Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill

Members, we come now to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 6 to 13, where Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu may appoint two members to council, and the question is that Part 2 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Part 2 gets down into the nitty-gritty mechanics around the appointment of the Ngāi Tahu representatives. It’s very self-explanatory. There are only two parts to the bill. It also goes into the area of remuneration and that was an aspect that was considered very closely at select committee. The end result was that the remuneration of the councillors, including the Ngāi Tahu members, will be the same because the Ngāi Tahu remuneration will be left aside and it won’t go into the calculation of the remuneration for the 14 elected members. The reason is that the workload of the councillors on Environment Canterbury will not lessen; in fact, it will actually increase because the additional Ngāi Tahu perspectives that will be shared around the council table will actually encourage greater work, a bigger workload from the existing councillors. So there was no justification to penalise councillors, who are all upright councillors who have put themselves forward for council position to face a drop in their remuneration as a result.

As we have said, this bill is about enhancing the representation on the council. I am pleased that the Māori Affairs Committee left that provision as it is so that the remuneration across the council will still be the same and no members will be affected.

Every contribution the sponsor of the bill has made on the bill appears to be a justification for its non-passing today. This has got to be a classic. So what I would—let me make it very clear—agree is that if anyone is sitting there with the full authority of a councillor, then they should receive the same remuneration as everybody else. That’s not really the issue.

The issue here, enunciated by the sponsor, is that this decision, if it is passed today, will see the workload of the council go up. Now, that can only be a commitment to greater bureaucracy and the sort of duck-shoving that people in Canterbury have to put up with every time they deal with the Canterbury Regional Council.

So I can’t understand how it is that a justification being advanced by the member for this bill is something that is going to bring Ngāi Tahu into somewhat of a conflicted position with the rest of the community that they’re seeking to serve. It’s utterly a ridiculous argument.

If the member stood up and said, “Well, this is going to shortcut a whole lot of processes and it’s going to make things easier, it’s going to make things clearer, and that those who are wanting to do things that require resource consents will not have to go to the extraordinary lengths that they do at the moment getting expensive buy-in from those who have an interest,” then that would be a useful thing in favour of this bill. Instead, he stands in the House and says, “Actually, this is going to increase the workload for everyone who sits on the Canterbury Regional Council.” That means it’s increasing the workload for the bureaucrats behind the scenes. It means they’ll have to increase the number of bureaucrats behind the scenes, and, ultimately, all of the costs related to that will fall back on the Environment Canterbury (ECan) ratepayers in Christchurch.

Most of us, frankly, who do pay that rate have got no idea what value we get out of ECan. We get these newsletters put in the letterbox every now and then. Long, verbose things that claim all sorts of interesting arrangements and outcomes, but really no direct connection for communities, particularly in the city, about what’s being achieved by them. Nothing at all.

Now, I see someone over on the other side there, who says, “No, they’re great, thanks. I love reading them.” Well, if you’ve got the time to sit around reading that, I’d ask about some of the other representation that should have been undertaken by people.

I have on the Table a tabled amendment. It deals with clause 13 of this bill. It is completely inconsistent, in my view, to come to this House and say, on behalf of ECan, “We want to have Ngāi Tahu representation appointed to our council and then retain the right to, at any time, an Act, section 19Z(2), of the Local Electoral Act, to create Māori constituencies.” What is the point of one if the other is a possibility? The mere fact that this clause is still in here gives absolute lie to the claim that the wider Canterbury community are happy with this bill, because, if they were, ECan would have done exactly as 19Z(2) of the Local Electoral Act allows them to do. But they haven’t; they’ve turned up and said, “We want a special bill that gives us the special authority to ask Ngāi Tahu to appoint two representatives to our council. We then want those councillors treated exactly as anybody else,”—and that part’s fair—“but we also want to retain the provision that would allow us to create Māori constituencies, should we see fit in the future.”

Remember that they start two votes up on that prospect the moment this bill passes. It is very anti-democratic, this particular bill, and people can dress it up all they like about Treaty rights and everything else. There is a simple principle inside the Treaty that affirms democracy in this country, and this rips it away.

My tabled amendment would change the heading of the clause to “The council may not establish Māori constituencies” and it would delete the words “nothing in” and simply read, “The Act prevents the Council from passing a resolution under section 19Z(2) of the Local Electoral Act 2001, which relates to the resolution to create one or more Māori constituencies.”

It’s quite a simple prospect. It’s one or the other. This bill confers two particular rights that I don’t think should be there.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and a pleasure to take a first call in regards to Part 2, referring to clause 10A(4), which is the similar section that the previous speaker, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, was referring to in regards to the remuneration elements and the aspects around the Remuneration Authority. My questions to the sponsor of the bill are as follows. So my understanding is that the total salary cost for the additional roles is in the region of just under $70,000 per role—so give or take 140 grand. As my previous colleague has noted in terms of the other costs that would be forming, no doubt, behind that, often you triple that number. But let’s say for the sake we just double it and say it’s a quarter of a million dollars of additional cost.

