Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Chair. I want to focus on clause 816 relating to obligations relating to gathering and sharing of information. One of the I guess big complaints that happens around the existing Resource Management Act is that often there will be people who are engaged in the resource management process at various levels and in various ways and they are repeatedly asked for the same information again and again and again by various players within the system process. Clause 816 provides a number of duties to gather information and to keep records. It says that (1) Every local authority must (a) gather … information and undertake or commission research as necessary to enable the local authority to carry out its functions effectively under this Act;". So what I'm hoping the Minister is going to be able to confirm for us is that under clause 817 for instance which requires regional councils to share records of protected customary rights for instance with regional planning committees the sharing of information will extend beyond just information relating to customary rights and that the sharing of information might extend across all parts of the workings or the mechanics of this new proposed natural and built environment legislation. As I've indicated previously the ability to take advantage of digital communications digital data storage and so forth I would have thought makes it much easier now to share data. I was delighted to hear that the Minister after what sounds like long and complicated discussions has decided to remove facsimiles from the methodology for serving documents. But a serious question: can the Minister give us some assurance that the information that is gathered in the requirements to keep records—that that information can be shared where appropriate while obviously taking into account the necessity to ensure that privacy matters and appropriate protections are put in place? So that's one part and if I might I want to move now to a particular matter in relation to clause 818 which is where local authorities are required to have participation policies for Māori. There are some quite extensive requirements for local authorities to have a participation policy that is developed in collaboration with iwi authorities and groups that represent hapū and Māori groups with an interest in their region or district. There's nothing wrong with that—it's quite good. But my question specifically relates to who decides which of the appropriate iwi groups hapū within a district or region to engage with and are they the mandated iwi? Again I'm familiar for instance with my part of the world in the Coromandel where we have multiple iwi interests. When it comes to Treaty settlement arrangements there are some iwi that are mandated for Treaty settlement negotiations and then there are some sub-iwi or iwi in their own right who have not been mandated but they feel very much closed out of the process and they're not included. So the question is: how do we decide under clause 818 which is the Māori participation policy clause and the duty in clause 819 to keep records relating to iwi hapū and Māori groups that represent hapū and Māori groups with interests in the region or district that may not necessarily be mandated under Treaty negotiation legislation? How is this legislation going to ensure that those groups are covered and whether they have legitimacy or not? Is this an area where a local authority is going to have to make some quite difficult judgment calls about who is in and who is out? So if the Minister could give us some overview of that I'd appreciate it."