Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill

I move, That the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The bill is an omnibus bill which will make minor and technical changes to the legislative framework under which councils operate. Its purpose is to carry out maintenance on local government legislation to keep it up to date and fit for purpose. It’s an opportunity to tidy up and correct aspects of law that would be beneficial to improved functionality and implementation of their respective Acts. The bill as reported back from the Governance and Administration Committee amends seven principal local government Acts administered by the Department of Internal Affairs. The Government recognises the importance of finding time in the parliamentary calendar to undertake repairs and maintenance to existing legislation.

This approach was endorsed by the Productivity Commission in its 2014 report on regulatory institutions and practices. The amendments contained in this bill support the Government’s vision for an effective system of local government operating under legislation that is clear, modern, and does not introduce unnecessary costs. I’d like to thank the select committee for its careful consideration of the bill and for conducting its business in a timely manner. This gives the House the opportunity to pass the bill with enough time left in the financial year so that those affected by the amendments to the Rates Rebate Act, in particular, have time to submit an application to their local council and receive the rates rebate for this rating year.

The committee received and considered 18 submissions on the bill from interested groups. The two key local government sector groups, Local Government New Zealand and the Society of Local Government Managers, submitted in support of the bill’s purpose. The committee’s report recommends the bill be passed with five main amendments, and I support these amendments.

I’d like to draw the House’s attention to some small but important changes we are introducing in this bill to improve access to information for communities across New Zealand. We’re introducing a new requirement for local authorities to publish public notices on their websites as well as in the traditional community newspaper. We’re introducing a new power for the Secretary for Local Government to prescribe the form of documents and information which local authorities make public. This is to ensure that the information is accessible and reusable by all, including those with a disability. We’re introducing a definition of “Internet site” into the Local Government Act so that council websites are a place where the public can find all important council documents.

In and of themselves, these are minor amendments. However, taken together these changes will make the information held by local authorities more readily available, accessible, and reusable and help support greater transparency in the sector.

I’d like to highlight another amendment in the bill. The amendment is to the Local Electoral Act and introduces a new duty to facilitate and foster representative and substantial electoral participation. The committee recommends that this duty be placed with the chief executive rather than electoral officers. I tend to agree with the committee’s recommendation and think chief executives will be well-placed to ensure the principle of facilitating and fostering electoral participation is reflected throughout their organisation and in their approach to elections. The current low level of participation in local elections means that membership of councils is often less diverse than the communities they serve, and we should always try to do more, which is why improving civic participation in local government is one of my key focus areas for the local government portfolio. This change to the Local Electoral Act will provide councils with a clear mandate to improve participation across our communities.

Finally, the committee recognised that there was some overlap between matters raised in submissions on the bill and the Justice Committee’s inquiry into the 2017 general election and also the 2016 local elections. While those matters were out of scope for the bill, I commend the submitters for raising these issues and support the Justice Committee considering the issues.

The bill contains a number of minor and technical changes which will strengthen the local government legislative framework. The changes are non-controversial and have cross-party support. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very happy to support this bill. In fact, it is an excellent bill which was inherited from the former Government, and a number of the clauses in this bill were developed under our watch. None the less, the bill achieves a number of efficiencies in the regulatory system across a number of statutes, and the Minister—thank you very much, Ms Mahuta—has outlined those to the House. As a collection, they don’t seem, perhaps, that significant. Who, really, is concerned about minor tweaks to the Dog Control Act? Well, maybe some are—I am. But, taken as a whole, these are another step in modernising, simplifying, and clarifying the regulatory regime around local government regulatory systems.

Before I just go through one or two of those clauses in the bill, I do reflect that one of the challenges that the local government sector does face is a low reputational score, and that is a score by their own measure, and a part of that low reputation is because local governments are regulatory bodies and must administer regulation. If we can simplify and clarify those for local government, then that can only have a beneficial flow-on impact on people who need to go up to the council door, knock on it, enter, and wish to transact with some council somewhere in New Zealand.

If I go to the Dog Control Act, one of the aspects of the Act which was a bit of an impediment was around the definition of a disability assist dog, and the Local Government Act really noted which organisations are authorised to certify dogs which are disability assist dogs. Because the legal definition of disability assist dog does include a list of organisations which are authorised to certify a dog as such, we need to do legislative change each time an organisation is added to or removed from that particular list. Clunky—very clunky.

