Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. I would like to make a couple of comments. One is to endorse what we're hearing from Jami-Lee Ross. Now I know in the normal course of events we're supposed to have local democracy and people are supposed to elect councillors to decide things such as their rates. And yet it's always important to remember that the ability of councillors to set rates is set by Parliament and all of the rules within which they set them are set by Parliament. One reason why Parliament might intervene on rate setting right now through an amendment such as that of Jami-Lee Ross is that I believe there is an imbalance of power between the bureaucrats or the civil servants or the management of councils and the elected councillors. I'll just give you one example from Auckland Council. I was speaking to a local councillor on the weekend and the bureaucracy told the councillors a zero rate increase is impossible cannot be done—We won't even do the modelling for you." Now thankfully a few of the councillors pushed back and I understand they are going to get some modelling of what that would mean. But far too often the option of saving money is left to the council bureaucracy who are the main source of cost. And haven't we seen that with Auckland Council recently with the number of indescribable unfathomable job titles that nevertheless attract six figure salaries with numbers like three and four in front of them? There is no question that councils are impacting on ratepayers and particularly on business ratepayers at the moment in the most destructive way that will cost jobs by slowing down the recovery of the economy. And yet the Government has failed to put in place any measures to allow councils to either breach their debt ceilings or give relief to ratepayers particularly company ratepayers. So I wholeheartedly endorse Jami-Lee Ross's amendment and I hope that it will have wide support because the impact of rates and the intransigence of council bureaucracies in reducing them are a major problem for business jobs and employment at the moment.I just want to quickly rehearse one of the arguments about these so-called safe harbours these exemptions for the directors' liabilities. I think it's really important at this time when we are saying "Haven't the officials done such a wonderful job and the Minister done such a wonderful job?" The officials told the Epidemic Response Committee that it was necessary to change the law to a more liberal version because the law was already liberal but directors didn't understand that. And if that's difficult to follow I don't blame anyone who doesn't follow that. It was difficult for us too. The problem with that is that if it's true that directors are just too dumb to follow the law—according to officials advising the committee—then surely the right thing to do is educate them on what the law is not change the law to what the law is supposed to be so somehow they'll understand that the law is what it is which is effectively the argument that we got from the officials on the committee. We then had professional directors come and speak to the committee and I asked them if it was really as crazy as it sounded and they said "Yes there is some uncertainty around the director's obligations in relation to trading while insolvent." Some of those have arisen out of the Mainzeal case—some of those caused the Mainzeal case some might argue. The upshot is that if that's true the last thing they want is for the Government in the middle of a crisis to change the law so that if they did have a problem understanding the previous law now they're going to have to understand a new one. So the Government is just layering uncertainty on a problem which is uncertainty. How crazy is that? Well that's the law that the Government is trying to pass through this Parliament. That's one of the reasons I've opposed this bill throughout and ACT will continue to do so. With that I end my remarks."