Luxton CameronCAMERON LUXTON (ACT): I appreciate that—thank you very much.SPEAKER: I think the two of you look alike; that's all!CAMERON LUXTON: Both handsome gentlemen I hope you mean! Mr Speaker I appreciate you giving me this call because this speech has been a long time coming. I'm based in the Bay of Plenty electorate and a large part of that electorate is in the Tauranga City Council area. We have gone a long time without democracy at our local government level. Government is better when decisionmakers are close to the ground and accountable to the public. And the decisions that have been made in Tauranga to the people living in the beautiful area Tauranga Moana do not feel like they have had accountable government. There have been many issues raised; in a five-minute call I couldn't possibly traverse them all but it has been a great relief of mine to be part of a Government that is going to restore democracy to Tauranga—full democracy—on 20 July 2024. Democracy was denied to Tauranga. In February 2021 the previous Minister of Local Government—oh a few ago—was Nanaia Mahuta. She installed four commissioners. These commissioners were given a mandate—and I'm going to get to whether they achieved some of their terms of reference or not. But she extended their term cancelling local government elections in 2022 for the people of Tauranga. We had no democracy. We watched the rest of the country vote. We wondered when we were going to get a chance to actually have a say.I took part in a byelection and this byelection for Tauranga was a great experience. I met many people of the Bay and I talked to so many people who had each had a different concern but the concern was growing about what the commission was up to. And it has come to pass that we have now gt huge debt loads. We have got—you might like this one Mr Speaker. The people of Christchurch God bless them—a highly indebted council unfortunately; I think it's about $9300 per ratepayer. Well in Tauranga we're at $17000 per ratepayer. We have the highest city rates for residential property and our commercial rates are growing rapidly. We have now under the auspices and the decisions of the commissioners agreed to hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure which is a nice to have not a must have. We have got a long-term plan which has got—you know you can love and hate either part of it but people didn't feel like they were properly consulted that they had a chance to put in what they thought should be done in their city. This is the sort of thing that happens when you don't have decision makers close to the ground.We saw this go to the head of some of the commissioners. Now what happened recently is the chair of the commission—Arena Williams: Great commissioner!CAMERON LUXTON: Yeah well you might say that Arena but she also thought hybrid democracy was something that the people of Tauranga would want—unelected commissioners governing in a co-governance between unelected and elected decision-makers. Now I would have to say that is an admission of failure. One of the terms of reference was to work with council to encourage quality candidates to stand. Now that piece of media that the chair gave goes—and to prove that she felt that they hadn't achieved that. On top of that they were tasked with taking any other necessary steps to maintain confidence from the community in the council. I would say to you that that has not happened.Democracy is coming back but because we have got an out-of-cycle electoral system for our local government in Tauranga there has been a change which has been asked for in the general election. My colleague on the other side of the House spoke about what she sees is the benefit of Māori wards. I see them as a divisive and very unfortunate thing in a 21st century democracy. We in this Government have voted to give councils the chance to repeal or have a referendum on local government having a Māori ward. Well unfortunately for Tauranga we're going to have to wait because of this out-of-cycle electoral system that has been put in place by the last Government.With 10 seconds on the clock I would just like to say that it is a relief to have democracy back in Tauranga. We shouldn't have waited this long but like my neighbours I will be relishing casting my vote in July.