So one of the clauses in this bill allows for organisations to be, through regulation, added to or removed from the Dog Control Act. It’s sensible, and so regulations can now—or will, on the passage of this bill—be made by Order in Council by amending Schedule 5, which is the new schedule, and so those new certifying organisations can be added and those removed.

That’s just an example of how Parliament can smooth out processes for an organisation. And, if I stick with this example, formerly a new organisation that was formed to certify disability assist dogs had to really wait until there was a bill that would enable that, and so wait for a piece of legislation. That could take up to several years, by the time a minor piece of legislation was scheduled for debate, or just not be certified. And now, of course, they can then by Order in Council be added to Schedule 5. So it smooths it out.

So amendments to the Local Electoral Act is another part in this bill, and the changes are to empower councils to improve representative and substantial participation in local elections. We do have a problem in New Zealand with a declining rate of participation in local body elections. There are many reasons why this could be so. It could be that because there is postal voting, there is no election day as such. It might be that the voting papers, when they arrive, contain so many items on which we are to vote that people get confused, maybe get a bit fed up by the whole thing, and then go, “I can’t be bothered.” Whatever it is, we’ve got to address it, because what we need in our communities is strong local representation.

So, again, I absolutely support the clauses in the bill which make changes to the Local Electoral Act, and so it goes. There are a number of speakers to follow me in this debate. I have highlighted two of the clauses for consideration. I commend the bill to the House at this reading.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this particular bill. The member who has just finished her contribution makes some very good points. I wish to elaborate a little bit further on some of those and also point out, and support, the words of the Minister, who, in the second reading of this bill, mentioned some of the substantive changes in the bill. There are all-up approximately, I think, seven changes to the bill but, in particular, five substantive changes to the bill. And I think what this does too is it shows that we can make some very good transitions into a far more democratic environment to engage our people. As we know, as locals in Tāmaki Makaurau, voter participation is particularly low, and that’s the case across many local governments across the country.

Little things can actually go a long way. This bill attempts to tidy up some of those things and takes away the focus—because most of my neighbours that I talk to always say that the council only ever concentrates on the three Rs: roads, rubbish, and rates. What we do know is there is so much more to the beast of council. Some of the things that are addressed in this bill actually go quite a long way to making sure that voter participation rises, and one of them—and it sounds rather mundane—is the definition around “internet” and allowing councils to post notices electronically on the internet.

Given that the internet’s been with us for quite a number of years now, the mind boggles at why we didn’t move to this earlier. It makes us question what has been missed, because readership of papers has been declining at the same time. So when public notices go into the paper—I, for one, certainly don’t read the paper, and the last time I checked on apps, quite often public notices are hard to access there. But we know that with this particular move in this bill, we can, number one, define internet, and, number two, provide a framework around which notices should be advertised on the internet, as well as your standard forms of the paper—because I know quite a number of offices in this institution still receive papers.

It’s important that if we want to increase, in particular, the younger generation to become more civically minded and more involved in civics generally, it’s important that we speak to them on the platforms that they access the most, and the internet is one of those simple forms. I guess, at some point in time, there’ll be some consideration given to far more varied social platforms such as Facebook and whatever else it might be, like Instagram—it seems that the only way my 22-year-old son will talk to me is via social media or on the internet. So it stands to reason that a move like the definition around “internet” and allowing public notices to be advertised through the internet is just one of those smart moves that should have happened a long time ago, yet here we are. It’s some of those little minor things that came through, in particular, in the submissions around this particular bill. Some of the submissions were outside of the scope of this bill, but I won’t talk to those.

Also, on the point of public notices, the Minister raised some good points around transparency and accountability—the ability as a ratepayer, or as someone involved, or as someone who takes an interest in local government to be able to access the portal of those councils to make sure that they can access past information which sounds, once again, a rather mundane thing, but they’re all important steps to make sure that our people are informed and engaged.

I recall another bill in this House where attempts to find old records through local government actually always came up against so many hurdles and barriers. That didn’t help the process for the locals, nor did it in fact help the process that this House was using. It was a local bill; namely, the New Plymouth District Council (Waitara Lands) Bill. But the fact that the general public couldn’t access information raises questions about whether or not the council is hiding something or simply weren’t just fit for purpose to make sure that information was readily available to the general public—and that’s a good thing.

