Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Madam Chair thank you for your guidance on that matter. This has been a very informative debate but I do just think at this point Government members do want to just touch on a couple of final points in terms of the very important parts of this part of the bill. The area that I want to focus on in a bit of detail is the sections relating to the Local Government Commission and I think it's important we don't overlook the importance of this section and some of the particular changes which are proposed through the bill which have been reported back by the Local Government and Environment Committee as well. The importance of the section is in fact the quasi-constitutional nature of it. It's something that we often overlook in this House actually. We get very focused on the functions of central government and forget that actually built into our democratic decision-making frame is local government. The role of the Local Government Commission is to make incredibly important decisions about how our decision-making powers are allocated by making decisions about who will be represented by which authorities so getting the processes around this correct are absolutely important. What comes through in these parts of the bill—really modernisation features in terms of the function of the Local Government Commission. It's being modernised and there's also a greater degree of transparency that comes through and there's just a few points in this respect that I wish to touch upon. The first focus is on the accountability and reporting framework and to me this is really critical. We simply cannot have an organisation like the Local Government Commission that touches upon the democratic fabric of our country and there being any level of opaqueness about what its focus is how it makes the decisions that it makes and the factors that it has to consider—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Which part are you speaking to? Which piece are you speaking to?MICHAEL WOOD: To Part 1 of the bill.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Yeah yeah but which clause?MICHAEL WOOD: I'm speaking to clause 16.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Clause 16A in the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)?MICHAEL WOOD: Yes. So the Local Government Commission—sorry clause 17 I'm speaking to. I correct myself because I was focusing on the accountability and reporting framework in particular. That to me is incredibly important and this is about having a function in the bill which actually sets out how the commission will work.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Well I'm sorry. Look I'm sorry to be pedantic but I'm looking at clause 17 which is crossed out in the SOP. All right—the whole page is crossed out.MICHAEL WOOD: That's fine Madam Chair. I'll move on. Let me speak about the membership of the commission—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Good. Thank you.MICHAEL WOOD: —which is also captured in this part of the bill as well. The membership of the commission of course is incredibly important and what we know in this bill is that we've got a couple of things happening. One we've got greater flexibility in respect of the membership which is being implemented by the bill. But the select committee has received I think a good range of submissions in this area—Simeon Brown: How many? Name the number.MICHAEL WOOD: Oh a very very good number of submissions were received Mr Brown. I just want to acknowledge the member who is interjecting over there as a former local government member.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): There's no need to. There's no need to; just focus on the bill. MICHAEL WOOD: Thank you Madam Chair. The membership of the commission is incredibly important and what the select committee heard were very good submissions particularly from the Society of Local Government Managers about the importance of having genuine expertise from the local government management side represented on the commission. I think what the select committee has done in its report back here is to strike a really good balance in terms of recommending that in clause 18 one member of the commission either has to be an elected member or has to be a chief executive. This is about making sure that we have direct practical knowledge of how local government actually operates on the commission—that we are making these incredibly important decisions. I'm a former local government member and I acknowledge the Chair and others in the Chamber are and there is actually nothing quite like having the knowledge about the functions of local government about—particularly I'm thinking about the decisions that are made by the commission around representation. Whether it's numbers whether it's boundaries whether it's an amalgamation question—actually having an understanding of issues such as communities of interest are enormously important in local government. Elected members in local government have that understanding and what you get from chief executives is a far more detailed understanding of how local government functions actually work on the ground. So I think it was a very good decision of the select committee to ensure that we had one of those two types of people on the commission.Look I could go on but I'll leave it there and commend this part of the bill to the committee.