Hayes Jo; Borrows ChesterJOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take a short call on this bill. After listening to that contribution I cannot support that member Ron Mark like I did yesterday. Some of the things that he said around this particular bill I have seen. I might not have been a mayor but I have actually worked in local government in quite a big organisation as well and I could see that there needed to be some reorganisation back then about how it did things.When I start to look at some of the issues that some of the councils are facing now to do with some of their infrastructure and the amount of money that they do not have—money that they have not put aside to be able to address some of the infrastructural issues—then I start to look at this particular bill and I start to look at the role of council-controlled organisations (CCOs) and what they are able to provide to local government. Whether it be a large local government organisation or council or whether it be a small one we have to take into account that there is only so much money in the rates take and I can say that whenever there has been a disaster as that member read out time after time after time the councils did come to the Government and we supported them just like the Christchurch ones.One of the issues around the Christchurch earthquake was the horizontal infrastructure. That was a huge huge bill and as we started to unravel all the issues around the horizontal infrastructure we started to see that other councils were starting to look at how much it was going to cost for them. Therefore I see the value of CCOs in their being able to take the plans and share out the knowledge that they have to other councils to actually be able to contract in so we get a better deal for councils to address some of the bigger issues facing councils—issues that you cannot see above the ground. So I look at things. Whanganui District Council has issues around its sewerage and it has big bills to build that brand new sewerage plant. I used to work there in the health sector and I saw all of that happening so I can see the advantage of CCOs being able to actually come together with councils like Whanganui in partnership with other councils to be able to work through those issues with them.They say that the CCOs will actually force an amalgamation. Well the CCOs do have to actually have a poll around amalgamation—a poll to determine whether or not amalgamation will go through. That is what CCOs will have to go through so when they say Oh you know they're going to make us go through amalgamation." that is rubbish. That is rubbish. The bill is very clear that there has to be a poll of all the ratepayers if local government is looking at that area. If we start looking at the transparency of CCOs we see that they are subject to the Ombudsmen Act 1975 so they are responsible. So you know when you say they going to go off and do whatever they want to do they just cannot because they are subject to the Ombudsmen Act 1975.I could go on and on but what I am going to do is I am going to stop now. I said it was going to be a short contribution and I meant it. I think that this is a very good bill. It is a good mechanism for councils to come together and to share resources under a CCO mechanism and I commend it to the House. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Eugenie Sage—a 5-minute call."