Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I wish to speak to my tabled amendment which seeks to exempt Wellington City Council and its council-controlled organisations from this bill. I note that this is actually completely in concurrence with what the Auditor-General has said should happen here. The Auditor-General's letter to the Minister of Finance stated that larger councils would have their annual reports completed within the current statutory reporting deadlines. But as the bill is on the Table before us as the legislation current stands those councils continue to have their audit and annual report time frames extended by two months even though the Auditor-General has said that is not necessary. I think this is an important principle because we need to remember and the Minister of Finance needs to remember that extending these statutory reporting time lines is a very significant step and so we should be minimising to the absolute extent possible the entities that are captured by the remit of this bill. I want to talk about why it is so important. Let's remember the state that Wellington City Council is in now in relation to its accounts and the Minister of Finance who is resident in Wellington Central should be very aware of these issues. Certainly constituents in Wellington make me very aware of their concern about the fact that Audit New Zealand has issued a qualified report about the state of Wellington City Council's accounts its 10-year budget. They have raised particular concerns around the approach that Wellington City Council is taking to the renewal of key assets. Now why would that be? Could that be because we have had several instances of raw sewage on the streets of Wellington? Could that be because actually we have had literally millions of litres of sewerage sludge dumped in our harbour? And could that be because the service levels in terms of water repairs have declined rapidly? So in that context Audit New Zealand has concerns that the asset renewal programme that the council has put forward basically says Look we'll do as much as we can within this cap." and will not actually get significantly outdated water assets up to standard and this is of significant concern. I do not think it is sensible to allow in the law a delay in the law a delay in the audit for Wellington City Council when there are such stark issues at play.Of course that's not the only issue at play with Wellington City Council's accounts. The other issue is around the capital programme. Audit New Zealand has said "Well it's all very well and good that you're going to go and build cycleways and do all of those things but have you actually looked carefully at the constraints in the construction market and done some sort of prioritisation framework should you come up against those constraints? Do you have a delivery plan?" Again I would say that I think it is in the interests of Wellingtonians as ratepayers as taxpayers as citizens to know that Audit New Zealand will be auditing these accounts thoroughly and on time because of the nature of concerns that have been raised in recent times.Finally I want to highlight the situation with Wellington City Council's social housing portfolio. City Housing owns almost 2000 properties that are home to more than 3500 Wellingtonians so it should be a particular concern to the Minister of Finance that City Housing is forecast to be insolvent by June 2023.Hon Members: Really?NICOLA WILLIS: Correct and the reason for that is that despite signing a deed of grant with Helen Clark back in 2007 and saying "Don't worry we're going to keep the houses upgraded and do the capital works. We're going to manage them well." the Wellington City Council has failed to do the upgrades that would be expected and is not running those assets in a way that allows them to be solvent. These are significant issues. We must exempt Wellington City Council from any expectation of delays."