One of the parts gives some powers, indeed, to the Secretary for Local Government. Part of that feeds on from, sort of, the last bit I mentioned about public notices, which is about growing civic engagement, diversity, and accessibility for the disabled, in particular, to be a part of civics within their local government. But more importantly, it actually appoints a task to somebody, a particular role, to make sure that this happens.

At the moment, most of the general public will look at the legislation or will be told to look there to see how they can participate. What this actually does is it says to the chief executives of local bodies, “Actually, it’s your role and your duty to make sure that participation across all sectors, all communities, increases.” Therefore, accountability, I think, is a good thing whereby we can measure whether or not that person is actually delivering that. And there is one other thing—and there has been a number of bills, and I recall, on a separate bill, a submission by a past member, Mojo Mathers, but I still think it’s related. It was around the ability of people who are hearing impaired or disabled to participate. They couldn’t fully participate in either debate, or in voting, or as a potential candidate. I thought it was a powerful submission.

But when she and others sought a remedy or sought a way to actually increase their participation, they were always told, “Go back to the legislation.” Well, we’re doing that now. We’re assigning a role to the chief executive to make sure that participation increases, and I think it’s a fantastic move forward to make sure that actually local governments, and this particular bill, reflect our communities wherever they may be, right across the country, and involve those who have felt locked out for so long.

One of the other parts too is, of course, the legislative framework, and it’s important because while these changes might be rather non-controversial and have support across the entire House, it’s important to note that while making some minor technical changes, there are some more significant changes that affect the legislative framework, and that’s important when we consider an omnibus bill. I say that because there have been a number of omnibus bills in the five years that I’ve been a member of Parliament, and for the most part a lot of the detail is lost on a lot of people. But it’s important that as we consider this bill, those legislative frameworks are spelt out, and I believe that is certainly the case here in the second reading of this bill and, of course, the work that’s been done by the select committee.

In conclusion, I wish to support this bill and, of course, thank the select committee for the work that they’ve done. I know—and if people read the notes, they will see—that this has taken a long time. There are productivity reports from a number of years ago that have been mentioned in this. There has been mention of the last term of Government, and now this term of Government. Well, all I can say is that it’s about time. It’s about time that this bill arrived into the House. The sooner this gets through, the better, and I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to speak briefly on the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. As I said in the first reading of the bill, New Zealand has a very complex and large regulatory sector made up of 200 or so regulatory regimes, and more than 10,000 people work in the regulatory roles. So the regulatory regime is a very important piece of Government infrastructure. The regime or systems need to be updated from time to time, simply because over time you will find inconsistencies, gaps, outdated paths, or errors. So such bills, the regulatory systems amendment bills, are efficient vehicles for us to address such problems. In that sense, these bills are a tool for us to repair and maintain existing legislation.

Such bills also can reduce costs. For example, in this particular bill, we redefined the definition or replaced the definition of “disability assist dog” in the Dog Control Act 1996. The original Act has a definition which includes a list of organisations authorised to certify a dog as a disability assist dog. But every time you had to add one particular organisation or remove one organisation from the list, we had to actually legislate. So this bill will simply remove that list, and also could actually have a list by adding or removing an organisation from the list through regulations instead of through legislation. So this will actually reduce the costs.

Also, the Governance and Administration Committee made a further change to the bill by asking local government to make publicly available all the reports related to dog control matters—matters like the number of registered dogs, or the number of complaints about those dogs, or prosecutions taken. So this is a bill which we believe is important, although it’s not a major policy bill.

The Productivity Commission has found that it’s difficult to find a time on the parliamentary calendar to deal with repairs or maintenance of certain legislation. For that reason our regulatory agencies often find it hard to deal with legislation, because legislation can be out of date or not fit for purpose. So this bill is a step in the right direction. For that reason, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I do rise to take a short call on this bill and to commend the Governance and Administration Committee: the chair, Brett Hudson, and Ginny Andersen, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, the Hon Jacqui Dean—who spoke in the first reading and who had been a Minister overseeing the initial writing of this bill at the time, and I want to acknowledge her for that work that she did in the previous term of Government—Paul Eagle, the Hon Peeni Henare, Jamie Strange, and Dr Yang, who just concluded. It is a technical bill and, going through the select committee report—not having sat on the committee—I think the committee has done the legislation justice.

