Lee DeniseDENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here in the general debate this afternoon. I would like to spend my short time here referring to some of the issues that have arisen in local government over recent times. We want our local government bodies—do we not—to be effective and for the public to have some trust and confidence in the way that they engage and the way that they feel that councillors and mayors and even staff and chief executives can do their job and do their job well. It is incredibly fundamental that we have that trust and assurance throughout the country but I would like to say and suggest that it is even more so for Auckland Council. You might think that this is something that I would refer to having been a former Auckland councillor just recently myself but let's see what the value is for Auckland Council and why it is that we would undergird this particular local body.New Zealand's GDP in 2017 figures is $270 billion. Auckland's GDP is just a little over $101 billion. That's 36 percent of New Zealand's GDP. So that's the size and the nature of the governing body that we're going to look at here just quickly this afternoon. So Auckland Council and their council-controlled organisation hold just—if you look at their entire assets and their balance sheet if I can put it that way—around $70 billion. That's a very sizable entity—Australasia's largest council. We're expected to grow of course those holdings those assets sizably over the next 10 years if you look at their recent long-term plan. In the 2016-17 year the staff at Auckland Council numbered 9470 full-time equivalents and if you look at total headcount somewhere to the tune of 11500 staff. That's massive numbers. So the importance of Auckland to the rest of the country can't be underscored. It's undeniable and it means that the governing body of Auckland Council needs to be stable needs to be reliable and councillors need the right information to do their job. This is not rocket science it's obvious unfortunately that the current system does not seem to be working. We have recently seen councillors blocked from accessing important information and tensions have been rising to a boiling point—to such a point that it's come across and cut across here in the House in Parliament.Council's been in the news for the wrong reasons. It's something that I've been through myself but I've never experienced the escalation that I have seen in the last week or so. Now someone could argue that the timing of the regional fuel tax and the tensions there may be related but I think there's a systemic issue here. So what's the Government done to offer a solution in this space? Little—probably nothing.And that was highlighted when I asked the Minister of Local Government in question time yesterday whether she sensed any urgency to address this issue and even gave her a solution—in fact two solutions if you want to put it that way. One was referencing her capacity to use the Local Government Act 2002 where it states clearly The Minister of Local Government may"—and I'm quoting here—"require a local authority to provide to her information on the nature and extent of a problem and how the local authority is addressing or planning to address the problem." Well that sounds like an A B C way forward for the Minister of Local Government to have a conversation with Mayor Phil Goff and Auckland Council about the nature and the extent of the problem that they're facing. Now there's another solution and that's my particular member's bill. I have offered—or I tried—to table that bill in the House and that was rejected by the Government. That bill offers a solution whereby the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act could be amended and quite simply—look here's the problem. Why do councillors have to go through the same exact process as the public to get information that they should be entitled to to do their job? It's not right. It's a simple solution.Hon Judith Collins: Get on with it.DENISE LEE: You should get on with it. Pick up—SPEAKER: Order! The member is—DENISE LEE: The Government should get on with it. Send a signal. Pick up my bill.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."