Mahuta NanaiaHon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I'd like to take a brief call as we are going into the committee stage of the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill and just highlight and recapitulate really what local government wanted which was to restore the four well-beings back into local government legislation because it did give greater emphasis and focus on what councils actually see as their day-to-day tasks which is beyond roads rates and rubbish.If I come to the reason why we elevated the four well-beings within the purpose of this particular legislation and Part 1 in particular it was to ensure that in the current long-term planning cycles that councils are engaged in as well as in the annual plans greater focus would be given to the four well-beings council by council as they tried to rearticulate back to the community the things that community wants and sees as essential to their quality-of-life aspirations.Now if there was one thing that was highlighted to me very early on when I came into this portfolio it was the importance of ensuring a broader lens was applied to the role and function of local government and the work that they did. I did hear the question posed around extra costs. While it's not intended that this will create any further cost in fact what it does will provide a greater focus and emphasis on what councils generally do on a day-to-day basis—which is beyond roads rates and rubbish—to be able to provide for the types of things that help a community grow and thrive.Let me just highlight a couple of those things because it might actually help focus why the four well-beings are so important: things like facilities in your community that young people can have access to. In many community engagements when they were going out and speaking to their community about what they wanted to see—and it's very very local and simple for many districts small communities in particular who don't have access to big recreational facilities: a skateboard park some opportunities for young people to go and play sports grounds that are enhanced to enable other activities a recreational facility.Look just the other week I was down in Westland and their recreational facility is a fantastic—fantastic—example of a community facility which has a multi-purpose benefit and is about place making. Now that was done with a broader ambition in mind and that's actually the four well-beings. It didn't just focus on the aspects that members of the Opposition would have council focus on—roads rates and rubbish—but that broader aspiration around bringing the community together having a multi-purpose facility fundraising to be able to do added things in the community.There's another advantage of having the four well-beings within the local government legislation and that's how you reflect what you value in your community. Actually the creative sector is a big contributor to this. When we look at the way in which communities and districts have demonstrated their relevance and the link of the diversity of their communities—they've had art installations and pieces—their art galleries and museums and their public facilities have been a focal point to be able to ensure that the values of that council can be reflected in all sorts of ways. These are the types of things that councils want to be more involved in.There was also a point made about performance measures. Well actually what we want to ensure with councils is that they operate in a best-practice environment—so all the time councils are sharing their experiences what benchmarking starts to look like when they're involved in a whole lot of different things.I was in the Hutt some months ago looking at what they were doing to ensure that the social interaction of their community was going to be more engaged because they had a proportion of their population that wasn't engaging in the community and was seen to be I guess causing problems. The way that the council responded is outside the ambit—if we were to take on board the views of the Opposition—of that greater well-being aspiration. But I say more and more councils need to be involved in the day-to-day fabric of what makes a community tick. That's why the four well-beings are so important. Environmental restoration projects are just another example of how the four well-beings can create social cohesion and greater inclusion into the way that our councils are engaging with their people.