I want to acknowledge Minister Mahuta, because she has taken on board those issues raised by the select committee during their deliberations and clearly factored those changes into the legislation. Bills like this can be a little bit technical. Some of us who have served in local government can get a little excited sometimes to finally see some things tidied up. This is like a repair and maintenance session on the bill. It is a little interesting that it’s taken so long for some of these technical adjustments to be put right, but put right they will be over the next few weeks as the House moves this legislation through all stages.

I think some of the things that were covered off—in fact, I think I spoke about it in the first reading—were matters that were raised by the Productivity Commission back in 2014 that were impediments to the more efficient operation of local government. Being a mayor in local government, I was acutely aware at times that the legislation was out of date, was clunky, was not using the tools available, and did not, as the Hon Peeni Henare said, take into account the fact that time’s moved on. People now use their devices in their hands. They use their laptops—they go to the internet to access public information from the councils. I think requiring the councils to make some reports more publicly available, and to actually publish them—and I see the information around dog control—are good things.

Often when councils don’t proactively publish information, it does raise suspicions and concerns, and conspiracy theorists start talking about councils hiding information. Most often it’s not that at all. Most often it’s just that the council hasn’t thought to publish that sort of information, or make it readily available, and I refer specifically to those aspects covered under the public notices. The part I would’ve actually enjoyed sitting in on at the select committee and listening to, had I been allowed to, was the discussion around the changes to the Local Electoral Act and how the council goes about encouraging, enticing, more participation. Those matters were dealt with quite ably by the select committee, and I congratulate them for that.

I can’t say a lot more. The bill is pretty simple, actually. It’s astonishing it’s taken this long to get to the House. But I compliment all members of the select committee for the way in which they have studiously handled this legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call. Like others before me, I intend for it to be brief. We do support this bill, and it’s good to hear the previous speaker, Ron Mark, refer to the Productivity Commission and their July 2014 report. This bill does emanate from that particular report and was, of course, started by the previous National Government.

Sometimes, you don’t get chances to tidy up, and the chances don’t come around too often, especially when you have a very full Order Paper, and that described the last Government. When we first debated this, the Order Paper wasn’t so full, under this Government. So here we are, still many months on, finally getting round to a tidy-up. That Productivity Commission report, of course, addressed that exact topic, where they found that the parliamentary calendar doesn’t always leave time for repairs and maintenance, if we can put it that way.

As we know, the bill amends seven statutes, and I found one bit fascinating from commentary from the Governance and Administration Committee, and that was how they covered—and great work from the select committee—a lot of modernising and the need for publications to be digitally available, but they went so far as to also mention how to spruce up newspaper publications as well. Where they refer to clause 15(2) in amending the definition of “public notice” and in clause 29, amending the definition of “publicly notified”, there was support for that, but the committee wanted to note that they would wish for further gains to be achieved in updating the form requirements of public notices in newspapers—yes, the old-fashioned newspaper form. So while we’ve heard some contributions tonight on online and digital access, the committee had the foresight to also look to spruce up how newspaper notifications are presented, and they went so far as to say, “Can we get a plain explanation of the subject matter in those newspaper notices, and can we have reference to a source where you can find more detailed information.” So my congratulations to the committee—you certainly got into some detail on many different topics.

We commend this bill. It’s a bill that started under our tenure, and the Productivity Commission might be proud that we’re getting around to repairs and maintenance. Thank you.

Kia ora, thank you. The Green Party is absolutely voting in support of the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I do congratulate the Governance and Administration Committee for putting through what appears to be a bit of a tidy-up, as others have mentioned, to get the machinery a bit of an all-over service, from what I can gather.

It’s an omnibus—I learnt that word when I came into this place—which really just means that it’s taking, in this case, I think, seven pieces of law, giving them all a bit of a tidy-up, a bit of a spruce-up, and also a bit of consistency work across the seven statutes—gaps, errors, duplications. So a good thing for this House to be doing, making sure that—I guess the word is efficient—the local government regulatory systems are doing their work in a way that is streamlined and common-sense and modern and up to date, has also taken into account the various changes in those specific bills that have happened over the years to make sure we bring that legislation into play, and making sure that we are getting good bang for the buck as well, across local government work in particular.

