Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It's my pleasure to take a brief call on this. Can I acknowledge you Madam Chair and the Minister in the chair Nanaia Mahuta for her work on this bill and Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 323 because both of you have been involved previously and now. I do want to start off by saying that we support the bill obviously but we do have some concerns about the SOP which I'm going to outline briefly. I think it's widely accepted in New Zealand that most people are resistant to large-scale reorganisations—and the Minister clearly articulated that—and I think that's probably where most people in this House would be as well. Although I do question where in fact the Minister is trying to go with the SOP because on one hand she is rightly reducing the role of the Local Government Commission (LGC) but still leaving it there with one member minimum—and there can be more; I accept that—but also taking away what I would call the proactive role of the LGC and then offering an alternative model of engagement in sort of another part which we don't know. The issue I struggle with in that scenario is this: unless there is a proactive body that is an agent of the Government then there is no effective way of recommending supporting and looking at change objectively apart from through the lens of the Minister's eyes. As somebody who has been involved in some change processes—the one that didn't go too well in Hawke's Bay although I still believe it was right—I do want to acknowledge that there is a role for an independent organisation to prod around some of these things. Minister the problem I have with your SOP is that you are referring to only stage one and we know very little about what follows next. I understand you've been having conversations with the sector and I understand they would be nervous because Minister with respect the three waters reforms that you're looking at could have a very profound impact on the role of local government what it does and effectively the scale of its operations. So if we are to change how we deliver water or the three waters and if we are to do it more collaboratively—and I acknowledge as the previous speaker Jamie Strange has just said that there are some councils in New Zealand that are working quite collaboratively. But in my experience when you get down to the nuts and bolts and the real hard stuff that involves a lot of money or assets it gets really really difficult. I can't see yet Minister in what you've announced how you're going to achieve that and I worry that by taking away some of the proactive roles of the Local Government Commission there is no other driving force for any substantive change. Now the Minister may have some in her thinking that we're not aware of. I do not accept for a moment that council-controlled organisations are a bad thing either. In many cases they deliver a very good service and in many cases they are quite accountable. They are not councils though. They are effectively more corporate-type organisations running the business of a council and they have a different role. They are deliberately like that to bring a more business-type focus to running the business of council. In my view with what has been outlined here in this Supplementary Order Paper you might as well do away with the Local Government Commission in totality and you might as well set up a separate agency to deal with electoral boundaries and ward representation every three years because as I look through this I can't see a legitimate role for the Local Government Commission. One person maybe a few more—I'm saying why bother? We don't want to be disruptive in this piece of legislation because we support the main body but we are concerned that the Supplementary Order Paper drives away an agent of the Crown to effectively intervene and to suggest some change. Without that we cannot see—apart from direct ministerial intervention from time to time or instruction—how the Government can ask things to be considered differently. Thank you Madam Chair.