Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Mr Assistant Speaker thank you for the opportunity to take a call tonight—the final speaker on the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. So we've heard a lot of speeches tonight of varying lengths. I will endeavour to give a long fulsome contribution tonight and in a way sort of sum up a lot of what we've heard tonight. Before I get into the aspects of the bill I'd like to acknowledge the Hon Nanaia Mahuta the Minister of Local Government who does a wonderful job in this space. As I speak to councils all around the country they are very impressed with the work that she's doing. They're particularly impressed with the engagement. They recognise that we have a Government who are working hard to engage with local government and with councils and there's certainly lots of appreciation there. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee I like to acknowledge our chair Brett Hudson for the excellent work that he's done and all of the members. I'd also like to acknowledge all of those who made a submission to this bill. There are a number of councils in particular who made submissions as it affects them but also lots of general members of the public. There's an important aspect that local government plays in all of our lives. There's a saying: All politics is local."—and that's absolutely correct. There's a strong link between central and local government. You know for a lot of people out there it's often difficult to know what central government does and what local government does. From time to time I'll get an email asking about street lights or maybe a pothole and so I'll obviously inform that person that that's a local government issue. There's certainly a strong link and I believe that the Government are working well to strengthen those links.So some of the key things that this bill talks about—tonight I'd like to start with the one that is absolutely vital for our country and that's around participation in elections. The participation in most local body elections as we've heard is around 40 percent. I've stood for Parliament myself my wife has stood for council and—Tim van de Molen: Is she standing again?JAMIE STRANGE: —we would have both benefited—possibly possibly. We'll see—wouldn't want to make any announcements tonight there sir. But both the times we stood the turnout was around 40 percent. If we're going to have diversity—if we're going to have youngish people like myself—on councils then it's important that we have a high level of turnout. Now why do I say that? Because a higher level of turnout creates more diversity on our councils. We've heard it before from Ginny Andersen. There are three key areas that we lack around representation on councils: that's youth Māori and Pacific. There are a number of other areas as well but those are three that have been highlighted quite a bit. If we're going to increase diversity if our elected members are going to be representative of the general public we need higher voter turnout. So this bill addresses that. The way it addresses it is by putting the onus on the CEO of the council to increase participation. If the onus for that is put on the elected members then we could potentially have the situation—and I think we probably do—where some elected members and often the majority of elected members would benefit from low voter turnout. So a low voter turnout will effectively keep them in their position. So therefore they're not incentivised to increase voter turnout.We see things like online voting being muted in many cases and more often than not it gets voted down by the elected members. I mean I don't presume to know all their thoughts but I do suspect that there's an aspect of job security for them. If they've been elected on a lower voter turnout they will hence generally not want to see an increased voter turnout and more diversity. But by putting that responsibility on the CEO of the council I believe we will see some good movement in this space because the CEO is impartial as we know.There's an aspect there I touched on that I just want to build on a little bit around online voting. Now I don't believe online voting will be you know some sort of fix-everything silver bullet but I do believe—and the research shows—that online voting will increase voter participation particularly among youth.So this bill puts the responsibility on the CEO to increase turnout. The CEO in his or her wisdom may decide that online voting will make a difference; therefore they will be able to do that. They won't have to take it to elected members and say "Elected members please make a choice on this."; they will be impartial. So I would like to encourage councils and CEOs in this case to look at online voting because I believe the time has come for that.The second point I'd like to touch on is around public notices—making public notices more readily available. So at the moment as we know public notices are in newspapers and newspapers are not always delivered. They rely on hand-delivery many times—Chris Penk: It's the year of non-delivery.JAMIE STRANGE: Unlike this Government Mr Penk—the year of delivery! But sometimes newspapers are not always delivered. For example if someone has a "No circulars" sign on their letterbox they will often not get a certain newspaper even though they would actually want that newspaper. I was talking to a newspaper delivery person recently who said "Oh I'm not going to deliver down that street because there's quite a few 'No circulars' down there so I'm not going to bother." So it's a little bit sporadic at times.So we can't rely only on newspapers for delivery. Newspapers do an excellent job but we can't rely just on them; we need diversity within that communication. We can't always rely on the daily papers. They are subscription-based and they will be delivered but only a smallish percentage of our society pay for a subscription. For a lot of people the newspapers that they receive are weekly free newspapers; and we have a couple of excellent newspapers in Hamilton. So if there's a special meeting that's taking place say for example tomorrow and the council put that in a daily newspaper it will get to a sort of smallish percentage of the population but others will miss out and they can't put it in the weekly newspaper which has a wider readership because you know the meeting is tomorrow. Hence the importance of online notices.I'm hoping that this bill will see councils think creatively around how they engage with people around how they inform people around meetings around events and around important things that are happening that affect them. So for example the CEO in this case may choose to look at things like sponsored adverts on Facebook or Instagram and the reason I say Instagram is that Instagram is a platform that quite a few young people are engaged with and so on their feed as they're looking through they will see an advert come up which relates to council which relates to their elected members to increase engagement.A lot of people get their news only from social media particularly young people and even people in their 30s 40s and 50s. The sole place they receive their news is social media—Facebook obviously the biggest one—so if councils and in that case Government are not engaging on social media then there's a large portion of society who aren't being reached who aren't being engaged with and in a way it's little wonder that we aren't seeing the voter turnout because people are not being reached.So this is a very important bill around that aspect and as we've heard from previous speakers we've got local body elections coming up later this year. So I'm sure the members in this House as there is strong support for this bill will be watching with interest around what CEOs choose to do in this space. I'll be talking to the CEO of Hamilton City Council and maybe suggesting one or two things that he may be willing to explore in this space.There's a final point I'd like to touch on in the last few seconds and that's the winter energy payment. Previous speakers have explained what this bill does around that: it's just ensuring that everyone is eligible for that rates rebate. But I'd like to finish by acknowledging the Hon Ruth Dyson who for many years spoke about this issue and now has enacted a piece of legislation around the rates rebate. I've had a number of people come into my office thanking myself and the Government for that. I commend this excellent bill to the House. Thank you sir.Bill read a third time."