Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I think before we even start there's a big question that needs to be asked about why this bill has come to the House in this form. We were told earlier this year that bills that come as private bills cannot change primary legislation and therefore I can tell you Madam Assistant Speaker there was a bill introduced by one of our members that was knocked out by the Clerk's Office for that very reason. So I am very interested as to why this bill particularly has been allowed to progress like this. Why has this bill come as a private bill when the Government should have moved the bill themselves? Why would you have seven Māori seats in your caucus and still rely on a private bill process to get something through?Hon Members: It's a local bill. Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Local bill but none the less this local bill changes primary legislation. This is completely in my opinion an abuse of parliamentary process and those who have promoted it should have found that out. I've told that particular position to Mr Tirikatene and to any others who bothered to ask for an opinion from me on this bill.I don't have any objection to the way in which an Electoral Act—a primary Electoral Act—determines who should sit where on any particular local body or for that matter in this House. But I do have an objection to this House being used through this process to create an arrangement where in fact many of the people who are living in the Ngāi Tahu rohe are disenfranchised because one of the reasons for asking for this was because apparently no vote could be accurately conducted by Ngāi Tahu to find out who their representatives were to be. That's a minor issue. The big issue is whether or not we should be changing electoral law in New Zealand through a bill like this and my strong view is that we should not.I think—I would like to make it very clear—that when we were in a position of having to disband Environment Canterbury (ECan) as it then was and make appointments to commissioner positions it was totally appropriate that the widest number of people in the community in Canterbury were represented in the appointments that were made. But the idea of an appointment process trumping an elected process is the wrong one. Now I'm sorry to say this but Ngāi Tahu is a very big well-organised grouping—a very important grouping one that is essential to the long-term success of the South Island and I appreciate that very very much—but a grouping like that should be able to command enough electoral support to be able to achieve what's being sought today without reference to preferential legislation. And I think the arguments that were just put in front of us by Marama Davidson tend to deny that Ngāi Tahu themselves are very very big players in the resource area and very reliant in many cases on resource consents. To have the idea as was advanced by Marama Davidson that this could in fact save us a lot of money because there'd be no objections from that group to a whole lot of resource consent applications is actually a huge disrespect to the organisation in the first place.So I don't need to take a lot of time. I just simply say that I think the way in which ECan itself has approached this bill has been totally inappropriate. The advice they've been given by various people that has allowed it to get to this House has been selective and quite unreasonable. And the fact is that if there is going to be a change in legislation that is of a primary nature then it should not be done through a local bill process. That has been the ruling from the Clerk's Office on at least one other occasion this year so I'd like to see a degree of consistency in that regard. And for that reason more than any other I can't support this bill and nor will the National Party.