Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported back to the House on 28 September 2018.

First, I want to acknowledge my colleague the MP for Rongotai, Paul Eagle, for agreeing for his member’s bill to be overtaken by this Government bill. He knew very quickly as he became an MP that this was something that this sector wanted, and he put the bill quickly into the ballot. So I appreciate the fact that we’re in a position to take over the bill and to do a little bit more.

We understand local government has a major role in enhancing the well-being of their communities. The decisions made by local government have an immediate impact on New Zealanders’ quality of life. In fact, when we think about the role and function councils play in our everyday lives, it’s far much more than roads, rates, and rubbish. Local government decisions affect the natural environment and neighbourhoods in which we live and work, and they impact on aspects of our health and safety in all sorts of ways. Local government plays a key role in supporting those quality-of-life outcomes that build a sense of belonging and well-being and happiness in our local and regional communities.

While there is a strong emphasis on good governance, strategic planning, and good decision-making, actually, the work that local government does is more than just about service delivery and asset management plans. The purpose statement in the Local Government Act at its introduction emphasised local government’s responsibility to make a broad contribution to promoting the well-being of their communities. It also emphasised that well-being should be considered holistically and that the social, economic, environmental, and cultural aspects of well-being need to be considered together, rather than separately. That purpose statement underlined the important role of local government in supporting individuals, whānau, and community outcomes to provide for their own future within their region.

This bill will provide clearer authority for local councils to shape their activities based on what their communities want. It shifts the balance of power back to local communities to decide with their councils what should be done for them, with them. It moves the focus from what councils can do to what they should do. It isn’t, and hasn’t ever been, the role of central government to tell councils what they should be doing for their communities. In fact, under this Government there will be a strong emphasis on working strategically together. We value that.

The bill reinstates community well-being into the purpose of local government. The four aspects of well-being—social, economic, environmental, and cultural—will be embedded into the fabric of the local government regulatory framework. They are referenced in a range of other Acts, from the Resource Management Act to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. Restoring community well-being will return certainty about the role local government plays and will be a welcome change to councils, who probably have wondered, “Why didn’t that happen sooner?”

Before reference to community well-being was removed from the Act in 2012, local authorities already made responsible financial decisions about the current and future needs of their community. The report of the Shand inquiry in 2007 and the report of the Auditor-General in 2012 confirmed this. The Government believes local government will continue to make the right decisions with and for their communities as we reinsert the well-beings back into the principal Act.

Local authorities have said that the change to remove well-beings from the Act in 2012 created uncertainty about the services that they provided. This has led to more complex compliance processes for councils, but no significant change in the services that they provide—in fact, service delivery expectations have increased.

Councils are accountable to their communities, not to central government. This bill will give local authorities the scope to develop the services their communities want in consultation with the people who use them.

The bill also removes the requirement for local authorities to have particular regard to a list of core services. Councils and their communities are best placed to determine which services they should be providing and the priority that should be given to each of them. These changes give local authorities more flexibility to respond to the needs of their communities. This approach, we believe, will empower local authorities, rather than instruct them about what they should be doing for their communities.

The bill restores local authorities’ powers to collect development contributions for the full range of community facilities, including libraries, swimming pools, and sportsgrounds. When we think about these services, we think about what actually creates community, and how much pleasure people get from actually having good community services and what it does for well-being.

When this ability to levy development contributions was taken out of legislation in 2014, it left ratepayers to pick up the full costs of meeting the increased demand generated by development. Many councils are struggling to keep up with costs of the growth in their communities while maintaining existing community infrastructure and service levels. A contribution from developers will provide a much-needed boost, and while it doesn’t address the full extent of funding and financing cost pressures, it’s a step in the right direction.

This bill will help councils by removing a barrier to growth. It will enable councils to shape the places and deliver the services communities want and need.

Finally, the bill resolves a technical issue that stands in the way of councils accessing transport infrastructure funding through the Housing Infrastructure Fund. The Housing Infrastructure Fund provides advanced funding to local authorities to accelerate the provision of infrastructure for new housing development. This framework allows councils to access funding through the National Land Transport Fund without it counting as a liability, allowing councils to borrow for other necessary infrastructure.

The Local Government Act includes a provision to prevent local authorities from requiring development contributions for projects that are funded from other sources, to prevent double-dipping. The Local Government Act already specifies that borrowing does not trigger these provisions, along with a number of other exceptions. Advance financial assistance from the New Zealand Transport Agency will eventually be repaid. This amendment will clarify that this advance financial assistance does not trigger the double-dipping provision.

The bill recognises that every council is different and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Every council needs discretion and flexibility to decide in consultation with their community the nature and level of services they should provide. By doing this, councils will best meet local needs and preferences.

As I have said, this Government supports local government doing the best that it can alongside the people that they represent. It’s about local people making local decisions. Decisions about the services councils provide are best made by the people that receive these services, not central government.

These changes are supported by the local government sector. They’ve wanted to see them happen for a very long time. This bill represents our commitment as another step towards a collaborative partnership between central government and local government, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on the first reading here of the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. The primary objective of this bill is to redefine the purpose of local government so as to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities. These principles are referred to—and some would know them as—the four well-beings, and anyone who has experience with local government would know that up until 2012 the purpose of local government, as defined by legislation back then, was actually the promotion of these well-beings.

Amongst other things, this was changed under the last Government as part of their wider local government reform. So what this bill is doing here tonight is actually just undoing the work of the last National Government and going back to the old system. The issue with using these four well-beings is not about their intentions. And I say this deliberately. I can understand that the recognition of the four well-beings is important and that councils are likely to be supportive of the change, but the issue is that they appear to many people to be unfocused and untargeted. That’s the perception problem. So I urge the Government to seriously reconsider whether these changes tonight will actually lead to better results for local councils and the people that they represent instead of the system that we have, and I’m going to explain why.

