Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Mr Speaker, this bill has re-emerged after six months in select committee, and I want to thank you as the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, and colleagues as well for their diligence in examining this bill. Sir, I have to say that I was fortunate, as you know, to be able to join with you and colleagues as part of the bulk of the committee’s considerations of the bill and was able to witness the ongoing collegiality that I certainly experienced as a former member of that committee early in my current parliamentary term. I’m delighted that the select committee received this bill with the unanimous agreement of the House, and it has now re-emerged with some suggested amendments, with some sense of a unanimous nature as well—and I’ll come to those amendments shortly.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge the submitters—the individuals, the organisations, the unitary and territory authorities; 23 in total—that submitted on the bill. They raised excellent points; their submissions were well considered and were well received by the select committee. I also want to acknowledge the registrar who deals with the parliamentary register here. Sir Maarten Wevers took up the invitation from the select committee, as you know, sir, to speak with the committee—someone who has spent eight years in that particular role—and was able to provide some good advice. As you know, the intention of the committee was to try and seek some natural alignment with, perhaps, the parliamentary approach that’s taken as well.

I want to also acknowledge the staff and the officials that were involved—particularly for their diligence but also for their strong and considered advice. In particular, can I thank them for understanding the issues that I was able to raise and for the fulsome and timely response and advice that they were able to provide to the select committee as a result of that and other questions and points that were raised by members as well.

This bill, as I say, has emerged from select committee—in my assessment, actually—in a better shape than when it went into the select committee. And that’s what we hope, right? We hope, with legislation, when it goes through a public submissions process, that the select committee considers the feedback and submissions from the public in the broader and wider sense, and that, as a result, when it comes back here, it’s in a better shape than when they received it. So that’s the first point that I wish to make.

The suggested amendments—I have to say I agree with all of them—provide clarity. They provide specificity; they provide more accuracy around what will be expected of those who are successfully elected to public office within the context of local government. This is because the purpose of the bill is around transparency and integrity in local decision-making. It is not about putting people off standing for public office in communities, but it is about ensuring there is consistency around New Zealand when it comes to declaring interests for those who make decisions—decisions that affect all of us.

Naturally, with a proposed list of what would be required to be disclosed, there is a degree of an individual’s privacy being curtailed to some extent. However, the Attorney-General’s advice for the select committee actually concluded that the desire to strengthen that trust and confidence for the public is “sufficiently important” to justify the curtailment. And, on the topic of privacy, I want to also acknowledge the Privacy Commissioner for the suggestion of an additional component about what the purpose of the register is, and that will appear in the bill—it’s being renumbered as section 54B of the Act. Further, the information contained in the register will be retained for a period of five years—that’s the suggestion of the select committee—and I note that that is consistent with existing provisions for how information is retained by those that file electoral-candidacy returns and how those are managed as well.

Mr Speaker, in my first reading contribution, there were some matters that I did hope the select committee would consider. And I’m delighted that you and your team did, because you’ve suggested amendments as a result, and I just want to touch on some of them briefly—other members making contributions may do the same this evening.

The first is around who this bill will actually apply to, and that’s actually outlined in the new section 54A(1). As originally drafted, the bill would only relate to members of local authorities—so mayors, deputy mayors, district and city councillors, regional chairs, regional deputy chairs, and regional councillors. The new section extends coverage to include members of community boards and also members of local boards. I guess, when I look at that, it’s in line with the transparency focus, and, in the Auckland context, it’s important because many local boards have decision-making capabilities and capacities that are equal to—or, in some instances, I’d suggest greater than—some other councils around the country. So this is a sensible inclusion. A point of discussion, however, was whether this should also cover appointed members—people who are appointed by councils to committees and the like—and the select committee received advice, and they’re not suggesting that change, because they believe that that’s already covered by existing arrangements; in particular, the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act 1968, which we referred to as “LAMIA”.

The select committee has also recommended that, while the registrar would need to maintain a register of interests, it’s actually more appropriate that an accurate summary of that register be made publicly available rather than every single, itemised item. I certainly accept that: that that’s a pragmatic way to balance privacy with the public accountability and transparency lens as well without members being required to have all and sundry within the public domain.

A new section 54D will also ensure that the onus is on the member to ensure that the information that is submitted is accurate and that there is now going to be, in line with the committee’s recommendations, a process for correcting any information that might be an error or an omission as soon as that is known.

Section 54E outlines some new requirements for what is to be included in a member’s return. One change is the control threshold in a company from 5 percent to 10 percent holdings—that’s consistent with other local government legislation. Another is that the details of a member’s property can be a general location description rather than a specific one. And there is no requirement to disclose companies or business interests for which the member is an investor by way of a managed investment scheme—very similar to the parliamentary approach there.

There is a new section 54F that’s been renumbered. The gifts threshold does remain at $500, but the select committee is suggesting that there is a change to ensure that that covers a cumulative amount; so, if there is one donor who gives a constant stream of gifts to a member, as soon as it hits $500, then it’s eligible to be, or required to be, declared. It will, however, exclude any gifts that are received from family members, and a helpful change from the select committee is to define who a family member is, which is consistent with the parliamentary approach as well. That also extends to travel and accommodation disclosure requirements from family members in that section. So I think that all of those changes do provide clarity for the purpose of the exposure.

Mr Speaker, as you will know, on page 8 of the select committee’s report, the committee does flag a suggested further amendment. Unfortunately, the committee didn’t have time, because this was something that arose, as you know, late in its deliberations, but they didn’t want to draft a change on the fly without any consideration to any unintended consequences. And it relates to the interactions and the perception of obligations for a member to disclose under this bill but also under LAMIA. And, to avoid any doubt, the committee, in its report, has suggested that there perhaps should be an amendment to make very clear that any interest declared under this bill is actually not automatically captured as a pecuniary interest under LAMIA, and vice versa. So, after discussions within select committee, it was suggested that the best way forward would be for myself to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to address that, and so I signal to the House this evening that that is my intention to do that as part of the committee stage and also to give effect to the Governance and Administration Committee’s discussions on that particular point.

So thank you, Mr Speaker, for leading that committee and for ensuring that those issues were adequately addressed. And I note that they were addressed by the unanimous consent of the select committee—so, good to see all parties on that particular page. This is a bill about transparency and accountability, and I’m delighted to commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and I acknowledge the member who has just resumed his seat, Tangi Utikere, for bringing this member’s bill to the House. I also acknowledge the very excellent—very excellent, it’s probably not the best thing but the—highly prestigious select committee that, Mr Speaker, I know obviously, you chair, which is probably the only time I can bring you into this. But I think we acknowledged the members of that committee for their contribution [Phone ringing in the Chamber] and the phone call that was just taken.

