Xu-Nan Lawrence; Brown SimeonDr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. I have a number of questions on Part 1 and I'll start with the first one. First of all I want to thank the Minister for clarifying a previous question by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb around whether ratepayers in the so-called landlord role are able to vote on this. I think that clarification was really important for the question I am going to be raising.So when we are looking section 19ZB(3) in clause 7 it specifies the definition of specified number of electors". Now if I cross-reference this to section 19ZC(2) it says that "An elector may sign a demand and be treated as one of the specified number of electors only if"—and this goes to what the Minister has clarified already—(a) in the case of a territorial authority the name of the elector appears on the electoral roll of the territorial authority;". I'm assuming this is the part where the Minister says that people who are on the colloquially termed landlord roll are able to vote on this. Correct me if I'm wrong.But the question I have is about fees. In the case of a regional council the name of the elector appears on the electoral roll of a territorial authority and the electorate address is shown on the roll within that region. Now like the Minister I also grew up in East Auckland. I am from Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland and so admit that I have not as great an understanding when it comes to the regional council or the size of the regional council. But in this particular case can a person own two separate houses within the regional council and have one on them on the electoral roll of the territorial authority and the second one an address that is also within that region?That clarification will be quite important for multiple reasons. Firstly I agree with what the Minister is saying that democracy here is crucial and also the Minister has addressed multiple times that this is about hearing from local communities. But one could argue regardless of whether you look at subsection (2)(a) or (b) of section 19ZC that ratepayers and landlords who do not live in that local community is anything but what is defined as hearing from that local community.The second part of this—and this is from the commentary on the bill; the report of the Justice Committee. I draw your attention to page 6 around the consistency with New Zealand's international obligations. It says "The DDS comments that the United Nations Human Rights Committee has previously raised concerns about the representation of Māori in local government". Hence we have the Māori wards. But there is another section in there that says "Article 25 recognises and protects the right of every citizen to take part in the conduct of public affairs. Article 26 enshrines a right to equality before the law." Now having one person being able to vote multiple times is very much the definition of inequality in this case.We are in a democracy like the Minister suggested but what we are seeing here is not a democracy but an oligarchy. The more you can own the more money you have the more you have a say. That brings me to my final question on this particular section. Unless it is defined under the original Local Electoral Act section 9 which is about holding a referendum which I see in clause 5 of this Part 1 there is nothing I can see in Part 1 that specifies that a person cannot put their name in more than once as part of a signatory to a demand.So those are couple of questions to the Minister just to tie it all together. The first question is when it comes to section 19ZC(2)(b) when they're talking about the scenario of being on the electoral roll and having the elector's address shown as in that whether it could be someone who owns two separate properties within the same regional council. And would that then mean that a single person is able to put their name into the demand multiple times and is there any provision that bars or bans a person from putting in a name more than once?Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): The answer is that each elector is only able to sign once."