What we have at the moment is a system that is, essentially, breaking down the purpose of local government into three major functions. One is providing local infrastructure, second is local public services, and the third is the performance of regulatory functions—so, very key and concise and very committed functions. They’re relatively simple, and it may seem to restrict councils at first glance from considering the wider issues or the services that do contribute to the general well-being of a community. However, we have seen that since these changes were made in 2012 there has not been a massive shift in the behaviour or the direction of local government bodies. These new directives back in 2012 have not been the handcuffs on councils that the Government is portraying them as.

So what the current definition actually does is keep councils grounded. It gives clarity as to what their core role is, what their core services should be and prioritising, and it gives them accountability to their ratepayers, who expect these services to be delivered to a high expectation. So if we lined up ratepayers tonight and asked for their opinions, where they’d land in regard to the purpose of local government, I’d say the words “core” and “cost-effective” would come to mind. So too do the words, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I wasn’t around in 2012; I wasn’t a councillor then, either. But there seems to be a fascination with wording and terminology. I’ve been told that there were concerns by territorial local authorities over the years that there’d be consequences should they stray out of the 2012 definition, but to the best of my knowledge there have been no transgressions, no hiccups—in fact, it’s been business as usual for local government. So what is the problem that’s trying to be solved here?

The purpose of local government as proposed by this bill does have one glaring omission that I want to pay attention to, and that is the explicit removal of any reference to cost-effectiveness or value for money. The local government sector is responsible for such a massive sum of money that it’s quite often overlooked, and so I first want to give a proper context of the scale involved. In 2017, the combined national rates bill—the total paid by households and businesses up and down the country—was more than $5.5 billion in 2017. Local government has the obligation to the people that fund it to make sure that they use funds in the most cost-effective way.

The tax burden on families and businesses for council spending has increased at a rate close to four times the rate of inflation and now represents a massive 3 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. The national rates bill has more than doubled since 2002, going from $2.6 billion to $5.5 billion. That’s a 141 percent increase. Delivery of core services has a big price tag to it, and so the public of New Zealand should easily be able to see why the last Government was trying to get accountability in place.

Another key part of this bill that we’re opposing is the relaxing of requirements on how councils can use development contributions. Development contributions go to the council and, under the current system, must be used to pay for costs of infrastructure directly related to development: the waste-water system, roading networks, and other infrastructure that facilitates and contributes to a growing housing supply. What this bill does is turn the important funding tool, a levy on housing developers, and has them as contributors to community infrastructure: swimming pools, libraries, and museums. The bill will let councils pass on the costs of community assets to the housing developers, but in reality, it’s not going to be the developers that actually pay for these. All it’s going to do is drive up the cost of housing when these costs are passed on to the first-home buyer, the renters, and the entire housing market. So despite all the talk that we’ve heard from this Government about a housing crisis and KiwiBuild and about their grand plan to build thousands of affordable homes, they’ve put together a piece of legislation that will actively make the housing market more restrictive.

We are opposed to this bill, and I know from experience in the local government space that local government lives in an age of quite severe public scrutiny, and scrutiny of its processes, and it’s a difficult space for many councils. Auckland Council—and that’s where I was before I came to this role here—has, by its own admission, trust ratings that have plummeted. Independent surveys very much quantify that. So what local government does not need at this point in time is accusations that it’s getting away, the perception that it’s getting away, from core roles of providing local infrastructure, local public service, and local regulatory functions, and that if they do, the cost will end up being borne by the ratepayer. This is not what local government needs at this point in time.

So the Government should be very careful about messaging in the local government space right now. The regional fuel tax issue has gone down like a lead balloon, and the lending of weight to this kind of legislation will not win over ratepayers. For that reason, we are opposed to this bill, and we caution the Government for some very sensitive local government messaging at this point in time.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Look, having come to Parliament from—in fact, directly from—seven years in local government, it’s an honour to speak in support of the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill, which is being read in the House for the first time. I want to acknowledge the work of the hard-working Minister Nanaia Mahuta, her staff, the officials, and Local Government New Zealand, who helped bring this bill to the House this evening. It’s a piece of work that rights the wrongs and resets the relationship with local government and central government. I am especially pleased this evening because, as the Minister said, I was initially hoping to progress at least the four well-beings aspect of this bill as a member’s bill, but there is nothing better than having it as a Government bill to give it the urgency, and it shows that this Government is serious about empowering local government.

I want to kick off by reinforcing the comments of the Minister when she said that local government is very much more than just roads, rates, and rubbish. That sets the scene because it sends a clear message to councils that this Government values the role of local government and supports civic participation and community involvement in local democracy.

The bill amends the Local Government Act of 2002, and it’s being expressed in four different aspects. First of all, it restores the social, environmental, and cultural well-beings in addition to economic. That’s a point that I’ll come back to later in my speech, because that goes now into the purpose of local government. Secondly, it removes the requirement for councils to have particular regard to core services—what was core and what was non-core—and how they fared for their communities. Thirdly, it restores that power to collect development contributions for a range of community infrastructure, and the Minister talked about what that can be used for. Finally, there is the minor technical issue that stands in the way of councils accessing transport infrastructure funding from the Housing Infrastructure Fund.

I want to focus on the most critical issue with this bill, and that’s the reinstatement of community well-being into the purpose of local government. We heard from the Minister too that it shifts the power back to local communities to decide, with their councils, what should be done for them. Councils all over New Zealand are facing the challenges. We know what they are, but the challenges are based on the most cost-effective reference in the current purpose statement. That’s the issue.

We know that the four well-beings are already intrinsically woven into the local government regulatory framework—that’s not a problem—but this holistic approach gives much clearer authority for local councils to shape the activities based on what their communities require. It moves the focus on councils from what councils can do to what they should do. It means that they can reset their thinking from “Are we allowed to do this?” to “Should we do this?”, and that’s critical. As I said, having spent the last seven years in local government here in the capital city, at the Wellington City Council, having to deal with this scenario, it was a sinister scenario based on an ideologically driven approach by the previous Government—based solely on that economic imperative—and today, with the reinstatement of the well-beings now, we look at all four aspects of it.

