Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill

Tēnā koe, te Māngai o te Whare. The Green Party is pleased to support the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill and congratulate Tangi Utikere for all of his work on the bill. And I think he can be very proud, because I know that Local Government New Zealand will be preparing quite detailed induction materials for all of the new councillors and some of the existing ones that will be elected later on this year. If this bill continues on its third reading today—which I’m sure it will—it will be part of those induction materials in terms of just the changes that the bill makes to improve transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in our democratically elected local authorities.

And I think, in terms of the way in which the bill has come back to the House, it really reinforces the benefits of going to select committee, the benefits of all of those who made submissions, and the select committee’s very thorough consideration of those submissions and its changes to the bill, clarifying a number of matters, and also adding some things to the bill, making it clear that the bill also applied while the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act applies, because that Act does prohibit members from voting on or discussing issues before the local authority in which they directly or indirectly have a conflict of interest. So this bill does not replace that Act, but I would encourage Mr Utikere to, perhaps, with his success here, go on and consider another member’s bill to reform LAMIA—the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act—because I know that Local Government New Zealand and others have been raising concerns about that Act for some considerable time about how it is 50 years old and somewhat out of date and has had quite significant problems in terms of its implementation.

So this bill is an improvement to local authority law. And some of the changes that were made in select committee were making it very clear, for example, that local councillors, when they were declaring a property interest—in the same way that members of Parliament do—it wasn’t to be the specific address of that real property; it was to be the general location. That was another example of the changes that the bill is implementing seek to put local councillors on a similar footing in terms of members of Parliament in terms of the interests that they have to declare and be transparent about.

But I would like to comment on the rather puzzling contribution from a National member: Maureen Pugh. We had a very thoughtful contribution from Simon Watts when the House was considering the bill previously about National’s support for the bill. But Ms Pugh, despite being a former Mayor of Westland District Council, seemed to be puzzled about the need for this bill. And yet I was puzzled because it was the Westland District Council, of course, which got the attention of the Office of the Auditor-General for the way in which they had carried out their work in terms of protecting waste-water infrastructure at Franz Josef in 2019. And the Office of the Auditor-General raised serious concerns about the way in which elected councillors had identified and approached potential contractors to do the work to implement the stopbank, and the Auditor-General concluded that there were numerous examples of poor decision-making and poor procurement.

So what this bill is seeking to do is make it very clear to councillors that they need to declare their interests in order to be transparent about that whenever an issue that potentially relates to those interests is being discussed by council. And we welcome the fact that, I think, all of the parties across the House are supporting this bill, because it will be a positive change to the law. Kia ora.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on this bill, which is being shepherded through the House by my good friend Tangi Utikere—well done to the member.

I’d like to begin by making a few acknowledgments and some thanks, and then I’ll move on to the specific aspects of the bill. So, first of all, my thanks to the Governance and Administration Committee, and I see the chair of the committee, on the opposite side, Ian McKelvie—

💬 Hon Member: Excellent committee.

It is an excellent committee. I’ve actually just joined the committee myself, so I should probably declare a conflict of interest on that. But, no, it’s a very good committee, and the committee did a good job hearing the submissions. I’d like to thank all of those who made submissions on this bill—also, to thank the staff. Look, we hear this quite a bit in speeches, but I’d like to hear it even more in terms of the thanks for the staff around this place. And, actually, if I could digress just very slightly to also thank the sound engineers in the box up on our right, or on the left for the people opposite, because if we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t have these microphones working to be able to have that debate. So just a brief digression to also thank them.

This bill so far has been supported by all parties, and it’s certainly my hope that all parties will support it at the third reading to, obviously, bring it into law soon. The first thing I’m going to talk about is really a philosophical view about the importance of trust in leadership within our democracy. Now, it’s important that we don’t take our democracy for granted. And living in, you know, a state of relative freedom here in New Zealand, the democracy that we have plays a very key role in that. The philosopher John Donne once said: “Mutual trust lies at the heart of all political processes.” That’s primarily what this bill is about. It’s about trusting the elected members. And as the elected members declare their conflicts or potential conflicts in a pecuniary interest form, that will raise the trust of those who have voted them into that position. I believe it will also increase voter turnout, because one of the reasons why people don’t vote is if they don’t have trust in their elected officials.

In the fifth century, Greece—sorry to take us on a brief history lesson, but the members will find it interesting—I don’t know if any members—

💬 Matt Doocey: Hold on; Ian was there. I’ll ask Ian!