I want to say that National will be supporting this bill. Look, in a basic sense, we’re supporting the fact around more transparency. We think that’s a sensible idea. Members of local government are key contributors in terms of our local communities, and having a degree of openness and transparency around their backgrounds, and particularly conflicts of interest, is sensible. It’s common practice in private sector. It is common practice in other aspects of our lives, and I think it is an appropriate check and balance in regards to that.

I think, also, particularly in regards to local councils and community boards—it was referenced by the speaker before—these are often within smaller communities and rural parts of New Zealand and, therefore, the reality is, is that those individuals will wear multiple hats in terms of the roles they undertake; i.e., being an elected member of the local council but also, no doubt, business owners and other voluntary contributions. So I think that transparency is important.

The one aspect I would want to note in the select committee report back was around the extension of this bill to appointed members on council committees. I do note that it says, the committee noted that “councils would still be able to require certain information to be disclosed by appointed members of council committees.” I think that is probably something we could explore a little bit more in the committee of the whole House stage.

That’s pretty much all I want to say. National support this bill. Sensible approach. We support the openness and transparency that this will bring, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call tonight on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. I just want to congratulate my colleague Tangi Utikere on his bill making its way through the House, and also my thanks to you, Mr Speaker, as chair of the Governance and Administration Committee. As deputy chair, I guess I get to make the first call tonight on behalf of the select committee. But I will note that the select committee went through a very robust and detailed process over this bill. We have made a very large number of changes that we believe will make the bill much more workable but also align it better with the requirements and responsibilities put on us as members of Parliament in declaring our interests.

The comment I want to make at the beginning, I guess, is that we grappled a lot throughout our deliberations about the balance that is needed between transparency and ensuring that the public are aware of the interests of members who are making decisions at a local government level; the balance between those interests but also the need to ensure people aren’t put off from standing for local government in the first place.

One of the particular issues that occurs in local government—and I’ll come to this a bit later when I talk about the change we made around employment—is that for many people who work and operate within local government roles, as elected members, it is actually not something they’re able to do full time. In many of our smaller councils, we have a number of people who may be working even full time in a role and having to undertake other employment while they are an elected councillor. One of the challenges we face with that is that by the very nature of that arrangement it means that people will often be involved in a lot of other activities, which brings about with it a number of potential conflicts that occur. So we had a lot of conversations about that.

I think I’ll talk through some of the changes before I end up running out of time tonight. I think, when you look at a lot of those changes, you’ll see that we’ve made some pragmatic decisions and we’ve struck the right balance in a number of those areas. So I’d encourage members to read through the select committee report. It does go into a lot of these changes in detail.

As the previous speaker, Mr Watts, noted, we made a change to include local and community board members. Given that people in those elected roles do make decisions around how money is going to be spent within a community, the committee felt it was important that those members are covered.

In terms of people who are appointed to roles, the place where we landed on that is that it has become more common in local government for people to be appointed into roles. One of the councils in my electorate—Nelson City Council—has appointed people with significant financial responsibilities into roles, particularly around the audit and risk area. We made a decision as a committee not to include them in the bill; however, a council, of its own decision making, could still choose to require those people in appointed roles declare their interests. So that option is sitting there for councils to make that decision themselves.

The next change that we made was around ensuring that there’s reference in the bill to the purpose of the register. So we included a new section 54B, inserted by clause 4, to clearly state the purpose of the register.

We also made some decisions around including a summary of information as opposed to going right down into the detail. One of the discussions we had around that particular issue is, for example, someone who is working as a lawyer or as an accountant in a role in the community, who’s also a city councillor, that person may have a large number of clients and, actually, it would be of concern to those people if they had to list, potentially, all of the clients they had. Whereas, where we landed, I think, which is a pragmatic place to end up, is very much around that summary. That’s also consistent with the requirements of members of Parliament as well.

We had a long discussion around time frames and some discussions around whether someone needed to declare their interests annually or just once in a term or on a particular date. Where we landed was similar to the requirements for members of Parliament, which is for members to declare their interests 120 days after an election and, therefore, annually after that. So we did as much as we could to ensure some consistency with requirements for members of Parliament.

We also inserted a new section around the reporting of errors, so that if a member has a requirement to do their best to ensure accuracy in what they declare, but that if they have made an error that there is an obligation on them, to raise that and have that error corrected.

As my colleague Tangi Utikere pointed out, we lifted the percentage required for voting rights in a company from 5 percent up to 10 percent, again to be consistent with members of Parliament’s obligations.

One of the changes we made was just around the disclosing of information around real property. This issue came up in regards to privacy of local members. I guess this is actually a topical issue at the moment, in the sense that for many people in elected roles or public figures, there have been times recently where we’re seeing people being threatened in those roles, potentially being unsafe in those roles. The committee was very clear that disclosing the actual address of an elected member would be extremely inappropriate. It would cause particular concern around safety for that individual. So we made the decision, which is, again, comparable with members of Parliament’s interest, to disclose the general location—so, for example, the city or the town or the suburb.

So I want to make a particular note here around noting a member’s remuneration. This is a particular issue where, as the bill was originally drafted, it may have been read to require someone to disclose their actual earnings from employment. The committee was quite clear that that level of detail is just not required. If someone works in a role, whether it be a supermarket worker or a consultant, they shouldn’t be required in their interest to actually disclose what their salary is. Absolutely, they’ll be required to disclose that they have that employment—but not, for example, the level of detail that would actually just go a little bit too far in disclosing that member’s individual and private information.

We made some changes around interests of members who are involved in other organisations. This is quite common in local government: that you’ll have people involved in a community organisation, sitting on the board of that organisation, and that organisation may be seeking applying for funds from a council, and that’s extremely common. Rather than requiring a member to list the full list of organisations that they sit on the board of, we made a determination that only those that received funding from a council or that have applied for funding from that council would be required to actually be listed on the register.

As other members have noted, we’ve changed some of the details around gifts and travel costs so that it’s a cumulative amount. Again, you’ve probably heard me say this quite a few times tonight, we made some changes to be consistent with requirements for members of Parliament.

I’ll just finish by noting the possible amendment to consider as listed in the select committee report. Mr Speaker, as you’ll be aware, in your role as chair, we as a committee ended up considering a matter in terms of how the bill interacts with the LAMIA—so the Local Authority (Members’ Interests) Act—how those two bills interact. We had that conversation very, very late in our discussion. We had to make a decision as a committee, which we made unanimously, which was something we felt was important, and we all agreed this was an important amendment but we weren’t within the time frame to include it within the report back to the House. So the committee all unanimously agreed that this was an important amendment to make, but, for a whole lot of timing reasons, we weren’t able to do it in time for the House. So my hope and encouragement is for the House to support Mr Utikere’s Supplementary Order Paper when he introduces it.