Let me give you some examples just to demonstrate this. There’s nothing like something that’s really from the grassroots that’s happened. Let’s look at something from back in June 2013, when I went to a formal farewell of 27 council road workers, who had given more than 500 years of service between them. That was the departure of those staff from the council’s in-house works unit, marking decades of institutional knowledge lost and the end of council building its own roads for 130 years. Funnily enough, that unit, only 20 years earlier, was forced to set itself up as an in-house works unit because the National Government of the time, in 1990, forced it to contract its work out. Luckily, the capital city made a decision to say, “We’re the best in the business. We’re going to compete against the private sector and win our work back.” But I said at the time of that situation—to quote myself—“Some of these men have given their entire lives to [Wellington City]. They’ve earned their jobs and our respect. They deserve better from us.”

A month later, in July of that same year—in 2013—the Local Government Act said it was absolutely fine to outsource the work, and so they did, to an Australian company called Leighton, solely because it was cheaper. It didn’t matter that they had no local workforce, it didn’t matter that they had no trucks and no depot, and it didn’t matter that they had no record of delivering works in New Zealand. All that mattered was they were the cheapest. I can tell you, for the next two years, the new contractor drove around in trucks with “Henderson Rentals” on the side of them. They even changed their name when ratepayers got upset because service levels weren’t being met. Now they were called Ventia. They cobbled together a workforce, mostly temporary and mostly on the minimum wage, not to mention they had to endure the 90-day rule. But worst of all was that less than 2½ years into that contract, they walked off the job.

So 130 years of the council doing the work themselves was flawed by an Australian company who got a cheap contract off the capital city council, and then they walk off the job: they literally down tools and they’re gone. That’s what the current Local Government Act and the lack of not having four well-beings in that Act does. That happened right here in the city that you are sitting in tonight. When I questioned the CEO and said, “How can this be? How have we got to this? How have we sent 27 guys down the road who had 500 years’ worth of institutional knowledge?”, he said, “That’s the legislation that we have to work in.” Tonight, and by the end of this year, we will bring that scenario to an end and no longer will local councils across this country be endured with that sort of treatment to their workers and their people.

I also want to talk on a more positive note, and let’s look at what the change means to local authorities. What it does mean now, and I want to focus on the same council, is that they can introduce things like the living wage. If you want to pay those same workers that you’ve outsourced $20.55 an hour—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don’t bring me into it.

—they are welcome to do that. I certainly want to say that there will be councils all over New Zealand who now will be able to engage with their communities based on those four well-beings and be able to say, “This may not happen anywhere else in New Zealand but we, as a community, will proudly implement this or deliver that because that’s what our communities want.”, and that’s the spirit of what we’re doing this evening.

As I said, I’m really proud to speak on this bill. This bill puts the local back in to local government. I said in my opening paragraph that it resets the relationship with local government and central government. I’ve given an example there that you cannot dispute. You cannot dispute where the purpose of the current Act—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I might, but others might not.

Absolutely, Madam Deputy Speaker. That example there some may dispute at their peril, but, look, I certainly look forward to the bill going to the Governance and Administration Committee and being brought back to the House by the end of September, and, come Christmas time, the people of New Zealand, through their local councils, will be delivered one of the best Christmas presents that I believe most of them will ever get. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand to take a call on the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill, the first reading. Before I get under way, I just want to make it very clear I won’t be supporting the bill. I won’t be supporting the bill for a number of reasons. I just want to bring the House’s attention to the 2010 and 2011 Christchurch earthquakes and the result of what happened, besides the deaths, to the horizontal infrastructure that traversed the whole of Christchurch city. During that time, the National-led Government’s amendment to the Local Government Act had not come into force. We were still working under the previous Local Government Act, which was about the four well-beings. If the four well-beings back then were so crash hot, then how come when those earthquakes happened in Christchurch the horizontal infrastructure was in such disrepair—something that the council should have been keeping their eye on—that they didn’t have any amount of funding to be able to help with repairing it?

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: That’s an outrage. There was an earthquake. That’s an outrage.

I know it’s an earthquake, but if the repairs and the maintenance had kept on over time then it would have minimised the impact of—yes, there would’ve been some damage but not as wide as what it was in those days. That was during the four well-beings.

I am very concerned about this bill because it does take the focus of local government away from what it is there for—to provide robust local infrastructure. We need that; we saw that post-earthquake. We’ve been talking about this over the last few years, about the local council. The Wellington one around the water pipes coming through—that’s infrastructure, that’s water pipes from the Hutt over here into Wellington. Should the four well-beings come in to effect, then what’s going to happen with that local infrastructure?

So it’s about local infrastructure and robust local infrastructure, which is what is currently there at the moment in the Local Government Act 2002. It is about local public services, and you need to have those services. I don’t know how those four well-beings would cover local infrastructure and the public services. We don’t want to be able to charge out levies for everything in communities like where I’m currently listed in Christchurch East. I don’t know whether people will be able to actually afford a levy, any levy in that area for building, or any other area. The local regulatory functions, as well, of the current council—those are the three key areas that the local council under the local government amendment legislation 2012 worked by. That’s why I do have concerns over these four well-beings.

I don’t know how places like Christchurch East are going to cope under the environmental side of the four well-beings. Yes, we have areas in Christchurch that are flooded. The Heathcote River, around there, there’s some big flooding areas, and currently, under the long-term plan and the consultation, the council are looking at putting some funding in there to mitigate some flooding. But on the other side, on the eastern side, there is also the estuary area that is crying out for some mitigation around erosion of the estuary edge and maybe the resurrection of a bund that goes further down into the South New Brighton area. I don’t know where in these four well-beings that will happen environmentally for the Southshore area.

Around the economic side now, if the council, kind of, dismissed the Southshore area—that has potential for new homes to be rebuilt there should the bund be re-established in that particular area. It’s a lovely area to build in, but, economically, maybe the council does not want that to happen. That’s why I have concerns around these four well-beings.

Also around the social side, the Guardians of Rāwhiti Domain are putting in a sensory playground. They have a plan there working alongside council. So council go in and chop some trees down, which is lovely, saying that the root system underneath is quite spongy and quite dangerous, so what do they do? They leave a great big trunk sitting outside and say, “Put a swing on it for children.” If the root system is growing on a spongy base then I don’t know whether that’s very social at all.

