O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. There's obviously been some scheduling problems here that've allowed us to actually speak on the same bill on the same side of the House to reinforce a very strong message.DEPUTY SPEAKER: People take a call or they don't.GREG O'CONNOR: One thing I've really enjoyed about coming here is meeting my fellow politicians on both sides of the House. There are some very able people here very bright people very successful. Most only come here because they've been successful at what they did before they came to the House. They've been successful at organising their electoral campaigns. So the people don't do that shall I say by counting paper clips. You do that by making sure you know what success looks like. If anyone ever goes into a business anyone ever goes into some sort of a strategy or even to stand for Parliament some think if you tick every box along the way then success will just happen. Well it just doesn't happen like that; you've actually got to have vision.You've actually got to understand what success looks like because otherwise you will end up in the situation where—and I have to say a lot of people I know have worked for big corporates in New Zealand that've been led out of Detroit led out of cities in the States who do impose on all their companies around the world a very strict reporting regime where you must do this you must count that and they demand this quarterly reporting back every quarter. Lo and behold those who don't do it. Those who are on the ground doing that job very quickly understand it's to the detriment often of the local business. It's to the detriment of the local operation. It's to the detriment of the local country. So the way around that is to make sure you have some sort of understanding of what it is you're trying to achieve. I used to coach young men playing rugby and at a coaching session before you actually went into the drills it was so important that you got those young men to understand why you had them running around doing the same thing time after time. It's so that they got that muscle memory so that they understood they actually had to win. The whole idea of the game was to win and everything we were doing was to make sure that they didn't have to think about all those little things they were doing because they understood the vision was to win.That brings me back to this bill—DEPUTY SPEAKER: That would be good. That would be very good.GREG O'CONNOR: —which I could see you were probably impatiently waiting for me to do. I had to do a little bit of contextualisation because what this bill does is ensures that local councils understand. Many of us as politicians we sit in our offices or we're out there at markets and we're approached by our local constituents and what they say is Why aren't you doing this? What aren't you doing that?"—a plethora of things. Often these things are local body issues. So what becomes more and more apparent is the absolute necessity to understand what it is we're trying to achieve and those four success factors—social economic environmental and cultural—just ensure we have a context ensure we have a marker ensure we have a template against which to succeed how we are actually succeeding. Again if we go down to counting the paperclips we might know exactly where the paperclips are we might know every machine we might have ticked off every box necessary but it doesn't actually mean we're doing the job that people want us to do.One of the previous speakers mentioned Federated Farmers being directly opposed to that. Well Federated Farmers. I'd invite them that—so often when we're talking farmers particularly when as I say those shiny backsides from the city come and talk to them the answer when we're talking about why they perhaps might need a subsidy when the weather goes about why farming is an intricate part of New Zealand and coming from a farming background I certainly understand that but it's bigger than that. Farmers will talk about being the custodians of the land. Farmers will talk about "Someone's got to be out there. We love the land. We're third generation."—these things. It's much bigger than just how much milk fat they produce how many lambs how many kilos of wool. It's actually much bigger than that.They're the very people that now are using this argument about why we shouldn't impose the same broad understanding of what success looks like on our local bodies—those very local bodies they're likely to be highly critical of because they will make them dig the latest cess ponds; they'll make them divert their waste in certain directions. Well the reason those things are done the reason we need to understand that—and some of those things the individual may not realise why we do those things why it is that those particular things are done because they may not be understandable because they're done against a bigger picture of what that success looks like.I go back to those four successes: social economic environmental and cultural. Aren't they a good mix those four things? Any one of those things taken in isolation will do some of the things that the Opposition are worried about. If we only look at the social side but without looking at the economic side of it yes of course it will put us in danger. Of course there will be a danger that we'll become less efficient but look at them in their entirety. That's what again I think the mistake that those on the opposite look like. They break it down into counting the paperclips. Success does not come from knowing how many paperclips there are so look at those things in their entirety.I mean someone talked about libraries before. OK libraries now as we will all know are struggling for relevance. The smart ones have moved. They have gone to electronic books; they've gone to all sorts of other things that attract people in there because economically they will never be—tell me any library anywhere in the world that has actually paid its way. Swimming pools: swimming pools do not actually pay their way. So if we only look at it from an economic point of view none of those things would ever be built. They certainly wouldn't be built today.In my own Ōhāriu electorate we're having a very nice new library built. It's going to be highly relevant. There's other things that are going to be going in there that are going to attract people there to make sure it becomes relevant. It won't be just the good old library but it still will not pay its way. I'm hoping we'll have a very nice cafe in there being very near to my own electorate office and those other things that will make it relevant.So again in those things—just look at libraries just look at those things that council do. Council grounds sit around. How often are our council grounds sitting there empty? Luckily we've now got those council grounds that have got artificial turfs and the smart clubs have actually started to adapt. So they do use those things 24 hours—with actually some chance of paying. They still will never pay their way it still requires—because they're part of our whole environment; they're part of our culture. Culture that whole thing that the country—whatever you think of rugby we'll stop while we're watching hopefully the All Blacks in the World Cup final in Japan. That is the thing—they're bigger than any breakdown because again if you were sitting designing something breaking it down into only its economic components only those little bits that we tick the boxes that we can tick—would we actually be supporting sport on a Saturday? No we wouldn't. Someone's actually got to have a look at making sure that all those things balance up. This is again why I would invite the Opposition—who naturally enough will oppose this; it's their job—but actually sit back and have a look at this. Imagine if we didn't have these there. Imagine if we took them away and we didn't have—the reason why it's survived now: it's been residual. These things were in place removed—so often it takes five to 10 years before the residual before the effects of these things—we change a law we change a thing; it doesn't happen overnight but it's a slow residual. I have my own theory about why our road accident rate is so high at the moment back to decisions that were made five or six years ago. So it takes a long time for these things to come through. So it is that so often we're getting now it would seem the breakdown in some of our councils some of our local services. There are problems there because without an understanding without our councillors—very good people who get out there work hard. We see them out in the weekends doing a great job. Without them sitting around the table and having a measure—we're going to pass this but what is it how will this help us to be successful socially? Will it help us to be more successful socially? Will it help our economy?I think the Opposition should be actually very satisfied be very happy that the economic well-being is in there because against all these strategies against all these decisions we'll make there will be an economic box to be ticked as well. Does it make sense economically? But not just economically—socially environmentally and culturally? Again the environment and—I'm pleased to see; hopefully we will see—I'm looking forward to the consensus we will get on the environmental changes we're obviously going to have to make but if we break it down no one will ever make those changes. I remember again being outraged growing up on a farm when all of a sudden we were forced to build a cesspit outside the cow sheds when we'd been putting it straight into the creek. Absolutely—this was a terrible thing these "commies" from the local council making us dig a cesspit. Luckily for us there were people that had a bigger vision a bigger understanding that us piling—continuing to do what we'd done farm the way we had done for many years wasn't going to work. So it is that we ask of our councils this very thing so the councils right around the country now will be having council meetings this week once this bill goes through understanding that actually is this going to improve things socially? Is this going to improve things economically? Is this thing going to improve things environmentally and importantly is this going to assist things culturally? So Madam Deputy Speaker as the last speaker on the bill I have no hesitation commending this bill to the House."