There we go. One of the members has claimed another member or members that—it was certainly a long time ago. In fifth century Greece, 500 people were chosen each year to serve in the Government for one year. So, basically, 500 people were randomly, I believe, chosen to be the elected representatives and, after 12 months, those people were removed from office and another 500 were chosen. I see some nods from the members who certainly know about this. It’s interesting because our democratic philosophy comes from Greece, and it’s important that we don’t take our democracy for granted. We must value it. We must continue to value it. We only have to look at other countries around the world who don’t share our views to see what, I’m sure, most would agree, is some of the negative side effects of not having a well-functioning democracy. So this bill will play a further role in strengthening and protecting our democracy. And just a second quote on that topic by G N Briggs quite a long time ago, 1644, who said “Public office is a public trust created for the benefit of the whole people and not for the benefit of those who may fill them.” Very accurate words and words for all of us who have been elected here to continue to reflect on as we serve the people of New Zealand.

Some of the benefits of having that trust is, obviously, like I said before, the willingness to vote, promotion of public legitimacy, support for bipartisan compromises, and support for programmes. There are many benefits that we often take for granted. But if we lose that trust, if the people of New Zealand lose trust, whether they’re taxpayers or whether they’re ratepayers, if they lose trust in those people that they’ve elected, we’re on a slope that will end in a very dark place for our country on pretty much every level that you can imagine. So it’s important that we continue to uphold these principles and our knowledge, again, in the bill.

So one of the reasons why we’re supporting this bill on this side of the House is that it’s important for ratepayers to understand any possible influences on those people elected to represent them. We’ve got a local body election coming up soon. You know, we’ll all sit down and we’ll pick up a booklet. We’ll work our way through the booklet and we’ll see a number of candidates, and within that booklet there will be 200-word blurbs within that booklet. And for people who haven’t met all of the candidates, they very much are relying on that 200-word blurb—there’s probably a better word for it—candidate profile. So they’ll be looking at that profile and then they’ll be making a voting decision. You know, they’ll be talking to others and they’ll be using their past experience, but the reality is that 200-word candidate profile will in no way be able to outline all of the possible vested interests, all of the interests of these people, and try and give an accurate representation. So, look, this piece of legislation will support people making informed decisions about those people that are elected and subsequently re-elected. So transparency and trust and confidence.

It also brings consistency across councils, because some councils already have a form of something similar to what we have as MPs, a register of pecuniary interests, but some councils don’t. So at the moment, there’s an ad hoc system. This piece of legislation will bring consistency to the councils, which is a good thing. It also covers local boards—initially it didn’t; it only covered the territorial councils, but this now covers local boards, which is a good change the select committee made. I’m thinking of the example up in Auckland where there are a number of local boards and those local boards make significant investments of ratepayers’ money into their communities. So that was a practical, important, important change. This bill doesn’t cover CEO staff, CEOs or staff, only elected members. Just an important point to raise there. It’s for $500, but captures cumulative donations over $500.

There were some personal safety concerns around too much information being disclosed that would then therefore—well, let me put it another way: it was around information being disclosed that would impinge on the safety of elected members. Those have been addressed through the second reading, which is good to see. So it’s, really, more along the lines of general interest, not listing every client the councillor has. So some useful, useful changes there.

I think one of the big points in this bill that impresses me is that it aligns local government with central government, and I think that’s a really good thing. There’s often, you know, people saying, out in the community, that they can at various times feel like there’s a disconnect between central and local government. But anything we can do to bring those two closer together is useful. I personally value that myself very much, having recently been meeting with almost all of the elected members from the Hamilton City Council, and it’s something I will continue to do in terms of building that relationship.

I’d like to touch on something briefly which I heard a previous member speak on and I’d like to touch on, too, and that’s the remuneration for those in local government positions, the local government elected members. In my opinion, I would like to personally see that remuneration increase. I know that a number of councils find it very difficult to attract candidates who have governance experience to oversee large portfolios of both assets and income and spending, making significant decisions for their communities, because of that low pay. So that’s just something I’d also like to put on record. It’d be interesting to see how things may or may not develop in that space. But I’d like to acknowledge all of those who do stand, who are elected members and who will be standing again for those positions, and I’d like to see that income increase. So we will see what happens here.