My question for the sponsor of the bill is: what process of consultation has been undertaken with the Canterbury community in regards to those additional costs that will, in effect, be borne by the ratepayers of the Canterbury region, some 600,000 or so individuals? And in the context of growing costs and the cost of living crisis and all of that, which all Kiwis are facing out there at the moment, what is the level of feedback that was received from that consultation? As any good local bill would do, they are generally, if not always, well consulted with in the community in which they are impacting. That’s good process. So I’d be looking forward to some clarity around the consultation around subclause (4) that I’m referring to there, and we’ll go on from there.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in response to the matters raised, as I mentioned in relation to Mr Brownlee’s amendment, we do not support the amendment. Environment Canterbury did consider a possible application of a Māori ward, but it wasn’t suitable for Environment Canterbury, and that’s why they have gone forward with this bill. However, the legislation and the bill as it is is about leaving that possibility open for future councils to consider. But at the moment, in terms of Environment Canterbury here in 2022, that is not the preferred option, and that is why they are seeking the passage of this bill to enable the Ngāi Tahu representatives to be appointed. But, again, those are potential decisions around Māori wards. That is something for a future council to decide.

In relation to the issue around consultation, I do know that Environment Canterbury has undertaken significant consultation, not only on this bill but on its predecessor, and also within its representation reviews that have been carried out over the past—I think it was 2018 or 2019. So there has been significant consultation around the issues, and the matter around remuneration, again, that has been included in the consultation that has long been running over the past several years.

The issue around remuneration is about ensuring, as I have said, that all members of the council are not affected and that they will maintain the same remuneration—those that are elected—as the Ngāi Tahu members will as well. So it’s about ensuring that they’re not penalised and to recognise the work that they actually do and to ensure that the extra perspectives that are added at the council table level through Ngāi Tahu are also rewarded and remunerated fairly as well.

I think, for too long, councils around the country have had Māori advisory boards or other different mechanisms in place, and for many of them there is no remuneration whatsoever for the important views that iwi, mana whenua, and hapū groups around the country make into those local government matters. So this puts in legislation the recognition that all members of Environment Canterbury will be remunerated equally.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the member some more questions around this issue of remuneration and the Māori constituencies. In clause 10A(4), it says “The Council must make the payments required … even if doing so exceeds any total amount payable to elected members of the Council determined by the Remuneration Authority.” At the Māori Affairs Committee, we heard from the chair of the Remuneration Authority, the Hon Dame Fran Wilde, who said that the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill had been designed with respect to the remuneration of the two new proposed appointed positions on the council. She said the bill is designed to protect the remuneration of elected members of the Canterbury Regional Council, and she made the point that it’s already the highest-paid regional council in New Zealand, and it would put that council in a privileged position that would be unfair to all other councils in the country.

She noted that if every council put in a member’s bill like this one that’s before the House today, it would unwind the whole process of having an independent decision on remuneration and would undermine the integrity of the Remuneration Authority. Why is it important to have an independent Remuneration Authority? Well, she’s outlined its role: it is to set the remuneration of all members of Parliament, all other elected officials including councillors, judges, and other key officeholders, including the Police Commissioner. Its independence is crucial to guarding against rates of pay being subject to political interference, which is an anti-corruption measure that has worked well in keeping New Zealand clean compared to other countries.

She dismissed remarks made earlier to the select committee by the chair of the Canterbury Regional Council that the Remuneration Authority’s governance pool had set up a barrier preventing councils making decisions on Māori constituencies, which I note is still available to the council in clause 13 of the present bill. The chair of the Remuneration Authority said that this was demonstrably untrue and pointed to examples of how other councils had already done it—i.e., put in place Māori constituencies. She emphasised that in her view, this bill’s remuneration clause had been designed to protect the financial position of elected members. She said Environment Canterbury was using it to circumvent the authority’s rules, basically wanting to have it both ways: have two extra members that are identical in every way to all other members, which she said, in her view, is how it should be, but who are somehow ring-fenced when it comes to deciding the council’s remuneration.

So my question is, to the member: why is this appropriate? Why should every other regional council in the country and every other council in the country have different rules but Environment Canterbury—which is the highest-paid regional council in the country—have an extra special provision enabling them to exceed the remuneration pool, when they can already establish Māori constituencies? Why do they have to appoint two members, and also have the option to establish Māori constituencies, when this is different from every other council in the country?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank Mr Mooney for his contribution. I’m sure, as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, he would have been able to hear from submitters and also express his views at the committee as well. But this bill is about Environment Canterbury getting its Treaty relationship right, and that’s why it is putting its priority toward Ngāi Tahu representation. It wants to get its Treaty relationship right before any other consideration. What may happen with Māori wards, that’s a consideration for councils in the future and, yes, that could be a possibility, but that, again, is just a provision of the law that we are leaving there. It’s not relevant to this particular measure in this bill, which is about putting Ngāi Tahu representation on the council to further the good work that was established between 2010 and 2019. That is the focus of this bill at this time.

