Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: I move that the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill now be read a first time. I nominate the Governance—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Could I just ask the Minister to repeat that, please, in the order in which it is written?

I move that the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill now be read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Could you do it one more time, please. Thank you.

I move, That the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider this bill.

I’m introducing this bill on behalf of the Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. This bill will ensure that the legislation that local authorities operate under is fit for purpose, not standing in their way, and not holding them back.

The bill amends seven local government Acts through a variety of minor and technical amendments. Government departments are responsible for the stewardship of the legislation that they administer. The 2014 Productivity Commission report Regulatory institutions and practices noted it can be difficult to find time and opportunity for departments to undertake repairs and maintenance of existing legislation.

Regulatory systems bills like this one have become an efficient vehicle for carrying out repairs and maintenance of existing Acts. They take care of inconsistencies, gaps, and errors, and clarify provisions which may be outdated or ambiguous. They can remove unnecessary costs and complexity within the regulatory system and ensure legislation remains relevant. These bills are not used to make substantial changes in policy. Instead, they can be used to make sure the original policy intent remains effective in a contemporary environment. This bill makes sure that public notice information is required to be in electronic form and key council information is provided in a useful digital format, and it removes the requirements for hard copies to be submitted to government agencies.

So, with this in mind, I will now summarise the changes made by this bill to the seven principal Acts. First, the amendments to the Dog Control Act 1996 will replace the definition of “disability assist dog” and will remove the list of certified disability assistance dog providers from the definition. A new schedule, Schedule 5, will be created to list organisations that are authorised to certify disability assistance dogs. This schedule may be amended by an Order in Council approved by the Minister of Local Government in consultation with the Minister for Disability Issues. The schedule will ensure there is one list of approved organisations, and the ability to amend the schedule ensures it remains up to date.

A further change to the Dog Control Act amends the public notification requirements for a local authority’s dog control policy report. The notification requirements will now align with those in the Local Government Act of 2002. The focus will remain on ensuring this information is publicly available.

The changes to the Local Electoral Act of 2001 are designed to encourage greater participation in local elections and polls. Effective engagement of citizens with their councils is vital for councils to support and enhance the well-being of our communities. This is a fundamental role for local government. The amendments include a new responsibility for electoral officers to facilitate and foster electoral participation. While electoral officers have undertaken this role, the mandate to do so has never been clear. These changes respond to the Justice and Electoral Committee recommendation that changes be made to the Local Electoral Act to provide a clear mandate to improve the facilitation of participation.

The change to the Local Government Act of 1974 will clarify the consultation and public notice requirements when designating a road as a pedestrian mall. This change will align the requirements with those of the Local Government Act of 2002.

There are a number of changes being made to the Local Government Act of 2002. A definition of “Internet site” is inserted into the Act, and the definition of “public notice” is replaced. The new “public notice” definition will allow public notices to be published online while retaining the requirements to print notices in newspapers. The definition of “working day” will be updated so that it is consistent with other Acts.

The delegation and sub-delegation powers of local authorities will be aligned, and the definition of extraordinary meetings is clarified. This is to clarify that the power to sub-delegate is no greater than the power to delegate, as well as ensuring that extraordinary meetings can only be called when they are absolutely necessary. This preserves public opportunity to participate in meeting processes.

There is a new power enabling the Secretary for Local Government to set requirements of form for documents or information that must be made public. This will provide consistency of information across all of local government. Documents will be made more accessible to the public, and they will ensure the information they contain can be analysed and reused in the future. The bill removes the requirement for local authorities to send hard copies and particular documents to central government. This includes councils’ long-term plans, annual plans, rating resolutions, annual reports, and summaries of their dog control policy and practice report.

A change to the Local Government (Rating) Act of 2002 removes the requirement to send a copy of any resolution setting rates to the Secretary for Local Government. These documents will still be required and will still be publicly accessible, but not having to send them in hard copy will reduce compliance costs for our local authorities.

The changes to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act of 1987 will update and clarify public notification requirements. The changes apply to the notification requirements for extraordinary or emergency meetings, and will allow these meetings to be notified on a local authority’s internet site.