I do have concerns around this particular bill. I have concerns that these four well-beings will be so prominent that rates will go up and the ratepayers won’t get value for money. They will go begging for a lot of infrastructural issues that they face, and especially, as I said, in the electorate where I’m listed in, in Christchurch East, especially in the Southshore area and the South New Brighton area.

I stand here; I am concerned that this bill may end up coming in to Royal assent at the end of September this year. I’m concerned for the ratepayers and for the well-being of the people that live down in the Southshore area, South New Brighton area, and New Brighton area. I don’t see how it will actually grow any more confidence down there. They’re pretty shattered at the moment, but this is actually going to throw it all apart for them. So I don’t support the bill. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise on behalf of the New Zealand First local government spokesperson, the Hon Ron Mark, in support of the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. You know that the National Party is taking this bill very seriously when they bring out the hard hitters—Denise Lee and Joanne Hayes—to take the first two speeches. When Joanne Hayes takes less than five minutes to try and explain how good the legislation that the National Government put through in 2012 was and only complains about earthquake-affected Christchurch, and that’s it—that’s the only example in the second speech that was given about arguments why we shouldn’t be supporting this bill—you know we’re on the right track, in being in the Government on this side.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, I don’t need to know anything.

We all know that we’re on the right track, being on this side in the Government. It is quite clear to me that just in the two speeches that we heard from the National Party, they’re just not listening to the ratepayers.

I’ve only really just picked up this bill today when the Hon Ron Mark couldn’t make it in to speak on this bill, because he was absolutely desperate to. I have looked just very quickly through the regulatory impact statement (RIS) and the bill itself, and it is quite clear that there is an absolute need and want from the ratepayers themselves and from the local authorities to get this changed and to put it back to where it was prior to 2012.

One of the things that did surprise me was the fact that the four well-beings were removed. When I dug a little deeper into what those well-beings were, it was actually about the entire purpose of local government. Having been in this House over the last four years, I understand what one of the most important things is in any piece of legislation, and it is the absolute purpose of the legislation. So for any decision maker or anyone that’s making decisions on behalf of someone else or managing, whether it be an organisation or a local authority, we all know that the most important part is the foundation, and that foundation for any decision-making process is the purpose and why one is doing what they’re doing.

So in order to dig a little bit deeper into when, why, and what for the National Party—and the then National Government, back in 2012—wanted to take out the well-being clauses—it was amazing to me, because the purpose of local government that we want to be reinstated is to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities. I just can’t see what’s so wrong with that. In fact, I think that is absolutely fundamental to the running of a community that has well-being as its focus. I suppose if the National Party doesn’t want a community to have well-being as a focus, then they would take it out, and I guess that’s what they did in 2012. The four of them are the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-beings of communities, and ensuring that local authorities take a sustainable development approach—a sustainable development approach.

When you look into the regulatory impact statement to have a look at a couple of the policy problems, it is clear to me that Denise Lee didn’t read the regulatory impact statement, because there are a couple of examples in there about how the current legislation as it’s written, or the current laws, is and has been a problem for local authorities. One of the things that she said was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There’s nothing wrong with it, whatsoever.”, but that’s not what I found in just a couple of minutes of reading the regulatory impact statement.

The overarching policy problem that this legislation is trying to amend is to, obviously, “restore reference to promoting the four aspects … This reflects a broad empowering approach to local government and enables local authorities to shift their focus to ‘should we do this?’ from ‘are we allowed to do this?’ ” If you just take a second to think about the fact that for the last five or six years, local authorities and local governments have been worried about whether they should do anything because they wouldn’t be allowed to do that because of legislation, that is entirely restrictive to any progressive local government. Obviously, it’s vitally important for any successful local government to be able to have the freedom and the boundaries to be able to put the well-being of the community at the heart of any of the decisions that they have.

Here’s a couple of examples that the RIS goes into. One of them is that “A number of local authorities that have considered paying their staff the living wage have faced challenges based on [that] purpose”. That’s one of the examples, and the reason why they haven’t challenged it is because it contradicts the “most cost-effective” elements of the legislation as it’s written now. At the moment, it states that there must be the most cost-effective manner or way that local government manages things, and that would restrict local government or a local authority being able to pay their staff a living wage.

It goes on: “Another consequence could be that ‘buy local’ policies [of the local government or local authority] whereby local authorities give some preference to local businesses could be challenged on similar grounds.” So when Denise Lee stands up and says in her first speech that there’s nothing wrong and that no one’s complaining and that all of the local authorities are happy, then perhaps she needs to read the regulatory impact statement.

So I said that I was a little bit surprised about the well-beings being removed from the legislation back in 2012, but what I wasn’t surprised to find out—if I was told correctly—was that Dr Nick Smith was the local government Minister at the time. That’s something I wasn’t surprised about, with this happening.

So, basically, what I read from the legislation, the intent of those changes in the legislation in 2012 was that the National Government wanted the councils—and we actually heard it again today, especially from Jo Hayes—to only focus on infrastructure, and on infrastructure only. Back in 2012, New Zealand First was in Parliament and we spoke on this bill. Andrew Williams actually spoke on this bill, and he was a former Mayor of North Shore City. He said something about those changes which was actually quite succinct and apt for those comments from Jo Hayes. He stated that “this latest reform”—back in 2012—“of the Local Government Act 2002 is basically taking the councils right back to where they were maybe 20 or 30 years ago, where they simply had a town clerk who fixed some potholes, did some footpaths, and maybe fixed up the roads and patched up the local hall. Well, the days of that have gone, and the days of local communities expecting much more from local councils are here.”

But, you see, New Zealand First took the approach back then in 2012—and we’re still taking it here—that expecting a council to only have a local clerk to fix up the potholes in the roads, fix the local hall, and fix the footpaths is a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. We need the local authorities to have the entire well-being of their local community at the heart of any decision making. But what Joanne Hayes was saying was that that was exactly what the National Party wanted—exactly what the National Party wanted. What she didn’t mention was that back then, all the submissions on the bill from the local authorities were against what the National Party were trying to do. They were against what the National Party were trying to do.