I know that these amendments are largely technical and administrative, but I did pique my interest a little bit on—so it is the “Fostering participation in local elections”. I think that talks about, in the bill, “clause 10 would amend the Local Electoral Act” and it talks about placing a duty on the “electoral officer of a local authority to facilitate and foster representative and substantial electoral participation.”, something I would hope we all want. I am not part of the committee, so I’m actually unsure what was already in place around that responsibility to improve people wanting to take part in, well, not just local government elections but all parts of how ordinary citizens can make their voice heard in all of the different decisions that are made. I’m not sure what the legislation was previously to this amended change. If it is just an administrative change—actually, the committee seem to have gone even further, where the committee felt that the duty for encouraging better participation in these local electoral—you know, that part of our democracy—absolutely should be placed on “impartial public servants rather than … incumbent elected representatives.” to try and keep it fair.

But the committee went further to say that it should be the CE, the chief executive, of local authorities who are better resourced to carry out that duty. So I think that’s a wise change from what was originally introduced. I’m interested in knowing what was beforehand, because we know that we could do a lot better in making it sexy to participate in anything to do with voting in democratic—and especially in local government. I mean, a lot of our ordinary citizens don’t always understand how much power and resource and decisions are made that affect our daily lives. So that did pique my interest a bit in whether it would actually make any impact on really improving it or whether it was really just an administrative change.

I also picked up, just like my colleague Denise Lee, who spoke before me, that the committee—bless them—went further around the definition of public notice and being publicly notified by local government activities and talked about plain language explanation. Well, that in itself actually is how we encourage and improve participation from citizens. Often, cumbersome, heavy processes and clunky processes and language can just turn people off straight away, so I think bless them. Bless the committee for being able to go a bit further and try and look for other ways of making the suggested improvements even better.

Apart from that, it appears that this is long overdue, from what I heard in the House tonight. This came from the productivity report that was in the previous Government, and we’re finally bringing it into now the second reading in this place. So I’m all for seeing if we can improve our systems, seeing if we can get things a bit streamlined, cutting out some of the unnecessary stuff. I was going to use a car metaphor, but probably not good for the co-leader of the Green Party, so I will go with gardening: a bit of weeding, nourish the soil, plant a few extra things. I think that’s how I’m coming to terms with what we’re doing with this omnibus bill in this House. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

It’s a pleasure to rise in the House today in support of the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I would like to acknowledge, first and foremost, the Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta for bringing this to the House today. I would also like to acknowledge the previous Minister of Local Government, the Hon Anne Tolley, for the work that she put into this bill, which started under the previous National Government.

I rise in support of this bill because of the importance of local government. As a local MP in Northcote, I just want to say that local government has extreme importance to people’s lives. As an MP, the amount of time that people come to me with local government - related issues is large, and I spend a lot of my time as a local MP dealing with local government issues. The essence of this bill, which is about improving the effectiveness and the efficiency of local government processes and systems and structures, I think cannot be underestimated on this front.

As the previous speaker mentioned, this was arisen through the 2016 Productivity Commission report on regulatory systems and Government administration. The Acts that this bill affects—these seven Acts—have been traversed quite extensively, so I won’t go into each, but I will point out one Act which is amended under this bill, which is the Local Electoral Act 2001. This bill essentially seeks to empower local governments around improving the engagement and participation in local government elections. We know in Auckland that that is an issue, where only about 40 percent actually vote in local government elections. So we understand the importance of improving the engagement and giving councils the tools and the authority and the mandate to do that for our civic society.

Again, these bills have been traversed quite substantively, and the reason that we’re supporting it is because we want local government to work well. We want to improve participation in local government elections. We want to remove unnecessary compliance costs for business and for residents. We want to clarify existing provisions in the bill and also update any small areas, as well. So this is an omnibus bill, and I very much support this bill in the House. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call. Paul Eagle, you have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I could take more, but five is enough on Thursday afternoon. Look, can I just start by acknowledging the Minister of Local Government, the hard-working Nanaia Mahuta—I think she’s done an outstanding job to date and will continue to do an outstanding job for those in local government—and also the hardest-working select committee on earth, the Governance and Administration Committee. It just so happens I’m a member of that committee—no coincidence. Someone’s got to do the hard mahi, as others might say. But look, it is a good committee. We look after local government, and this and other bills that are coming to the House soon have been the focus of our energy to get right.

