Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very happy to support this bill. In fact it is an excellent bill which was inherited from the former Government and a number of the clauses in this bill were developed under our watch. None the less the bill achieves a number of efficiencies in the regulatory system across a number of statutes and the Minister—thank you very much Ms Mahuta—has outlined those to the House. As a collection they don't seem perhaps that significant. Who really is concerned about minor tweaks to the Dog Control Act? Well maybe some are—I am. But taken as a whole these are another step in modernising simplifying and clarifying the regulatory regime around local government regulatory systems.Before I just go through one or two of those clauses in the bill I do reflect that one of the challenges that the local government sector does face is a low reputational score and that is a score by their own measure and a part of that low reputation is because local governments are regulatory bodies and must administer regulation. If we can simplify and clarify those for local government then that can only have a beneficial flow-on impact on people who need to go up to the council door knock on it enter and wish to transact with some council somewhere in New Zealand.If I go to the Dog Control Act one of the aspects of the Act which was a bit of an impediment was around the definition of a disability assist dog and the Local Government Act really noted which organisations are authorised to certify dogs which are disability assist dogs. Because the legal definition of disability assist dog does include a list of organisations which are authorised to certify a dog as such we need to do legislative change each time an organisation is added to or removed from that particular list. Clunky—very clunky.So one of the clauses in this bill allows for organisations to be through regulation added to or removed from the Dog Control Act. It's sensible and so regulations can now—or will on the passage of this bill—be made by Order in Council by amending Schedule 5 which is the new schedule and so those new certifying organisations can be added and those removed.That's just an example of how Parliament can smooth out processes for an organisation. And if I stick with this example formerly a new organisation that was formed to certify disability assist dogs had to really wait until there was a bill that would enable that and so wait for a piece of legislation. That could take up to several years by the time a minor piece of legislation was scheduled for debate or just not be certified. And now of course they can then by Order in Council be added to Schedule 5. So it smooths it out.So amendments to the Local Electoral Act is another part in this bill and the changes are to empower councils to improve representative and substantial participation in local elections. We do have a problem in New Zealand with a declining rate of participation in local body elections. There are many reasons why this could be so. It could be that because there is postal voting there is no election day as such. It might be that the voting papers when they arrive contain so many items on which we are to vote that people get confused maybe get a bit fed up by the whole thing and then go I can't be bothered." Whatever it is we've got to address it because what we need in our communities is strong local representation. So again I absolutely support the clauses in the bill which make changes to the Local Electoral Act and so it goes. There are a number of speakers to follow me in this debate. I have highlighted two of the clauses for consideration. I commend the bill to the House at this reading."