Bridges SimonHon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): I want to speak against the substantive motion and for the amendment that Christopher Luxon has put up changing the dates from 15 February to 15 May—from some five days to 90 days. Really the issue here is time and five days—as we've made clear I think on this side of the House—just isn't good enough. I like what David Seymour was saying which was that it's actually a disbenefit in many ways and I'll come back to that. But you know we know you can't achieve anything in five days. Michael Wood like myself is a churchgoer and he knows that the Good Lord on the first day created dark and light. On the second day there was water and fish. On the third day—help me out Michael—there were animals and various other things and on the seventh day he rested. Even he needed more than five days to create the earth and here we are—we are rushing this through in just five days.The point's been made I think very well that actually it's not even five days when you're talking about the actual time for submissions for people to come along who may just have wisdom and experience and knowledge and actually for expertise from local government that we do not have in this House of Representatives. They are actually getting under two days to make those submissions and I said at the—Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order Madam Speaker. I'm loath to draw too much attention to Mr Bridges but we've heard this three or four times now and we don't need to be told how many days there are for submissions yet again.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call the Hon Simon Bridges.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Oh that's good. Thank you for that Madam Speaker. I disagree with what David Bennett said about your speakership. I think you're doing a great job and I just want to put that on record. Five days two days or under two days for actual submissions and the wisdom the experience that people will bring to those submissions even where there is actually a sense that because we know—and I agree with David Seymour that it's regrettable when people in this House attribute bad faith to others when they haven't even made a submission—we might just hear from a bunch of racists. Well actually there will be people—possibly thousands actually—that would like to come along and make their submission against this bill for what some on the other side of the House might say are racist reasons. But we know from long experience in this House that by being given that opportunity—I was going to say privilege" but it's not a privilege actually. It should really be their right to come along on a fundamental bill like this about local democracy given that even if the outcome—because let's be honest we know that the outcome is going to go against them. We know there's a preconceived view on the other side of the House even though they didn't put it in the manifesto—Hon Willie Jackson: How do you know? Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —to deal with this. Well you said so Willie Jackson. You told us so. Even though that's so we know that if they've come along they've been heard and they've received some degree of decorum and politeness from the select committee they will be more willing to see it as a bona fide good-faith decent law that they have before them. David Seymour talked about—well he didn't actually say "disbenefit" but he said effectively that in a cost-benefit analysis the costs of this outweigh the benefits—the five days. I would say frankly that there is a—if you want to keep with the economic language—disbenefit from doing it in five days. And I don't want this by the way but you'd almost be better to have the—dare I say it—integrity to just not have a select committee process. If you've determined what you're going to do and you know you're going to do it you should have done it tonight—make the whole thing—because we know that that's the charade that's going on here. You're doing it in urgency you're doing it retrospectively you didn't put it in the campaign manifesto—well as I said just do it. I don't want that but in a sense that's better. It has more integrity than a five-day charade that dare I say it is barely in good faith. But there's something even better than that and that is because I know that as a senior Minister as Minister of Foreign Affairs now and as Minister of Local Government it is in the power and the ability of Nanaia Mahuta. She'll remember the tweet I did when she first became Minister of Foreign Affairs—see she smiled—when I said how good she would be and how fantastic we would be and when she leads international delegations when they finally open up I'm ready and willing to come—[Interruption] No no no. She has it—[Interruption]—I've got a serious point—within her ability today to change from 15 February to 15 May. The reality of that is that it won't change anything much. We still know that the Government will in the end pass this law but it would have been an infinitely better process—still shorter than the six months that's usually there but an infinitely better process—where for not five days but for much longer people would have been heard. People from all around New Zealand with their experiences wisdom and expertise will have had that ability. They will have washed away dare I say it the tarnish that those members put on this bill right now with the urgency. That would go some way to dealing with the fact that they are wanting to do this bill and make this law retrospective and it's particularly important in this case for the sole fact that I talked about and other members talked about in our speeches in the first reading which is that this process is happening when it wasn't campaigned upon. It wasn't in any manifesto document. In fact I hadn't realised when I had spoken that—worse than that—in the local government manifesto the Labour Party had said the opposite. So for all those reasons you'll be clear that I oppose the motion and I support the amendment and I say to Nanaia Mahuta that she's a good person. She's a senior person. She got it wrong in Tauranga—no we won't go there. She got it wrong but she can do the right thing here. I hope there will be support across this House to increase the period of time during which this is at select committee so that people have that right that they have to be heard on this bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call Duncan Garner—Duncan Webb. Dr Duncan Webb—my apologies."