Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Madam Speaker thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this bill the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) particularly obviously talking to the Supplementary Order Paper. As the final speaker I will attempt to sort of sum up some of the arguments that we've heard and finish this debate. I'd also like to begin by acknowledging all those who stood in the recent local body elections. I was a candidate myself back in 2013 in the Hamilton East ward. Unfortunately I missed out and now I'm in Parliament which I'm enjoying.Now we have a new mayor in Hamilton Paula Southgate and I'd like to acknowledge the previous mayor Andrew King for the work that he did. If you could indulge me briefly just before I get to the bill if the House would indulge me I would like to place on Hansard congratulations to my wife Angela Strange for being elected to the Waikato Regional Council. I know some would say that is a bit shameless but no—she deserves strong congratulations. Our family was very proud of what she achieved. There you go Angela—you're on Hansard.Hon Members: Angela Strange.JAMIE STRANGE: Angela Strange my wife yes—the top polling candidate but we don't need to. I would also like to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta who since she has become Minister of Local Government has engaged very closely with councils and I've heard from a number of councils right around the country that they've been very impressed with the engagement from this Government. They often felt at times the previous Government effectively sort of made a decision and then told them what to do which relates to this bill because you know the previous bill was effectively telling councils what to do whereas the amendments that we have made are about central government and local government working together. It's around collaboration and we've heard that theme come through a lot from different speakers. Now the aspect around amalgamation. We heard from the member opposite in the previous speech that he believes there isn't the threat of amalgamation hanging over councils. Well I disagree with that. I hear from a number of councils and speakers from this side have noted in their speeches that there is an uneasiness around amalgamation potentially being forced on them. Now there were some recent comments from the chair of the Chamber of Commerce in the Waikato region who publicly said our councils should amalgamate and the councils almost en masse across the region rose up against this viewpoint and said No we don't want to be amalgamated. We don't want this. We are happy to work together but we don't want amalgamation forced upon us."So I believe that is a very real and present either threat or perceived threat within the council and what this Government does is provide certainty for those councils—certainty around them being able to carry out their functions in the way that they see fit. The aspect that relates to that is that the bill states that if a reorganisation is to take place—effectively another word for amalgamation—that if somebody's going to put that forward somebody from the public they need 10 percent of the electors to sign effectively a petition which they then present to local government. Now it would be interesting to see how this piece of legislation is interpreted because is that 10 percent of the electors within one ward or is that 10 percent across both the two wards that are going to amalgamate so therefore 5 percent of one ward and 5 percent of the other? But we will see if somebody chooses to put that forward how that is interpreted.I'd like to give a couple of local examples. Now it must've been about one year ago. Three councils within the Waikato region were talking about sharing water services. They got very close to the point of combining as three councils and providing shared water services and there were obviously some benefits around that particularly in terms of cost. What happened though is that at the last minute that arrangement failed. It basically fell over and as I interpret it it fell over because some of the smaller councils felt a little bit uneasy about engaging with a larger council and the idea that possibly they could therefore be amalgamated into some sort of large council. What this bill does is basically remove that threat to those councils and it actually encourages councils to work together without that threat without that sense of potential insecurity for councils to represent their own areas to understand their own issues and serve their own people but also work collaboratively together and with the Government.The second local example is from when I was first elected to Parliament as a list MP covering Hamilton and loosely the wider Waikato region. I pulled the mayors together from all of the councils and I said to them "What are we going to focus on as a region?" And we talked through it for a while and then we settled on the corridor between Hamilton and Auckland—the fastest-growing growth corridor in New Zealand. So we settled on that piece of work and then that piece of work has since grown over the past couple of years—I might elaborate on that a little bit soon. But the key point I want to bring out of that is that after that meeting I vividly remember one of the mayors saying "This is the first time we've met like this for 10 years. It's the first time we've done this for 10 years." As someone who came to this House out of the education sector where collaboration is sort of taken for granted it's really sort of second nature.Tim van de Molen: I don't think any of those mayors were there 10 years ago.JAMIE STRANGE: I found that surprising and I said to the mayor—no no one of them was. One of the mayors was there 10 years ago and that was the mayor I spoke to.Hon Scott Simpson: Name names.JAMIE STRANGE: I don't need to name names but it was the first time that they collaborated for 10 years. It took me by surprise because I just assumed that this was happening all the time. Anyway the good work that's come out of that collaboration is that now there's a piece of planning linking the Hamilton-Auckland corridor—effectively working on linking those two labour markets into essentially one labour market which will be fantastic for GDP in our country. Some of the work that's been done is around transport networks urban growth and water. That's an example of councils coming together and collaborating. If there's that threat around amalgamation then the councils are a little bit less willing to do that. The second point I'd like to touch on here—and it has been spoken about so I'll just touch on this one briefly—is around the council-controlled organisations (CCOs). The CCO provisions in the Supplementary Order Paper they aim to improve council-controlled organisations' responsiveness to local authority direction transparency to the local authority transparency to the public and responsiveness to Māori. Just to highlight some of these key changes the Local Government Commission will not be able to transfer council services to council-controlled organisations. Secondly proposals to create an elaborate system of council-controlled organisations to deliver water transport and other services are withdrawn. Thirdly provisions to enhance the transparency and accountability of council-controlled organisations to councils and communities are added. I'd just like to highlight the point of the speaker Ginny Andersen who basically gave the example around how at times there's not the amount of transparency within CCOs that people desire and so this is certainly addressing that. The final point in closing is there is one other aspect—and I haven't heard it spoken about yet so it is a new point in the debate—and that's the provision in this bill to enable transport functions to be transferred between regional councils and territorial authorities at the request of the Minister of Transport. I know there's interest in Canterbury transferring these functions between Environment Canterbury and Christchurch City Council. Just to give an example of how that can work well is in the Waikato region—obviously the region I live in so it's easy for me to speak about that—an example of a passenger rail service which will be going middle of next year which I'm sure everyone in this House is very excited about so the middle of next year. We've had collaboration between the Waikato Regional Council Hamilton City Council Waikato District Council and Government. When that collaboration occurs we get the kind of outcomes that people want—you know we get the aspects of economies of scale and people playing to their strengths. So look hopefully I've sort of summed up the bill and I commend this to the House. Thank you."