McAnulty Kieran; Brown SimeonHon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I'm still waiting actually for answers to previous questions. One was in regard to the funding of councils particularly those that aren't in a position to finance easily the costs of the referenda and that led to a subsequent question which was which councils asked the Minister for this. That's actually an important one because at a previous debate when we were discussing the proposed repeal of the water reform I asked the Minister on numerous occasions which councils did he engage with and he refused to answer. He didn't even get up and acknowledge it. I want to pre-empt that now and say we've seen this trick before. I think the House deserves an answer.While he's considering that I am specifically considering here Amendment Paper 48 in new section 19ZB(3). It mentions here—it defines—'specified number of electors' in relation to a territorial authority or regional council means a number of electors equal to or greater than 5 %". Five percent is very low. I'm sitting there thinking about it. What are the implications of 5 percent? First of all it won't require many people to bring forward a referendum that isn't broadly supported by the community. As the Minister has said on numerous occasions—not necessarily in answer to the question but nevertheless it has been said—that is democracy playing out. But it also comes at a cost.Now if 5 percent of the population can trigger a referendum that to me seems like something that really councils are going to have to factor into their finances moving forward ongoing. As I said earlier—and we might have been able to address this if the Minister answered the question—small things such as even just electing an additional cleaner mean a significant increase in rates for some councils. Now they're potentially facing the costs of a referendum that's going to be triggered by 5 percent. Now it's a reasonable question and it's not one that's been posed before but would he consider increasing that? If the referendum is going to be held and a majority needs to be sought in order to change things why trigger it at such a low amount? When you consider a citizens initiated referendum—even that's higher and that requires them to go across the whole country. This requires them just to do it in a district. Now as we know some districts are quite small and it's going to be very easy to trigger 5 percent. If all he wants to do is give people the option to have a say—I don't accept that but this is what he said—5 percent is incredibly low. Would he consider a different level? Would he actually engage with us on a proposed amendment here? We can go away and draft it up pretty easily. Where's the wriggle room here? Five percent is very low—very low—so let's work on this.Ultimately we haven't had an opportunity really until now—until this committee of the whole House stage—to work our way through this amendment paper which is thicker than the original bill. We're slowly going through it and then we get to this.I did put forward an amendment earlier which he has indicated he's not going to support—which I think is a shame because it would actually achieve his pleas for consistency. So work with us on this.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Just to answer the member's questions in regards to funding ultimately there are a range of costs. Ultimately we as a Government decided to hold the referendums alongside the election to minimise the costs. Hon Kieran McAnulty: It's a bit of a cost though isn't it?Hon SIMEON BROWN: Democracy does have a cost. In terms of the 5 percent that is effectively going back to what the previous legislation was which was put in place by the Helen Clark Government. So we're just simply putting that back in place. In relation to the tabled amendment he rightly points out the size of it. It makes one key change but ultimately that change has a range of tracked changes which are required throughout the bill. But the simple change is it requires the council to make a resolution by 6 September whether to disestablish or rescind or have a referendum. So whilst yes it's a sizable document ultimately there is only one change that is being made effectively through that tabled amendment."