So, look, I managed to get to 10 minutes, and I think I got through the whole thing. So thank you, Mr Speaker, and I didn’t run out of time, which was great. So I commend this bill to the House and look forward to further contributions.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I must applaud the member for Nelson on her diligent use of the 10 minutes that she had available to her. The whips were nodding enthusiastically. But I have to say, to her credit, some of it was even interesting and actually—[Interruption] Ha, ha! She spilled her water. It did actually summarise, I think, very well the deliberations of what I think is an effective Governance and Administration Committee so ably chaired by the member for Rangitīkei. And I want to just put on record my congratulations, actually, to a new member, Mr Utikere—not that new now, but I think this is his first member’s bill. It’s always good to bring a bill to the House and have it passed into law. I’m confident we’re going to get there.

I don’t intend to re-traverse the very good summary that Ms Boyack gave, except to say that I want to congratulate both Mr Utikere and the chair, who are both former local councillors, because that actually, I think, added some real insight into what we were doing here. It’s one thing to bring the bill in one form, but then to make sure it’s fit for purpose when it comes back out of the select committee is also important, and I think we’ve done that as a committee very well. Can I thank the officials who supported us and the many submitters from around the country, many of whom were councillors or councils themselves, who made the suggestions for improvement that Rachel Boyack summarised.

It’s a thankless task. In fact, I’ve always said that being an MP is actually not as hard as being a local councillor. We have the benefit of collective caucus responsibility and we generally comply with it. I describe councillors as being like islands in an archipelago. They are out there all with their own franchise, keen to be re-elected it that’s their wish, and it’s a bit like herding cats if one is the mayor or even the chief executive officer, as is the case down my way, and it is also thankless. When we get to select committee and we have people submitting, particularly for the first time, I always think they look a little bit wide-eyed, a bit overwhelmed by the fact that they’re in this great place and they’re submitting to MPs; the same respect isn’t given to local councillors, in my experience. When I go to planning meetings or resource consent hearings, actually, it’s pretty disrespectful, I have to say, what I’ve seen, and I think anybody who puts themselves up for a local office, even as a community board member or as a local councillor or a regional councillor, has my admiration.

What worries me is that they’re not well remunerated, as the submissions and the report says. I use this at a macro level, because I don’t want to highlight any individuals, but what we risk doing is having a lot of people for whom the meeting fees and the stipend looks pretty attractive, and a lot of people for whom they’ve got so much independent income or wealth that it doesn’t matter, and, actually, we’re losing a really solid rump in the middle who might make excellent councillors but who are too busy in their day-to-day lives to actually put themselves up for office.

When I was a kid, all of our councillors were truly part-time, even in the fourth-largest city in the country; that’s not the case anymore. So for those people, and it is mentioned in the report, who are thinking about putting their hands up, I hope that the examination of their pecuniary interests and other aspects of their lives isn’t a barrier to them doing what is such important work. We’ve discussed that as a committee. I think we’ve landed it in the right place, and certainly the changes are improvements in that regard, but I would hate to think that somebody felt that there was such scrutiny that they weren’t prepared to put themselves through that. If somebody is of significant means and they have a potential conflict, LGOIA—the local government official information Act—

💬 Chris Bishop: LGOIMA.

LGOIMA—the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, thank you, Mr Bishop—does actually cover that. They can declare it. They can recuse themselves from decisions so that there is no conflict or even an appearance of conflict, and I hope that that doesn’t make matters worse. We need good people to stand for local government.

The last thing I just want to touch on is in respect of the issue of including local and community board members. The select committee report says that “We want to be clear that we don’t recommend extending the bill to representatives appointed to council committees.” I agree with that, but just not as stridently as the committee ended up. I am a bit worried that we’re coming to an area in our local government where, regardless of the reasons, we are doing more appointments relative to elections, and appointees to committees or councils where there is a financial decision-making process actually could be the subject of the potential for disclosure. I and my National colleague, singular, weren’t so stern on this that we that we thought that we should put in a minority view, mainly because the existing declarations would suffice, but I will be interested in whether or not that becomes a problem in the future.

I look forward to the committee of the whole House, because there is a bit of work to do, as Ms Boyack said. But in the meantime, thanks to submitters, thanks to officials, and well done to the sponsor.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on this bill, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. Can I just acknowledge the words of the previous speaker, the Hon Michael Woodhouse. I was just reflecting on what that member said about standing for the Mayor of Dunedin city. I think he said something like, “I’d rather put a hot needle in my eye.”, or something like that, which I thought was rather hilarious. But I guess that sort of sums up local government in many ways sometimes.

But on a more positive note, can I just acknowledge Tangi Utikere for the same reasons others have talked about—he has come from local government, as have myself, and, of course, the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee; I acknowledge you, Mr Speaker—and for bringing this around, improving the transparency and strengthening the public trust and confidence in the decision making of local authorities. I want to also just say to the member, yeah, it’s great, having a member’s bill drawn from the ballot and being able to have something to say that’s featured for a big part of his life in terms of being on Palmerston North City Council—and I note they’re looking for a chief executive—but also to reflect with some skill and experience why this is important to have for local government.

I want to just acknowledge this Government’s work—and if I can just point to the work of the Hon Nanaia Mahuta in terms of what Labour’s doing here for the future of local government, that review. They have already started engaging with the sector. We’ve seen other aspects in terms of Māori wards, other types of structures that are coming through in terms of saying what will the direction of this review look like. That draft report for consultation will happen next year, with a report due at some point in 2023 also; so, well done. This is the first reading, and so I’m looking forward to how this progresses through the select committee.

Look, I just wanted to point out a few things, and some of the things have already been said. I did note, interestingly, that one of the conversations has been around the comparison to central government, and that’s been mentioned by members in terms of saying, look, one example is the very full-time nature of this role versus local government, where, I know, in many of the smaller districts, it’s very much a part-time role. There’s also been the point made around those people, in particular, having many other jobs, or another job or role, and they can be various within the local community that they represent. So not only are they an elected member but they may own a construction company or be on several boards, and so the conflicts may be many. Then, of course, some of those organisations or entities that they sit on, they could be in another governance role or even have a management role, but some may even apply to the local authority for funding.

So these conflicts are many. I know one of the conversations that we had between the member and his former mayor there in Palmerston North was around the practice of declaring conflicts and pecuniary interests up front at the start of meetings or in some other way where it was sort of self-managing. I know that that can be seen as—look, I know even for the local authority here in the capital city, too often are there conflicts which need secondary legal opinions to determine whether they are, to determine what the consequences are, and then the behaviour of the individual will dictate how they participate in the conversation or in the deliberations of that particular paper or that topic. So I think one thing I conclude from the member’s desire here is to clean that up and to make sure that that’s not the sort of practice that is going to continue. So I applaud him for that.