In relation to the Remuneration Authority, Environment Canterbury had quite a lot of dialogue with Dame Fran Wilde and the Remuneration Authority on this very issue, and it goes back way before this bill was introduced to this House. Again, it’s an issue where Environment Canterbury and the Remuneration Authority disagree. Environment Canterbury, rightly, asserts that the workload with two additional Ngāi Tahu members, the workload of the council, does not decrease and therefore the remuneration should not decrease—and an example of that is the additional perspectives of mana whenua and of Ngāi Tahu around the council table. It requires more work from the whole council to be able to gain their understanding and engage with their communities around the concerns that Ngāi Tahu express at the council table. So it doesn’t involve a reduction in workload; arguably, it involves more. But, on that basis, it was an aspect where there was just disagreement in terms of reducing the remuneration based on the formulas that the Remuneration Authority applies towards elected council members across the country.

I think, hopefully, that addresses that matter. As I’ve said, the member would have heard this when he was a member on the Māori Affairs Committee, in their consideration of this bill, and Environment Canterbury, through this provision, want to ensure that quality candidates put their names forward and that quality representatives who are elected to this important office are able to be fairly remunerated for the work that they do.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a great concern to learn that, in fact, rather than the efforts of appointed Ngāi Tahu members to Environment Canterbury actually giving Environment Canterbury decision makers insights and knowledge that would enable them to be more efficient, what the member has said is that the appointment of these voting but unelected members of Ngāi Tahu is going to be like sawdust in the machine of local government. As if local government needed anything else to slow it down—but to have people appointed to local government who can’t actually help the organisation improve its delivery and improve its performance but rather create some kind of impediment to progress. Now, it’s remarkable that that’s the conclusion that the member supporting the bill proposed would result from having Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu members appointed to council.

I would have assumed—and this is based on my experience in presenting to mana whenua groups as an engineer at Auckland Council—that, actually, by engaging with people early and meaningfully and offering them an opportunity to comment on infrastructure or land development proposals or regulatory proposals, you actually clear out a whole lot of potential objections early in the process so that when you come back to the decision makers with your recommendations, they say, “That’s good. We understand all of that. Where do we sign?” In fact, what the member has proposed is that even after the council officers and potentially all the applicants for resource consents and people that want to develop land have made their case and they’ve been and they’ve talked to all the stakeholders and they’ve done the consultation and they’ve got everybody to sign off on the consultation that’s required under the resource management consenting process, and when it goes up to Environment Canterbury’s decision-making committees of the elected members and the two non-elected members, basically what they’ll say is “You, start again.”, because there will be things that the non-elected members, the representatives from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, haven’t heard about before and they’ll be asking a whole lot of questions. Basically, that’s going to be like a massive handbrake on the decision making of Environment Canterbury. Who would have thought that the member representing Te Tai Tonga, supporting this bill, and having brought this local bill to the House would say that quiet part out loud? But there it is.

Now, one of the problems with elected members we have in New Zealand is sometimes they don’t perform well, but you can still get rid of them. You can vote them out next time. The problem with this legislation, and it’s a problem that we’ve seen in all places around New Zealand where you elect people, is that some of them have a single issue, and when they can’t get that issue over the line, then they don’t want to perform, they don’t want to turn up to meetings, and they don’t want to participate. In the case of Environment Canterbury, one of the reasons that they were stood down and had commissioners put in place in the past was because they couldn’t agree on a system for allocating water rights and managing land use. And so that actually required the intervention of central government.

Now, what I’m proposing in my Supplementary Order Paper 177 is to insert new clause 9A, which would give the voters who have a franchise, people who are over 18 and eligible to vote in Canterbury and to vote for Environment Canterbury, to give them the opportunity—because they can’t vote in or vote out the proposed Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu representative. They would be appointed, and the people of Canterbury wouldn’t have an opportunity to vote for them, to vote for their policies, to vote for the ethos of the person who is supposed to be making decisions about them even though they weren’t elected. So what I’m proposing here in this Supplementary Order Paper is that the voters of Canterbury should be able to—10 percent of them—deliver a petition to Environment Canterbury that recalls the appointee from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and removes them from office if 10 percent of the voters of Canterbury feel that their behaviour or their performance is egregious enough that you can get 10 percent of the voters to bring a petition to Environment Canterbury.

