Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. There's a wonderful project in my community. It's a project run by an organisation called Te Whāngai Trust. They are an organisation who some 20 years ago identified the problem of young people who had fallen out of education work and training and who had got into a cycle potentially of drug or alcohol offending had entered into criminal activity and were falling out of the system. So what the good people at Te Whāngai Trust decided to do was to establish a native nursery to bring in these young people to nurture them to support them to teach them to mentor them and to not stop doing that until they had helped to transition these young people into sustainable employment to get them on to their feet as young people who can be proud of themselves and make a contribution and sustain themselves and do something good for their community. This trust has a native nursery that they have set up in my electorate in the community of Wesley in partnership with the Puketāpapa Local Board—the local governance unit in my community—and in partnership facilitated by the board with a range of other community organisations. Te Whāngai Trust at that site now brings in young people from our community who need this support. They provide that support and they also provide now native trees for local environmental projects and that cycle of work is exactly what this bill is about. It's about recognising that local government at its best when it really understands local communities is the best-placed layer of government to work with them and deliver the outcomes that our communities need. There you have a project that delivers social economic environmental and cultural well-being outcomes. It is exactly the kind of thing that is good for our communities that our communities want to be delivered and that local government is better equipped to deliver I would argue than central government. This bill in restoring the core competencies of local government to deliver those well-beings is actually I think just confirming what most people in New Zealand believe the job of their local government is to deliver. What is the institution of a library in a local community if it is not about the social and the cultural well-being of our communities? What is a local business association supported by local government if it is not about the economic well-being of our communities? What is a tree-planting project or an environmental stream restoration run by local government if it is not about the environmental well-being of our communities? Yet we have members on the other side of this Chamber seriously attempting to contend that those activities should somehow be beyond the stated remit of local government. That's what they're contending when they say that those well-being outcomes shouldn't be identified as the core competencies—Maureen Pugh: No we're not. MICHAEL WOOD: —of local government. Well if those members are not imputing that as the member says then it's difficult to see what sustains the arguments that they are putting forward when they're saying that these well-being outcomes should not be defined in the legislation that sets out the remit of local government in this country. The reality is that local government in New Zealand is in fact more constrained even under this legislation than local government in virtually any other country that we compare ourselves to. That's the reality on any measure and in fact some of the submitters whom members on the other side of the House have quoted are submitters who in fact in other forums argue that local government should have more powers delegated to it. Now that's not what we're arguing here but we are arguing that the core competencies that most New Zealanders expect to be delivered by local government should actually be reflected in the legislation and let's address head-on this argument which keeps coming up about rates. This was disabused in the second reading when with about five seconds of a Google search the Taxpayers' Union very helpfully informed me that under the previous legislative regime set in place in 2012 by those members currently in Opposition rates increased at four times the rate of inflation. So the legs that the Opposition has to argue on this point are very stumpy indeed. The reality is that local government is always under enormous pressure in the space of rates. The pressure comes because of years of underfunding because of its significant infrastructure needs and I think it behoves those of us in central government—who should think of our local government colleagues as colleagues and not just whipping boys—to address those issues instead of making spurious arguments around the well-beings that have always been a part of local government in New Zealand and will continue to be. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.