Hernandez FranciscoFRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. I apologise if my contribution is repetitive in nature—I only got here so I haven't been following the debate as closely as I could have. As I said I only just got here. My question is around new section 19ZC inserted by clause 7 around the requirements for a valid demand.Now section 19Z(2)(d) says that the address given by the elector who signed the demand is confirmed by the Electoral Commission as the address at which the elector is registered as a parliamentary elector and the address (i) is if the demand was given to a territorial authority within the district of the territorial authority; or (ii) is if the demand was delivered to a regional council within the region of the regional council; or"—and this is the crux of my question it's something that I'm really curious about whether it's deliberately in there kind of considering that the rationale for this is to increase democracy—"(e) [is that] the elector has enrolled or has been nominated as a ratepayer elector and is qualified to vote as a ratepayer elector in elections of the territorial authority or as the case may require the regional council."So my reading of this is that a ratepayer elector could actually demand a referendum in an area that they might not actually live in. So is this actually democratic that some person who just owns property who's on the ratepayer roll essentially is affecting the politics? We already have heard some analysis and I think there's been discussion earlier and there's been extensive critique of how the ratepayer roll—Rawiri Waititi: Old McDonald had a farm.FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Yes yes. It's fundamentally undemocratic. Yes there's lots McDonald's you know. It's really problematic if we're letting people on the ratepayer rolls dictate and demand referendum—that's problematic.There was an excellent contribution by someone on the Labour benches that also talked about the 5 percent requirement—I can't quite remember who it was—but he mentioned whether the Minister of Local Government had considered setting the threshold the same as the citizens initiated referendum which I believe is 1percent. So in my view if if it's good enough for having the threshold set at the citizens initiated referendum it should also be good enough to have that be the same in terms of having the specified number of electors. Because it is really important that there is some consistency between the kind of rules at the local and the national level.One of the questions that I also have is who is running these elections? Are these elections being run locally by the election services—Electionz? Because we do know that in the local councils they have quite terrible turn out some because of the nature of the poll but also because of the lack of promotion and the lack of democracy investment that goes into it.So if we're serious about actually investing in our democracy and if we're serious about making sure that people are fully participating I think there needs to be some level of investment being made in our local councils so that they're actually having robust elections. Because as other speakers have already said councils are being squeezed around the country. We're seeing rates rises of 20 to 25 percent. Quite frankly a lot of a lot of councils are struggling to afford just basic services and they're getting a lot of complaints about the rate rises. I just don't see how in this era when we're kind of already loading up councils with so many demands—you know we've cancelled the three waters we've made them assume control over the water services we're also shouldering them with the burden of climate adaptation. I think it's kind of consistent in that central government repeatedly loads local councils demands them to do things but it doesn't resource them to do so. So I think this is another example of how you know we're requiring them to run quite complex elections quite expensive elections and we really need to make sure that we're resourcing them.So just to reiterate: the ratepayer role is that deliberate? Because I do find it quite problematic. The 5 percent threshold—I think it should be raised to 10 percent. And also whether there's going to be more resourcing to local councils. Thank you."