Finally, the changes to the Rates Rebate Act of 1973 will clarify the definition of “income” and will ensure that all retirement village residents are able to apply for a rates rebate. The definition of “income” is updated to be consistent with the entitlements listed in the Veterans’ Support Act of 2014. It does not change the entitlements of veterans or their families. This change to the Rates Rebate Act will enable all retirement village residents, regardless of their occupancy arrangements, to apply for a rates rebate. This was the intention of the changes made by the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Act passed earlier on this year. However, it came to light that the changes would inadvertently exclude residents with a particular previously unknown occupancy arrangement. We are correcting this.

As I noted earlier, bills such as this have become a vehicle to address a range of minor and technical issues. It is important that we take opportunities such as this to repair and maintain the legislation we pass in this House. And so with that, I commend this bill to this House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. National is pleased to support this bill, the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. It contains a number of clauses in it and, as the Minister for Building and Construction has outlined, makes a number of tweaks to legislation, all of which are eminently sensible. There are one or two, perhaps, which I want to speak a little more to, but we are pleased to support this because, in effect, it’s our bill. So I want to acknowledge the work of the Hon Anne Tolley when she was the Minister of Local Government in bringing forward—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I apologise to the member. Could the two members at the back of the House please take your seats?

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. That was an interesting intervention, so now I will continue, for the benefit of those members, to just, perhaps, say once again that we are supporting this bill, and the reason we’re supporting this bill is because the provisions in the bill came from National when we were in Government.

It really just underlines the fact that the National Government was very focused on reducing red tape for local government, and the clauses in this bill—most of which are very sensible and eminently sensible, but there is one clause I do wish to speak to—do exactly that. It was a very strong focus of the National Government to attack those very issues that made local government inefficient, out of date, and inconsistent between some of the provisions and some of the Acts. So, again, I say—and I’ll probably say it a few more times during the course of the speech, but this is a good piece of work, mostly, because it did come from the previous Government.

It does actually give rise to the open-ended question—and I know that members on this side of the House are also thinking this. I’m pretty sure that it is something that is troubling them also, and that is: gosh, isn’t local government lucky to have a bill brought forward with some pretty insubstantial amendments when over the other side of the House we have a Government telling us how endlessly busy it is? So why is it that up to two hours of tonight’s House sitting time can be spent on debating something which, effectively, should be business as usual for any Government and could be put further down the Order Paper with no harm done to anyone? Could it be that there is a lack of legislation coming through? I just wonder, and I just wonder whether the other members of the National Party are wondering the same thing. I bet they are—I bet they are.

But here we are. Here we have got the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill before us, and so I’m not going to painstakingly go through clause by clause by clause. I could—I could—but, again, I’m going to leave that to my colleagues because I know they want to do that. I know they want to go through changes to the Dog Control Act, Local Government Act 2002—they are busting to make contributions around those clauses, I just know they are.

But there is one part that I do wish to speak to, and it is a new part, and it’s the second one in the bill. It is “Amendments to Local Electoral Act 2001”, and it does make quite a substantial change to responsibilities of councils. So the purpose of the changes to the Local Electoral Act is to empower councils to improve representative and substantial participation in local elections. “Nothing wrong there”, I hear you think, and on the face of it there is nothing wrong with that. But how are they going to do it? So we are putting a new purpose into the Local Electoral Act which empowers local authorities to increase participation in local elections. We all want that. Participation is declining in each and every election, and I think participation is down around 40 percent. There are members here who might—it’s around 40 percent.

💬 Lawrence Yule: 42 percent.

Forty-two percent. You see, when Lawrence Yule gets up to make a contribution, I just know he’s going to hammer this point, because I know he cares about it a lot—that and some other points.

But how are they going to do that? Are we going to, yet again under this Government, give an unfettered power to local government to increase participation in local elections? It sounds great on the face of it, but I can tell members something: we will be watching this part through the passage of this bill through the House. In select committee, we will be very, very interested in just what is meant by the insertion of the part into this otherwise very, very good bill. I will leave my contribution there, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. First of all, can I start with an apology. I was just talking with my colleague here, the Labour list MP based in Hamilton, about how great local government was and we were totally fixated; so I apologise. But, look, we are here now. I am always proud to come into the House and talk about local government. I can see some former colleagues over there. I’m sure they too will give this a resounding thumbs up. It’s been a night of thumbs up, and I’m really happy that we got to this before we closed for the evening.

