Wade-Brown Celia; Rutherford Tom; Brown SimeonCELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. Well thank you for answering the previous question and giving your view of the independent report. I have a second question in a different area.New Zealand is highly vulnerable to natural hazards as the Insurance Council notes and this is a matter that came to our Governance and Administration Committee. We cannot overstate the importance of risk reduction readiness response and recovery. Dave Gawn Chief Executive of the National Emergency Management Agency recently spoke to us and said that the New Zealand Emergency Management System has been set up to manage small events generally weather events—not big catastrophes like the Hikurangi subduction or the Alpine Fault which could be level 8 and almost unimaginable.Now I'm asking the Minister of Local Government for his thoughts because civil defence and emergency management committees are run by local councils with fire police and other organisations—hopefully iwi although you do wonder; they would be better to be woke than asleep in my view when we come to emergencies. However smaller councils do not employ any specialised civil defence and emergency staff and in addition Fire and Emergency New Zealand have not extended their local advisory committees to all of New Zealand.Does the Minister of Local Government have concerns that councils do not have adequate resources to fulfil their civil defence and emergency management duties?TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I'm keen to sort of ask a question the Minister alluded to in his answer previously; he talked about democracy. Being the MP for the Bay of Plenty for the last three years we have had appointed commissioners at our local city council at the Tauranga City Council and so I'm keen to know—because that was an appointment from the previous Government and it was an appointment under this term that we're reviewing. They were appointed on 9 February 2021 through to the elections in October in 2022 to align them back to the local government elections and then their appointment was extended to July 2024. I'm keen to understand the Minister's priorities in the space around the return to local democracy and the use of appointed commissioners and what he sees is the importance around the local community having their say for the people who represent them around the council table and the decision making being made on behalf of the local community.If we think about Tauranga we've got our local elections taking place in a couple of months' time and the community is ready to re-elect and to elect the council to represent them around the table and to be held accountable to the ratepayer. That's what the community locally in Tauranga is keen to do. But they're also keen to ensure we've got representatives sitting at that council with future direction future forward thinking so we can take our city—the fifth-largest in New Zealand—forward and have the prosperous city that we want to have.So I'm really keen to understand from the Minister how he likes the use of appointed commissioners what he views to have been under their term and what he sees around the importance of local democracy and decision making at local city councils.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Mr Chair and I thank the members for their questions. The question from Celia Wade-Brown around councils fulfilling their obligations in relation to civil defence—and obviously that is a critically important role that councils have alongside civil defence which leads the Government's response. It's really important that councils do play that role and ultimately that's why my message to local government is to focus on the must-haves not the nice-to-haves". And so that's the focus that we expect from local government.In terms of the question around Tauranga and local democracy we are committed as the Government to restoring democracy. We are not extending the term. We've confirmed that the decision made by the previous Minister will remain unchanged which means that in July this year the residents of Tauranga will be able to elect their own mayor and elect their own councillors and we will not be having some form of—Tom Rutherford: Hybrid. Hon SIMEON BROWN: —hybrid model or commissioners in place alongside elected members. Ultimately what we will be doing there is ensuring that the local community can decide who will represent them in that community.The wider question though around the role of commissioners—so Part 10 of the Local Government Act does give the Minister of Local Government certain powers to intervene in particular circumstances and ultimately where there are problems. And that is a process which ultimately I will reserve judgment on in terms of other councils."