Baldock Larry: Local Government Law Reform Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Baldock Larry: Local Government Law Reform Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14123] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I will make a brief contribution on the clause we have been discussing the clause about being able to stand for both council and mayoralty. I appreciate the contribution of the member who spoke before me. I have no doubt whatsoever that he will be on the phone only a few minutes after this bill is passed taking the credit for having had the amendment passed that clarifies the issue. But the member is somewhat mistaken in his speech when he says that in the past people have been denied the opportunity to stand for both council and mayoralty. I stood in the 2001 local body elections and there were a number of people in the Tauranga area who stood for both mayoralty and council. This provision was introduced in the 2002 legislation and it has not yet had an effect upon any local body elections. So the member was slightly awry of the truth in that regard but we understand what he was talking about. Perhaps they do different things up in the north and perhaps they did not allow people to stand for both but people in the rest of the country were able to. 
This clause makes it clear that someone can stand as a candidate for a ward and also for a mayoralty. In our area we have another situation arising where we have members standing at large. We have seven councillors being elected at large and three councillors being elected as ward members. That is one per ward as there are three wards in the Tauranga area. I have had a number of submissions from sitting councillors about why they cannot stand for both ward candidate and councillor at large which is currently prohibited. We have had a number of reasons given to us by officials as to the complications that occur there but that is a new phenomenon. There are only two councils that I am aware of after the Local Government Commission’s review where there will now be members standing at large as well as in wards. 
Some of the arguments put forward to me made some sense. It did seem that there was a bias in favour of those who were standing at large—being able to do that and stand for the mayoralty as well. People who wanted to stand at large had no aspirations to be mayor. They wanted to stand for the ward but were prohibited from doing that. I trust that the Local Government Commission will evaluate how these elections go this year and see whether some of the arguments that have been raised about that prohibition are in fact valid. Perhaps recommendations need to be made in order to have consistency in this whole area. 
I said earlier that I am personally not in favour of people being allowed to stand for both. I believe that if a person is a councillor and wants to have a shot at the mayoralty then he or she should have a shot. But if the person misses out then he or she should spend a bit of time out in the real world again learning what is going on and not clinging to his or her seat as a councillor. The converse argument of course is that some good councillors might be lost but one of the great things about local body politics is that it is a great place for people to step into politics and have an opportunity to get involved in public service. I do not think it is a negative for us to see some people of experience stepping aside for a while and allowing some new blood to come in. Who knows? A person could end up going from there straight to Parliament. It does happen. Those sorts of things occur and that cannot always be a bad thing. So I hope we might look at reviewing the legislation after a few more local body elections and seeing whether it is wise to allow dual candidacy.