I also note, too, that in terms of other local authorities, such as Auckland—and that has been mentioned—you have local boards, and so community boards and local boards. I know that community boards can be a lot smaller, but in this case of Auckland, the local boards can be as big as some of our district councils, and in control of much larger decision-making, or a part of that process for decision making, and so their interests, as such, will be much more transparent, which is the purpose of this bill, in terms of saying, “Well, if you are on those two types of committees, which are part of the local government structure currently, then you too will be subject to this bill.”

I did note with interest—I don’t sit on the Governance and Administration Committee; I did in the previous term—the conversation about those who are appointed to council committees. Now, I was interested in this because there is always some conflict, not with all members, but what you’ll find is they can come to these committees with several conflicts. So it was interesting to see that the committee has said that they would still be subject to disclosing the more limited information under the 1968 law on members’ interests.

So, look, I do wish the committee well as they go through this. I’m assured that it will be in time for the local body elections coming up on 8 October, and it will only be those who come in this year who will be subject to these. So, well done to this committee. Well done to the member for his work. I did want to finish off with one more comment, which I think I may have covered, so, look, I think I’ll finish there and say well done to the member and all the very best for this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, thank you. I’m very pleased to take a short call on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, because there is a very comprehensive nine-page report from the Governance and Administration Committee highlighting the changes that the committee has made in response to submissions. I also acknowledge the very comprehensive outline of the recommended changes to the bill that the bill’s sponsor, Tangi Utikere, and also Rachel Boyack made. I think they have been very clear, for anyone listening and for the Hansard, exactly what happened in select committee and what the changes are proposed to be.

So the Green Party does support this bill and its intent around improving transparency, public trust, and confidence in decision making by local authorities, because, of course, local councils manage infrastructure and other assets with a value of more than $135 billion. They’re responsible for significant planning and regulatory decisions, whether it’s resource consenting or urban planning, and those decisions can shape a community for decades, so the public needs to be confident that decision makers act transparently and in the public interest.

This bill is particularly useful because the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act 1968, LAMIA, while that certainly prevents elected members from discussing and voting on issues where they’ve got a pecuniary interest which isn’t in common in the public and it prevents someone from being an elected member where they or a company they control have got contracts worth more than $25,000 annually, it doesn’t require members to make an upfront declaration of their interests which might be relevant to any decisions the council makes.

While Local Government New Zealand has, for a long time, recommended that councils adopt a register of interests, as well as having a code of conduct, compliance is voluntary and the standards required around the country aren’t consistent. So the major value of this bill is introducing a regime which will be consistent across the country. It will require councils to actually hold and publish the register of pecuniary and other specified matters, whether it’s directorships, business interests, employment, or property.

As both Tangi Utikere and Rachel Boyack have noted, there’s been a lot of very good work in the select committee to ensure that the publication is of a summary, it’s of a level of generality that is similar to the register of interests that members of Parliament contribute to, so it’s not intruding on privacy but it is providing a level of transparency to the public.

There are quite a number of specific changes, but one change that I suggested in the first reading and hasn’t been picked up by the select committee, is this concept of having—and I noticed the Law Society raised it in its submission—a single external registrar for all local authorities, rather than just the chief executive of each council designating someone within the council to maintain the register.

I think Sir Maarten Wevers, in his role for the Parliament, has certainly shown the value of having that external person—also particularly when you’ve got a new Parliament, new MPs—in providing advice to members on what sort of information they need to provide in those declarations. So I still think that that concept deserves merit and it would bring the expertise into one place, rather than having it scattered across councils.

Rachel Boyack noted some comments around the select committee not having the time to deal with some of the issues around LAMIA and that there may be a Supplementary Order Paper around that, but as some of the submitters noted, and I think Taituarā – Local Government Professionals Aotearoa said, “LAMIA is complex, outdated, and difficult to interpret and apply. It predates accrual accounting, modern financial management provisions,” and all sorts of other things. So I sincerely hope that the local government Minister has LAMIA in her sights; with it being more than 50 years old, it does need to change. Tangi Utikere is bringing the pecuniary interests register into the 21st century, but this wider issue of pecuniary interests needs work as well.

The Green Party is very pleased to support the bill. We congratulate Tangi Utikere for all of his work and members of the Governance and Administration Committee for their comprehensive analysis of submissions and very detailed technical changes to the bill which will significantly improve it. Kia ora.

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. I rise for the first time in—

💬 Simeon Brown: This’ll be a good speech.

Did you say this will be good? I do hope so. I rise for the first time in quite a while physically in the House, which is really a complete delight. It’s actually really quite challenging to speak in the House via Zoom, and I commend my colleague Mr Eagle for doing so earlier. It’s quite challenging too when one’s being heckled because you can’t actually hear what’s being said, which means it’s actually quite hard to respond and I think sometimes the fun of being physically in the House is being able to respond to the wonderful input from the other side.

But I stand here tonight to talk to the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, which has been brought to the House by my colleague Mr Utikere, who, as we’ve heard, actually had a history in local government as he was, in fact, Deputy Mayor of the Palmerston North council. I can say with hand on heart that the speakers before me are absolutely in possession of a far greater deal of knowledge on this particular bill than I am, because I’m not part of the Governance Administration Committee, but I would like to thank them for their work because I can see from the extremely detailed reports that a great deal of thought and work has gone into them.

The reason why we’re here—it really does make sense for us to be sitting here in consideration of this bill because people really do want to know that their elected representatives may or may not have any possible interests in the issues that come forward to them, and I think it’s completely reasonable that they do that. I did note that the select committee had discussions on who to include in this particular piece of legislation and did land on the inclusion of local and community board members, which I think is completely appropriate. As we’ve heard, some of them really have a great deal of financial responsibilities and I think it’s completely fair; as the Privacy Commissioner said in their report, local authority members do have access to information that isn’t available to the wider public. I think it’s reasonable that we can assess for ourselves, and maybe engage in further questioning to assess, whether or not there is a conflict of interest whether real or perceived or whether there may be personal gain.

I found this really quite interesting coming to this bill for the first time from outside the committee, because one of the things I was particularly interested in was the discussions that were had around the balancing of transparency on privacy—versus privacy, I should say. I think this is a conversation that we’re probably going to be having a great deal more in the House as time goes on, because my take on the subject is that previously through history, when registers were made available or there was a request for a register to be made available, what that meant was that somebody had to rock up in person to a physical office and actually ask to go through a book. And if one wanted to gather—I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, I come from a time when, you know, my university study in my 20s was done pre-internet, so I’m fully familiar with actually gaining information. But what I do know from my experience is—

💬 Hon Member: From books. That’s lucky isn’t it.