Look, they say all politics is local, and the member for Northcote certainly reinforced that with the fact that many of you who have electorate offices will know that many who come in or email, and other ways, will raise local issues. I’m really proud that this is contributing to the small stuff, the little bits and pieces, but also the big stuff. The big stuff, really, for me, if I can focus on one aspect, is really about helping to get more people to vote in local elections. They’re this year. Most people won’t know. They’ll start seeing a clutter of hoardings at a reserve near them and go, “What’s going on?”, and that’s when the confusion really starts.

💬 Simeon Brown: They’ll miss your face this year.

No, the Eagle won’t be appearing on the streets of Rongotai this year, young Simeon. Instead, it’s—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! You need to refer to members by their proper names please, Mr Eagle.

The member for the mighty Pakuranga—sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker. No, there won’t be any red Eagles around the streets of Newtown and other parts of the southern area this year, but don’t worry: they’ll be back next year with a vengeance. There might be a couple of blue ones this time around.

💬 Hon David Bennett: You won’t have to wait until next year for it, mate.

I could put them up early. I mean, there are really no rules. There’s so much love for the red in the southern area; it’s just unbelievable.

But look, let’s get some focus back on—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): That would be good.

—what is an important—no, no, this is really important. I mean, there’s always lots of love when I talk about local government, but the real love needs to happen with the voting public. When they turn on the tap and they can’t get water, or the bin’s not there or they have some other issue with a cycleway or two, then they can talk to their local councillor and know who that is and actually vote. I mean, it sits around 40 percent—and the Minister of Transport is looking at me with some evil eyes. It sits around 40 percent, but I think we can do a whole lot better than that.

If the smaller but important change to the principle of the Local Electoral Act goes, it means that more marketing and promotion of the actual election itself—in fact, many people don’t know that it’s a decentralised, localised campaign. So it depends on where you are in New Zealand and who the electoral officer is as to whether it’s been effective or not. Unlike the orange thing that wobbles around and goes around New Zealand, and it promotes the general election, you don’t get that at the local level, even though people think that you do.

So I’m stoked that that’s going to get the attention that it needs to ensure that more marketing is done. And, look, it is a tough gig, because, as the member for the mighty Pakuranga will know, you are voting for much more than just the city or district councillor; you’ve got the health board members, regional councillors in most areas too, but also you have energy trust boards and other things that will come up, as well, in some areas. So it is a smorgasbord of things to vote for and people to vote for, and if this is one of seven amendments to go through, then that will make a major change to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. That’s the five minutes. What a pleasure, as per usual. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s great to be speaking as the member of Parliament for the mighty Pakuranga, and it’s great to be taking a short call on the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I just want to start by acknowledging the good local government representatives who represent the Pakuranga electorate, the members of the Howick Local Board, and our Howick councillors Sharon Stewart and Paul Young, who do an excellent job advocating on behalf of people in the Pakuranga electorate and making sure their voices are heard.

I do want to just make a few comments. This is a bill which amends a number of bills—it’s the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge the Governance and Administration Committee for the work that they have done and also to acknowledge those who made submissions to the select committee, as well—I think five people came and presented and gave evidence—for the time that they took to be able to input into making sure this legislation was fit and proper.

Now, there have been a number of comments on the different pieces of legislation that this bill amends, and I would like to just make a couple of comments in relation to the amendments to the Local Government Official Information Meetings Act 1987. This piece of legislation, in my view, is a very important constitutional piece of legislation. It gives the public the rights to be able to know and to be able to hold to account those officials who do represent at local government level, and it also ensures that the affairs of local governments are held in a public, open, and transparent process. The amendments which are being proposed here ensure that meetings are publicly notified in a more efficient way.

I think at the moment when you open up your local paper and you generally go to the last page, you generally see these half-page adverts with a whole lot of information, and that’s where the detail is placed. Often they’re in the daily newspapers, and not everyone gets the daily newspapers. So this allows for more of that information to be required to be put online and more of it to be required to be put into the local papers, which people do get if those ones are available and they are frequent enough to be able to be made available. I think that will allow more people to be able to actually get the information that they need and then to be able to be made aware, whether it’s a notification for a meeting, or a notification for consent, or whatever that notification might be.