This is a bill that you usually do at a time when you think “What else can we do to make things better?” I want to praise the local government Minister, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for taking the time out to say, “Look, let’s fix those things that local government have been asking to be fixed for many, many years.” I’d say “nine long years” but that might be a bit mean. Anyway, can I say that this takes care of those inconsistencies—the gaps, the errors, the maintenance stuff of at least seven Acts related to local government. And I just want to talk about a few of them.

One is the Local Electoral Act 2001. We know that there’s a bill going through the House now but what this will do is make the facilitation of participation mandated. It’s important we do that. Some of you may not know that, unlike in central government where the orange person comes out, it’s a centralised campaign, and the promotions go out, in local government, it’s localised. Every council does their own thing. Some councils do better than others, but I know, in this city, the great city of Wellington, you get roughly 40 percent of people voting. I don’t know how that compares with other parts of New Zealand but that’s not good enough. I think that to get facilitation mandated to get more people participating is a great thing.

There’s another small but important thing too, and this relates to that modernisation that this Government wants to do. It’s making sure that public notices are not placed only in newspapers. It’s a bit of a pain when you go through a newspaper and all the public notices are bunged at the back, but what this piece of work, this bill, says is that they must be published on the internet too. So you still retain the printing in the newspaper, but you’ll put it on the internet as well. That also connects to the future, which won’t see local governments having to be lumbered with big documents. The long-term plan, the annual reports, the annual plans—some are probably about this thick or that thick. Now it can all just go on the internet. So I’m really proud that councils are not going to have to be lumbered with producing these documents, many because they have to, now they can go online and they can produce just enough for what they need.

There’s also going to be some clarity around the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. That’s really around the notification of extraordinary or emergency meetings. In the past, these meetings have been held without the need to notify properly. They can have them; councils can make decisions quickly. The concern here is, and the feedback’s been, let’s make sure we get communities notified that these are going to happen. So there will be a requirement that those too will have to go up on the internet as well. As I said, small changes but very, very important. Likewise, the Rates Rebate Act 1973—we’ve already made some of those changes but, inadvertently, it’s come to light that there have been some changes which exclude residents with a particular or previously unknown occupation agreement. This corrects that, and I want to say that what we have here is just a range of small but very important things.

One of the more interesting things is the Dog Control Act 1996, also. What this will do is make sure—I mean, really it’s just some wording changes to say, “Look, here’s a list of organisations that are authorised to certify disability assistance dogs.” Those will simply be updated and added to the list. So the schedule may be amended by an Order in Council, approved by the local government Minister, in consultation with the disability issues Minister, but now there’ll be one list of approved organisations ensuring that that list stays up to date.

I just want to applaud the Minister, as I said at the start, for taking the time and going through a whole range of Acts. This is part of this Government’s commitment to giving local government more powers, modernising the way they do things, and ensuring that when they carry out their business, it’s a whole lot easier to do the things that they need to do. I’m really proud that what we’ll see with some of these changes is that they will enable the work that’s going through, or has already gone through, this House to make some real changes. When we look at the Local Electoral Act, you can already do online voting now, but what the changes that come through in a different bill are to give effect to will enable trials to take place online. I’m really happy that some of the things that were started by the previous Government—that, yes, this Government will actually make sure they happen. And they will happen with the protections in place so that local authorities know that if they want to carry out a trial online or if they want to do something, it’s not going to come at a reputational risk for that city, that district, or that region. So a real thumbs up there.

I want to go back to some of the work that local government also does around just producing publications. I’ve said that what you’ll see is that no longer will they have to submit the work, but what this gives is an indication to local government that they can carry out their work knowing that the cost to ratepayers won’t be going in to all that printing or that unnecessary cost around distribution. For those smaller councils that find this a necessity, it will mean that they won’t need to pay the money or be lumbered with the costs of doing some of this work. I think notification of things like the extraordinary meetings is key also. And I can say to that: in a previous life, being able to easily do things because the law allows you to do that but without carrying out that “requirement”, I guess is the word, to engage with your citizens and do that properly—that can now no longer be done. What that does is set up the transparency and democratic processes a whole lot better.

