SpeechDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a real pleasure to stand and speak to this bill and just to congratulate my colleague Tangi Utikere for bringing this bill to the House. It's fitting that somebody with such significant local body experience should be the one that brings this bill forward.Basically I didn't sit on the Governance and Administration Committee that heard the submissions on the bill but for me I think it's really great to see that we're going to be getting some more consistency in terms of the way that those elected to local bodies declare their pecuniary interests and also meaning that members of the public will be able to see much more quickly what the declared interests are of elected members that are making decisions on their and their communities' behalf.When I was preparing to talk tonight what I did was a quick search of the websites of the local councils down in the southern area where I live. It was quite interesting just looking—first I put in Invercargill City Council" and I put in "pecuniary interest register" and immediately their interest register popped up. It not only has the interests of the elected council members it also has the Bluff Community Board members and it has the interests of the council's mana whenua representatives and also executive staff. So very very comprehensive. Actually looking through some of those interests there all the things that you would expect were actually there and being declared—so company directorships trusts employment and organisational memberships.But also looking on the website going into the meeting agendas you also found that the conflict of interest was up there right at the front. So for example the Bluff Community Board agenda item number two "Declaration of Interest … Members are reminded of the need to stand aside from decision-making when a conflict arises between their role as an elected representative and any private or other external interest they might have." It was interesting then going on what they said in the second point of that was: "Elected members are reminded to update their register of interests as soon as practicable including amending the register at this meeting if necessary." So very very clear up there at the beginning of the agenda.Looking across to our regional council Environment Southland. Again very quickly just a couple of clicks and I came to a downloadable document which summarised all the declared interests of the elected council members—not anything broader but at least the council members' interests were there and very easy to find.Going across to the Southland District Council I couldn't find anything. That doesn't mean that a register doesn't exist; it just means I couldn't find it searching on their website. However if you go back into some of the agendas very similar to the Bluff Community Board with reminders very up front—item number three—about making sure that members are vigilant about standing aside from decision making when a conflict arises. Also noting in the minutes of the previous meeting again item number three "Conflict of Interest" that no conflicts are declared.So I think as introduced what this bill will do will make it much more consistent across councils and other local authorities about what the interests are of their elected members. I think by requiring that register to be publicly available and updated regularly it will make it much much easier for members of the public to go in and see about the interests of those making decisions on their behalf.But I think also as my colleague Tangi Utikere said there were a number of submissions that were received that the select committee heard—and I think from the report there were 19 submissions; eight from individuals seven from organisations and four from local authorities. They had a range of things to say about how the bill might be improved. I think the select committee took a number of those on board. I think that one of the themes arising from a number of submitters was to make sure that all elected decision makers were included.So just going into the Local Government New Zealand submission what they noted was that the bill only dealt with members of governing boards—so what they're referring to there are mayors and council members—but it didn't actually mention local or community members or appointed members to council committees even though those members also could make significant decisions about the allocation of resource. So I think in Local Government New Zealand's view it was important to enhance a transparency across all of the different types of member that may be making those decisions.We've also heard a lot about the size of the Auckland Council and the fact that some of the local boards within the Auckland Council may be as large as some different councils further afield. So similarly in the Auckland Council they were advocating very similarly about broader inclusion. They were talking about how their council was organised and a governing body followed underneath which sat 21 local boards. So the governing body has the mayor and 20 councillors but then the local boards have between five and 12 members.Then in their submission they went on to talk about the accountabilities and decision-making processes of each of those different groups. What they were saying though is decision making across both governing body and local boards is highly scrutinised by the public. If elected members participate in decisions where they have a conflict of interest or a closed mind they say the public confidence in those decisions will be diminished. Then they talk about the implications in terms of the decisions themselves that may be exposed to challenge which could be quite significant in terms of the work streams in terms of that decision making. For them they saw that a maintenance of a register of interest is a key tool to ensure transparency integrity of decisions and to ensure the public can have trust and confidence in decision making.I think the committee members in recommending changes to the bill took that on board. What they basically said was that they recommended that people that were members of local boards or community boards should also come in under this legislation. I think that's quite an important change.There were a couple of other changes that the committee was recommending. Another one was around making it much more clear about the requirements for elected members to disclose payments related to their employment. I think here it's been raised already in the House tonight that for us as MPs because it's pretty much a full-time job very few people then take on other employment opportunities. However for those involved in local bodies basically a lot of their connection with the community—they may be a business employer they may be working for local community organisations and part of that is their connection with the community. So many elected members of local councils also want to maintain employment as part of their role and so it's then thinking about how you declare that.In the bill as introduced there was some lack of clarity which meant that there may be a potential expectation for members to have to declare their salaries or wages from employment and there was a sense there that that may discourage people that were well connected within the community from standing not wanting to be doing that. Because already in the bill local authority members were required to disclose the names of each employer they were working for and a description of the main business activities. What the committee felt was that was sufficient to be able to give people a sense of if there was any potential conflicts of interest there without having to go down into the detail of every single payment which potentially could have be required. So what they recommended was adding clarification that payments of interests already disclosed under section 54E which includes employment—but also directorships and trusts—don't have to be included in the register any further. So I think that was an important change as well.One of the final ones was just about correcting mistakes and the accuracy of the register. I think everyone wants to make sure that their information is accurately portrayed in the register but often you may have the situation particularly if you've got a lot of information that you've got to upload where you make a genuine mistake. What happens if that genuine mistake you then identify it once that's actually been publicly disclosed and published? The issue was I think that the bill was silent on whether members could correct mistakes. I think as part of that integrity that if we've got errors in that register then members of the public may not think that that is an accurate reflection of the interests and so again from a transparency perspective that's a problem.So what the committee felt was that it was important to specify that members could actually include information and get that corrected with the register. I think that's an important change that needs to come through. This is an important bill and we've made some very significant changes and I commend this bill to the House.Motion agreed to.Bill read a second time."