Lots of experience of books. What I do know from my experience is it’s far, far harder to gather information on individuals from these sorts of registers if you have to go from place to place to place physically rather than just click online. I think what we’ve seen over the past—actually really quite recently; definitely over the past year—is that some of our local councillors and local elected representatives have genuine reason to be concerned that their home addresses are not readily available to the general public. I think we’ve certainly seen that in Christchurch, and I would like to emphasise the importance of ensuring the safety and privacy of our elected members whilst balancing that need for transparency. As I said, I think we are going to be having some further conversations about that in the past. In the past? We’re going to have conversations about that in the past? That would be clever of us; it’s obviously getting late for me.

So what does that look like and how does it compare with Parliament? I kind of wanted to take a moment to really congratulate Christchurch City Council because, as the Hon Eugenie Sage said, one of the issues here is around consistency nationally. Some of our city councils already have taken these steps and they’ve made these registers available publicly and, in Christchurch City Council, online. When I go through what the bill in its introduction version is going to look like, and I compare it to what Christchurch City Council already has available, I’m actually really heartened to see that they don’t just meet the needs of this bill but they’ve added on some extra pieces of information that make it a little bit more consistent with what we have to do as parliamentarians.

Of course, we don’t want to make it so onerous that we do discourage people from seeking positions in local government and community boards, clearly, especially as we’ve heard when sometimes they aren’t met with the same degree of respect. They are frequently not met with remuneration that’s concomitant with the effort involved. I have to say that, speaking as the chair of wāhine caucus, one of my particular areas of interest has been encouraging women into positions of leadership and into positions on community boards and in their local councils, and I do want to be able to reassure them that they’re going to be safe to do so. I do want to be able to reassure them that the legislation that we have, which I am certain it does, does actually provide that security. I can say that, speaking from my own personal experience of recently filling in my own pecuniary interest form, it’s not onerous even at the level of parliamentary representative. It doesn’t take a huge amount of time but it is really important that we do see exactly where our interests lie.

So I do commend this bill. I do congratulate Mr Utikere for the good fortune of drawing this bill from the biscuit tin. As I think Dr Duncan Webb said in his first speech, it’s slightly odd sometimes to be congratulating somebody on the luck of the draw, but I am absolutely delighted for my colleague in the class of 2020 that he has done so. It’s such a worthy bill. It really is worth our attention. It’s clearly been worth all of the effort that the select committee has put into it and I really look forward to seeing it progress through the House and I heartily commend it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, the ACT Party supports this bill. It’s wonderful to bring more transparency to the operations of local government. If only this Government, the Labour Government, were so intent on delivering the transparency that they promised.

But, look, let’s have a look at the problem. What is the problem definition? Well, a top law firm’s been looking at this bill. They’re asking what’s it for, and here’s what they tell their clients: “The purpose of the register is explicitly stated to record a member’s interests so as to provide transparency and strengthen public trust and confidence”—public trust and confidence—“in local government decision-making processes.” Well, this bill goes some way towards doing that, but we actually have to ask ourselves why ratepayers and voters have lost confidence in local government. It’s not just because elected members might own a business or have shares in something that ratepayers would be interested in; actually, it’s because voters and ratepayers have lost their confidence that the people they elect are actually accountable to the communities for delivering basic services. They’ve lost confidence that local councils, their elected members, are using public money wisely and making decisions on behalf of the whole community so that businesses, that employers, that the needs of families are taken into account. They’ve lost confidence because they often hear about grants being made to organisations that they feel really don’t deliver for the community.

What the ratepayers really want is for local government to deliver basic services, on time, on budget. That’s collecting the rubbish. That is making sure that there is water coming out of the tap and it’s safe to drink, and that waste water and sewage are not spilling from overflowing manholes into waterways like Te Wai o Pareira, the Henderson Creek, where I live, where local council and council-controlled organisations have presided over multiple waste-water overflows right outside the waka ama club and the water sports club, where kids come from Rutherford College to swim and play after school. That is primarily why people have lost confidence in local government. It’s not because they don’t know if elected members might own shares in something. But, of course, ACT supports this bill, because it does in fact provide transparency.

So I want to give you some examples as to why people might have lost confidence in local government, because the purpose of this bill is to strengthen public trust and confidence in local government processes and decision making. Well, I’ll give you an example. Auckland Council and its council-controlled organisation Auckland Transport decided to take out all the parking in the Henderson town centre as part of a Liveable Streets trial sponsored by the New Zealand Transport Agency / Waka Kotahi. They took out all the public parking in streets like Railside Ave and Great North Road, Henderson. They painted the streets blue. They put sheep and tacky planter boxes where cars and buses used to roll and where people used to park, and the downturn in local business, the foot traffic—people couldn’t even work out how to drive there. That is why people are losing confidence in local government, because local councils, local boards, and council-controlled organisations believe that dealing with climate change is more important than actually delivering basic services to their communities and supporting local business.

It could be because councils like Wellington have voted for incredibly expensive upgrades to their town hall at a cost of tens, then twenties, then seventies, then hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, who knows how much this seismic strengthening for failed buildings will cost Wellington City Council? But what we do know is that the infrastructure in Wellington below the ground is broken. That’s why you’ve got waste-water pipes breaking, drinking-water pressure pipes bursting and sending geysers of drinking water into the air. That’s why the flat that I had up until a few months ago, up the road here, just north of Parliament here, there was drinking water running down the road for the entire six months that I lived there. And I know it’s drinking water because when I bent down and I put my hand in the water that was running down the gutter and I lifted it to my nose, I could smell chlorine. So at least we know it’s treated. But there were millions of litres running, out of broken pipes, into the sea. That’s why people have lost trust and confidence in local government. But we appreciate the member’s efforts to bring this bill to the House, the pecuniary interest register, to at least try to restore it somewhat.

And I want to give you another example about why people have lost trust and confidence in local government. The Nelson City Council, this week, had to accept that even though they had spent hours and hours debating a motion about whether to install a pride-themed, rainbow-coloured pedestrian crossing in Nelson—how much consultant’s time they’d spent getting reports done, getting special drawings done, having public hearings—it turned out they’d forgotten the very people of Nelson who absolutely depend on being able to cross the road safely, and that is people who are blind or have low vision and find that a pride crossing is one of the most confusing things you can ever put on the road, because they don’t know what on earth this thing means when they’re trying to cross the road. So Nelson council, bless their cotton socks, backed down. They decided that it would be OK just to put some pride stickers on the bike racks, rather than let blind and low-vision people wander out into the road and, potentially, get run over because they’d spent all this time worrying about how to deliver a pride crossing rather than actually deliver basic services for the people in their communities.

