Sage EugenieLOCAL GOVERNMENT (PECUNIARY INTERESTS REGISTER) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed from 4 May.Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe te Māngai o te Whare. The Green Party is pleased to support the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill and congratulate Tangi Utikere for all of his work on the bill. And I think he can be very proud because I know that Local Government New Zealand will be preparing quite detailed induction materials for all of the new councillors and some of the existing ones that will be elected later on this year. If this bill continues on its third reading today—which I'm sure it will—it will be part of those induction materials in terms of just the changes that the bill makes to improve transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in our democratically elected local authorities.And I think in terms of the way in which the bill has come back to the House it really reinforces the benefits of going to select committee the benefits of all of those who made submissions and the select committee's very thorough consideration of those submissions and its changes to the bill clarifying a number of matters and also adding some things to the bill making it clear that the bill also applied while the Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Act applies because that Act does prohibit members from voting on or discussing issues before the local authority in which they directly or indirectly have a conflict of interest. So this bill does not replace that Act but I would encourage Mr Utikere to perhaps with his success here go on and consider another member's bill to reform LAMIA—the Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Act—because I know that Local Government New Zealand and others have been raising concerns about that Act for some considerable time about how it is 50 years old and somewhat out of date and has had quite significant problems in terms of its implementation.So this bill is an improvement to local authority law. And some of the changes that were made in select committee were making it very clear for example that local councillors when they were declaring a property interest—in the same way that members of Parliament do—it wasn't to be the specific address of that real property; it was to be the general location. That was another example of the changes that the bill is implementing seek to put local councillors on a similar footing in terms of members of Parliament in terms of the interests that they have to declare and be transparent about.But I would like to comment on the rather puzzling contribution from a National member: Maureen Pugh. We had a very thoughtful contribution from Simon Watts when the House was considering the bill previously about National's support for the bill. But Ms Pugh despite being a former Mayor of Westland District Council seemed to be puzzled about the need for this bill. And yet I was puzzled because it was the Westland District Council of course which got the attention of the Office of the Auditor-General for the way in which they had carried out their work in terms of protecting waste-water infrastructure at Franz Josef in 2019. And the Office of the Auditor-General raised serious concerns about the way in which elected councillors had identified and approached potential contractors to do the work to implement the stopbank and the Auditor-General concluded that there were numerous examples of poor decision-making and poor procurement.So what this bill is seeking to do is make it very clear to councillors that they need to declare their interests in order to be transparent about that whenever an issue that potentially relates to those interests is being discussed by council. And we welcome the fact that I think all of the parties across the House are supporting this bill because it will be a positive change to the law. Kia ora.