Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party in the third reading of the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. As has been stated this is an omnibus bill that will make minor and technical changes to the legislative framework that councils operate under. It's possibly not the most interesting bill for people listening—I'm looking at the faces of the people in the gallery—but we have had people make the connection to gaming so it's amazing what can be brought into a debate on something that's minor and technical. I will do my best—I can't promise it will be interesting—to go through some of the points that are covered by this legislation. It was started by the last Government I understand and it has been considered by the Government and Administration Committee. It amends seven principal local government Acts which are all administered by the Department of Internal Affairs. The select committee made some amendments to the bill that have been confirmed by this House and some of the points in it are that it makes changes to the Dog Control Act. I understand from a previous speaker that it extends to organisations that weren't listed and covered by that. But also what I found a little more interesting was that it requires local authorities to make reports publicly available on the number of registered dogs and dog-related complaints received and prosecutions taken. Those reports have been required to be compiled before but they've pretty much been kept in-house and so this bill requires councils to make those reports public. Personally as somebody who has a concern for animal welfare and who believes that the conversation around how we care for our animals is a really important conversation I welcome that information being put into the public sphere so that the communities can actually find out if there's a real problem in a particular community and start engaging in how they can be part of the solution. You know as part of the Green Party we have a lot of passionate members right throughout the country who care a huge amount about animal welfare who would really welcome that information to be able to help care for our animals in the community. So that's welcome. Another thing which has had a little bit of discussion or possibly quite a bit of conversation actually considering the significance in the bill—but it is actually significant—is that it requires the chief executive of the local authority to be responsible for facilitating and fostering representative and substantial electoral participation. When we know that we have a real issue with declining participation at a local government level which undermines the legitimacy of local government when it's a minority in some areas of people who are voting of those who are eligible it raises questions about the legitimacy of the representation at a community level. So it is really really important that we do more to actually make sure that people understand the importance of the decisions that local government makes and that they understand how our democracy operates at that level. I was having a conversation with some people recently and letting them know that they can contact their local councillors. If they've contacted their council to complain about something and they haven't had a response that they're happy with actually part of the role of their local councillor is that they can contact their local councillor and say Hey look. I was in contact with this person about the rubbish all over my neighbourhood. I haven't heard anything back." and they can intervene on their behalf. So it's about kind of making decisions to represent the community but it's also to have your advocate to make sure that the things that need to happen in your community can get done. These people had no idea that that was part of the job of their local councillor. So I think we've got so much more work to do to help people understand the role of local government and how it all works and even when it comes to elections—and I'll own up to this. In years past when I've looked at voting at a local government level I've really struggled at times to know where to go to find out information about the candidates and to know if actually I think they would be a good representative for me or not and I've kind of gone through those booklets that they have and they put out where there's a little photo of somebody and they've written maybe 100 to 150 words. That's been my experience of their accessible information and it's not enough to go on. I've looked for key words. If somebody's said "green" I'm like "Yeah OK." but who knows? There's lots of different definitions of "green" as we've heard from the other side of the House—"green" and "washing" do tend to go together at times. So I really think this provision is really important. There is so much more that we can do to help make it easier for people to find out who the people standing are and to understand what they're offering for their council and to help get that out into a range of different communities. Hon Ron Mark: How can 48 percent of the population determine the direction? That's the turnout. JAN LOGIE: Yeah exactly. For there to be real legitimacy we want a majority. We want it actually to be as many people as possible as close to 100 percent of people who are engaging in this and have the ability to be represented and have their voice heard in the local government process.What I would also mention with this is that it's particularly important for communities who—often in our democratic processes there are some people who know how to use the systems a little bit more. There are quite a few reports that talk about the squeaky wheel and they tend to be a certain group of ratepayers who are quite comfortable with speaking up and writing letters; and the writing letters bit may indicate the age group that we're talking about. We need to go broader than that. Their voices are important but it should be a voice amongst others. So the Green Party very definitely supports this provision in this bill to actually make sure that more work is done to facilitate and foster representative and substantial electoral participation.Another change I will touch on in this bill which is I think worth noting is that it makes a change to the Rates Rebate Act. I'll also add my voice of acknowledging the work of Ruth Dyson previously on making changes to that legislation that were very important in updating it and making sure that it worked fairly for all people who should be eligible for it. So what this bill does though is it ensures that recipients on main benefits—New Zealand superannuation or the veterans pension—who are entitled to receive a winter energy payment under the Families Package—that this isn't counted as income when it comes to considering their rates rebates so that their rates rebate isn't cut because they get that payment. So this is in effect another way of ensuring that the value of that winter energy payment is maintained and not reduced through its interaction with the Rates Rebate Scheme. We know that the issues of poverty for people on welfare are very very real challenges for us as a country to do more in reducing and taking responsibility for ultimately eliminating the poverty felt by those people who are trapped in unfair situations at the moment. So this is not enough obviously and neither was the winter energy payment. We have a lot more work to do but it is important to maintain the value of that. On that note we support this bill."