So as I said, this bill is making small amendments but important amendments. I hope that it can be part of a continuous cycle of improvement to our local government regulatory systems so that we can continue to ensure that local government becomes more productive. I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution. Peace and harmony have broken out at 10 to six on a Thursday afternoon.

💬 Simeon Brown: Quarter to 6.

Wonderful—wonderful. Quarter to 6. This bill, as we’ve heard, addresses a few key issues, and I’m looking forward to touching on those. So the first one is around requiring local authorities to make various reports about dog control matters publicly available. The second one is about placing a duty on the chief executive of local councils to facilitate and foster representative and substantial electoral participation, rather than the council’s electoral office. There are a few others as well that I’ll touch on, but I’m just going to focus particularly on those first two. Before I get into the aspect around the dog control matters, as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, I’d like to acknowledge our chair, Brett Hudson. He does a wonderful job, and our deputy chair, Ginny Anderson, does as well, and also Paul Eagle and others, who may or may not be in the House tonight.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Don’t refer to members not in the House.

My apologies, Madam Assistant Speaker. So moving on to the first point there: the Dog Control Act. So, basically, what the bill does is it requires councils and local authorities to make public their dog-related complaints and prosecutions taken. So at the moment, if there’s a prosecution or if there’s an issue around something to do with the dog, the council record it, they log it, but they don’t have to make it public. The key reason this is in here is because there is a lot of public interest in dog issues—issues around loose dogs, unregistered dogs, and dog safety. I live over the road from a dog park and we regularly see people walking dogs. Generally, we don’t see many issues; however, there are certain issues. The Opposition members are helping me out with a few dog anecdotes—thank you.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: They bark at every passing car.

Indeed they do that. The key point here is that there is public interest—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Fun times on a Thursday afternoon.

—in dog issues.

I would like to acknowledge Ian McKelvie’s member’s bill, which addresses some of the unintended consequences around dog control. He’s done some good work on that, and this bill links in with that, as well.

So, at the risk of letting the dogs out, I’ll move on to point No. 2. Point No. 2 is around fostering participation in local elections, and—

💬 Hon David Bennett: Oh, go back to the dogs.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): All right, all right—OK.

—this is very important.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Let’s settle now, shall we. Thank you, and let—

Ten minutes to go—come on, team.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Please, Mr Strange, carry on.

There are a number of reasons why people don’t vote in elections. Some people feel like their vote won’t count, others are simply disengaged from the process, and others say, “Politics doesn’t affect me.” There’s a disproportionate amount of young people who don’t vote, and it concerns me, and I know it concerns members of this House. The Hamilton City Council, in their local body elections recently, had a 40 percent turnout—which is very low—compared to a central government election, which is 80 percent, and we’re working on improving that, of course, as well.

Now, what this bill does is it puts the onus and responsibility on the chief executive officer of council, rather than on the elected members. Now, why is that? The key point is that if you leave it to elected members to improve voter participation, there can be biases involved, whereas a CEO is impartial.

Let me give you an example. Some councillors would benefit from a low turnout. Other councillors would—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): OK, OK—we’ve got 10 minutes. Can we just try and get through the next 10 minutes? Please, can we just come to order. If you can’t hold it in, then can you perhaps take it out into the lobby. Please, Mr Strange, will you continue. [Interruption] Yeah, we’ve had enough now, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. So, building on the point around participation in local body elections, only 40 percent of Hamiltonians voted in the recent local body elections, which is something that concerns me greatly. If we leave it to the elected members to decide whether to increase participation, then there can often be a bias there. However, the bill puts the onus on the CEO, which is fantastic, because the CEO is impartial. So one of the CEO’s responsibilities will be to increase voter turnout.

Let me give an example. If we leave it to the councillors, there could be biases involved. For example, some councillors will benefit from low turnout. Others would benefit from high turnout. So those councillors who benefit from low turnout would be incentivised to keep the turnout low, others who benefit from high turnout would be incentivised to have it high, and, depending on the make-up of the council, situations will ensue. So the CEO, who is impartial, has been given the mandate to increase participation.

