SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Kia orana Mr Speaker; thank you. I'm pleased to talk a call on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill and can I congratulate all the candidates for city and district councils regional councils unitary councils community boards and local boards around the country. They've all increased their social media activity they're out putting up billboards knocking on doors calling and engaging with their communities because they want to serve their communities and I do encourage them to all get their nominations in by 12 August 12 noon.I think the National Party and particularly Mr Watts and Mr Goldsmith are over-egging it in terms of the scale of the changes that they think are in this bill. It is not trying to change the fundamental rules around local government; it is trying to improve the way local government operates and improve some processes such as the nomination process by allowing candidates to put in their nomination forms electronically so they don't get prevented from being candidates by being delayed in traffic as I know has happened to at least one candidate. So the National Party's also quite cynical I think about local government. We had Mr Watts talking about councillors on Auckland Council sitting around the table singing Kumbaya". That is totally disrespectful of the enormous work that councillors at Auckland do and the scale of their responsibilities. So this is again an example with the National Party's comments—it suits them to have electoral systems that don't encourage effective representation.The reforms that the Labour Government has led particularly the reforms in the previous legislation around putting the establishment of Māori wards on an equal footing with general wards so that you didn't have to require a referendum to establish a Māori ward—you don't for a general ward; why should you for a Māori ward? That was an improvement in local democracy. So it's absolutely ridiculous for the National speakers to claim that this is about a lack of trust by central government in local government when it increases the flexibility for councils to determine the number of councillors in the case of Auckland Council; their local board boundaries in the case of Auckland Council; and when it improves electoral processes. It is nonsense for a result where two candidates tie to be determined by a coin toss. So this bill ensures that there is automatically a judicial recount in those circumstances rather than it just being determined on something as opportunistic as a coin toss.This bill is ensuring that there are these technical changes and it's about better implementing the purpose of the Local Electoral Act which is to provide for fair representation of electors and effective representation of communities. And local authorities do this by reviewing their representation arrangements at least once every six years and what the bill is doing is ensuring that in that review of representation arrangement councils have to consider the issue of Māori representation and whether to create Māori wards. In Auckland the changes in the bill will improve representation because the current law is far too rigid; it restricts Auckland Council to 20 councillors plus the mayor. That doesn't provide for effective representation of communities in such a fast-growing city where we've got those 20 councillors representing 13 wards and that limit on 20 councillors also obstructs Auckland Council's ability to create Māori wards and improve Māori representation. So the bill simply provides Auckland Council with the ability to determine whether it wants to have between five and 29 councillors and I'll be interested in submissions on the bill as to whether there should be that 29 cap.As members know the Local Electoral Act has the 10 percent plus or minus rule to ensure that a vote in one constituency is similar to a vote of another. But the Local Electoral Act also provides for breaches of that rule to ensure effective representation and the regulatory impact statement notes that this can happen in relation to local board boundaries where at the moment there is a complete misalignment in Auckland between the ward boundaries and the board boundaries and Auckland Council has signalled that it wants to be able to adjust the board boundaries to get that alignment back again. The bill allows that to happen.I am interested that the regulatory impact statement also says that the Remuneration Authority has advised that it—the authority—is unlikely to increase the size of the governance pool funded by council to account for the salaries of any additional councillors. The salaries in local government are not high. The responsibilities of councillors are significant and if we want to attract capable people if we want to ensure that there's less risk of corruption we need to ensure that there are adequate salaries for local councillors and board members. So this restriction on increasing the pool if the number of councillors increases I think is unfortunate. The bill also provides for—I think I have covered all of the major points but it is not the massive sweeping change that the National Party is claiming it is. It is simply some technical amendments in an omnibus bill which improves the representation processes and makes quite sensible changes in the nature of a judicial recount and the processes that apply there. The Green Party is pleased to support it."