I’ve just looked at the clock and seen that my time is finished. A very brief shout-out to Ross Robertson, a former member of Parliament, and a local government politician, who made an excellent submission on this. He highlighted the aspect of ensuring that citizens have trust in their elected members, like I outlined before. So I’d like to thank Ross Robertson for his submission. A good piece of legislation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party supported this piece of legislation to select committee, and until it got to the committee of the whole House, we had hoped that the Government would respond to some concerns that people had, which, essentially, said, “Look, if there’s a loss of trust in local government, is this the way to address it or are there other ways?” What is the fundamental reason for a loss of trust in a local government? What ACT says is that, despite the fact that this member has chosen to bring this bill to the House, supported by the Government majority, it doesn’t actually solve the problem of loss of trust in local government.

A pecuniary interest register, where you ask people who want to stand for office to list all of their assets and interests, is actually not going to deliver what it says it will. I had proposed a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the bill to extend the requirements for disclosure, if there were going to be any, to people that actually made decisions about procurement and were responsible for awarding contracts, because if there’s anything that undermines trust and confidence in local government, it’s when local government wastes money and allows employees and senior managers to get away with fraud. But the Government majority voted down my Supplementary Order Paper.

So what we’ll move on to is the loss of trust. There’s been a loss of local voice with central government taking actions that actually belong with local government. There’s been messing with voter representation. The Labour Party has introduced bills to this House messing with representation, like the Rotorua representation proposal, which allocates an unfair number of seats to people based on their ethnicity. There’s one thing that’s going to undermine trust and confidence in local government and democracy; it’s giving people different rights by virtue of their ethnicity. ACT opposes that, and we’ll continue to oppose it. In fact, the Attorney-General, David Parker, opposes it. So, for once, the Labour Party are getting schooled from one of their own on what’s good.

Another reason that people have lost trust and confidence in local government, which the member Tangi Utikere has failed to consider when bringing this bill to the House, is that they failed to deliver infrastructure—insufficient serviced land for housing. And we know that because we have local government organisations appealing developers, like those in South Auckland who are proposing to build tens of thousands of new homes. They’ve opposed it, and now they’re considering whether to appeal developments at Drury, for example, because of the infrastructure funding requirement. Well, ACT has a solution to that. What we’d say is that local government should share 50 percent of the GST on all new house building. That would cash flow the infrastructure, take the problem away from local government, and actually give local government trust and confidence that they can deliver stuff because they’d get the money that would otherwise be kept by central government.

There’s another problem for local government that’s caused a loss of trust and confidence: it’s getting off track with stuff that central government should be dealing with. I’ll give you an example: climate change. Climate change has driven Auckland Council and Auckland Transport to make some absolutely ridiculous commitments they can’t meet about reducing emissions from transport. And the reason they can’t meet and will never meet those commitments, and the reason they’ll spend tens of millions of dollars chasing this unicorn is because this Government has set completely unrealistic targets, and they are now cascading down so that, rather than focusing on relieving congestion, rather than focusing on building the roading connections that they should, they already zoned hundreds of thousands of people to live in new suburbs and failed to build the roading connections. What they’re doing is they’re wasting money. They’re wasting money on projects, like enormously expensive cycleways at $8 million per kilometre, in order to reduce emissions. It is a complete waste of time. They’re off the rails. That’s another reason why voters and local communities have lost trust in local government.

And then there’s the abuse of the Resource Management Act (RMA) perpetrated by local government. Just yesterday, I opened the Dominion Post—what used to be a newspaper of record now struggles to come up with good stories, but they had a good one yesterday. That was that the Greater Wellington Regional Council had wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, pursuing another council and landowners for disturbing a wetland that turned out not to be a wetland. It was such an egregious abuse of their powers under the Resource Management Act of property owners seeking to develop their own property that the Environment Court awarded half a million dollars of costs against the Greater Wellington Regional Council. And, in fact, the Environment Court was so aggrieved by this abuse of the RMA process by a council, they’re considering whether the Environment Court should also send an invoice to the Greater Wellington Regional Council for wasting the court’s time. So if there’s anything that would undermine trust and confidence, there are some examples, and this bill goes nowhere towards addressing any of those fundamental issues.

So the member Jamie Strange made some interesting observations. He described the bipartisan approach potentially as building more trust and confidence. There’s another name for that. The engineers at NASA who sent the Challenger up, knowing that tiles would fall off and it could catch fire and explode—they had a bipartisan approach to the problem. That’s called groupthink. And that’s why ACT MPs stand here in the House and we offer better public policy than any other political party in this House. We do not share in groupthink around climate change. We do not share in groupthink around electric vehicles. We have better policies.