So I commend the member for bringing this bill to the House, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, so that at least voters know that elected members who have interests in business or shareholdings or property—that that’s understood, so that decisions they might make in their role as elected members, where there’s a conflict of interest, that that conflict of interest can be reduced as far as practical. But there are a couple of opportunities that I’d like the member to consider, particularly when we get to the committee of the whole House—some amendments, in fact, that could actually make this bill far more effective. We need to consider whether, in fact, it would be helpful to the functioning of local government—to actually restoring trust and confidence in local government decision-making and processes—to include the pecuniary interests of those individuals appointed to chair and as board members on council-controlled organisations where they have the ability to sign off on procurements worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

And, in fact, in many cases, it’s not clear that those people appointed to the council-controlled organisations—and I’m thinking Wellington Water; I’m thinking Auckland Transport; and, as an Aucklander, I’m thinking about the Auckland Council - controlled organisation that controls the stadiums, which competes with local business that holds events. That actually means that private companies that want to hold events find that they’re either undercut by the council-controlled organisation or priced out of the market, because the council-controlled organisation won’t let those function centres and event centres to the private sector to carry out their business. And when the local government entity is the biggest kid on the block, you know they have market power well beyond what should be acceptable if they really are focused on good governance, good decision-making for the benefit of their communities.

So ACT would be open to considering actually widening the scope of this bill to address some of the concerns particularly people in Auckland have, having seen incidents of very poor procurement decisions—in fact, decisions the Serious Fraud Office investigated, involving council-controlled organisations and decision makers in local government around transportation and other types of procurement. So the ACT Party would support widening the scope of the bill to actually look at whether it would be worthwhile including elected members and their ability to appoint people to trusts and other council-controlled organisations.

So on that note, the ACT Party supports the bill in its current form, would be open to amending it, to making it better in increasing the scope of transparency. But, more importantly, we want local government to stick to its knitting and deliver basic services for communities. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Tēna koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. It’s a pleasure to be back in the House, after a few weeks of virtual sessions, to speak on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill in the name of my colleague Tangi Utikere. This bill amends the Local Government Act 2002 to provide for the establishment of a register of pecuniary interests and other specified interests of members of local authorities such as directorships, business interests, employment, and property.

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge the member Tangi Utikere, who has a good understanding of the issue, having been a councillor and then Deputy Mayor of Palmerston North, and now a much-liked MP from the area. While Mr Utikere has moved from local government to central government, there are a lot of similarities between his old job and new job. One of these similarities is that both the roles are democratically elected and people expect transparency from decision makers at these levels.

I also want to acknowledge Ian McKelvie, who has chaired the select committee which this bill has come through, and, again, his experience of being the Mayor of Manawatu District for, I think, about nine years—which is significant experience—and his leadership in the amendments that came through when the bill came through the select committee. In addition to that, we’ve just heard from Paul Eagle, the former Deputy Mayor of Wellington City and a member of Parliament, again, having had great experience both in central government and local government.

It is important for ratepayers to understand any possible influences on these people who are elected to represent them, and the purpose of this bill is to improve transparency and strengthen public trust and confidence in the decision making of local authorities. The bill will better align transparency requirements of members of local authorities with those of members of Parliament and the Executive Council.

This bill will provide greater transparency of interests of members of local authorities, improve public trust and confidence, and contribute to robust decision-making by local authorities. Currently, the information collected and published on members’ interests for the purpose of managing conflicts of interest is inconsistent across local authorities. While some authorities have registers which collect information required by this bill and make them available to members of the public, the vast majority of local authorities do not. When councils are making decisions about funding opportunities for community groups, often it is very, very unclear as to what the nature of the relationship is with someone who is sitting around the decision-making table and the group that’s seeking funding.

I know some of the local politicians have publicly spoken against the bill. I know that the Mayor of Palmerston North, Grant Smith, and the Mayor of Tararua District, Tracey Collins, have both argued that central government politicians are full-time politicians and, therefore, are much better remunerated than local body politicians, so the same level of scrutiny should not apply to local body politicians.

Now, I just want to give an example. In Hamilton West a few months ago, I had somebody get in touch with me because they were worried about a decision that the council had taken in regards to their dealing with a private vendor, and the claim was that somehow there was some sort of underhand technique going on because the council member’s house was on the same street as the person who was the private vendor. This was a significant claim and it came to me as the member of Parliament to get some guidance on this, and, obviously, the whole discussion went through the council and, obviously, they had the time to express their concerns.

But I think that situations like this prove that there are times when the public can be concerned about what’s happening at a local level, and I think more so at a local level, because that’s where you know the community very well. At the grassroots level, if you’ve got those community connections, people can ask, “Is there is a conflict of interest there?”

In many ways, I think this bill also protects the elected representatives themselves, who may find that the bill puts more trust in them through people, because now they know that there is a pecuniary interest that’s been published, and it’s hard for people to say that there is some backroom dealing going on, especially because it’s all out in the public. So I think, if anything, it helps those local members as they move forward, especially in an election year. I know there are council elections coming through. If anything, I think it will help people make a better decision about what’s going on.

💬 Chris Bishop: Are you running?

I am still a member of Parliament. I’m not running for council.

One of the newspapers mentioned that no local government entities in the central North Island have pecuniary interests registers available to the public, but there are councils that do publish a register of pecuniary interests. Often it is done so late that it is almost redundant. So if you’re looking at the Christchurch and Tauranga city councils, their last published returns were in January 2020.

On the other hand, you’ve got councils who have very strict criteria, and they expect their members to report in. So, for example, at Auckland Council, the code of conduct requires that if they get gifts of over $300, they do need to be declared. So there is a wide inconsistency between councils, especially in the North Island, where there are very few councils that require any sort of interest register, which makes it difficult to have that transparency at the council level.

The purpose of this bill and the original bill was to standardise this so that the local representatives from all local authorities are subjected to the same scrutiny, but I have to say that Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee has gone one step further in flagging that this would exclude those elected to local or community boards. This is, again, important because these local or community boards do make significant decisions at that grassroots level. So it is important that they have the same scrutiny as members of Parliament and the other local authorities, councillors, and mayors.

I think the bill in its original format was really good, but then, obviously, there were concerns that in small communities, what happens if you release the pecuniary interests register and it causes any harm to somebody who is on the council? So my understanding is that there were some changes made. For example, initially, the bill said that if you had 5 percent of the voting rights of a company, you should put that on a pecuniary interest return. After the bill has gone through the committee, the advice is to change it to 10 percent.