So why did the National Party do this in the first place? Because they were listening to the business communities. The business communities in the local communities, all they wanted—they complained about the rates that they were paying. They complained about where those rates were being spent, because they didn’t want them spent on arts and culture. They didn’t want them spent on anything else apart from economic development. And that’s who National listened to.

Well, New Zealand First, back then, made some promises, and so did the Labour Party, about listening to the local communities, about listening to those local authorities, and about ensuring that when we got into power, we would turn back the clock and bring this back into legislation. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. Thank you.

I rise to speak on the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. We will oppose the bill, simply because the bill may well result in large, less efficient local governments.

The bill would enable local governments to promote four well-beings: social, economic, environmental, and cultural. It means that local governments would have broader and less well-defined responsibilities. That also means more staff, and may well mean higher rates. So this is why we believe that this bill has fundamental problems.

The money raised from taxpayers should be spent on well-defined projects. But these four well-beings can be loosely defined and hence can be used as excuses for local governments or local councils to spend money on ill-defined projects. That can be a waste of money.

Local governments need physical discipline, and this was a key focus of the previous National Government’s local government reforms. The reason why we believe local governments need to have physical discipline is because some local governments, some councils, are running high debts. They are not using their money efficiently and responsibly—as I said a couple of weeks ago at Auckland Council, because over the last four years the council’s spending on wages increased by $800 million, and, each year, the council now spends close to $900 million on salaries, on wages.

💬 Maureen Pugh: How much?

Almost $900 million. So that’s how much taxpayers’ money is being used to pay a big local government. They employ about 12,000 staff—12,000 staff—and among them, about 200 earn over $200,000 a year, and over 2,000 people earn over $100,000 a year. So this is a huge, huge salary and a huge local government. In comparison, Brisbane City Council—similar size population—has only 8,000 staff and only about 150 staff earning money over A$100,000. So this is a sharp difference.

Now, local councils need to deliver high-quality services. How to do that? We need to make sure they have well-defined responsibilities, and the core roles—the core roles—should be to provide local infrastructure, to provide local public services, and also they should focus on local regulatory functions. They should focus on all these areas at the least cost to households and businesses.

New Zealanders know how to use money, and therefore we should not randomly increase rates at local councils’ wish. We must make sure local councils really focus on their real job. Thank you.

E Te Māngai.

💬 Jamie Strange: Bring a bit of sense to it.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is my absolute pleasure to, in the words of one Jamie Strange, bring a little bit of sense to this debate. In response to what was just said by Dr Jian Yang, the previous speaker, about how we need to ensure that we are controlling rates, somehow, as central government—I’m not sure he quite understands the role of central government nor local government—the point that I’d really like to bring home to the House tonight, and, indeed, to all of the MPs, is who do we think we are? The reason that I ask that question is that what we’re debating at the moment is the mandate of local elected members.

So frequently in this place and in the political debate, as has raged throughout this past election, and, indeed, subsequent to it, with the formation of the Government and, obviously, the Opposition too, has been this attempt to drive a wedge between rural communities and urban communities, while all the while, us in this place—some politicians in here—are saying that they know best what kinds of outcomes these communities are looking for. What we’re saying on this side of the House, on the Government benches, is that we believe it should be up to those communities to decide what is best for them, and they do so, by way of local government. They elect these people to make decisions on their behalf. That is what a representative democracy is.

So this legislation, which the Green Party is very proud to support, does a number of things, but where the majority of the debate has centred has of course been on the four well-beings, with those four well-beings being social, economic, environmental, and cultural. The bill will seek to replace section 3(d), which currently reads: “provides for local authorities to play a broad role in meeting the current and future needs of their communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulator functions.”

What previous speakers such as the likes of Darroch Ball from New Zealand First have touched on is that what this really myopic focus on cost and spending without any of the values that, obviously, inform those decisions has resulted in is councils being criticised for attempting to pay the living wage and for attempting to pay their employees properly the amount it costs to live in these cities that we so frequently debate—the likes of Auckland and Wellington. For the sake of cost efficacy, these councils are currently constrained. But, again, I’d really like to drive home the point that they get their mandate by way of being elected in the very same way that we here in this House do. So do we think we know better? Do we really think that we know better than the people who are actively at the coalface and the grassroots, talking to their communities on a day-by-day basis? It’s incredibly prescriptive for us to think that we know better.

So, obviously, Denise Lee, a former councillor in Maungakiekie on Auckland Council, noted that our reversing this change implemented by the National Government to, indeed, remove the four well-beings was just a perception problem because the rolling back that the previous National Government did resulted in no major change in the way that councils operated. On that point, if the practice has continued despite the changes that the National Party sought to make, how out of touch is that? Seriously, how out of touch is it to think that we in this place know better and seek to prescribe what local communities should be doing? We make this massive change and, as a result, nothing happens—no change comes about. Surely, with the likes of Local Government New Zealand—a massive organisation that represents, in my understanding, by far the majority of the local councils around this country—heralding in this change, celebrating this change, and representing all of these local governments, how is it that the Opposition is seeking to block this change?

I would also like to speak to the point from Jo Hayes. She said that rates will go up. I’d really like to see some evidence of that, because there is, indeed, not one shred. As was mentioned by the speaker previous to myself, rates have gone up under the changes that the National Government made previously. So, again, these changes made by the previous Government did not do very much at all.

Another change that we are making to the Local Government Act is to remove section 11A. That requires local authorities to have particular regard to a contribution specified as core services. Again, the Green Party is proud to support this change because it is prescriptive and undermining of the mandates that local councils and their elected members have by way of being elected by their local communities.

It also restores local authority powers to collect development contributions for public amenities—as was noted by Minister Nanaia Mahuta—such as sportsgrounds, libraries, and swimming pools and for reserves from non-residential developments. The fourth change that it makes is in resolving a technical issue with development contributions that are stopping councils, currently, from accepting Housing Infrastructure Fund advances from the New Zealand Transport Agency to accelerate infrastructure for new development areas, which, surely, is something that we want to see.