The member Jamie Strange also talked about the candidates in this upcoming local government election and the 200 words that they get to describe what kind of candidate they are. Well, I can offer some advice to voters and viewers today. This is what you should be looking for in that 200-word blurb: a commitment to upholding private property rights. That means people should be able to use their property as they see fit without undue interference or control from central or local government—without having mad councils, like the Greater Wellington Regional Council, launch an appeal against building new houses in a paddock; what they called a wetland.

The other thing is local government should stop competing with the private sector in business activities that the private sector already executes very, very well and makes a profit at. I’ll give you some examples: waste management. Dunedin Council’s about to spend tens of millions of dollars, investing in building a new landfill. Well, there are technologies that would put landfills out of business. Why on earth is Dunedin City Council pursuing this opportunity? And, in fact, if you wanted to build and operate a landfill, you could simple allow the private sector to do it for you. There is no reason for Dunedin to be investing public money in such a thing.

You’ve got Auckland Council teamed up with the Government, with the Minister Megan Woods, to pursue a climate agenda, which is funding electric ferries to compete against Fullers in Auckland. If there’s anything that damages trust and confidence in local government, it’s central government and local government competing with the private sector to deliver services that private sector is already employing people to do. That’s what voters should be looking for when they’re looking at the candidate blurb. Stay out of business.

The other thing they should be looking for is: will this candidate support taking out car-parking in my local business district and damaging local business interests? If we want to talk about the history of local government, actually, it was founded in New Zealand by local businesses—small- and medium-business people who got together to raise money for things like town halls and to organise a street cleaning operation, and they paid for it from local business profits, and that’s something that’s absolutely lost on this Government.

That’s why ACT will reject this bill. We won’t be voting to support it, because it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of how to restore trust and confidence in local government. Mr Tangi Utikere, the member, was a former deputy mayor of Palmerston North City Council, so he, of all people, should know that what I’m saying is absolutely correct. But, of course, having to have a member’s bill you can bring to the House and say you’ve done something—well, Mr Utikere, this is not the thing that you should be doing. So ACT will reject it, and what we’ll be doing is proposing better ways to deliver infrastructure—sharing 50 percent of the GST with local government so that local government can cash flow the delivery of infrastructure to get more houses built. That’s what Kiwis are asking for.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill, especially since it comes from my friend and colleague Tangi Utikere. He is a new member of Parliament, and to watch him handle the debate that he did in the time in committee stage of this was actually just a wonderful thing for our entire intake of MPs, I think, to see how accomplished he was. That probably wasn’t an accident; that was because he’s come from a role as a deputy mayor, and that has informed what he has decided is an important thing to bring to this House. So he’s taken this on from another MP, who has become a Minister. Both of those people have their feet on the ground about this matter. They know what it’s like being in local government and where the catches are.

What I appreciate about this bill is it’s taught me a few things. It’s made me think about transparency and about conflict and about perceived conflict. And, yes, as my colleague Jamie Strange said, it’s made me think about what is very important in New Zealand in terms of reinforcing open, transparent, and democratic processes.

So I want to talk a little bit about that for a minute because New Zealand is a place where, I think, no matter what you do, you see that it is vulnerable to corruption. It’s a place where we all know each other, and sometimes that’s a really good thing; it means that we have a strong sense of community and it probably helped us recently in COVID. But the downside of that is it can be quite a lot of pressure on people. If your mate wants you to do something, it can be a situation where you can have corruption grow pretty quickly. You can be an open and good place to live and you can turn into somewhere where those things are happening in an insidious way really quickly if you don’t guard against it. I think that’s probably something that we all share as something that we’re watching all the time, because we all come to Parliament wanting to do the right thing. People who come to local body also come wanting to do the right thing. But sometimes, actually, they need guidance. This kind of Act will allow people to know exactly where the rules are.

So what the Act will do is it will actually reinforce trust and confidence in that process. I think it’s particularly important, because I see a great value in a lot of what we do in local government, where it is possible, because in local government there can be a real responsiveness. I really like that idea. But we can’t do that if, actually, by doing it, we’re taking a risk. So this is one of the things that will keep everyone safe. It will keep the public safe, because they will know what they are dealing with and who they are dealing with. It will keep the people who are brave enough to stand for local body politics safe too, because they will be declaring their interests constantly and they will habitually understand where those lines are.