I’m really proud that we’ve got this to the House. I’m also proud that I think we’ll get a unanimous vote on this. So I commend this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to stand in support of this Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill in its first reading. First of all, I would like to congratulate Minister Nanaia Mahuta for picking up this bill, and the speech given on her behalf by the Hon Jenny Salesa shows that the work done by the previous Government is being acknowledged.

I was listening to the speech of the member Paul Eagle. He was passionately speaking because he has been part of local government, and I can see members from this side—Simeon Brown, Denise Lee, Lawrence Yule, and Ian McKelvie—who all have been part of local government. They are very passionate about this bill because they know there are minor technical changes in this bill but they are very important, and this is because of the report by the Productivity Commission in July 2014, which recommended these changes. The Productivity Commission found that it can be difficult to find time on the parliamentary calendar for repair and maintenance of existing legislation. As a result, regulatory agencies often have to work with legislation that is out of date, not fit for purpose. This can create unnecessary cost, complexity, and ambiguity for the regulators and regulated parties. It means that the regulatory regime may not keep up with the public or political expectation.

We also see, as Paul Eagle mentioned, some of the modernisation which has taken place, as we see in the Parliament also—we are becoming paperless, and so are councils. So these technical changes can really help to improve the working of overall local government.

The local government legislative framework is a complex arrangement of multiple Acts and regulations. Over time, amendments to local government regulations have been introduced and errors and inconsistencies have been fixed. That is why this bill was a part of the previous Government, which wanted to reduce the paperwork and bureaucracy, and to improvise the regulatory system so that people can have the advantage of that. Those are the things which were in the minds of the previous Government members, and which this regulation was for.

I would like to touch upon some of the issues which are being addressed in this legislation. “Local Electoral Act 2001: The purpose of the changes to the Local Electoral Act … is to empower councils to improve [the] representative and [the] substantial participation in local elections, and to clarify when a successful candidate in a by-election may come into office.” “A candidate who is declared to be elected comes into office on the day after the day on which the official result of the election is declared by public notice under section 86.”

So this legislation is going to improve a lot of local government legislation problems, and it will fix the errors which are present there. With these words, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a privilege to be able to stand and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this, the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I want to start by acknowledging the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Minister of Local Government, for bringing the bill to the House. I also want to recognise previous speakers who have local government experience, in particular—and I see a few more on the Opposition benches lining up to take calls—just to pay recognition for the service of some of those members. They have long, deep experience. I acknowledge member Lawrence Yule as a former president of Local Government New Zealand. I enjoyed the time working with that member and local government, and being part of the local government family.

It’s no secret that, for years now, there have been numerous inconsistencies in the Act. And it’s when the previous speaker Jacqui Dean spoke on the bill and made it clear that it was the previous Government that put this legislation together, and, therefore, the previous Government and the Opposition benches deserve the credit for this bill being here—I guess, what they must also accept is the criticism for it taking so long to get here. Nine years they had to tidy up some of these matters, and instead of dealing in some of these technical issues that were costly, cost productivity, were difficult to interpret, and, in fact, in some cases just simply out of date—instead of dealing with those simple matters which would have reduced compliance costs, reduced red tape, reduced rates for the ratepayers or costs on the ratepayer, something that the previous Government promoted itself as being a champion of—they instead got diverted by other nonsensical local government amendments, such as the 2013 legislation, which, I assume that the Hon Jacqui Dean was taking credit for as well, along with that erstwhile former minister Nick Smith.

You see, it’s pieces of legislation like this bill that come in and they’re quite technical—they’re sort of a technocrat’s tidy up. It’s long overdue, and it’s work that has to be done. I don’t anticipate there’ll be a lot of opposition. In fact, I would anticipate that, given that the previous Government who sits in Opposition apparently produced this perfect bill, there wouldn’t be a lot of discussion in select committee and it’ll be all over and dusted and reported back tout de suite back to the House, and we will be able to enact it in a very efficient manner as well—in a very expeditious manner. So I look forward to seeing that, because I do not anticipate, on the back of the Hon Jacqui Dean’s speech, that there’s much that they’re going to criticise in select committee, that there’s much they’re going to change, because apparently they wrote it, and they wrote it perfectly, and therefore it should stand on its own and just move straight through that select committee process very, very swiftly indeed. So I look forward to an early report back, possibly, if that’s what they could possibly manage for the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, and thus allow us to get the changes through swiftly. But I’m not anticipating that’ll happen, for some funny reason.

