Swarbrick Chlöe; Leary Ingrid; Kuriger Barbara; Brown SimeonCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you very much Madam Chair. So as I was alluding to—unfortunately in the wrong clause as you so dutifully pointed out—what we are talking about here is a context and a backdrop whereby we have had over the past 15 or so years a successive number of inquiries commissioned by successive Governments which have told us that local government is massively underfunded and under-resourced to do the work that it does. Now this is particularly pertinent here because what we're looking at with this clause is as the Minister himself has just said that increase from 10 to 14 percent in terms of what the Crown can recover.So my questions for the Minister are particularly related to any consideration that he as Minister for Local Government or indeed Minister for Auckland may have given to that broader context of the resourcing which is available to local government in this country given that he is looking to take more of that funding through this increase in the proportion of cost recovery to the Crown.So just to run through some of those reports for those who are following along at home and may like to have those citations we're talking here about the likes of the Shand inquiry we're talking about the Productivity Commission review of the Shand inquiry—which actually New Zealand First asked us to do back in the 2017 to 2020 term; I'm dedicating this to the Hon Mark Patterson—and then of course we had most recently I believe tabled at the end of last year the Future for Local Government Review.All of these reviews and inquiries have told us precisely the same thing: local government is not resourced to do what it needs to do to meet the challenges of our time let alone the increased responsibilities and mandate that are placed on it by successive amendments to the Local Government Act 2002. It does not have the ability to generate the revenue necessary to meet those challenges and those tasks. As actually former Mayor of Wellington Celia Wade-Brown was just alluding to the fact that we have had—and consistently are seeing through the rate-setting processes with the long-term plans having gone out to consultation with communities over the last few months—that councils are under immense pressure when it comes to setting their rates. I know that the Minister has had a lot of engagement with this in Auckland when it comes to his water plans.So my specific question to the Minister is: what consideration if any in the development of this legislation—and particularly in this clause when it comes to the Crown's ability to recover the cost—did he have for the ability for local government to generate alternative revenue streams? And that unfairness in the context of the OECD will we see far higher proportions allocated to the use of local government in relation to central government?INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Chair. My question is about the 10 and 14 percent—the relationship of that—and my question to the Minister which has been asked but not answered is about whether the costing is about individual fines or the quantum; the volume of fines and how that relates to the so-called cost recovery. Because if we look at the volume of fines actually there's been a bigger volume and therefore the cost recovery would have got smaller. In fact to the point probably the evidence would show that there would be a negative cost recovery element required. So we haven't had that specific question answered.On the back of that I would like to speak to my tabled amendment which is to say that rather than saying from 10 percent" to "14 percent" for the cost recovery I think that a better amendment would be just to make it 0 percent. We don't seem to have from the discussion in the House an evidence base by which to measure the costs that need to be recovered. We haven't had answered whether it's by individual fine or by quantum. The most prudent thing to do in the absence of evidence which I have asked about is to basically make the effect of this bill neutral. That way we would probably be able to pass it; we could all go home we wouldn't have to stay here all weekend.But it is contentious when we've got this 4 percent increase and we still haven't got to the point of how that was achieved. If I look at the numbers we've got evidence that the spend by the courts in collecting fines was $43 million and $99 million in 2023. So there's been quite a leap there and that's why I'm suggesting that if we're looking at the volume of fines the cost recovery would seem to go on—if you thought of a graph instead of the numbers going up and the graph going up the graph would go down. So that is why I think my tabled amendment would help to get us out of a spot of bother. We could actually just make it sort of fiscally neutral impact but we could still go ahead and pass the bill. So my amendment just simply says "In clause 4 replace '14 percent' with '0 percent'."Now I'd be happy to not have that happen if I could understand from the Minister what the mathematics is underlying the suggestion of the 4 percent. We've heard it's cost recovery of debt collectors but there are no numbers around that and I'm really curious to know: what debt collectors were consulted with? What numbers did he look at? Were there a range of debt collectors across a range of councils across New Zealand?Just a little bit more sunlight on that would help us to get a better handle on what the problem is that we're trying to fix. In the absence of that—and I'm an optimist so I do hope that the Minister will answer it—I'd suggest that my amendment is an easy way out of a tricky situation that would help us to progress this bill fiscally neutral just replace "14 percent" with "0 percent". That way even if there's no evidence of whether the costs are going up or down in terms of recovery and whether actually a profit is already being made at least we could be seen as being responsible because we have something that is not purporting to say that it's based on evidence when so far in this debate we haven't heard any evidence. So I'm really keen to get the Minister to respond to that please.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Hon Dr Duncan Webb. Oh sorry—the honourable Minister.Hon Dr Duncan Webb: You called me Madam Chair!CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): You'll get a turn.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Madam Chair. I appreciate the member's question. We will not be supporting her tabled amendment because of course what that tabled amendment does is it would effectively mean that we would not be achieving cost recovery and instead we'd be having to take money from other parts of government to effectively fund this particular function of ensuring that people pay their fines. So whilst that member might seem that putting it down to 0 percent is a good idea that would mean we wouldn't be getting cost recovery which means we'd have to be getting general taxation to pay the cost of this—which is not good policy and we are avoiding that.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Hon Dr Duncan Webb and it's only second time lucky for you."