So what they will be showing is they will be, every year, indicating what has happened in the last 12 months in their lives that might actually provide a conflict. They will declare when they’ve got more than 10 percent interest in a company. They will declare when they’re a director of the company. They will declare which companies they’re involved with even beyond that. For ones that they’ve got a significant stake, they’ll describe what the activities of that company are, and that’s really important for a public who, really, probably, often get baffled by the amount of information that is in the local body process, and if you write a company name, they don’t really know what that indicates, without an indication of activity. So the activities themselves are the things that are going to be the red flags to whether there’s a conflict, whether people really need to worry about that. That information is going to be provided on a 12-monthly basis and it will be the entire 12 months, and there are probably lessons to be learnt there, because, in Parliament, we actually declare them once a year, which actually isn’t as thorough as this. So I absolutely congratulate you on providing something that’s even more robust than what we have here, because anything somebody does in that time is reflected upon.

Then they will declare gifts of over $500. That’s a pretty important thing to do, because those things can motivate. They’ll declare travel that they do where somebody else has contributed. We always have in mind, in the Labour Party, a concern about that insidious interest that sometimes come in from a lobby group, that you get groups that come in and they have money, they have power, and it’s very important that, actually, we always, always keep an eyes on those things, and it’s very important that we distinguish between actually listening to people and actually having shared interests and thoughts and being won over by things like sweet deals, travel, and gifts. So that’s a really important thing for us to put right up there, and this bill does that.

It’s going to also mean that people declare their beneficial interests. Now, I thought that was a really interesting point that had been brought up and dealt with. It’s not just beneficial interests you know about; it’s ones that you should know about. So there’s a little bit more cover than usual.

And then there is the actual declaration of what real property you own. So, I think, in society, we’ve used things like trusts as a form of shelter, in many ways, but they come with a terrible price in transparency. Now, those things become just known to the public, and that’s a good thing. It means that people know if somebody has got them. We can, perhaps, keep some of those mechanisms that we’ve had but people aren’t actually going to be tricked by them. It is actually information that is key to us actually making an informed decision about who we vote for.

I’d really like to see more people from local government come into the Parliament. I think what is interesting about this is that the rules that are being developed around that area are ones that are actually becoming almost universal across our culture. Where we see a conflict, we now expect people to actually declare it. It’s true in professions that they need those kinds of rules, it’s true in here that we need these kinds of rules, and it’s true for our colleagues in local government. Actually having a set of rules across all structures which are of a similar ilk is actually a really good, good place to be as a country, because it’s a healthy place to be as a country. It might be uncomfortable at times, but it is actually going to serve us well in the long term.

Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of interesting podcasts about the UK and how many of these factors of lobbying have been problematic in one of our role models in terms of democracy. I think we are very lucky that we have not actually had that degree of conflict in our system. This puts our first and foremost call for citizens, their local government, on that same footing.

I take the point made by Jamie Strange that it also makes sure that one council is actually being given the same benchmark as another council, So it isn’t up to each council; everybody is up for the same standard. So we can all get used to the rules. There will be mistakes made, there always are. These things are not actually as easy as they seem. What you have to do under this Act, if you don’t declare something, is you have to do it as soon as you possibly can. I think it’s really important these systems are sensitive to the fact that the people who stand in these positions are brave, they’re vulnerable in lots of ways, and it’s really important that they’re actually treated with respect and that we all actually live under a scheme that is one of good faith, one of best transparency. That is what this Act does.

I would like to thank my colleague again—Tangi Utikere—for bringing it to this House and I think it will mean a real difference to our society. So thank you and congratulations.

Harete Hipango—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a brief call. I’m just demisting my glasses and, with speaking to this bill, demystifying the bill as well—Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. In speaking to the bill today, it’s a bit of a mare of a place in the Chamber. I look around the Chamber and we’re graced with the presence of former deputy mayors and mayors, on both sides of the House. In speaking to this bill, I acknowledge the member Tangi Utikere in the success with this bill being brought to the third reading, which is supported by the National Party.

So the member has presented, submitted, advocated, represented, and progressed this bill based on experience. I also acknowledge good colleague and friend Paul Eagle, a former deputy mayor as well and, again, bringing to the House that level of experience; my colleagues Maureen Pugh and Ian McKelvie, both former mayors of the respective communities that they come from. So, in supporting this bill, the bill is substantively enhanced because of the experience that members across the House bring. I also note my colleague Ian McKelvie chaired the Governance and Administration Committee in the transference and transmission of this bill through to the third reading, soon to pass into law.