In my time in local government, it was often frustrating for a small council to be required to churn out large documents in volumes at great expense to the ratepayer, like the long-term plan, and being expected, at the drop of a hat, to give everybody who asked for a copy a copy—a very expensive exercise. So it’s understandable that we change the law so that these documents, and all documents including minutes of all council meetings, should be available online, so everyone can see exactly what their councillors did and didn’t say in those meetings that took place. And if we reduce this cost to the ratepayers, that’d be a very, very good thing.

There’s only the one caution, and I would ask members to pay a little bit of attention to it, because I’m anticipating that mayors, councillors from rural and provincial New Zealand will say, “That’s all very well and fine if you’re online.” And we know that there are parts of New Zealand who have not had the pleasure, the enjoyment, the privilege of rapidly rolled out broadband initiatives that John Key promised them into their hinterland. I can tell you that you can’t even make a phone call from Gladstone, let alone get broadband. So this provision in Part 4 Amendments to Local Government Act 2002, I’m anticipating some discussion at select committee around whether or not there might still be an obligation in some parts of the country to provide where necessary. So I’ll look forward to seeing the report back and seeing if—based on the submissions, based on the evidence—that is an issue, and if it’s an issue that needs addressing at all in the committee stage.

The other areas—electoral participation; this is a real doozy. I’m looking forward to hearing the discussion and debate around this post the select committee hearings, because we all know that turnouts in local government elections are appallingly low. Again, it’s interesting that in rural and provincial districts it tends to be high. There tends to be something about those districts, those territorial authorities, that drives their constituents to take a higher level of interest, indeed, responsibility, as citizens, as ratepayers, in making those decisions. And so they do fill out those voting forms, and they do post them—not in wonderful numbers but in far better numbers, from all the evidence that I’ve seen. So to have, finally, the Electoral Act amended so that there is focus and mandate to facilitate and foster representative and substantial electoral participation in the legislation is a welcome addition. It will be interesting to see how this rolls out in different parts of the country—what it is that people determine is the cause of the low turnout, the low expressions of interest, the low participation levels, and what it is they choose to do to try and change that, because, believe you me, we need to change that.

There is nothing more frustrating, I think, for many of us who have served in local government than to go through all of the hoopla of consulting, producing a draft annual plan, a draft long-term plan, putting it out for consultation, and then sitting there patiently, late into the evening, waiting for people to come in and make their oral submissions. And at 10.30 or 11 o’clock at night, one finally packs up their notebooks and pads and walks out having had only two people walk in the door, both of them friends of a councillor, who just wanted to come and see who was going to be there—and then, post the publication of the annual plan or the long-term plan, to be bailed up when you’re trying to have a beer in a pub by someone who doesn’t like the long-term plan, who doesn’t like the rates increase, who doesn’t like the plan to modernise or improve the playground or the park, or whatever. And I would always find myself saying to these people, “Did you make a submission?” Did that person vote? And it was always frustrating to find that, in far too many cases, they didn’t even vote. Anything that we can do to increase participation in local government has to be a win. So empowering those in the position to actually promote and foster representation and increase participation and increase voter turnout has got to be a jolly good thing.

Like I said right at the start, I think unanimity is breaking out across the House. Consensus is having its way in the final hours of this evening. Unlike the previous bill, the overseas investment bill—I wish I’d been able to debate this bill with the same degree of passion that I would have debated that one, but I certainly recommend this bill to the House.

This omnibus bill is an attempt to improve and maintain the effectiveness and efficiency of the regulatory system established by principal local government Acts. A well-functioning Government needs an updated and well-informed and practical regulatory system. Outdated and impractical regulatory systems would increase substantial costs and, of course, would reduce efficiency. Like taxation and Government spending, regulation touches the lives of all New Zealanders in different ways. After all, the proper functioning of our society, of our economy, is dependent on a well, sound regulatory system. It is believed that regulation, when implemented well, underpins markets, protects the rights and safety of citizens and their property, and assists the efficient and equitable delivery of goods and services. So we can argue that regulation is an important tool for preserving and advancing the public interest. Poorly designed regulatory arrangements could reduce efficiency and substantially increase costs, while well-designed regulatory arrangements would do otherwise. So it is important—

I apologise to the member. This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō marie.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.