Similarly, the original bill said that members should not disclose where the property is that they own, which is fine—obviously, you don’t want the members to be targeted in any way if somebody knows where they live—but, then again, there are properties which are owned under a trust. So the recommendation is now that if you do own a property under a trust, you do need to disclose where the location of the property is.

Thirdly, there was the question was around what happens if you are making some money from a different organisation. You do not have to actually disclose how much money you get, but you do have to disclose that you are getting funded from a different source altogether.

So in some ways it’s a balance between greater disclosure and the privacy rights of individuals, particularly some elected members who work in quite small communities and, obviously, have a lot of connections and relationship in those communities. But, as I said, I have been approached many times within Hamilton where people have shown concerns regarding elected members. None of them have been held up—I just wanted to say that clearly—but they have been investigated, and it just is another step in making sure that the public has full trust and faith in elected members and, similarly, that the elected members have faith that they can continue to do their job without somebody pointing the finger at them.

Similarly, somebody from the ACT Party just talked about whether it should be extended to other agencies or other people at the high level. Again, that’s something that maybe should be looked at, because there are other decision makers as well who are responsible for these contracts, including local body contracts and Government contracts, and adding more transparency wouldn’t hurt.

My view is that if you are running for this sort of position, you should have nothing to hide. There should be no reason for you to worry about hiding something, and we do understand that people at a local level have multiple jobs—you know, they might have another part-time job—but it would be good for people to make that connection and see if there is a conflict of interest in a very open and public way.

I just want to congratulate the member for bringing in this bill, because it will have a huge impact, especially as we move into the council elections and the local body elections in the next few months. So I would like to commend the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill in the name of Mr Tangi Utikere to the House. Thank you.

This is split call. I call Maureen Pugh—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in support of the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill tonight in its second reading. Although I haven’t been part of the Governance and Administration Committee, so I haven’t had the privilege of hearing the submissions, I have read several of them. But mainly the provisions of this bill seek to insert new sections into the Local Government Act that look to provide openness and transparency in the local government sector, and in particular to the councillors that are elected to those councils.

Best practice would tell you that councils who are open and transparent will always have their interest register advertised and part of their regular monthly meeting agendas. It’s common practice for boards, for District Health Boards, to also include that information at their regular meetings. This is best practice. This Government is now legislating to make this lawful, and that there is now a legal requirement for these entities to be open and transparent. And I think the irony of this legislation is that it is being brought to this House by a Government member of a Government that has, arguably, been the least open and transparent in New Zealand’s history. I submit this bill to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. I rise to take a call—as the Māori Party aren’t in the House tonight, I do want to take this opportunity to just take a brief call on it. Firstly, can I acknowledge the member, who is a former local body councillor—deputy mayor, I understand. As somebody—

💬 Chris Bishop: Deputy mayor.

Yeah; that’s right. As somebody else who started out in local government, this is actually quite interesting for me.

I was first elected to the Far North District Council in 2013, and then a second time in 2016. So before coming into Parliament, I spent one and a bit terms in local government. When I was looking at this bill, I was trying to remember whether our council did have a process of declaring your interests. I went back online, and I had a look at the minutes of meetings from 2016. It was my recollection that we did have a process whereby we declared our interests. It also made me think, well, what about the rest of the councils in my electorate, in Northland. It turns out that so too do the Kaipara District Council, the Whangarei District Council, and the Northland Regional Council.

Under the Local Government Act, all councils are required to adopt a code of conduct, but it is not a requirement that there be, within that code of conduct, the inclusion of a pecuniary interest register. That’s the problem: there is an inconsistency in this across the country. And we’ve heard that from other speakers this evening who have made those contributions and have highlighted areas where they do have it and other areas where they don’t have it. I commend the member on finding this gap in the legislation and proposing, through a member’s bill, a way to address this issue.

The purpose of the bill is that we want to ensure that the public can have trust and confidence in our councils and in local bodies. They make really important decisions that affect the community. Large amounts of money are often subject to those decisions. I think it is important to ensure that our communities can have the most trust and respect and that we have an open and transparent process around the declaration of their interests. What we see here in the bill is a lot of similar things that we are required to do as members of Parliament. I know, listening to the contribution from one of the members of the Governance and Administration Committee—the member for Nelson, Rachel Boyack—that she traversed all of those and said that sometimes in the original proposal it wasn’t quite what we do here in Parliament, and so there were recommendations to align it to that. But in other cases—and I think it was particularly around private property, for example—they don’t actually go as far as to revealing the exact location of those. I support all of those points in there.

One thing I did want to cover off—because it hasn’t been raised by any of the other contributions this evening—is the committee looked at Māori land. As you and I will know, many people—many whānau—have interests in Māori land, but those interests can be from a tiny interest and shareholding in a small parcel of land that does not derive any economic benefit, and there is not going to be any dwelling on there, necessarily. The committee were very clear about that: that in terms of Māori land that is captured within the scope of this legislation, it would be where the member had an actual pecuniary interest in a Māori land trust. We do have many of those—and very successful ones—around the country, and so that would be the type of interest that would be required to be declared under this proposed legislation.

With that, I just want to conclude my speech by thanking the Governance and Administration Committee for the work that they did, the 23 submitters that wrote written submissions, the seven oral submitters, and, of course, the member who introduced the bill. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to support this bill on behalf of the National Party. And I’d congratulate Tangi Utikere, who came in, in 2020, one of the new members, as I did. Well done on bringing a bill before the House and getting cross-party support for it—well done.

This is a bill that aims to record members’ interests so as to provide transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in local government processes and decision making. That’s a laudable aim and one that the National Party supports. The bill requires that councils maintain and publish each year a register of elected members’ pecuniary and other specified interests such as directorships, business interests, employment, and property, and disclose gifts and payments received by elected members above a certain amount.

Councils across the country and the wider local government sector are currently facing the biggest period of change in some 30 years. Labour’s Future for Local Government Review and the reforms they are driving through in resource management and three waters and the review of local government all raise questions about the future of our councils, and it’s a discussion that we’re actively watching.

Councils are very important. They provide the local public services and local infrastructure needed to survive and prosper in our communities around New Zealand. Their total assets are some $124 billion in total. They account for 11 percent of public spending. So decisions made by local elected members are very important. It’s not always well understood, though, as the average voter turnout in local body elections is only about 41 percent. So we support a bill that, in the face of some significant change and reform in the current time, implements a small but significant change to strengthen public trust and confidence in our local representatives.

I certainly know from going around my electorate, the electorate of Southland, which I would say is bigger than Belgium in its total land area—

💬 Nicola Grigg: Your favourite stat.

