Tirikatene RinoRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm pleased to round off the debate on the first reading of this Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill and I agree with my good colleague Dr Duncan Webb that this is an exciting piece of legislation! At times there are different types of legislation that we have to put through this House but as the Minister Nanaia Mahuta said in her first reading speech this is more about repairs and maintenance so that we can get the odd jobs done as parliamentarians. This is about the closest we'll get to it but no doubt there will be some substantive heavy lifting that we will be doing later on as well as we put through our agenda as a coalition Government.As has been covered quite fully in this debate we are tweaking and making minor technical amendments to a range of Acts which control or regulate local government in New Zealand. As we know local government is very important. I for one know that in my vast electorate I've got pretty much just about every type of local government that there is except for a super-city. But there is—Dr Duncan Webb: Christchurch.RINO TIRIKATENE: Oh well Christchurch comes close—it is super.It's important that we do make these technical amendments which come around periodically and I do commend the Productivity Commission for laying the groundwork for us to put through these amendments in this bill.I just want to quickly touch on a couple of matters. I think this type of legislation is very important because we know what happens when local authorities get things wrong. We've had numerous occasions in my time in this House when we've had to do fix-up legislation—retrospective legislation—when councils have not adhered to procedural matters properly or whatever obligations or requirements that they have which haven't been adhered to. It is left up to us as a Parliament to correct those errors. So it is important that the legislation which governs our local authorities is very clear is up to date is modern and is able to assist in the work of local authorities.Secondly I also want to touch on what stuck out for me in this bill which was local authority elections. Make no mistake local authority elections are very very complex whether it's just the enrolment side of things whether it's the voting system or whether it's just the eligibility. So there is a whole host of complexity and when you apply that overlay that across rural provincial city unitary type—the whole range of different entities that we have in the local government sector—it is very important that that emphasis is given to electoral officers to have the mandate to ensure that there is wider participation and engagement in electoral processes because as we have heard from earlier speeches the turnout in local body elections is actually woeful.So we do want to adopt more modern technology and processes and I'm sure this is an evolving space but we're making good progress with the changes that we are making in this bill and I'm sure others may emerge at the committee stage. But for now I commend this bill to the House.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.