Now, one of the ways the CEO may or may not choose to do this is through online voting. There’s been a lot of talk about online voting over many years, particularly among young people. A lot of people think that this will increase voter turnout. I think that it probably will. I’m not sure it’s a silver bullet, but I believe it will make a difference. So if we’ve got a council who are predominantly made up of elected members who benefit from low voter turnout, are they going to move to online voting? Probably not. However, the CEO, who is impartial, has been given the mandate, and so he may well go “Online voting, I believe, will improve turnout.”, and hence move on that.

Another key aspect around increasing turnout is diversity of councils. Many of the councils around New Zealand don’t have a lot of diversity. I’m talking about ethnic diversity and I’m talking about youth—there are not a lot of young people on councils. So the higher turnout will increase diversity, and diversity makes the councils more representative of society.

I stood for council myself, in 2013. Unfortunately, I missed out and I ended up here, but I still have aspiration.

So, when I was standing for council, the turnout was very low. As a young person, I believe I would have benefited from a higher turnout. We heard a number of submissions on this bill. [Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Settle.

We heard a number of submissions, and I’m just going to touch on a couple of those submissions, particularly as they relate to voter turnout. So we heard from an organisation—good friends of mine: Federated Farmers. I regularly engage with the Waikato president of Federated Farmers—excellent, excellent, excellent man. Federated Farmers, in their submission, stated here: “It is well known that interest in local authority elections overall is in decline.” So Federated Farmers made this point very strongly. They said, “This trend, in our view, represents a growing disconnection between local authorities and their communities and a decline in mutual trust.” So Federated Farmers support this bill in order to increase voter turnout, and I think that that aspect there will have widespread agreeance right across the country.

Next one: Local Government New Zealand. They also talked about this aspect. They said, “Electoral officers themselves do not currently have [the] capacity to undertake the type of work involved in promoting participation. Neither will they be able to fulfil that duty if a local authority fails to provide adequate funding.” Hence, Local Government New Zealand “recommends that the ‘duty’ is placed on the council itself”, and in this case, the CEO. So we had submitters certainly in support of this.

I’ll touch on one more point in my final minute here, and that’s about public notices. It has been touched on before by a number of speakers. I’d just like to add to their contributions by mentioning a submission—excellent submission—from Auckland Council around public notices. I won’t read it, because it is reasonably long, but the Auckland Council highlight the importance of public notices being made online. At the moment, as we’ve heard tonight, they can be in newspapers. We heard from Simeon Brown previously that newspapers are not always delivered. Someone may have a “No circulars” sign, you know, to stop circulars coming, but that in turn stops newspapers coming. We have that example in our street, for example. So society is moving to an online platform, and it’s important that Government keep up with that.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my views on this bill and commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. I have to congratulate and acknowledge Jamie Strange for his dogged determination to stay on task with his speech. I will make a very short contribution to the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. It’s quite ironic that we’re talking about this as the local government stakeholder function gets underway.

It is, as Denise Lee said earlier, a bit of repairs and maintenance to seven statutes that we’ve got before us today. Ironic as it may seem, I do want to turn my mind to the Dog Control Act and the work that the Governance and Administration Committee did around the legal definition of “disability assist dogs”, and it may come up again in the committee of the whole House stage, but definitions also around special-purpose dogs—so dogs that have been trained for special purposes, such as search and rescue dogs, or dogs that have been trained to detect cancer, for instance, in the medical profession. So I think there is an opportunity there to further expand the definitions that we’ve got inside the Act.

I do note and I acknowledge former mayor and colleague the Hon Ron Mark. We know that central government policy, as it trickles down into local government, does create some ambiguity and often some inconsistencies. So this is a very good bit of repairs and maintenance to make sure that we do make this fit for purpose in today’s day. Look, that’s my contribution. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, it was really good to hear 18 submissions on this bill in terms of the changes it makes, and it enables New Zealanders really to have a better access in participating in their local democratic structures. So the main point, really, is that this is an omnibus bill that really brings a lot of that legislation up to date. It’s good to take the time out of the busy legislative programme to make sure that all of our pieces of legislation are fit for purpose.

This particular omnibus bill amends seven different Acts, and some of those key changes that we see are really important to make sure that we’re doing things in the proper way. One of the interesting changes is the different way in terms of notifying public notices. So we’ve seen a big change away from print media, and not very many people would read the public notices in the Dominion Post or the New Zealand Herald on a daily basis, so it’s good to be able to see a new requirement for local authorities to publish notices on their websites as well as in traditional community newspapers.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.