Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Kia ora thank you. The Green Party is absolutely voting in support of the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I do congratulate the Governance and Administration Committee for putting through what appears to be a bit of a tidy-up as others have mentioned to get the machinery a bit of an all-over service from what I can gather.It's an omnibus—I learnt that word when I came into this place—which really just means that it's taking in this case I think seven pieces of law giving them all a bit of a tidy-up a bit of a spruce-up and also a bit of consistency work across the seven statutes—gaps errors duplications. So a good thing for this House to be doing making sure that—I guess the word is efficient—the local government regulatory systems are doing their work in a way that is streamlined and common-sense and modern and up to date has also taken into account the various changes in those specific bills that have happened over the years to make sure we bring that legislation into play and making sure that we are getting good bang for the buck as well across local government work in particular.I know that these amendments are largely technical and administrative but I did pique my interest a little bit on—so it is the Fostering participation in local elections". I think that talks about in the bill "clause 10 would amend the Local Electoral Act" and it talks about placing a duty on the "electoral officer of a local authority to facilitate and foster representative and substantial electoral participation." something I would hope we all want. I am not part of the committee so I'm actually unsure what was already in place around that responsibility to improve people wanting to take part in well not just local government elections but all parts of how ordinary citizens can make their voice heard in all of the different decisions that are made. I'm not sure what the legislation was previously to this amended change. If it is just an administrative change—actually the committee seem to have gone even further where the committee felt that the duty for encouraging better participation in these local electoral—you know that part of our democracy—absolutely should be placed on "impartial public servants rather than … incumbent elected representatives." to try and keep it fair.But the committee went further to say that it should be the CE the chief executive of local authorities who are better resourced to carry out that duty. So I think that's a wise change from what was originally introduced. I'm interested in knowing what was beforehand because we know that we could do a lot better in making it sexy to participate in anything to do with voting in democratic—and especially in local government. I mean a lot of our ordinary citizens don't always understand how much power and resource and decisions are made that affect our daily lives. So that did pique my interest a bit in whether it would actually make any impact on really improving it or whether it was really just an administrative change.I also picked up just like my colleague Denise Lee who spoke before me that the committee—bless them—went further around the definition of public notice and being publicly notified by local government activities and talked about plain language explanation. Well that in itself actually is how we encourage and improve participation from citizens. Often cumbersome heavy processes and clunky processes and language can just turn people off straight away so I think bless them. Bless the committee for being able to go a bit further and try and look for other ways of making the suggested improvements even better.Apart from that it appears that this is long overdue from what I heard in the House tonight. This came from the productivity report that was in the previous Government and we're finally bringing it into now the second reading in this place. So I'm all for seeing if we can improve our systems seeing if we can get things a bit streamlined cutting out some of the unnecessary stuff. I was going to use a car metaphor but probably not good for the co-leader of the Green Party so I will go with gardening: a bit of weeding nourish the soil plant a few extra things. I think that's how I'm coming to terms with what we're doing with this omnibus bill in this House. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."