Webb Duncan; Brown SimeonHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Oh thank you Madam Chair. You'll see I'm sure that I do have an Amendment Paper here because it does seem to be a little precipitous to rush this through. I was reading the document that the Minister in the chair Simeon Brown referred to the Cost Recovery Impact Statement and just noticing that some of the constraints—this is right on the front page; it talks about constraints. For example it mentions about halfway down the page there that Consumers Price Index data has been used as a proxy for the limited financial information which provides a reasonable basis for decision making. That's the problem limited financial information because it's been done in a rush—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Link this to commencement please.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Yeah no this is the point right?CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Just link it to commencement.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Absolutely but my point is this has been done in a rush and we need to just take a breath. So let's just not rush into putting this into force. Of course the fact of the matter is that we've rushed from one thing; we're rushing into the next. All of a sudden this change is going to come into force within one month and that's an extremely short period of time—a short period of time for systems to change but also a short period of time for local bodies so that local bodies can make choices.The Cost Recovery Impact Statement itself says that on some occasions local bodies choose different providers and they may well when they look at this and they say Oh our costs are going up by 4 percent." they may want to change providers. Now to do that within one month simply isn't enough because this is a lot of admin to do. You've got a lot of parking fines out there a lot of enforcement notices; you might even have court cases in train so you'll have issued summons to people to appear and the price that you have to pay to the Government has gone up and you've got no way out.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Please use the word "council" instead of the word "you".Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Can I apologise Madam Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Thank you Dr Duncan Webb.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Sometimes I do get excited about matters of such high importance—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Like commencement.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —and the commencement date is what we're talking about. My point is simply that councils ought to be entitled to make their own arrangements and that ability has effectively been taken away from them.My Amendment Paper is very modest actually. It was not some silly amendment that says "push it out to the never-never." It simply says let's push it down the road to 1 January 2025 because what would happen then is all of the court proceedings which are currently in the system will be cleared out—because they don't take too long these traffic infringements and the like usually—and the councils can then make a choice as to whether they want to continue using this enforcement mechanism or whether they want to go down a different road which might be more effective for them.So it's a very simple point but the overall global point is this is just another bit of the rushed flavour of this legislation because the Government wants to push it through and wants this money as quickly as possible. I'm saying well no let's just have a bit of reasonableness a bit of fairness a bit of justice and just stretch it out by six months and one will be able to get one's money in due course. I honestly can't see what the rush is.And there's a relationship thing going on here right? The councils are going to have this thrust upon them. They probably didn't hear—well we didn't hear about it until today; they didn't hear about it by all reports until today. So it only seems reasonable decent and fair to give them an easing-in period which is a lot more than four weeks or a month.So it's a very reasonable suggestion and I actually would like to hear from the Minister why he has this commencement which whilst it's not tomorrow—that would probably be impossible—is so quick. Is he confident that the relevant systems can be put in place to make this system work and for councils to make the appropriate decisions as to whether they opt in or choose to opt out of this or whether this was simply plucked out of the air—either out of his own head or did he receive advice on this date? Thank you.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Oh I thank the member for the question. I didn't pluck it out of my own head because I'm doing this on behalf of my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith of course but I would just make the point in terms of the time frame: no we don't agree with the member's amendment to delay the date for another six months. This is a Government of action and we're making decisions and we're implementing a change. Ultimately as we'll get to when we get to the debate on the Schedule the member if he hasn't read that part of the bill yet will realise that the percentage increase only applies to fines which are issued after 1 July and so all of those fines that he was incredibly concerned about which may already be in the system the percentage continues over under the current law for those ones. The percentage of revenue ultimately is collected progressively over time as those fines post that date are fined and then the decisions are made. So actually we think there's plenty of time for this change to be bedded in due to the progressive way in which this legislation—in which I think the decisions made by my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith were very sound very evidence-based and very good for supporting that cost recovery model.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Before I take the next call I'm going to say this is a very very narrow clause and the purpose of committee stage is questions for the Minister. We've just had a full one around whether things would be in place on time and we've heard the answer to that so these questions must be apart from that and very clearly crafted to the Minister because that's the purpose."