O'Rourke Denis: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10303. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First has listened intensely to what everyone has had to say in the previous stages of this bill. We have now fully considered our position on it and we are going to vote against it. We are going to vote against it for six very good reasons—six very good reasons.The first one is this: democracy must not be frustrated. If people want to elect a person as their board member who is the board member in another area then why should they not have the right to do that? If that is what they want to do let them do it. That is called democracy. It is called free choice and we do not see why people should not have that free choice to exercise.The second one is this: we think that the electors in the city of Auckland are intelligent and knowledgable people. We think that they know whether a person is going to stand for another board or not and we think that they can decide whether or not they wish to have that person as their board member. We should respect that knowledge and that intelligence and we should not pre-empt that. There is no reason—no good reason—to do so.The third point I would make is this: think about the number of commercial boardsthat there are where board members are on multiple boards of various companies. They seem to be able to handle that—even companies that are in competition with each other at some levels. They seem to be able to handle that all right. Think about the statutory boards that are set up—this Government along with many other Governments has appointed people to multiple boards as well. They seem to be able to handle all of that without any difficulty but there is suddenly a difficulty with local boards? What a load of rubbish that is. That is absolute drivel and everyone here should recognise it.Fourthly the principle that should be applied here is this: there is a democratic process that should always as a matter of principle be kept as free and unrestricted as possible. This bill infringes against that principle and it is a very important principle. If we are going to mess with people’s democratic rights there needs to be a damn good reason for doing so—and this bill is not a damn good reason. I have listened to the three reasons given by Mr Shearer and they were all nonsense. They all had very little impact on me—and I am sure they will have very little impact on the people of Auckland as well—so I reject them in their entirety.The fifth reason is this: there is no public clamour for what is in this bill. I have not heard anyone whether they be in Auckland or any other part of the country say “We want this.” So where did it come from? Was it Mr Ngaro’s own nightmares that they arise from or what is it? I do not know what the source of this is—it is certainly not from the public.The sixth reason is this: if this was such a great idea and so really necessary then why is it being applied to Auckland only? If it was so great then why is it not in legislation covering the whole country? Why have people not thought of it before if it was such a wonderful idea and it was so necessary? The reason is that it is not a wonderful idea and it is not necessary.So there are six good reasons. And now I want to specifically deal with the claim that there could be a conflict of interest. Well there are conflicts of interest that occur with people on commercial boards all of the time and there are procedures that are adopted to deal with those conflicts of interest. Exactly the same thing could and should be done with elected boards for the Auckland City. In any event I have not heard that anybody has yet said in this Chamber what the problem is as far as conflicts of interest are concerned. I mean how can there be a conflict of interest between one board and another? They deal with totally different areas. Where is the conflict of interest? I just do not understand that. That is a nonsense argument and should be totally disregarded.Mr Twyford asked what would happen if MPs could stand in more than one electorate. I have just had a look at the Electoral Act and—surprise surprise—I cannot actually find any prohibition against a person standing for two electorates at the same time. So perhaps Mr Twyford should read the legislation before he comments because he has just given us another reason why this bill should not be passed.So for all those reasons this bill is really not required. It is retrograde. It is anti-democratic. It achieves nothing because there is no problem to fix. If people think there is a conflict of interest then tell me how. And tell me even if there was why it could not be managed. This bill is utter nonsense. It is rubbish. It should be thrown in the wastepaper basket right now.