Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Mr Chair. This is my first opportunity to speak in this debate and I really appreciate the opportunity to take a call. This will be a technical speech and it introduces a new point that relates to new section 19Z(2) inserted by clause 6 and again further into the amendment that the Minister has put forward at clause 7.CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Section 19ZA did you say?ARENA WILLIAMS: New section 19Z(2). What I'm seeking to ask the Minister is essentially a point about the consequences of those councils who have a large Māori constituency creating a geographic ward to act as a de facto Māori ward. So let me explain the context of this point because it is a new point and I'd like to hear from the Minister on it. Many councils around Aotearoa New Zealand have large Māori populations for example the Rotorua Lakes Council or the Wairoa District Council. In some of those areas there are one or two geographic areas in the council's boundary where those areas are predominantly Māori. They have a population that is largely Māori and where the other ethnic groups are minorities. Then there are some councils where if geographic boundaries were redrawn where they have Māori constituencies currently they could use boundaries to define new areas.So what I'm asking is how the new provisions in section 19 impact on a council's new responsibility when it turns its mind under the new provisions to a boundary review. It would be useful for the Minister I guess to take the committee through what those factors are when a council will consider a boundaries review or a representation review under the new mechanism if they have Māori councillors sitting around the table if they have a new commitment to Māori representation in their councils like many of the mayors who have written to him have expressed that they do.To give the committee some further context there is a ticket that runs in the area that both the Minister and I are from. It's called the Action Team. When that ticket was first established by the Hon George Hawkins who was the mayor for Manurewa later in his life but at the time he was Papakura mayor and before that a city councillor my father stood on that. It is also the ticket that the Minister stood on when he was elected to local government. It has a proud history in South Auckland of representing the concerns of local people. It is considered to be a highly localised ticket and it represents centrist views. It's important to recognise there that when my father was standing he was one of the first Māori to be seeking election in the area in an area that had significant Māori population. When he won that seat he credited the Māori population in that area for electing him. Later in his career a representation review changed the boundaries. In his view the change of boundaries meant that he lost some of his traditional support base which was those Māori communities represented in that area. I raise that question because that is a question which has been put to the Minister before. He hasn't had an opportunity to consider really the point that goes in the other direction. If we have councils around the country who stand to lose their Māori councillors who they have relationships with who they have gained a lot of benefit from sitting around the table not only in terms of their relationships with Māori communities but also their knowledge of te taiao and their relationships with iwi Māori which are both really important considerations for local government representation then are we setting up a situation for ourselves where it is possible that councils around the country particularly places like Rotorua and Wairoa—I'd like an answer from the Minister on those two particularly. Will they be in a position where they will be trying to create constituencies of their Māori voters in a geographic way and does that create a situation where other people are not being represented in the same way? Would it not be better to have a Māori ward in those areas where there is a high Māori population so that we can have Māori councillors who are taking Māori views into account and representing Māori constituencies whilst also having other representation around the table? Is it useful I guess to be using the boundaries reviews and the representation reviews in that way to now accommodate for something that councils see themselves as losing? Are we getting ourselves into a situation where representation reviews will be conducted up and down the country and result in something like that which is not the intended consequence?