Although it’s a small bill and relatively straightforward, it’s significant. In the House again today, but in the Chamber last night, there was the Data and Statistics Bill and members talked about the importance of transparency, and that’s what this bill attempts to improve—the public’s trust with the transparency, in building confidence in local government in relation to that. What’s been interesting is, although not sitting on these select committees, when we are invited to address the House and speak to these bills, we go on a journey ourselves in terms of reading the reports and looking at what amendments have been made for improvement to the bill.

So it’s noted that the report from the Governance and Administration Committee made a number of recommendations with amendments. Interestingly enough, what’s been reported back to the committee of the whole House, as a result of that, to this third reading, is that all of those recommendations for amendments from the select committee report have been picked up and those adjustments accordingly made to the bill.

So the purpose of the bill is that it creates a pecuniary interest disclosure regime that’s similar to one that Parliament has for the members. This is premised on local government and local authorities, thus demystifying what interests and pecuniary interests that those in public office have in giving service and representation. So the bill requires that councils maintain and publish yearly a register of elected members pecuniary and other specified interests.

I am to be followed by the last speaker of the National Party—most appropriately, really, to wrap this up—Ian McKelvie, who chaired the select committee, who calls and is duly recognised in the House, and warmly regarded by colleagues across the House. So Mr McKelvie will address the House in that chairpersonship role and also in the role of having been a long-serving Mayor of the Manawatū district—for some nine years I believe it was, Ian—and then being elected into Parliament in 2011, giving service thus far.

So I will wrap this up because it will be a matter of after the next speaker, my colleague will finish this off. In doing so, there are times when members in this Chamber, appropriately, should be gracious and acknowledgments appropriately afforded. So I do so, accordingly, to the member whose name this bill has been carried through into the making of law, Tangi Utikere. Ngā mihi ki a koe. Kia ora.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It is a huge honour and a privilege to speak on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, in the name of Tangi Utikere. It’s an absolute honour as the chair of the Pacific caucus to speak on this member’s bill, which, hopefully, by the end of these spectacular speeches, will go into law.

I know the member who has just spoken, Harete Hipango, made an attempt to demystify the bill to us, so I will make a second attempt to see if we really can get to the core of the matter. This bill amends the Local Government Act 2002 to provide for the establishment of a register of pecuniary and other specified interests for members of local authorities, such as directorships, business interests, employment, and property. It is really important that I state why I support this bill. It’s important for ratepayers to understand any possible influences on these elected local council members. It’s important that voters and ratepayers understand what influences these elected people come in with. Secondly, the purpose of the bill is to provide transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in the decision making of local authorities. Thirdly, it will provide greater transparency in terms of the interests of members of local authorities to improve public trust and confidence and contribute to more robust decision-making by local authorities.

In this debate, we have heard about Greece from Jamie Strange. We’ve ridden on unicorns on rainbows—that’s from the ACT Party’s Simon Court. But I want to give factual information today in terms of New Zealand. The Corruption Perceptions Index in 2021, which was published in January of 2022, has New Zealand tied third-equal with Denmark and Finland for being the least corrupt country in the world. So I believe that this bill adds to and contributes to our international reputation as one of the least corrupt countries in the world.

I want to quote the member Tangi Utikere from when he released a press release to explain the reasons why he’s promoting the bill. I want to quote Tangi Utikere on this because it’s been challenged by some members on the other side in terms of why this bill is in the House and its relevance. I quote him: “Let me be clear: in promoting this bill, I am not suggesting that there has been any wrongdoing, but I am suggesting that there is currently an anomaly with the level of disclosure and transparency expected of members of Parliament and the level of disclosure and transparency expected in local government. And I don’t believe there should be a difference.” I think that’s really important, because there was some suggestion that there was little relevance for this bill in the House.

What does this bill do? It enforces one law for all. Currently, what councils do if there is a conflict of interest for a local elected council official is they use a conflict of interest register where they register the conflict of interest. What this bill means is that there will be an annual published register of pecuniary interests of elected officials so that the ratepayers know the influences they have in decision making about rates, about public money.

In my haste I forgot to acknowledge the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, Ian McKelvie—thank you for your leadership in the select committee’s due diligence in scrutinising and writing this bill. I take this opportunity again to congratulate the member Tangi Utikere for this bill, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill. It might be a short one, because there’s a very good bill coming up later in the night which we need to get to. I just wanted to, first of all, just comment a little bit on my initial view of this bill, because I did have some nervousness about this bill initially. I thought it would have the potential, I suppose, to intimidate people—put people off standing. In fact, we had one or two submitters who suggested the same thing. But I think we’ve got the bill, in my view, into a pretty good space now, and I’ve got every confidence in supporting it.

