Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker thank you. I'm very pleased to speak on behalf of the Green Party on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill and congratulate Tangi Utikere—having been in this Parliament for nearly 10 years and never having had a member's bill pulled from the ballot the luck of the biscuit tin definitely was with him in getting it pulled within the first 12 months. It is a very worthwhile bill and it was really interesting in terms of just preparing to speak having been an elected regional councillor of Environment Canterbury from 2007 till 2010 when the Hon Nick Smith and Rodney Hide summarily removed elected councillors and replaced us with commissioners I think we did fill in a conflict of interest declaration then but going through and looking at what other declarations councils had—the Christchurch City Council for example has quite a comprehensive pecuniary interest declaration that seems to be modelled very much on the one that parliamentarians fill in whereas Environment Canterbury has a much more circumscribed one and Nelson City Council has quite a good one as well. So I think that reinforces the point that the member made that the provisions across the country are not consistent and that this bill therefore will provide that consistency.I think back in the 1990s there was quite a focus on increasing the transparency of council decision-making efficiency effectiveness and accountability. Legislation then—the Local Electoral Act 2001 the Local Government Act 2002 and the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002—did provide councils with more flexible tools and the Local Government Act also requires in section 14 that councils conduct their business in a clear transparent and democratically accountable way. The legislation means that all councils have to adopt a code of conduct setting out how elected members behave towards each other towards staff and how they use the information available to them as elected members. So certainly councils do have codes of conduct and then some of them have gone further in terms of pecuniary interests. So this bill is adding that extra layer of transparency. And also I guess there is the Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Act 1968 and that ensures that members are not affected by personal motives when they participate in council decisions and it prohibits members from being involved in a council decision if they have a pecuniary interest other than one that they hold in common with the public generally or unless they have actually sought and obtained an exemption or a declaration from the Office of the Auditor-General. That highlighting one thing but what this register will do is make it much more obvious—the range of pecuniary interests that councillors will have.Like other members I think the submissions to the select committee—if it gets that far and I hope it will—will be quite interesting because the point Tangi Utikere made was: what period should the declaration cover? I think there may be some concern if it is going to cover a whole year or whether it is done as MPs do it: the interest that we have registered on 31 January each year a snapshot in time. One of the other issues is the fact that central government has put a lot more responsibilities on local councils and then not provided the funding to enable them to carry that out. I think that is a big conversation that needs to be had particularly around things like three waters. Collating the declarations that councillors make for say 14 or so councillors may not require a lot of staff time and expertise but as Sir Maarten Wevers who performs that role at Parliament—(a) he's independent; (b) he said in his report this year that being a new Parliament there were a lot more requests for advice that went to him. So I think there does need to be some thought as to who needs to be responsible for the collation: is it the council or is that managed nationally and does central government help fund it to protect the independence of that person as we have with the registrar here Sir Maarten Wevers?Most councils where they've got a register do have them on their websites though they are sometimes quite difficult to find. But that may be—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.