Wall Louisa: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4772. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I too want to pay my respects to you and the communities in Whanganui who have been devastated by the floods and send our aroha from right across Aotearoa actually. Some of the images have been quite distressing so I acknowledge that you have had to deal with that at this time.It is my pleasure to speak on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3). I would like to acknowledge the Hon Maggie Barry whose bill this initially was. It has now been transferred to Alfred Ngaro and it seems to me that there are three main issues or problems that this piece of legislation is trying to correct or fix. The first is about conflict of interest. The proposition is that if you serve on multiple boards then you have a conflict of interest because supposedly the communities you are serving may have different needs and so you are pulled in all sorts of directions because you cannot reconcile the priorities of those two communities. I just want to put on record that a conflict of interest is actually “a situation in which a person is in a position to derive personal benefit from actions or decisions made in their official capacity.” So if you are torn in a whole lot of different parts—which actually we are a number of times in this House because we end up debating and discussing particular pieces of legislation that some members of our communities support and others do not—I guess we have to use our judgment in determining where we sit on that spectrum. So dealing with conflict of interest is actually an inherent responsibility and role as a member of Parliament.The second issue that this bill seeks to rectify—actually I will quote Minister Barry from a press release I have seen: “This has allowed local board power to be concentrated in the hands of a few people many of whom don’t even live in the area they represent.” So I guess that a fundamental question this legislation is proposing is whether you should live in the area you represent. It is an interesting proposition. I am sure that there are a number of members of Parliament who actually do not physically live in the electorate they represent for a number of reasons. I am sure my former colleague Lynne Pillay will not mind if I say that she did live in the Waitakere electorate but the boundaries changed after the census. So sometimes people do not actually end up living in their electorate but they have a huge relationship commitment history—but that seems to be one of the issues that this piece of legislation is trying to deal with.I guess the third issue which I find really fascinating is this whole issue about double-dipping. So if you are a member of one local board and another local board and you collect two salaries because you represent that local board and that local board somehow there is a problem with that. What I want to highlight actually is an Auckland Council document dated 13 May 2013. It is titled Step forward for Auckland:Becoming an elected member. The interesting thing about this booklet is that it anticipates how much commitment a member of the local board should anticipate giving per week. If you are a chair it says that you will end up working 40 hours a week and if you are a local board member you should anticipate working between 15 and 25 hours a week.So if you serve on two local boards and you are anticipated to work between 15 and 25 hours a week actually that is between 30 and 50 hours per week. Is that unmanageable I guess as a concept? Is that type of workload unmanageable? Because actually what this bill says in clause 5(2)(c) is “must not serve as a member on 2 or more local boards at the same time.” What about being a chair?It does not mention anything about not beinga chair. The reason I bring it up is that actually I think having that responsibility of a 40-hour week position actually might challenge your ability to do a good job if you are on two different boards.But if you are a memberof a local board who is on two local boards is working between 30 and 50 hours actually an unmanageable workload?So that is my short contribution to this debate. I will reiterate that weare supporting this bill to the select committee. I look forward to reading the select committee report on this piece of legislation actually and whether or not this is sufficient because maybe there will be some other Supplementary Order Papers that the select committee recommends. Kia ora.