Smith NickLOCAL ELECTORAL MATTERS BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 11 April.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): When the Minister of Local Government introduced this bill and told the Parliament that it was a bill that would improve the performance of local government in New Zealand that it would improve the participation rate of local electors in elections I was pretty excited. I would say Good. They are things that I can subscribe to." What I could not believe was when we look at the detail of this bill it will achieve the most minute of changes that we would have to call small beer—and that's being insulting to beer.Hon Andrew Little: Sounds like your RMA changes.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let's just talk about—Mr Little—what's in this bill. The first thing it does is that it makes a very minor change to the way in which novel local government elections systems could be used. Here's all it does: the current law allows us to trial electronic voting systems. What this bill does is allow it to be trialled in just a ward rather than a whole district. Big deal! And then we come to the second provision in this bill. This bill is going to allow in the Electoral Act information to be shared for analytical purposes on the age profile and date of birth of electors. Is that it? Is this the Government's vision for improving local government in New Zealand? Give me a break. What this bill tells you is how lazy and ineffective members of the Government spent their nine years. The programme of this Government's six months in office should be brimming with substantial pieces of legislation. Let's think about all of the important issues that we should be tackling in local government. We know we've got major infrastructure issues. We know there are key issues for communities up and down New Zealand. But any member of the Government like the Minister that truly believes this bill is going to do anything substantial in that local government sector is pulling the leg of this Parliament and of the public of New Zealand.You see when we look at the last bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill which was highly administrative and when we look at this bill you almost get the impression that the Government is having to filibuster up the time in the House because they've got no programme they've got no policies and they've got no vision for New Zealand so we end up with pathetic administrative bills such as this as though that will provide some pretence that they have some sort of programme of reform for New Zealand. It is so disappointing. It shows such a vacuum of ideas from members on the Government benches. It shows just how hopeless they were in Opposition in having to develop policy. When I look at this bill I line it alongside the more than 80 reviews and inquiries that the Government has initiated since it formed the Government. The truth is—Clayton Mitchell: I lost count of how many you guys did.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Members opposite have no damned idea. Look there are more reviews than there are members of Parliament on the Government benches. If they really had their act together this Parliament would be brimming with substantive bills that address the issues and challenges that a successful fast-growing New Zealand that they inherited would be wanting to get on and do.So I say to the members of this House that this bill is an embarrassment. Anybody who suggests as the Minister of Local Government does that making very technical changes about where you might be able to trial electronic voting and which allows Statistics New Zealand to be able to share information about the age of voters and about their birthdates is a bill—Greg O'Connor: Read the child poverty bill?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The new member of Parliament for Ōhāriu somehow thinks that this is the bill that's going to save the country and ensure his re-election in 2020. I say to that member "You're kidding yourself mate." This bill is an embarrassment. It's an embarrassment that the Minister introduced it saying that it was going to make a substantive difference to the important $5 billion-a-year local government sector.Here's the real message for the Government. The provisions in this bill that are so pathetic should have been included in a far more substantive reform bill in local government. Let me just give a simple example. There's a huge challenge for the local government sector across New Zealand particularly around strong growth and actually if we look at both population and economic growth every single district of New Zealand is experiencing growth right now. How do we match together the development levies the contributions from rates the contributions from the Government for making sure that we've got the roads the houses and all those things? If the bill had those sorts of issues addressed within it I'd be enthusiastically championing and recognising the vision of the Government.But the truth is this is a Government that is vacant on any substantive ideas to address the issues that matter and so we end up with these pathetic bills—these bills that will not make a dime's worth of difference to the lives of New Zealanders out there because they've failed. They've failed to do the homework. They've failed to provide the sort of vision that we need to tackle the challenges that New Zealand faces right now. And so we end up wasting Parliament's time with bills that mean diddly-squat.So my challenge to the Government is to stop rolling out pathetic bills of this sort. Where there's some legislative tidying-up to be done please put them in a statutes amendment bill please put them in a substantive bill. But six months into Government—if you take six months into the last Government we had the contest the argument between Ministers as to who could get House time to get their reform bills in. It was one of the biggest arguments we had—we had such a busy agenda. This bill is an embarrassment."