McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. I've got rid of my nappy" [face mask]. I'd like to congratulate the member Tangi Utikere on the introduction of this bill the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. It's interesting that the last two bills discussed in the House have actually been introduced by people who know what they're talking about which isn't always the case with members' bills. So I congratulate both of them on that. The member who introduced this bill would certainly know what he was talking about with respect to local government as he was a former deputy mayor of Palmerston North.I of course am really filling in for Christopher Luxon who leads our approach to this issue and has done the work behind it. So I'm a fill-in I suppose. Actually I'm quite liking the Auckland lockdown because I've had a few goes in the House since they've been gone! It's given me a bit of a chance! I also have a bit of experience in this having been a mayor for some time; so I do have a bit of experience in this area. The National Party does support this bill to select committee at which stage we'll be able to closely scrutinise the submissions on it because there are a number of issues—and I will raise them in the course of this speech—that we are I guess interested in and think may cause some concerns as the bill goes the process in the select committee.Local government is often criticised; however in my experience of it it contains many outstanding officials and many many capable and very loyal local community people who work extraordinarily hard give up much time to serve on local councils and get very little reward for it except for a bit of abuse often and they're criticised for all sorts of things. One of the other things they're criticised for is the turnout at local elections and local government members are often criticised for creating the result of the low turnout. I've got to say that in my view the low turnout at local elections is to a large extent caused by the fact that the only people affected by local councils directly are ratepayers because no one else gets the bill. And so effectively if you pay the bill you're interested; if you don't pay the bill you don't have an interest. And so because a large number of our residents in a lot of our council areas are only indirectly affected by the activities of council they're not going to take much interest. So I think we've got some challenges with the way councils are set up and the way they're structured and that doesn't help in my view to draw out voters at voting time. So that's a bit of an issue I think that's worth raising in the course of this bill because I'll get to the point I want to raise about it and that's the fact that there is much happening in local government at the moment.There are many good councils and they do a lot of good work with little resource and this building and the occupants of it over the last 20 years in my experience have lumped a whole lot of issues and work on local councils that have created a lot of costs for them a lot of resource required and increased costs significantly to them. We've got to find new ways of funding local government and new ways of dealing with it and I accept that this Government has got some activity going on at the moment in that respect which I'll get on to in a moment but the really interesting issue is that however you look at this there is only two sources of funding for everything in New Zealand: they're taxpayers and ratepayers and the rate this Government is going at there are less of each of them every year. And so that's very challenging for us because that means fewer people have got to pay the bill and so that's one of the challenges local government has.I want to talk a bit about the future now because this bill is one of many that will impact on the activities of local government and in fact impact on what's going on in local government at the moment and this Government has a number of measures they are taking right now—three waters being one of them—that affect dramatically what might happen with local government in the future. And also the other issue that's going on is a potential review of local government and how that works. Local government to some extent reminds me of our farmers and fishers; they're under constant pressure. And this bill—one could be forgiven for wondering if we'll have anyone standing for council in the future because my personal concerns about this bill are that local people who have to expose themselves financially for all and sundry to see for $20k a year are not going to be particularly interested in standing for council and I think it's going to put a lot of people off being interested in local politics simply because the rewards are so little and the challenges are so great. And also the fact that you're exposing yourself completely—as we do in Parliament and I'll get to that in a minute—is quite a challenge and I think it will be a real challenge for the future of local government and who might put themselves forward for it.Comparing this to Parliament—local government to Parliament—is drawing a long bow because we as ordinary MPs are paid more than almost every mayor in New Zealand and certainly more than almost every councillor in New Zealand and the other opportunity we have of course as MPs is there's a fair chance you're going to become a Minister who's then paid more than any mayor in New Zealand and making decisions that have dramatic effects on the future of everyone in this country and on all sorts of areas whereas local government is pretty much confined to certain areas and certainly confined locally. So I think there's a very big difference between the responsibilities that local councillors and mayors have or particularly local councillors have and the people who occupy this building. And it's interesting to note—and I'll get on to the penalties in a minute because Tangi Utikere talked about the penalties—that three of our members of Parliament couldn't get their returns in on time. You'd wonder how that would happen really because that can't be that difficult.But anyway Tangi Utikere talked about the penalties involved in this bill and I've got some I guess doubts about the penalty as well and that a $5000 fine—if you're really into rorting your local community a $5000 fine is not going to stop you rorting your local community—and so I think that the penalties are an interesting issue and it will be one that no doubt will be very interestingly discussed when we get to the select committee. I think that penalty—I mean obviously it will be enforceable because it will be an Act of Parliament but it will again I think put people off really wanting to become part of local government.Now there's one other thing in this bill that I think is quite challenging for us as well and it's very different again to what happens in Parliament. The member has modelled the bill on the parliamentary pecuniary interests register to some extent and another challenge I can see facing the select committee will be in 42C(1)(c) which reads: "if the member of a local authority is employed the name of each employer of the member and a description of the main business activities of each of those employers [must be declared]". Now if you think about the piece of legislation that the Government is proposing to put into Parliament—and they've said they'll put it into Parliament some time later this year—around a piece of labour law I guess it would be it's highly likely that contractors will become employers. And do you think that a courier driver for example who has maybe 150 employees is going to want to stick his client list out there in the public forum on a council pecuniary register? Not likely. So I think it's going to put a whole lot of people off standing for council for that reason as well and I think it could apply to accountants lawyers or anyone like that because it's not defined in the bill. And I think there's some work to be done on clause 42C(1) as well.So I think it's in my view fine for MPs who are full-time to be subject to pecuniary interests registers and made public and I think Tangi Utikere himself talked about the Palmerston North City Council one which to the best of my knowledge is not made public—and probably a very good model actually—and I'm sure there are plenty of other councils who have varying forms of pecuniary interests declarations. The Mayor of Tararua felt that her council dealt completely adequately with it and I'm pretty sure her councillors would be paid less than $20000 each a year to be councillors. So I can't imagine them being that keen on declaring their body and souls to stand for the council if this piece of legislation goes through.So I think that there are some challenges in the bill. As I said we support it to the select committee and it will be very interesting to see where it gets to. So we have some reservations but we will support it and I'd just like to again congratulate or commiserate with the member on getting his bill through to the select committee and we'll see how it goes from there. Thank you Madam Speaker."