Kerekere Elizabeth; Mahuta NanaiaDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. Kia ora koutou. Thank you the Hon Mahuta I appreciate that you reminded us that the complete redoing of the ture whenua Act was off the table tonight. We'll focus on what we're looking at today. The Greens have already made clear our support for this bill particularly because it makes it easier for Māori to engage with our whenua and to lift the burden that we have because of considerable—years and years of—rates arrears particularly for unusable and inaccessible land.One of the things that I really focused on is that we know that for some councils it's hard for iwi rūnanga and our trust boards to engage with our councillors. Part of the work of trying to get Māori wards in is to actually make some councils say Hey you have to have some representation in here." One of the things I'm wondering about and ask your response for is how we make sure that then councils are adhering. If it's hard for our trust boards and rūnanga which generally have some pretty solid infrastructure and have paid staff often for some of our landowners in groups—they may or may not be a legal entity or they might just be a group of people that get together once a year to say "Hey what are we going to do with this or how do we move forward." and quite often do not move anywhere. How do we have confidence that councils will adhere to best practice but also make sure that those whānau are going to be—we don't expect them to be looked after; we expect people to develop some capacity and be organised around what they want to do. But how do they make sure if council goes "Mmm this is not a priority right now." or "We're just not wanting to deal with this."? Kia ora.Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Thank you for the question and the consideration around the real-life challenges of whānau engagement with councils and the process. Clearly the intention or the practice would be that as councils undertake the process of applying the rates remission approach they report on it annually within their annual reports.However I think if I get to the nub of the point that you're making in how challenging it is for whānau or even hapū to engage with councils the onus will still be on the whānau or the hapū to engage with councils and have the conversation. That's what we're trying to encourage here: a different conversation with councils. For far too long many whānau have not felt that they could walk through the council doors and have the conversation they really wanted to have. In many cases it's our kaumātua whose name is on the succession to a particular bit of whenua and whatever they can pay they will pay. They'll corral the whānau to try and pay a little bit off because it's better paying a little bit off and remaining connected to your whenua that way than I guess having this burden of debt. What we want whānau like that to be able to feel like is that they can walk through the council door and they can say "Look we're in this stage. We haven't got all the succession sorted. We're still going through the process of succeeding to our whenua. It's going to take us maybe three or four years to really get to a point and a position to really develop our land. We're going to generate some finance" or whatever. But that's the conversation we need because we need the council then to understand what is realistic and an opportunity there if the council can continue to support whānau down a road of using their land rather than sitting aside from it.It may well be also that whānau have conservation or biodiversity aspirations for their whenua. That's another conversation in itself. But the point is councils can report on the remission decisions that they are making in their own rohe so that there is greater visibility for everybody around what's happening."