Logie Jan: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10802. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): Mr Deputy Speaker you may be relieved to know that this is going to be quite a short contribution on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) in the name of the member Alfred Ngaro. I would like to offer my congratulations to the member on getting a bill drawn and seeing it through this process in a way that seems to have very strong support across the House. That is a very rare thing and I am incredibly envious.This is a bill—and I know that there is a party in the House that is opposing it—that is quite a constrained bill. It is not going to change the world. The effect of the bill is that new people standing for council or local boards in Auckland will not be able to be appointed to two or more local boards. They can run for more than one local board but as has been previously mentioned they will need to indicate that to the voters and rank the order of preference for those boards.So it seems that the intent of it as stated and as supported by most submitters is to remove a perception of conflict of interest and to connect people to their local representatives and connect the local representatives to a community. It is to ground them in a community and that is something that the Green Party supports. We believe strongly in appropriate decision-making and decisions being as close to ground level as possible.I have heard the arguments from some other members and from one of the submissions that actually this bill is not necessary. You know there are people on district health boards on licensing boards and on a whole range of boards and that is not a problem. In this world when these are not full-time jobs people can manage those different interests. Well I think it has been pointed out—and it is a view that I share—that local boards are different. Part of their role is advocating to Auckland Council for resources and also for policy positions.I can imagine the situation where the community I was living in say had a very strong position on an issue and another community had a very different position. You could argue that a representative who was on both of those local boards would then be able to say to Auckland Council “Well look there are these two perspectives.” and you could say that is helpful for Auckland. But I would say that is actually diluting the voice of the local people and that it is the role of Auckland Council to hear those two pure unadulterated voices of those communities and then for the council to make that assessment of difference and make its decisions on the basis of that.But for that person to be introducing the compromise and the tensions I do not think that helps represent the people of their communities. I think that dilutes the voices of their communities. So we are absolutely supporting this bill to ensure that the local board members represent one community in Auckland. Thank you.