Mooney Joseph; Dean JacquiJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I rise to speak to the second reading of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. I didn't have the privilege of sitting on the Governance and Administration Committee which considered this and I will yield my speech at the end of this and we'll hear from Ian McKelvie who has been a great chairperson of that great committee and is also very experienced in local government as well as central government so I'll look forward to hearing from him. Just to return to my contribution I note that the purpose of the bill is to provide clarity and certainty for local authorities on the provisions of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. Submissions have arisen that this bill will address and I'll turn to those quickly. The LGOIMA—as it is colloquially known—allows for the withholding of information in certain circumstances which is essential when other concerns might make the disclosing of information desirable but there's a mismatch between the Official Information Act (OIA) and the local government official information Act. The changes to withholding information for reasons of national security which this bill will address are common sense and they already exist within the Official Information Act. However the lack of conclusive withholding of grounds is currently preventing both the intelligence agencies from practically providing security advice to local authorities and local authorities from seeking advice on security threats including foreign interference and cyber-attacks and getting that information from intelligence agencies. So having consistency between the OIA and the LGOIMA makes sense and aligning the two is a good thing. I note that the LGOIMA lacks these provisions primarily by virtue of having been entered into law a lot earlier than the Official Information Act and not having been updated as much which this bill will do. I see that there were 36 submissions received by the select committee from interested groups and individuals and the select committee heard oral evidence from 10 submitters. These provisions in terms of the report back to Parliament don't seem to have raised much attention or at least much that had to be addressed by the select committee in their consideration of the issues. I note that the other thing that this bill does is amend the Act to set out clearer requirements to provide natural hazard information in land information memoranda (LIM). It would introduce provisions to allow regulations to be made for the purpose of providing natural hazard information and this is particularly important for property buyers as we've seen with weather patterns around the North Island in particular this year. It has certainly demonstrated the risks some property owners face in the event of a natural disaster and therefore it's crucial that property buyers can be fully informed about the issues that might affect a property. So this bill will require regional councils to provide natural hazard information and support for territorial authorities and will also limit the legal liability of local authorities when providing natural hazard information in good faith. I note that the select committee did recommend some changes to this. It was concerned that this could require territorial authorities and regional councils to produce new data and information for properties' specific assessments and the select committee noted that that was not the policy intent of the bill and it has made some suggestions to make it clear that the territorial authorities and regional councils were not required to create new information for each individual LIM. Another concern that the select committee looked at was a potential requirement that a regional council could be required to provide natural hazard information to a territorial authority even if that information did not relate to land in that territorial authority's district. So the select committee recommended a proposal to change the designation to make it clear that that was not the policy intent of this bill. The other main thing they looked at was that a particular amendment to section 55 in clause 9 would not unfairly impact persons or organisations that would need to be consulted. The select committee was concerned that there would not be a specific requirement for consultation with councils and territorial authorities given that they are central to providing these LIMs and so the select committee also recommended some changes to make it clear that that was the intent of the bill. So with that I will end my contribution and say that the National Party is supporting this bill through to its conclusion. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Dr Tracey McLellan—five minutes.