Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a great concern to learn that in fact rather than the efforts of appointed Ngāi Tahu members to Environment Canterbury actually giving Environment Canterbury decision makers insights and knowledge that would enable them to be more efficient what the member has said is that the appointment of these voting but unelected members of Ngāi Tahu is going to be like sawdust in the machine of local government. As if local government needed anything else to slow it down—but to have people appointed to local government who can't actually help the organisation improve its delivery and improve its performance but rather create some kind of impediment to progress. Now it's remarkable that that's the conclusion that the member supporting the bill proposed would result from having Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu members appointed to council. I would have assumed—and this is based on my experience in presenting to mana whenua groups as an engineer at Auckland Council—that actually by engaging with people early and meaningfully and offering them an opportunity to comment on infrastructure or land development proposals or regulatory proposals you actually clear out a whole lot of potential objections early in the process so that when you come back to the decision makers with your recommendations they say That's good. We understand all of that. Where do we sign?" In fact what the member has proposed is that even after the council officers and potentially all the applicants for resource consents and people that want to develop land have made their case and they've been and they've talked to all the stakeholders and they've done the consultation and they've got everybody to sign off on the consultation that's required under the resource management consenting process and when it goes up to Environment Canterbury's decision-making committees of the elected members and the two non-elected members basically what they'll say is "You start again." because there will be things that the non-elected members the representatives from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu haven't heard about before and they'll be asking a whole lot of questions. Basically that's going to be like a massive handbrake on the decision making of Environment Canterbury. Who would have thought that the member representing Te Tai Tonga supporting this bill and having brought this local bill to the House would say that quiet part out loud? But there it is. Now one of the problems with elected members we have in New Zealand is sometimes they don't perform well but you can still get rid of them. You can vote them out next time. The problem with this legislation and it's a problem that we've seen in all places around New Zealand where you elect people is that some of them have a single issue and when they can't get that issue over the line then they don't want to perform they don't want to turn up to meetings and they don't want to participate. In the case of Environment Canterbury one of the reasons that they were stood down and had commissioners put in place in the past was because they couldn't agree on a system for allocating water rights and managing land use. And so that actually required the intervention of central government. Now what I'm proposing in my Supplementary Order Paper 177 is to insert new clause 9A which would give the voters who have a franchise people who are over 18 and eligible to vote in Canterbury and to vote for Environment Canterbury to give them the opportunity—because they can't vote in or vote out the proposed Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu representative. They would be appointed and the people of Canterbury wouldn't have an opportunity to vote for them to vote for their policies to vote for the ethos of the person who is supposed to be making decisions about them even though they weren't elected. So what I'm proposing here in this Supplementary Order Paper is that the voters of Canterbury should be able to—10 percent of them—deliver a petition to Environment Canterbury that recalls the appointee from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and removes them from office if 10 percent of the voters of Canterbury feel that their behaviour or their performance is egregious enough that you can get 10 percent of the voters to bring a petition to Environment Canterbury. Look even if this bill passes if you took up the ACT Party amendment it could give people in Canterbury a whole lot of confidence that if they were dissatisfied with the performance or behaviour or the character—or who knows what that representative might do in the future?—they could remove them. So I ask the Minister: would you support my Supplementary Order Paper to include a recall provision so that the people of Canterbury if these non-elected appointed representatives turn up to be failing in their duties or to have failed the good character test they could be removed? And if not I'd ask the member to describe exactly why it is"