So, in summation, I’d like to state—just really bringing it back to the issue of the four well-beings, which is absolutely the major point in contention tonight—that the change that we’re seeking to do here will provide “for local authorities to play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach.” I’m not sure how familiar my colleagues in the House are with the likes of sustainable development, but, broadly, what it actually means is investing money that is going to deliver long-term change that communities will accept. It won’t be rejected by those communities. It will be adopted and it will, obviously, absolutely necessarily align with their well-beings, with those being social, economic, environmental, and cultural. The Green Party commends this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m very pleased to speak to this Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill about the four well-beings—social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-beings.

Now, National opposes this bill, and we oppose it because it’s like going backwards. I was part of the first Local Government and Environment Committee, back in 2012, when we first heard the submissions on the 2012 bill, which changed the community well-beings and removed them. That change was, then, to reflect increasing concerns about rates that were going up. It was the fact that many councils were funding all sorts of fabulous projects from development contributions but many of the ratepayers were not convinced it was the right thing to do. We heard from them ad nauseam. Hundreds of them came to give submissions, and Mr Ball might be interested to know that it was not just the business community; it was ordinary Kiwis and, particularly, quite a lot of elderly Kiwis concerned about paying increasing rates on a fixed income.

There was also an ongoing concern about the affordability of housing, and the fact that some councils were using development levies to fund infrastructure that was nice to have—swimming pools, libraries, and those sorts of things—but that was delivering amenity to a much wider community than the one that was actually paying for it, and, of course, that was making it difficult for young people, particularly first-home owners, to get into their own home. There’s always a balance between what the community would like to have, in terms of amenity, and what they’re prepared to pay for, and in my time working in local government, there was one hard and fast rule: ratepayers—and taxpayers, actually—want the very best facilities but they don’t want to pay for them.

One of the problems that we have is often, in terms of community consultation, we ask people, when we’re considering a new project, “Would you like a new swimming pool?” And, of course, they say yes, but if you actually said to them, “Would you like a new swimming pool—and that will be $100 on your rates every year for the next 10 years?”, there might be a different answer.

I was actually wondering why the Government is actually bothering to do this—except for the fact, of course, that it was Mr Eagle’s member’s bill—because when you look at the regulatory impact statement about restoring the four well-beings, it says, and I quote from clause 36, “Our analysis is that the actual impact of the change[s] to the purpose of the local government on … decision-making, services and activities is likely to be low,”. It has to be a symbolic bill, rather than one that’s going to make a real difference.

I remember those consultations on the 2012 amendments. There was a great divergence in opinion about what local government should be spending ratepayers’ money on. We need to get the balance right this time. It’s fine for Minister Nanaia Mahuta to talk about how it moves the focus back on to community decision-making—everybody agrees with that; we don’t want to tell them how to spend their money—but there’s not uniform agreement of what the community can and wants to afford. Many ratepayers feel absolutely disenfranchised and helpless as expectations of the community increase and rates skyrocket—and, again, I refer back to elderly New Zealanders who are often on a fixed income.

Every ratepayer should be confident that the council is delivering good value for money in terms of rates, and that they can afford to continue to live in their homes in the future. They are happy to pay for the core roles of local government, but they want local government to be cost-effective, they want it to be efficient, and they want value for their rate money, and I absolutely support that. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Well, I found that most disappointing—an MP who comes from Christchurch to be sitting there saying that local bodies should, fundamentally, stick to their knitting and should be worried about drains and roads. The fact of the matter is that councils around the country have been assiduously ignoring these reforms because they know that, in fact, it is their duty to look after ratepayers—all ratepayers, young and old. Of all places, Christchurch is one where that absolutely stands out.

If we think about these well-beings, we know economic well-being’s important, we know we’ve got to balance the books, and we know we’ve got to deliver those core functions. That goes without saying. But to suggest that cities and regions should stand by whilst their environment is degraded, whilst their social fabric is degraded, and whilst their cultural heritage is eroded, it beggars belief. I commend the Minister for putting things back as they should. This is fantastic. Going back is not a bad thing when we should have never left there.

If we look at what’s gone on in Christchurch over the past years, we look at what the city has done—and I commend Christchurch City Council for the innovative things they’ve done to support their communities, despite everything and despite the shackles placed on it by the Local Government Act. We think of projects like Greening the Rubble, Life in Vacant Spaces, and Gap Filler—groups of “hippies” making the place better, supported by things like the Christchurch City Council and the Canterbury District Health Board, because we know that health and wellness is critical to any city.

It’s no good having a city which has great roads and water if its people are broken, and that’s what this Christchurch City Council has been doing: things like the Mayor’s Welfare Fund, looking at vulnerable people and picking up the pieces where it has. The $10 million that this House knows is going to the refurbishment and restoration of the Christ Church Cathedral—how can that fit in to the narrow shackles of the Act that the National Government left us with? That would leave us impoverished—architecturally impoverished, our heritage would be impoverished, and our culture would be impoverished. That money is going back to restore our heritage. Heritage grants themselves—the preservation of our valuable buildings—don’t fit within the core objectives that that party would have us constrain our local bodies to.

The list is endless. The multicultural forum that is funded out of civic funds to ensure that our city is inclusive, that it’s culturally diverse, and that it’s welcoming—that is absolutely part of the cultural wellness. I am very pleased that the city council now doesn’t have to shirk and hide in the shadows; it can point to cultural wellness in saying, “We are mandated to spend this money”—on a multicultural forum, or on an international buskers’ festival for the arts, or on a biodiversity fund to ensure that our environments are protected and preserved for everyone into the future.

The other thing that’s important to note is that these wellnesses are not only just for now but they’re for the future. This is a forward-looking piece of legislation, a piece of legislation which would protect us.

It’s interesting that we heard the former member for Christchurch Central berating us for passing this, but look what Local Government New Zealand said. They are delighted—the local governments from around the country are delighted to see the introduction of this bill; they congratulate the Government. This is widely supported throughout the country—we know that—because cities have been strangled by the constraints put on local government previously.

