Arbuckle JamieJAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Local Government (Facilitation of Remote Participation) Amendment Bill. This actually kind of touches a little bit on my heart because actually I'm still a local government member at the moment so obviously some of what I will speak of today is actually stuff that I am dealing with daily.But firstly how did this come about? It came about through COVID times. I remember being on the Marlborough District Council and being able to participate. It was probably the first time in my local government career where we were actually participating daily and weekly on Zoom meetings and it was something that was new to us. It was something probably prior to COVID—being a local body member we had always turned up to the meeting and if we couldn't turn up to the meeting well that was just hard luck. But through COVID we had that opportunity to do the Zoom meetings and I must say for a period of time it was very very useful. The former Minister the Hon Kieran McAnulty who just spoke before on the other side of the House also mentioned around emergency situations. In emergency situations around cyclones and different weather events being able to participate through the Zoom meetings is also really really useful. But the one insight I would like to give everyone in the House is that when you're participating daily and weekly on Zoom meetings you very much quickly lose the relevance of what's happening in the room. It's like anything in life: face-to-face meetings are so important and face-to-face contact and also face-to-face with your community because often in our chamber at the Marlborough District Council we have constituents that come. Actually to be able to eyeball them and see the motion of the meeting as you're discussing things becomes really really important. I must say that when you're Zooming—and I guess the new thing these days is Teams—you lose that interaction with the room and what's happening. It is really important when you're debating to actually be able to physically see someone and actually see them and actually talk to them.The one important thing about this bill is it's talking about the quorum—it's talking about making the numbers. The one thing that we all should recognise pretty quickly is that most councils have more than one two three members—most councils I'm aware of have at least 10 12 members. The council I'm involved in has 15 and that includes the mayor. So one person does not make the difference.But what this bill is saying is basically you want to be also counted in the quorum of that meeting saying that you were there and that your vote counts. What I would say back to that is that in my experience on council I always represent—if you can participate and you can still participate through this bill. You can still go on a Zoom meeting you can still go on a Teams meeting you can still talk and you can still hear what's happening; just your vote will not be counted. The one thing you do learn on local government—Hon Willow-Jean Prime: That's kind of what you're an elected member for though right?JAMIE ARBUCKLE: No it's not because the one thing is getting a point of view across. If you can't trust the rest of your councillors to make the right decision then you actually aren't making a very good debate in the first place.The other thing is the types of meetings that we're talking of. In local government you have full council where basically like here in the House everyone turns up—but you have a lot of subcommittees and a lot of times in subcommittees there may only be two or three members. In those meetings you only need a quorum of one under standing orders. In most meetings under standing orders you will need four out of seven or four out of eight to make the quorum so that shouldn't be too hard to actually achieve.So from this point of view I can understand maybe from some people that are in the rural community they may be in—like in my community they live in the Marlborough Sounds. It does take commitment to actually travel to the council and to participate but that is something that you put your hand up to be a local member for.So what I say to this House today is New Zealand First does not support this bill because you already have the ability to participate and you should rely on the rest of your council—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member's time has expired.