Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. I'm very pleased to speak to this Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill about the four well-beings—social economic environmental and cultural well-beings.Now National opposes this bill and we oppose it because it's like going backwards. I was part of the first Local Government and Environment Committee back in 2012 when we first heard the submissions on the 2012 bill which changed the community well-beings and removed them. That change was then to reflect increasing concerns about rates that were going up. It was the fact that many councils were funding all sorts of fabulous projects from development contributions but many of the ratepayers were not convinced it was the right thing to do. We heard from them ad nauseam. Hundreds of them came to give submissions and Mr Ball might be interested to know that it was not just the business community; it was ordinary Kiwis and particularly quite a lot of elderly Kiwis concerned about paying increasing rates on a fixed income.There was also an ongoing concern about the affordability of housing and the fact that some councils were using development levies to fund infrastructure that was nice to have—swimming pools libraries and those sorts of things—but that was delivering amenity to a much wider community than the one that was actually paying for it and of course that was making it difficult for young people particularly first-home owners to get into their own home. There's always a balance between what the community would like to have in terms of amenity and what they're prepared to pay for and in my time working in local government there was one hard and fast rule: ratepayers—and taxpayers actually—want the very best facilities but they don't want to pay for them.One of the problems that we have is often in terms of community consultation we ask people when we're considering a new project Would you like a new swimming pool?" And of course they say yes but if you actually said to them "Would you like a new swimming pool—and that will be $100 on your rates every year for the next 10 years?" there might be a different answer.I was actually wondering why the Government is actually bothering to do this—except for the fact of course that it was Mr Eagle's member's bill—because when you look at the regulatory impact statement about restoring the four well-beings it says and I quote from clause 36 "Our analysis is that the actual impact of the change[s] to the purpose of the local government on … decision-making services and activities is likely to be low". It has to be a symbolic bill rather than one that's going to make a real difference.I remember those consultations on the 2012 amendments. There was a great divergence in opinion about what local government should be spending ratepayers' money on. We need to get the balance right this time. It's fine for Minister Nanaia Mahuta to talk about how it moves the focus back on to community decision-making—everybody agrees with that; we don't want to tell them how to spend their money—but there's not uniform agreement of what the community can and wants to afford. Many ratepayers feel absolutely disenfranchised and helpless as expectations of the community increase and rates skyrocket—and again I refer back to elderly New Zealanders who are often on a fixed income.Every ratepayer should be confident that the council is delivering good value for money in terms of rates and that they can afford to continue to live in their homes in the future. They are happy to pay for the core roles of local government but they want local government to be cost-effective they want it to be efficient and they want value for their rate money and I absolutely support that. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."