SpeechIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Well if I could honestly say I was looking forward to this coming to select committee because we could make some constructive changes to it I would but I can't because I've never seen the select committee change anything a Minister's sent us yet and I've been here a little while. Anyway that's enough of that.I want to get on to the point of this bill. As a former mayor I take a good deal of interest in local government and things that happen in local government. I was around when the Local Government Act 2002 was passed. It was actually I felt at the time quite a constructive Act; I note people in local government were frustrated at the time because it would change the way they'd been doing things for the previous 13 or 14 years but none the less it was a good piece of legislation that did a good job for local government and structured local government very well.Now I just was thinking a little while ago about the number of pieces of legislation that have come to the House affecting local government this year. I think it's eight this year. You can imagine that local government was a very popular place for people to put themselves in. We've got of course as the Minister so rightly said in his introductory remarks the local government elections coming up this year. I understand that we've got almost 50 percent of our mayors going from local government—retiring or leaving it. When you think that there's eight pieces of legislation that have come in this year to affect the way they operate it's not surprising that they're scarpering. I wonder seriously whether there will be anyone standing for local government in a year or two's time because everyone will have been put off it.I want to talk a little bit about what we might well do with a piece of legislation instead of doing what we're doing here. If you think about local government local government relies entirely on those people standing for positions on council to promote the election. No one else promotes the election—the Electoral Commission doesn't or virtually doesn't; local government don't promote it because they've got to spend ratepayers money to promote it; so no one promotes it and we wonder why people don't stand for local government. There's absolutely no promotion of the fact that there's an election happening or the activities of the council at all. So I think that we're very seriously threatening democracy by consistently and continually interfering in the processes of local government and not really in many cases structured interference in those processes but processes that are extremely frustrating for the people involved for our local communities and for people standing for positions in local government. So I think if we continue to interfere in local government without putting a structure in place that lets them get on with life manage the affairs of our local communities in a manner that at least enables the local community to some extent manage what happens in their areas then we're going to have serious problems attracting anyone to stand for local government. Why would you at the end of the day when you're constantly effectively—I was going to say abused" but you're not necessarily abused but you're certainly constantly under scrutiny you're doing a job where you're poorly paid? I don't think if we continue to interfere in the processes of local government we're going to get anyone standing. The other point with respect to this bill is that if you think about the fact that you could be the Mayor of Auckland a great job and every time you front up to your committee you've got 29 people to convince that you're right or wrong imagine that! Not a wonder that they've got some interesting people standing for the Mayor of Auckland. I think that that's a real challenge for a city of Auckland's size to have potentially a council of 29 people running it—there will never be a decision made in Auckland on that basis. I just think to attract people of the standard that you need to run a city like Auckland—or in fact any of our councils for that matter but certainly a city like Auckland—you've got to have a structure in place that encourages people who have got the capability to stand and who wish to be part of what goes on there. So that's a little piece on Auckland that I wanted to talk about.I want to talk about the tied result thing for a minute because I do think that's a kind of sensible solution to a very minor problem because actually it's not really satisfactory having a councillor elected on the toss of a coin then thrown out as a result of a judicial recount and so you've got a job one minute and you haven't got a job the next. Pretty untidy. So I do think that that little piece of alteration to the law which could have been put in probably any four or five pieces of local government law we've passed through this Parliament in the last six or eight months but happens to be in this one—that's a sensible change to it.The Auckland Council issue I've talked about. Simplifying the process to change local board boundaries again probably much of an Auckland issue as anywhere else and probably won't affect anyone else much but none the less probably it would have been a sensible suggestion but it certainly doesn't require a piece of legislation to pass it. As for enabling candidates to submit electronic nominations I guess that's progress but again it hardly required a separate piece of legislation to enable it to be passed.I want to talk for a little bit about the piece of this Act that I guess talks about—I'll use that term—Māori representation in local government and the way local councils need to deal with it as they go through their representation review. In my time in council we went through that representation review and invariably considered Māori wards because the Local Government Act 2002 enabled that process to take place. It didn't happen in the Manawatū district at that time for reasons best known to Māori not best known to the council because council made the decision that their local iwi and local Māori communities wanted us to make. I think that that's how it should be and that's how it should have remained. But none the less we've had changes to the Local Government Act in recent times that have changed the process. We've now got another change to the Local Government Act which is effectively the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill this one's called which effectively changes that potentially again. That will be a very interesting discussion to have in select committee because I think there will be in my view a large number of submissions on that point and it will be very interesting to see where we get to as we consider that in the long term.So there's been a lot of talk about local government. I think if you go back in time that local government has had more and more and more loaded on it ever since that 2002 Act came to pass and Governments of all colours have been to blame for the fact that we put more emphasis and more responsibility on local government but it effectively forced the ratepayers to pay those bills. That's one of the real challenges we've got with our rates bills at the moment and there wouldn't be an MP in this House that doesn't get a daily complaint about the rates bills—[Interruption] What are you trying to tell me to do Goldsmith? I'm having a turn for the first time in a few days where I haven't been told what to do every time I stand up in the House! Ha ha! So anyway I think that there's a lot of consideration that needs to be given to this bill even though it is a very small bill and does not really influence a lot of stuff. But in the course of the select committee process it will be very interesting to see what we get in the way of submissions. I assume I was getting hurried on by Mr Goldsmith so I will commend the bill to the House."