But I did want to make just one or two comments about the issue I just raised, because I think that a couple of our speakers earlier raised other issues which I’d be a little concerned about. And Helen White talked about making mistakes in pecuniary interests—well, frankly, if you’re going to make a mistake in a pecuniary interest, you shouldn’t be here. If you can’t fill your own pecuniary interest, then how can you fill someone else’s? That’s the first point I wanted to make.

And the other point I wanted to make was that Simon Court, in my view, missed the point of members’ bills. Members’ bills are really there to make a little difference to sometimes a big thing, to sometimes a little thing. And they’re generally bills that Governments would never consider putting in place because they take too much work and Governments are too busy. And so I think the point of members’ bills, to a large extent, is to do exactly what this member’s bill’s done, which is to make a little difference to something that might make, in some cases, a large difference. And if you look at Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch, probably a large difference, but if you look at Manawatū, Kaikōura, places like that, nowhere near the difference. And generally in places like the Manawatū, or Kaikōura for that matter, we probably know enough about everyone else’s business to know what they’re doing anyway. And so that’s the interesting thing about small communities. And so I guess that when you think that we’re looking at the pecuniary interest of people who are probably, in some cases, standing for a job that might pay them five or 10 grand a year, it’s hardly got great significance. None the less, the principle’s the same.

So I think the bill got to a good space there, and I think we had one or two submitters who made quite a difference. And I just want to mention Sir Maarten Wevers, because he came in and really straightened our thinking up on how the bill should work, because he obviously has a lot of experience in this because he runs the parliamentary pecuniary interests. So, from that perspective, he made quite a bit of difference to the way we thought about it. And there were one or two other issues that I think were really important.

And the member Tangi Utikere introduced a Supplementary Order Paper to the process which just clarified the relationship between the two bills that concern this, and one is the LAMIA bill—or Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act—which has been in place for a long time. So there has been some reference or control over this for quite some time now. And the relationship between those two bills needs to be clarified, because, if it wasn’t, there could have well been some confusion as to when you’ve got a pecuniary interest and when you haven’t, and I think that was necessary to be done. That was done during the course of the committee of the whole House stage.

But the other couple of other issues that were really important and need to be borne in mind as we go forward is there was a suggestion in the original bill that, for example, an accountant could have to declare all that accountant’s clients. And I think just as well that was tidied up in the bill and put in order. So I think the bill’s in pretty good order from that perspective.

I want to talk about just a couple of other things related to local government. The idea of bills like this is to improve the confidence in local government. And there’s been a suggestion that, actually, one of the reasons that local government voter turnout is so low is because there’s no confidence. I tend to take a different view on that. And I think that one of the reasons I think local government election turnout is so low is because, frankly, in most places there’s next to no publicity given to local government elections at all, and that’s quite a challenge for us. So for some of the bigger councils, no doubt some people will have big budgets. And I see some of the budgets that are being outlined for the Auckland mayoralty right now which is significant, but, in most places, those budgets are very, very small, and the advertising is next to zero. And I think that’s something we could well do something about in the future as a Parliament, because we don’t generate interest in local elections, even in our own elections, in fact. And, of course, we’ve got the Tauranga by-election right now. If we don’t generate interest in those things—we’re certainly going to—I think we’re never going to encourage more interest in what we do as politicians and what our local government organisations do.

So, with those few words, I just want to congratulate the member on what I think is an ideal member’s bill. It was well discussed by the select committee, it was put in very good order, and I think—as I go back to the comments that Simon Court made earlier—it’s pretty specific, this bill. It deals with an issue that for some people is important, and I think it’s well worthwhile. So it’s a very worthy member’s bill and we’ve got no problem commending this bill to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make the final call on the third reading of the member’s bill, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill.

I have the honour, then, of finally acknowledging the member whose name this bill is in, for bringing this bill to the House. As we have heard in all of the readings, and particularly this afternoon, there is a significant amount of work that the Governance and Administration Committee did on this bill—and a lot of acknowledgment has been given to the member for first and foremost identifying this gap and bringing this member’s bill to the House, but also the way in which the committee worked really hard to make this the best possible piece of legislation, which we are debating this afternoon and are going to be passing shortly, in about another nine minutes.

The member is a new member, and so I think it’s wonderful that today his first member’s bill is going to pass. I watch with interest what the next one will be. What I love about this one is it is connected to the work that he did prior to coming into Parliament, and I think that’s one of the wonderful things—with that experience that you have and the opportunity that you get in here, to be able to put that experience to good use and to make meaningful changes.