It’s also interesting to note that many public health scholars have identified the role of city councils in improving public health and especially mental health. So we’ve got, for example, Dr Tara Kessaram, who in 2013 looked at these reforms. She noted, and I quote, “the shift towards a stronger economic focus, the challenge to local democratic participation, and the potential impact on wellbeing from the undervaluing of [the] local government’s role in affecting the wider determinants of health, may jeopardise the health, representation, and participation of the present and future generations of New Zealand society.” And you know what? That was prescient, because that’s exactly what happened.

Local bodies were unable to look after their people because the National Government said, “Look after your roads but don’t worry about your people. You can run down your people but keep your sewers going.” We know how important core services are, we know that we’ve got to keep our water clean and drinkable, but we’ve got to look after our people, too, and look after our environment so that not only now but in the future our cities will be fantastic places to live, and that’s what this does.

This Government has stopped thinking about one bottom line. We recognise that there’s a whole lot of measures that we’ve got to measure ourselves by, and I am very proud to be part of a Government that recognises social, environmental, and cultural well-being as well as economic well-being. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It hasn’t happened to me very often in this House, but tonight I’ve had an epiphany. It just dawned on me. I’ve been reading the debate notes on this particular bill, and it’s just dawned on me, after listening to Mr Webb over there, what this bill is probably all about. He’s talked about the well-beings, but then he’s gone on to talk about local government providing social support, providing heritage support, and talking about health. This here is a divesting of the responsibility of central government and pushing it back down on to local government and the ratepayers.

Well, Mr Webb, I can tell you that the ratepayers will not thank you for that. That is the role of central government, and for someone who’s got such a tight budget coming into their first round of budgeting, I can see what the motivation is: you are trying to push all this back down on to the ratepayer.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, I’m not.

I can recall back in—Mr Webb is attempting to push it back to the ratepayers, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I do recall back in 2002 the unsettling effect that the legislation had around the local government sector when the well-beings were first introduced by the Labour Party. It was unsettling because it meant that any active lobby group could justify any project under those headings of well-being, and it opened a huge can of worms. And the problem with these things, that are what we used to call in the local government sector the “nice-to-haves”, is that these lobby groups will lobby really hard to get their “nice-to-have” project, but then they’re usually the same people that will come along at annual plan time and complain about the rate increases. And these “nice-to-haves” are a very slow creep. You get a new project one year, you get another project the next year, but actually, the ongoing costs of these projects are continual, because someone has to maintain them; someone has to repair them.

Well, then, in 2012, the Local Government Act was amended and the well-beings were removed, and guess what? The sky didn’t fall in, and it didn’t stop the councils from doing the things that they needed to do. It didn’t stop them investing in libraries or pools or playgrounds or parks, but what it did do was refocus back on their core responsibilities. “Rats, roads, rubbish, and water”—that’s what we used to call it. What they want to know is when they turn on the tap, the water will run and it will be clean drinking-water. What they want to know is that when they put their bag out once a week, someone is going to come and pick it up and take it to a transfer station. What they want to know is that their roads, when they come out of their driveway, are going to be sealed and safe.

There’s one other point I would like to make about these particular well-beings. It is that when you’ve got a large council, these costs are spread across a large number of ratepayers, but I can understand that it is more palatable to make these changes for a Government that’s lost sight of the regions. And the small councils that are running and managing those small regions—they don’t have the same economies of scale, so those “nice-to-haves” actually do have a much higher impact per ratepayer. I can tell you that in Auckland, I believe that the average rates up there are about a thousand dollars. Well, in some of those regions it’s three times that amount. They can’t afford the added cost of these “nice-to-haves”.

This side of the House is opposed to this bill. We believe that local councils are the best managers of their money, and we do not support this bill.

The next call is a split call between Labour and ACT, and I call Ginny Andersen.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my colleagues Nanaia Mahuta and Paul Eagle for bringing this piece of legislation this far, and what a good bill it is. It’s a good bill because it acknowledges the importance of local and central government working together, and that is long overdue in New Zealand. If you ask any person when you are out on the streets—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t want to ask.

—about the issues that concern them, it is the issues that are affecting people on a day-to-day basis. It’s about having a home that’s warm and dry, about having transport that’s affordable and accessible, and it’s about having things like parks for children to play in—preferably those that have a public toilet, and even ones where mums and dads can get a coffee. Those are the types of things that people want in their home communities.

This piece of legislation restores the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of our communities, and it acknowledges the fact that it is people, not just things and roads and buildings, that connect us. It is those communities that we want local bodies to be taking control of when they wish to do so. I have some very good examples of how that operates where I come from in Hutt South. It empowers councils to be able to work with their communities and give them those things that are required. It reduces compliance exercises of councils having to identify how a particular activity meets the constrained statutory purpose that’s in the current legislation.

A good example that has already been mentioned tonight is the living wage. The Hutt City Council expressed a clear desire to pay its staff the living wage: 232 staff earned less than $20.20 an hour. That came to an annual cost of $560,000 a year. When the local living wage group lobbied and worked with councillors to make that change, the view that was taken was that special legal advice was sought, and once that legal advice was provided, it was put forward that only the most cost-effective option could be taken. As a result of that legal advice, the living wage was not able to be paid to those 232 people—those people who did some of the hardest jobs and were paid the least amount of people, on a daily basis; not earning $20 an hour.

I’m proud to see a piece of legislation put through from this House that will change the lives of people where I come from, and give a basic wage in an area that is long overdue. In that process, I would like to acknowledge local councillors who have lobbied hard for this change to take place: Campbell Barry, Josh Briggs, and local advocates such as Muriel Tūnoho, who have worked hard to represent those who don’t have a voice. I’m proud to see a piece of legislation where central and local government will be working together to give our communities the basics they need to get by.

