Bishop Chris; Hipkins ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Mr Chair. Now something very interesting has happened between the introduction of this bill and the select committee and the committee of the whole House because as the bill was introduced the Government sought an amendment as part of this omnibus bill to the Local Electoral Act to replace section 73A(2) of the Local Electoral Act 2001 and essentially give the Government give themselves the power to move local elections; not just once as is the current law—and it's going to remain the current law; just giving the game away—but they sought the power to move local elections out by six weeks over and over and over again; not just in the year of the local body election that we're talking about but for the year after the local body election as well.So for all those listening just so you know the Government turned up with this omnibus bill and it's got about 20 different amendments to different pieces of legislation. Most of it's rats and mice. Most of it's sensible. I haven't even bothered to dwell on the Gambling Act amendment which allows various people to operate under level 2 and 3 lockdown restrictions—I haven't dealt with that. But 20 pieces of legislation amended an omnibus legislation sent to the select committee with a shortened report-back time this omnibus bill and the Government just quietly thought that they would get away with the secret—or not secret but quiet little change secretive little change—Hon Member: Clandestine.CHRIS BISHOP: —clandestine—clandestine; great Julia Deans song great word—this clandestine little change to allow themselves the power to delay local body elections. And I'm pleased to say that the National Party was on to this. I'd like to take the credit for it myself but it was actually Chris Penk the shadow Attorney-General—sadly in Auckland so he can't be with us but he's taking victory in absentia. He's taking vicarious victory because he cottoned on to this. And I remember he sent me a text. He said Have you got any idea what the Government's chucked in this little bill?" I said "Oh no I don't yet. I'm just looking at it now." He said "They want the power to delay local elections over and over and over again." It's just unbelievable. And I remember standing in this very position in the first reading of the bill saying "What is the rationale for this?" And I said "We're going to want to get into this in committee." And that's exactly what we did.The Finance Committee I'm pleased to say—very sensible members—got into this issue at the committee and said "What is the rationale?" And the funny thing was as it turns out there isn't one. I mean there was this sort of confected concern about you know it might be very tricky to run an election under level 3 lockdown restrictions. I mean that's true up to a certain point obviously although let's bear in mind local elections are postal votes; they are not you know go down and vote in person. Personally I would like to bring voting in person back for local elections but that's beside the point.But anyway the good news the excellent news is the Government has quietly just backed down on this. Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 78 makes it very clear. By the way SOP 78 is actually I think longer than the bill. So it's a pretty poor process. And the Minister in the chair before was saying things like "Oh well we've already made that change." Actually we haven't because the select committee bill that came back—because of the shortened report-back time the select committee didn't send back the bar 2 bill; it sent back the bar 1. So it's un-amended at present; we're making the amendments as we go through this giant SOP—very poor process. But here we are that's the way we work.But if you read SOP 78 Part 2 "Local Electoral Act 2001" there we see the lines through every single paragraph and every single word. It's all gone. So the Government has given up. They've given up on this secretive clandestine little change and I welcome that. But I have a question; in fact I have two questions for the Minister in the chair. The first is—and bear in mind we welcome the change—we need to know I think it's worth the committee's time finding out why the Government wanted to make this change. And then secondly—and it's related to the first question—why has the Government decided to not make the change? Because for a period of weeks it was critical and now it turns out it isn't. I suspect the reason is the Government's decided that they're in a big enough war with the local government sector already with 60-odd councils opposing the misguided Three Waters reform process. I strongly suspect they've decided "Well let's not add fuel to the already burning conflagration that is the Government's relationship with the local government sector." So that's why they've quietly beaten a retreat and we welcome that. But we need to know exactly how this happened in the first place. We welcome the Minister's contribution to that.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I'm very happy to answer the question put by the member which was why this provision was made in the bill in the first place—why the provisions around local government elections were made in the first place and why they've been taken out.This bill of course has been in the works for several months now and when the bill was put together we were in quite a different situation when it came to COVID-19 and we were preparing for that situation to potentially continue into the new year. It is now clear that it won't and that we are entering a new phase of our COVID-19 response. Under our old settings a delay in local government elections—as there was a delay in the general election last year—would have potentially been something that the Government may have had to consider; it now isn't likely that we would have to do that. So the Government took the view that in the highly unlikely event there was a need to postpone or delay the local government elections because of COVID-19 the appropriate course of action would be to come back to the House at that point and produce a separate piece of legislation to enable that to happen.So the Government took the view that while this may have been justified several months ago potentially it's not now and is unlikely to be justified next year. And if it is justified next year then the appropriate course of action at that time is to come back to the House to seek that.Point of order Mr Chair. I understand that there has been some debate about the way the debate on the schedules should be undertaken in the committee. So I thought it would be useful to share the agreement that was reached at the Business Committee by all parties who were at the Business Committee. Parties were invited to nominate which parts of the bill they wished to have Ministers available to answer questions on. The only response was from the National Opposition from Mr Woodhouse who indicated that they would like to debate the local government provisions as has happened; the residential tenancies; and the commercial law provisions. No response was received from other parties.So on that basis we have made sure those Ministers who have responsibility for those provisions are available here in the House. In terms of the local government provisions the Minister of Local Government is not available so I am here to answer the question which was pretty much the only question that they've really asked about which was why has it been deleted which I have now done.And finally I should say if the agreement reached at the Business Committee is one that parties in the House no longer wish to sign up to then the default is the Standing Orders which is all provisions all schedules are taken as one question and one debate up to the point where the Chair accepts a closure motion."