So I want to talk, first and foremost, about the purpose of this bill and the purpose of the register. As described in the bill, the purpose is to “record members’ interests so as to provide transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in the local government processes and decision-making.” As I spoke in one of my earlier contributions, before coming to Parliament I too was an elected member. I was first elected on to the Far North District Council in 2013 and then a second term in 2016 before coming into Parliament on the list in 2017. So doing one and a bit terms on council. I wasn’t a member of the select committee, so when I was listening to the contributions and understanding what this member’s bill is proposing to do, I was reflecting on the time that I was on the Far North District Council, and I remember vividly that we had our interests listed on every agenda, actually, before every meeting. And so the issue there is I assumed—and found out I was wrong to assume this—that it was something that all councils, in fact, did. But as I was listening to the contributions in that debate, it became clear to me in the House that that’s not actually the case for all of our councils across the country. So while the Local Government Act requires all councils to have a code of conduct, it doesn’t require that code of conduct to have the requirement for a pecuniary interests register.

So here I was sitting there going, “Oh, I remember having to declare all of my interests, and, in fact, it was published on every agenda at every meeting.” I quickly did a google search of the Whangarei District Council, the Northland Regional Council, the Kaipara District Council, all those councils that are in my Northland electorate, and they too all declare their interests, they have a register for that. But coming back to the point that this bill addresses is that there is no consistency across our 57 councils—is it?—across the country. So by having this legislation, it will no longer be something that’s done ad hoc, but that is, in fact, required of every council. I think that that is important because, you know, you possibly have heard it in your electorates as well, but I often hear people say, “Oh, those dodgy councillors and mayors, they’ve got interests in these things” or “They’re hooking up their mates.” And that’s not helpful to local democracy. That’s not helpful to people who—as we heard the member Ian McKelvie say—might want to stand for local government and to have that perception or those things said about you. So I think that actually having the pecuniary interest register there, that you can point to when accusations might be made, is helpful and it will instil more trust and more confidence.

I wanted to also mention the benefit of having the select committee processes, that they picked up in that process that when the bill initially was introduced to the House, it was only for elected members of the council. However, the select committee discussed that elected members who are local board members and who are community board members undertake a very similar role. They often make decisions which have financial implications—and in the case of Auckland local boards, it’s quite significant sums of money. But even in the Far North, while a lot of smaller sums of money, our community board does make funding decisions and distributes a number of grants out into the community. So when I saw that the select committee had identified that as one of the gaps of the initial legislation that was proposed and made strong recommendations as to why it should be included, I wholeheartedly support its inclusion.

Not every council has community boards, but, in the Far North, we do have community boards. They are members who are elected into those positions by their community and so, therefore, they will be captured by this legislation. So I just wanted to talk to a couple of things that the members are required to include, the information they are required to include in their return: the names of any companies which they are directors of, but also every other company or business or entity that they may gain a pecuniary interest from. The next one is if the member is employed. Now, I do know that in the local government space, while it is a very busy role it is not well remunerated and many elected members do undertake other work as well. So it is important that that is disclosed somewhere, particularly if it’s going to be the subject of any of the decisions that they are making. It also includes the name of any trust in to which the member has a beneficial interest, or the name of any organisation or trust, and a description of the main activities that the member is a member of, the organisation or a member of the governing body of the organisation or a trustee of the trust.

I’m just reflecting on my last marae trustees meeting where we’re talking about the inclusion of a conflicts of interest register in our marae charter, because this is an issue that has come up and we had a great debate about it. The reality is: New Zealand is a very small place. We all wear many hats. I don’t know how many boards you’ve all been on in the past, often in a voluntary capacity, but those organisations that we are members of do, in some cases, make application to the councils, to the community boards, to the local boards, and, in the case we were debating at the marae, also to Government departments. So I do think that this is an important one to capture, because it was through that discussion that I saw that people—it’s that trust and confidence, again, in the people who are making decisions on your behalf, that the perceived conflicts of interests or any pecuniary interests are declared so that it’s known they can remove themselves from the decision making. That can all be clarified and people can have more trust and confidence in those who are making those decisions. It also includes any organisation that you hold as a member, as an appointment by virtue of being an elected member. I had one of those positions. I was on the Turner Centre, who in turn applied to the council for funding for its operations—it, essentially, is the community hall. So it captures that as well.

I’ve now come to the end of my contribution. I commend the member and I commend the bill to the House.