Luxton CameronCAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise and speak on this member's bill. Now we've heard an argument put forward tonight that one person one vote means you should only get one vote. But really what it means is that all votes should be equal. I'm sure the member opposite wouldn't want to see a situation where a New Zealand citizen who also has voting rights in another country forfeits their voting rights in New Zealand because that is the level of analysis being done on the other side tonight. If you own a property outside of the rating area in which you reside you should have a right to vote in that because you have a vested interest in what happens in that community what happens with the debt levels what happens with the rates and what happens with your investment in a town which means a person who invests in a town would like to see a town get better. I do not think that the level of analysis has been properly applied by the members opposite tonight.A better principle which we could use which has been spoken about by my learned colleague Miles Anderson is: no taxation without representation. Now Tauranga residents have had a long time of being rated without representation. We are waiting. And thank you to the Minister of Local Government for declaring that we will be having an election in July. Finally the people of Tauranga will get to enjoy that privilege which is one of being a free citizen in a property-owning democracy: the right to vote in your local body. As I say we know what it's like to go without it and I would not want to be on the side removing the right to vote from somebody.Now we should have a say in the use of the rates which are charged on a property which we own. I'll address the member across the House saying that it is the renter that pays for. Well that is not always the case. Sometimes when your property has been left in a state of disrepair and you must go through the process of renovations because of a leaky-home crisis or some such you're still paying rates. So it's not always on the renter. I grant that is a minor case but what you are doing is—sorry Madam Speaker; what a purchaser of a property is doing is investing in the long-term prosperity of a community and wanting to have a say because they have a vested interest. If the community does better and people would like to move to said community then the property value will go up and that is where the property owner will benefit.So I think another benefit on that train of thought is that people who have worked hard started businesses provided goods to the community have used their skills and whatever natural endowments they have talent wise to produce wealth and have been able to invest it in more property—what we want to see is those people investing in areas perhaps outside of their immediate neighbourhood spreading the wealth and the knowledge around the community. They may take governance skills business skills even the skills of being able to swing a hammer or roll on some paint to another community in which they can provide benefit if we were to remove a current situation that is another hurdle which someone would have to cross when completing an investment in a property outside of their immediate neighbourhood.Now another thing that comes up quite often when we're talking about local government and local democracy is we hear people decrying the low voter turnout and specifically in the Tauranga area—[Bell rung] Oh I didn't realise that the call was only five minutes but cool—we hear of sub 40 percent voter turnout. Now why would we want to do another? Why would we want to do another thing to put a hurdle in the way of people getting involved in local democracy? We want more democracy not less. The ACT Party opposes this bill. Thank you.