Ngaro Alfred: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10793. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National): I move That the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time. Before I do I just want to take the opportunity—I know my colleague David Bennett stole the limelight this afternoon when he was acknowledging academic awards and I know my colleague across the House here Mr Phil Twyford would also want to go on record in acknowledging that fact. I want to start off with a little whakataukī that says “The wealth of a country is not judged by its oil and gold but by the knowledge of its sons and daughters”. On that note I want to acknowledge that Oxana Repina from Rutherford College was awarded the top academic award and that was great. Also too there is Danisha Dadley—who actually is the granddaughter of the Hon John Carter—who also won an academic award as well. So I just want to go on record just acknowledging them as well.Returning to the bill at hand first of all can I just acknowledge that it is a real honour for any member I think to be able to take a member’s bill through. I know from talking to my esteemed colleague over here to the left the senior Government whip it is the object of his desire as an MP to be able have a member’s bill. It is I think a real honour for any MP to be able to have a member’s bill come through the House.With that I would like to start off my remarks by first of all just acknowledging that this bill did begin with the Hon Maggie Barry. After she introduced this bill in the House she then transitioned on to become a Minister and therefore I took over the custodianship of this bill and was honoured to be able to—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are we going to hear what it is?ALFRED NGARO: I am honoured to take on this bill. Can I also just acknowledge the Local Government and Environment Committee through which this bill traversed and the chairperson my colleague Scott Simpson and all the other members. I just want to thank them because I too was subbed on to that committee to hear the submissions throughout that whole passage as well as being able to then progress the bill back into the House with a number of changes mainly technical in nature.Inside that bill I want to mention Supplementary Order Paper 418 in particular which introduced new clause 6 which I think is quite significant and important and I just mention it because it was not included in the initial drafting of the bill. But the intent of that was to ensure that when the bill is gazetted and comes into force and into law the current membership and the existing membership of local boards will not be affected by this bill. So I just wanted to mention that as well.I was listening to the debate on the previous bill in the House and I want to acknowledge Grant Robertson for his bill as well.Carmel Sepuloni: Already run out of things to say on it.ALFRED NGARO: No well actually the member Ron Mark made a quite important remark when he said that often when you have gone through all three readings of the bill and the Committee stage you end up at a place where actually a number of the technical issues have been addressed.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Can I just remind the member that he has now got only 6 minutes and 29 seconds left. He has not mentioned the name of the bill any of the terms of the bill or what it is going to do yet.ALFRED NGARO: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I must say that I think I did introduce the bill in its third reading to the House. I am not challenging the Speaker Mr Deputy Speaker but it was mentioned once. I dare not challenge or trifle with the Chair—I dare not challenge or trifle with the Chair.The intent of this bill is around closing a loophole—there we go. In the legislation it is a minor loophole but it is a loophole that covers two things. When we talk about democracy in regard to local government for which this bill is actually intended the fact is that at the moment the loophole exists where you can have both multiple candidacies and also multiple memberships on a number of different local boards. So really that is the heart of the intent of this bill. What this bill will do when it gets passed through with the support of others is close that loophole and ensure that there can still be multiple candidacies but there can be only one form of membership on one local board.I know there have been some remarks and people have talked about whether this is a democratic process and I know others have challenged that. I just want to make a short remark on this. When we talk about democracy and the ability of people to be able to engage with a system of governance—in this case local governance and the local body and local boards—we talk about representative democracy but we also need to talk about participating in democracy too. I believe the role this bill will play is that it will increase the ability to have not only greater representation but also greater forms of participation.Currently we have in the Auckland Council 21 councillors but there are 149 current local board members. So that is quite a significant number which covers over 21 different electorate boundaries for the different wards that currently exist in the Auckland Council. The intent of this bill is to ensure that the fact is—and people have said: “Well is there an issue here for us that warrants us to make this change?”. We know in the first elections of 2010 there were three candidates who were on two or more boards. That has increased and in 2013 that increased to five members. So we know that the trend is heading up. Our intent for this bill is to ensure that others actually have a greater role of participation and representation into the local boards as well.I want to acknowledge those who are on the local boards. They play quite an important role. I know that our local boards are involved in managing local facilities parks and local events and they draw up local board plans promote local leadership identify and propose local bylaws and input into our council-controlled organisation and economic development plans. They play quite a significant role.Being that it has now been almost two terms of this local government under the new local laws what has also now happened is there has been a greater sense of interest in participation. By way of example this week alone for instance I had a gentleman who came up. He had seen my truck outside my office and was admiring this truck and then knew that I would be up in the office. He came up to the office and came to ask me about what it would be like for him to engage to be able to put himself forward as a local board member. So we sat down and we had a cup of tea and talked about this and again to me this is the interest that is coming out. I have had two other people locally who have come to talk to me about this very issue.So to me I think that this bill is important. I think actually it does draw on the opportunities for greater participation that people can have into local boards in particular.I want to just then mention a couple of remarks because there were 17 different submissions that were put through around five of which were oral submissions. Out of that only three were opposed. Obviously the three that were in opposition were from those who are currently on two or more local boards. There was some justification that they gave. There were the boundaries that had changed. They had previously been councillors under the seven territorial authorities that were there so for them they had had this sense of connectivity. I think though that what it also came to when it was really clear is that now we are evolving I suppose in our sense of understanding around the role of the Auckland Council its executive of 21 councillors and its 149 local board members. People are beginning to see the importance of their ability to participate in that.I want to just then read a couple of submissions that came through that I think are really important and highlight and support the intent of this bill. I would like to read from the submission of the Auckland Council for instance which clearly is in support. In fact in its recommendation it says it “supports the prohibition on local board members serving on multiple local boards at the same time”. It did make this comment and I know it has been raised before where it said: “Membership of more than one local board at a time has the potential to create the perception of conflicts of interest …”.I think this bill goes also to the heart of the aspect of that. What we want to do is not only have greater participation and greater representation but also reduce those conflicts of interest that do exist for a number who are on there. For instance there are examples where current members on those boards are on two or more local boards. They are actually boards that are bordering on either side of those wards. So when it comes to the issue around bidding for financial bids to be able to bid for—whether it be issues around parks or reserves and so forth there are conflicts that do exist and cannot be said not to exist. We know that they are there and we think that that is really important as well.I just want to then close my remarks by speaking on a couple of submissions that talk about the equality of opportunity. On this I think that is really important. One of the submitters talked about “by limiting members to only serving on one local board I believe that the bill will also improve fairness in the local electoral system by creating a greater equality of opportunity for a wider range of people.”So I finish my remarks. I do thank all those who have been involved through the passage of this bill those on the select committee and also those who have submitted. I do commend this bill to the House.