It’s my favourite statistic, as Nicola Grigg has said. And I should say it has five district councils in it and two regional councils covering various parts of my electorate. So I have the Queenstown Lakes District Council, the Central Otago District Council, the Southland District Council, the Clutha District Council, the Gore District Council, and then in the regional council space I have Environment Southland and the Otago Regional Council. I know that all of the elected members and all of the staff in those councils are very focused on what is best for their communities and all work really, really hard. But this is a small step in this bill just to improve the public confidence in those members who, I know, are all working very hard for their communities.

With that, I’ll say I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to stand and speak to this bill and just to congratulate my colleague Tangi Utikere for bringing this bill to the House. It’s fitting that somebody with such significant local body experience should be the one that brings this bill forward.

Basically, I didn’t sit on the Governance and Administration Committee that heard the submissions on the bill, but, for me, I think it’s really great to see that we’re going to be getting some more consistency in terms of the way that those elected to local bodies declare their pecuniary interests, and also meaning that members of the public will be able to see much more quickly what the declared interests are of elected members that are making decisions on their and their communities’ behalf.

When I was preparing to talk tonight, what I did was a quick search of the websites of the local councils down in the southern area where I live. It was quite interesting just looking—first, I put in “Invercargill City Council” and I put in “pecuniary interest register”, and immediately their interest register popped up. It not only has the interests of the elected council members, it also has the Bluff Community Board members, and it has the interests of the council’s mana whenua representatives and also executive staff. So, very, very comprehensive. Actually, looking through some of those interests there, all the things that you would expect were actually there and being declared—so company directorships, trusts, employment, and organisational memberships.

But also looking on the website, going into the meeting agendas, you also found that the conflict of interest was up there right at the front. So, for example, the Bluff Community Board agenda, item number two, “Declaration of Interest … Members are reminded of the need to stand aside from decision-making when a conflict arises between their role as an elected representative and any private or other external interest they might have.” It was interesting, then, going on, what they said in the second point of that was: “Elected members are reminded to update their register of interests as soon as practicable, including amending the register at this meeting if necessary.” So, very, very clear, up there at the beginning of the agenda.

Looking across to our regional council, Environment Southland. Again, very quickly, just a couple of clicks and I came to a downloadable document which summarised all the declared interests of the elected council members—not anything broader but at least the council members’ interests were there and very easy to find.

Going across to the Southland District Council, I couldn’t find anything. That doesn’t mean that a register doesn’t exist; it just means I couldn’t find it searching on their website. However, if you go back into some of the agendas, very similar to the Bluff Community Board, with reminders very up front—item number three—about making sure that members are vigilant about standing aside from decision making when a conflict arises. Also, noting in the minutes of the previous meeting, again, item number three, “Conflict of Interest”, that no conflicts are declared.

So, I think, as introduced, what this bill will do will make it much more consistent across councils and other local authorities about what the interests are of their elected members. I think, by requiring that register to be publicly available and updated regularly, it will make it much, much easier for members of the public to go in and see about the interests of those making decisions on their behalf.

But, I think, also, as my colleague Tangi Utikere said, there were a number of submissions that were received that the select committee heard—and, I think, from the report, there were 19 submissions; eight from individuals, seven from organisations, and four from local authorities. They had a range of things to say about how the bill might be improved. I think the select committee took a number of those on board. I think that one of the themes arising from a number of submitters was to make sure that all elected decision makers were included.

So, just going into the Local Government New Zealand submission, what they noted was that the bill only dealt with members of governing boards—so what they’re referring to there are mayors and council members—but it didn’t actually mention local or community members or appointed members to council committees, even though those members also could make significant decisions about the allocation of resource. So, I think, in Local Government New Zealand’s view, it was important to enhance a transparency across all of the different types of member that may be making those decisions.

We’ve also heard a lot about the size of the Auckland Council, and the fact that some of the local boards within the Auckland Council may be as large as some different councils further afield. So, similarly, in the Auckland Council, they were advocating very similarly about broader inclusion. They were talking about how their council was organised, and a governing body followed underneath, which sat 21 local boards. So the governing body has the mayor and 20 councillors, but then the local boards have between five and 12 members.

Then, in their submission, they went on to talk about the accountabilities and decision-making processes of each of those different groups. What they were saying, though, is decision making across both governing body and local boards is highly scrutinised by the public. If elected members participate in decisions where they have a conflict of interest or a closed mind, they say the public confidence in those decisions will be diminished. Then they talk about the implications in terms of the decisions themselves that may be exposed to challenge, which could be quite significant, in terms of the work streams, in terms of that decision making. For them, they saw that a maintenance of a register of interest is a key tool to ensure transparency, integrity of decisions, and to ensure the public can have trust and confidence in decision making.

I think the committee members, in recommending changes to the bill, took that on board. What they basically said was that they recommended that people that were members of local boards or community boards should also come in under this legislation. I think that’s quite an important change.

There were a couple of other changes that the committee was recommending. Another one was around making it much more clear about the requirements for elected members to disclose payments related to their employment. I think here it’s been raised already in the House tonight that for us as MPs, because it’s pretty much a full-time job, very few people then take on other employment opportunities. However, for those involved in local bodies, basically a lot of their connection with the community—they may be a business employer, they may be working for local community organisations, and part of that is their connection with the community. So many elected members of local councils also want to maintain employment as part of their role, and so it’s then thinking about how you declare that.

In the bill as introduced, there was some lack of clarity which meant that there may be a potential expectation for members to have to declare their salaries or wages from employment, and there was a sense there that that may discourage people that were well connected within the community from standing, not wanting to be doing that. Because already in the bill, local authority members were required to disclose the names of each employer they were working for and a description of the main business activities. What the committee felt was that was sufficient to be able to give people a sense of if there was any potential conflicts of interest there without having to go down into the detail of every single payment which potentially could have be required. So what they recommended was adding clarification that payments of interests already disclosed under section 54E, which includes employment—but also directorships and trusts—don’t have to be included in the register any further. So I think that was an important change as well.

One of the final ones was just about correcting mistakes and the accuracy of the register. I think everyone wants to make sure that their information is accurately portrayed in the register, but often you may have the situation, particularly if you’ve got a lot of information that you’ve got to upload, where you make a genuine mistake. What happens if that genuine mistake, you then identify it once that’s actually been publicly disclosed and published? The issue was, I think, that the bill was silent on whether members could correct mistakes. I think, as part of that integrity, that if we’ve got errors in that register, then members of the public may not think that that is an accurate reflection of the interests, and so again from a transparency perspective that’s a problem.

So what the committee felt was that it was important to specify that members could actually include information and get that corrected with the register. I think that’s an important change that needs to come through. This is an important bill and we’ve made some very significant changes, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.