Simpson Scott: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10796. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I too want to join with others—well Phil Twyford—in congratulating the member Alfred Ngaro who has been shepherding this bill through the House to what is now the concluding debate in its third reading. As the chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee which considered this bill it was a great privilege to get to know the bill well to understand its genesis and to get a feel for what it is all about. Those of us who do not live in Auckland are not really familiar with the creatures that are known as local boards. Local boards were created at the time that the Auckland City was established by statute and they are a kind of hybrid that is something more than a community board but something less than a membership on the governing body of the council. They have evolved and established themselves as an important and integral part of the Auckland City governance model.This bill as the member Alfred Ngaro indicated was originally put into the ballot by our mutual friend and colleague the Hon Maggie Barry who upon her elevation to the executive passed the bill over to Alfred Ngaro who has done I think a very good job in working it through the select committee process. He sat on the select committee hearings he heard from submitters and he has been very involved in the process since he took over responsibility for it. I think he has done a very good job and should be congratulated on it. As Mr Twyford said it is not every member of this House who has the good fortune to firstly have a bill drawn from the ballot but then to have it successfully work its way through the legislative process that is the parliamentary legislative system to the point of being read a third time with a high prospect of success. That is no small feat and I know that the senior Government whip is looking forward with an aspirational ambition to achieving that same kind of goal in the not too distant future before he too I am sure finds himself in a high place in this Parliament.Tim Macindoe: Thank you. I love you too.SCOTT SIMPSON: Well that is very good Mr Macindoe. I am greatly concerned now. However that said this bill really is largely of a technical nature but it is an important one because it goes to what is a fundamental foundation stone in terms of creating and maintaining the credibility of democracy in our local government system.I think that members and the general public would agree I am sure with Mr Ngaro in his proposition that as a rule it is not possible for one person to effectively and responsibly—and without the potential prospect of conflict arising—represent more than one constituency at a time. I want to just raise the prospect for instance of the possibility of a citizen standing for election in two parliamentary constituencies and then perhaps having the good luck or good fortune to be elected to two parliamentary constituencies and trying to represent themselves in the Parliament—or indeed in a fair and equitable unbiased way representing both of those constituencies. That is exactly the situation that has occurred. And if I am correct in hearing Mr Twyford I think he said—or maybe it was Alfred Ngaro—that there are currently five people who are on more than two local boards in Auckland. I think that is problematic for the voters of Auckland the people who make those voting decisions to put people into elected representative positions. They expect them to be able to without fear or favour represent the geographical region in which they have been elected. I just cannot see how it is that someone can really effectively represent two geographical areas simultaneously at the one time and do justice to both those roles or in some cases potentially more than two areas.Mr Ngaro made mention of a technical change that was made by way of Supplementary Order Paper 418 as the bill progressed through the House.Simon O’Connor: Supplementary Order Paper?SCOTT SIMPSON: Supplementary Order Paper 418. That introduces into this bill new clause 6 and new clause 6 means that current and/or existing members of local boards will not be affected by the provisions of this bill and the provisions of this bill will if passed tonight kick in and become effective at the elections to be held later this year.So what is it that this bill seeks to do? The bill seeks to remedy a loophole in the current legislation that does allow people to stand for multiple local boards and then if they are successful to go on and represent more than one board and that I think is not a position this House or indeed the voting public in Auckland are particularly supportive of. That is really in no way a commentary on the ability or the integrity of the people who have found themselves elected to more than one board because I think it goes without saying that they are people of good intent and high integrity and they are people who in their minds feel they are doing justice to the multiple roles they are representing.For me the risk really about this is the risk of perception. Those of us who are actively involved in politics and in representing the public in our elected roles know all too well that in politics perception is reality. Even though a board member who represents more than one board may feel in their heart and in their mind and can justify to themselves on a rational basis that they are doing a good and effective job it is the perception of conflict it is the perception of not being able to do justice to both boards and it is the perception of in some way having to discount one against another that creates the problem. So that is why I think this bill should go through.Alfred Ngaro in his third reading speech given just a few minutes ago made the point that we are fortunate to live in a participatory democracy. It is one of the great hallmarks of being a New Zealand citizen and a voter in our parliamentary system and our local government system that we actually have a very high level of participation. That is a participatory democracy that involves citizens—fine upstanding citizens—nominating and putting themselves forward for election and the very basis of our participatory democracy relies on good folk nominating and putting themselves forward. Equally so it is that the participatory democracy that we so enjoy relies on people going out and voting. In local government elections they do it by mail—by postal ballot—and that means that if they are to have credible faith in the local government system then they need to be confident that the people they are electing will be fine upstanding citizens who can do justice to the job they are elected to. It is this participation and the prospect of conflicts of interest that goes to the very core and integrity of our local government democratic process and system.I want to just mention the submissions because there were some 17 written submissions in total. The majority of those submissions—10 of them in fact—were in complete support of the bill. We received those submissions from people who had given the bill very careful consideration and I was grateful as committee chair to receive them and to give them consideration because I thought the submissions had all been well thought through they were well presented and they presented cogent and logical arguments in favour of the bill.There were however three submissions that were opposed to the bill and ironically—and I guess maybe not surprisingly—those three submissions that were opposed to the bill all came from people who currently sit on two or more boards. That in itself in a way goes to backing up my assertion that in fact it is the perception of a conflict it is the perception of self-interest that is actually the issue here. Whether or not they are in fact physically and intellectually capable of doing the two jobs simultaneously is almost irrelevant—it is the perception that is important.I found as we went through this bill that the more the select committee considered it the more we got to a point where we found that the arguments put forward by Mr Ngaro in this bill were very cogent they were rational and they were worthy of the support of this House. I commend this bill to the House.