able to last in perpetuity so that it wouldn't run down. And we can see that that is not what occurred and that there was a time when the fund dropped down to quite seriously low levels and the council has had to do a very good rescue job I must say of getting that back up to the levels that it is today—but still lower than where it would be if it had been inflation adjusted. So what I think is good about this bill and where I do commend the council is putting in place a process to come to Parliament so that that fund can be treated in a sustainable way. It's important that with governance part of good governance is ensuring that when people change roles—when you have people elected into new roles—that you don't necessarily lose the important principles that you've placed around a fund such as this. And I think what is very very sensible is to ensure that through this bill the council will be able to satisfy the need for this fund to be used in a sustainable way. I note that in the past it's been used for a couple of particular purposes. One is as I mentioned to reduce rates for ratepayers but also the potential to invest in community assets and funding for the development of things like walkways things that are going to benefit the New Plymouth community. As the previous speaker Mr Watts noted the bill also does another very good thing which is to ring-fence this for the local community should there be an amalgamation at some point in the future. I'm not aware of what the discussions are in the area about potential amalgamations—I know in my area we sometimes have those conversations—but it is important that an asset that has been built up by those people will be able to be ring-fenced for that purpose and so I can see that being a very good part of the bill. I do note that the council has also gone through the process of considering some other options and I think that's wise before bringing something to the Parliament to see whether there is something else that can be done. So one of the things was to do nothing and retain the status quo or an enhanced version by taking measures such as listing the PIF as a strategic asset or to establish an entire new trust. Having said that the council determined that they would proceed with a bill before Parliament. I think this is a good local bill that will go before the scrutiny of a select committee which is where it will get further consideration and I commend it to the House.