Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): It is an absolute delight to be able to speak on this bill the Local Government (Customer Focus) Amendment Bill. Actually I want to acknowledge the Hon Jacqui Dean for her work in bringing this to the table and to this House tonight. For example I know that each of us in this role liaise closely with our local body councils and there's a lot of crossover between the work that we do. For example where I live I have five local authorities that come into my electorate and the presumption is of course that the focus is always going to be on the customer and the people before us.The challenge I think that I have with this bill slightly though is that there's a presumption that there isn't a focus on the people that they serve the councils that they serve and I struggle with that a little bit because for example I'm thinking of my mayor in Ōpōtiki District Council Lyn Riesterer. They have very minimal resources. Her staff and the CEO Aileen Lawrie—I mean they are just incredibly dedicated servants of the Ōpōtiki district community. The rate take there is very very minimal. I am not sure that legislating to require them to be customer focused would do absolutely anything for these diligent servants.I'm also a little surprised. I was reading the member's remarks when the bill was pulled and I read the press statement that she sent and I agreed: you know one of the biggest hassles for people with councils is just the unnecessary rigmarole or kind of the red tape that I think she was getting to. I couldn't help but turn my mind to the fact that last week we were sitting in urgency and the Hon Nanaia Mahuta the Minister of Local Government had brought to this House a very pragmatic bill that was specifically focused on—it was a rates rebates bill but it was about cutting red tape making life a little bit simpler. It was about not having to go through the requirements of getting statutory declarations. I sat through quite a few hours in this House listening to that side of the House absolutely rubbish that Minister absolutely rubbish this Government for trying to cut red tape for trying to enable our local citizens in our electorates to be able to access the things that we all need to from our local governments.The practical reality is I don't know what it's like in big areas but what I can speak to are the issues in an area like mine—very under-resourced people that work very very hard and do everything within their power. What we can do as legislators is that we can enable them. We can lighten the burden slightly. It's like that—you know is it a stick or a carrot that drives good behaviour? Sometimes perhaps it's a little bit of both but here I see a bit of a stick being imposed on local governments—You must must must do this focus on customers and we'll tell you how to do it."—whereas the Minister for local authority in this House came with practical solutions about how to remove red tape and the hassles and the barriers that most of us all face in our communities and took away some of those burdens.It's always interesting on a member's night because we always have to sort of see—well actually the underpinning philosophy of that side is probably that you should've—and you should have voted with us because you probably agree that it was a good and pragmatic bill that went through to enable folks that couldn't in that instance access those statutory declarations and so we're trying to cut the red tape to make things a little bit easier.But like others have said in this House this is a small and technical bill. It amends the Local Government Act 2002. It's going to require like I've said what we talked about the sort of customer focus. As my learned colleague and friend Willow-Jean mentioned before—Willow-Jean Prime—it's nevertheless a little bit empty. There's nothing defined about who the customer is and what this focus might be; it's words and it's more red tape to bind small little councils. I'm sure that my friend Lawrence Yule from across the way will have something very concise to say."