The second area I would like to touch on is housing. We’ve got some exciting developments happening in Hutt South, particularly in Ēpuni, where we will have Housing New Zealand properties of social housing and KiwiBuild. Those areas are fantastic opportunities for our local council to be providing services to those people who need assistance. There is a strong appetite from our Hutt City Council to be able to do that. It’s great to see a piece of legislation that empowers local councils to be involved with new developments that central government is developing, and to be able to give people those services to make lives better, to give people the care and support they need to get on, get a job, pay their rent, and have a happy, well-balanced life. That is what this Government is about, and I am proud to see a piece of legislation that works from top down to the bottom to give everyone in New Zealand a fair go. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill—but it should be called the “Local Government (Puppy Dogs and Ice Cream) Amendment Bill”, because, like so much of what this Government gets up to, it is built on the myth that if only the intentions are good, the results will follow, and as this Government is going to find out, painfully over three years, the real world don’t work like that.

This bill takes the Local Government Act and changes it to take away the important features that stipulate what local government should be doing and says that local government can just do whatever it feels like. At the moment, the bill says that the purpose of local government is that local authorities should play a broad role in meeting the current and future needs of their communities for good quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions. Under the current Act, local government is given some actual tasks and responsibilities.

Under this bill—and it’s only four short pages, but it goes to the heart of what local government is supposed to do—it says that local government should “play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities … taking a sustainable development approach.” What does that mean? Well, for local government, it means they can justify any activity they want at cost to ratepayers. That is why this is not the community well-being bill; it is the “Puppy Dogs and Ice Cream Local Government Bill”.

And it gets worse: we get on a few sections later and we, again, attack the purpose of local government. At the moment, the purpose of local government, according to the Local Government Act, is to “[meet] the current and future needs of … communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and [the] performance of regulatory functions.”, in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses. Well, that’s not going to be there any more; that’s going to be gone. It’s going to say, “As long as the council thinks it’s doing the right thing, then that’s OK and forget cost-effectiveness for households and businesses.” This is rate increases telegraphed from Parliament, through your local council, coming to a town near you—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the people waiting at home who actually have to work hard, earn the money, and pay those rates.

And it gets worse: at the moment, the Local Government Act says that good quality services are “efficient; [are] effective … and appropriate to present and anticipated future circumstances.” That’s gone completely. Efficiency, effectiveness—this Government is actively bringing a bill to the House to try and make sure that local government won’t be effective or efficient. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be hilarious. But it is serious, because I can tell the Government that people in the real world, such as the Epsom electorate, know that they want a local government that delivers those services which have no substitute in private markets, that central government doesn’t provide. They want their council to provide those things at the most efficient and effective cost possible.

It’s bad enough now, but once the last remaining restraints on local government, the last remaining requirements for local government to perform efficiently and effectively are proactively removed by this Government—would you believe it—then local government is going to have a field day at the ratepayers’ expense, and those real problems we have in Auckland, those real problems like raw sewage getting washed into the Waitematā and Manukau Harbours when it rains too much, those real problems like people that get sewage going down the creek at the back of their house in Remuera when it rains too much—those will remain unfixed. Those real problems like the shortage of infrastructure, those real problems like the lack of affordable housing for the next generation of New Zealanders—those will remain unfixed by local government, which, under this bill, no longer has to be efficient and effective.

Rather than solving the real problems at a cost-effective rate for ratepayers up and down this country, local government will be pursuing puppy dogs and ice cream, and that’s why the ACT Party opposes this bill.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak tonight on the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. I wanted to start by responding to some of the comments that have been made across the House tonight. The first one was Miss Chlöe Swarbrick from the Green Party. She mentioned during her address that she urged the Opposition MPs to listen to ratepayers—to listen to ratepayers. Well, actually, Miss Swarbrick, that’s exactly what we did when National were in Government. I think Nicky Wagner, when she was Minister, and certainly during her time before that as the local MP in Christchurch Central, listened to ratepayers at length, and that’s why we eventually passed the law in the way that we did in the last term.

I want to, I guess, caution some MPs across the other side—perhaps, like I am, new MPs—about listening to councils and thinking that is a proxy for talking to ratepayers. It’s not. Of course councils are going to have a view about what they want to spend money on, but, actually, it’s ratepayers who have to pay for it, not the councils.

I also wanted to touch on some comments made by Mr Paul Eagle. Now, as Paul mentioned, he was recently a Wellington City councillor and, in fact, wanted to bring this bill up as a member’s bill. I congratulate him for wanting to do that. But it does intrigue me, because I just wonder to myself: you know, did he get a phone call, perhaps, from Minister Nanaia Mahuta saying that she was going to be picking up the bill, perhaps right before he had that phone call with his local panel beater? The reason it does intrigue me, though, is in terms of the substance of the bill. The legislation at the moment says “to meet current … future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.” That is the legislation at the moment.

So my question for members opposite is: what in there do they disagree with? What in there do they disagree with? Actually, there’s a whole range of things that councils can do within that current framework. I look at my local area of Ashburton, where we’ve had the council fund things like a brand new art gallery, a brand new museum, they built a lake, and, more recently, they’ve put in a new swimming and sporting centre—those are all things that have been done without this legislation being in place.

So I ask members opposite: what problem is it they’re trying to fix? It brings me to the last sentence of that passage, which is “in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.” I think that is the thing that members opposite object to. They hate the idea of Government and local government being accountable for every dollar they spend. That’s the reason we oppose it, and that’s the reason I’ll vote against it tonight.

It’s an absolute privilege to be the last speaker on this Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill, and I will take a very short speech. I just want to acknowledge the leadership of Nanaia Mahuta. This bill reminds me of a whakataukī that says, “Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi”—as an old net withers, another is remade. Or you could say, “When an elder is no longer fit to lead, a healthier leader will take its place.”, and that’s what this bill is about.

I want to just remind the House, because I’ve got not very long to go: the purpose of this amendment is about amended section 3(d), inserted by clause 4—there are other purposes, but section 3(d) “provides for local authorities to play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of … communities, taking a sustainable development approach.” I want to end on well-being. Well-being is about being comfortable, being healthy, and happy, and all the people across the House, they spoke today—tonight, their speech was about taxpayers, about ratepayers. I put it to the members across the House: everybody that lives in a community contributes to paying tax, contributes to paying rates. It is about everybody, and therefore, I support this bill and I commend it to the House. Malo.