McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this bill. It might be a short one because there's a very good bill coming up later in the night which we need to get to. I just wanted to first of all just comment a little bit on my initial view of this bill because I did have some nervousness about this bill initially. I thought it would have the potential I suppose to intimidate people—put people off standing. In fact we had one or two submitters who suggested the same thing. But I think we've got the bill in my view into a pretty good space now and I've got every confidence in supporting it.But I did want to make just one or two comments about the issue I just raised because I think that a couple of our speakers earlier raised other issues which I'd be a little concerned about. And Helen White talked about making mistakes in pecuniary interests—well frankly if you're going to make a mistake in a pecuniary interest you shouldn't be here. If you can't fill your own pecuniary interest then how can you fill someone else's? That's the first point I wanted to make.And the other point I wanted to make was that Simon Court in my view missed the point of members' bills. Members' bills are really there to make a little difference to sometimes a big thing to sometimes a little thing. And they're generally bills that Governments would never consider putting in place because they take too much work and Governments are too busy. And so I think the point of members' bills to a large extent is to do exactly what this member's bill's done which is to make a little difference to something that might make in some cases a large difference. And if you look at Auckland Wellington Dunedin Christchurch probably a large difference but if you look at Manawatū Kaikōura places like that nowhere near the difference. And generally in places like the Manawatū or Kaikōura for that matter we probably know enough about everyone else's business to know what they're doing anyway. And so that's the interesting thing about small communities. And so I guess that when you think that we're looking at the pecuniary interest of people who are probably in some cases standing for a job that might pay them five or 10 grand a year it's hardly got great significance. None the less the principle's the same.So I think the bill got to a good space there and I think we had one or two submitters who made quite a difference. And I just want to mention Sir Maarten Wevers because he came in and really straightened our thinking up on how the bill should work because he obviously has a lot of experience in this because he runs the parliamentary pecuniary interests. So from that perspective he made quite a bit of difference to the way we thought about it. And there were one or two other issues that I think were really important.And the member Tangi Utikere introduced a Supplementary Order Paper to the process which just clarified the relationship between the two bills that concern this and one is the LAMIA bill—or Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Act—which has been in place for a long time. So there has been some reference or control over this for quite some time now. And the relationship between those two bills needs to be clarified because if it wasn't there could have well been some confusion as to when you've got a pecuniary interest and when you haven't and I think that was necessary to be done. That was done during the course of the committee of the whole House stage.But the other couple of other issues that were really important and need to be borne in mind as we go forward is there was a suggestion in the original bill that for example an accountant could have to declare all that accountant's clients. And I think just as well that was tidied up in the bill and put in order. So I think the bill's in pretty good order from that perspective. I want to talk about just a couple of other things related to local government. The idea of bills like this is to improve the confidence in local government. And there's been a suggestion that actually one of the reasons that local government voter turnout is so low is because there's no confidence. I tend to take a different view on that. And I think that one of the reasons I think local government election turnout is so low is because frankly in most places there's next to no publicity given to local government elections at all and that's quite a challenge for us. So for some of the bigger councils no doubt some people will have big budgets. And I see some of the budgets that are being outlined for the Auckland mayoralty right now which is significant but in most places those budgets are very very small and the advertising is next to zero. And I think that's something we could well do something about in the future as a Parliament because we don't generate interest in local elections even in our own elections in fact. And of course we've got the Tauranga by-election right now. If we don't generate interest in those things—we're certainly going to—I think we're never going to encourage more interest in what we do as politicians and what our local government organisations do.So with those few words I just want to congratulate the member on what I think is an ideal member's bill. It was well discussed by the select committee it was put in very good order and I think—as I go back to the comments that Simon Court made earlier—it's pretty specific this bill. It deals with an issue that for some people is important and I think it's well worthwhile. So it's a very worthy member's bill and we've got no problem commending this bill to the House.