Look, even if this bill passes, if you took up the ACT Party amendment, it could give people in Canterbury a whole lot of confidence that if they were dissatisfied with the performance or behaviour or the character—or who knows what that representative might do in the future?—they could remove them.

So I ask the Minister: would you support my Supplementary Order Paper to include a recall provision so that the people of Canterbury, if these non-elected, appointed representatives turn up to be failing in their duties or to have failed the good character test, they could be removed? And, if not, I’d ask the member to describe exactly why it is.

I thank the member Simon Court, but we won’t be supporting the Supplementary Order Paper that he has brought to the committee. The issue of remuneration, I’ve covered that previously, but I just wanted to make the point that Environment Canterbury has consulted widely on this bill in its earlier iterations as to its core elements, which is about Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu having the ability to appoint two representatives to Environment Canterbury. The issue about remuneration is one that has only come up on the iteration of this bill, so it hasn’t come up earlier. Whilst Environment Canterbury did not consult specifically on this bill, the select committee process was used to ensure that as many people as possible would be able to present their thoughts and make their submissions on the bill. So that was the process that Environment Canterbury followed.

What were the terms of the other aspect that Mr Court raised? Was it remuneration and—I think—

💬 Simon Court: That’s it.

Yeah; that’s it. So that was just in response to Mr Court.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to clarify for the member, because I know it’s getting late in the day and he’s been left alone by his caucus to make the case for this piece of legislation. I’d just like to clarify that what I was proposing with this amendment was, in fact, that the voters of Canterbury, the citizens of Canterbury, those who have a franchise, should have the right to vote in or vote out people who sit on decision-making boards like Environment Canterbury, who make decisions about natural resources and about spending public money. So what my Supplementary Order Paper 177 proposes is that a clause is inserted into the bill, so that should 10 percent of the voters in Canterbury want to recall the appointed person from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, they have the right to do so.

Look, as you’ve described “democracy plus” we would say in the ACT Party, in fact, what you’ve proposed is “democracy minus”. It’s an aberration. It’s an egregious assault on the notion of one person, one vote and liberal democracy. And, in fact, it was the values of liberal democracy that set aside the divine right of kings to rule over us. Nearly a thousand years ago, the Magna Carta, which actually allocated rights and property rights to the people of England who I whakapapa back to, and who came to New Zealand on sailing ships and offered all the lessons—

Chlöe Swarbrick: And colonised. And stole the land. And imposed rules.

That’s right. They offered all the lessons they had learnt in getting rid of kings and queens—getting rid of kings and queens—and coming up with a system called democracy, which was one person, one vote.

And so despite the concept of “democracy plus”—ACT says that’s “democracy minus”—you should not be appointing people—Madam Chair, the member, the Government, in fact, should not be creating legislation that allows for appointments of people into decision-making bodies that are otherwise made up of elected members, to make decisions about water rights, property rights, who gets to build stuff, and where they get to build it. And what’s particularly concerning, and I have a great deal of respect for the individuals who I’ve met at Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, those people who make decisions about investing in infrastructure, who manage 100,000 hectares of commercial forestry, who have interests in resource exploitation, and they don’t mean—it must be frightening for the Green Party to realise, and for the member who’s sitting here to realise, worried about colonisation still, as if it’s 2022—Chlöe Swarbrick, it’s not 1722. We had the Treaty of Waitangi. We’ve got the Treaty of Waitangi tribunal, a process to deal with breaches of contract. In fact, Ngāi Tahu have expressed, through the latest review of stewardship land in the South Island, that they would like to retain access to conservation land or Government-owned land held in stewardship for the purpose—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member’s getting a bit broad.

Coming back to the bill.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Grateful for that.

So, look, imagine that there are decisions that Environment Canterbury are faced with around who gets access to resources, who gets consents to do stuff like mining or quarrying, and who gets to get consents to build access roads, and if there is a potential conflict of interest between the appointed members of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, which is a massive conglomerate that operates somewhere maybe $700 million, maybe a billion dollars’ worth of property and infrastructure and operations. What I’d like the member to respond to is: what provision is there, what controls are there, on the risk of a perception of conflict of interest? Now, I’m not saying there is a potential conflict of interest but the perception of one. Where there are decisions that come to Environment Canterbury that materially affect the corporate and business interests of Ngāi Tahu, how on earth will this bill, any provision of this bill, address that perceived conflict of interest, and, therefore, decisions made by Environment Canterbury that, essentially, could undermine people’s trust and faith in local government to make decisions about resource allocation? This bill opens up a can of worms.

And we still haven’t heard from the member Mr Willie Jackson who offered to stand up and support you, member Rino Tirikatene, and give his views. We still haven’t heard, and so I’m assuming, sir, they’re leaving you on your own to answer this, but I’d love an answer to that. Thank you.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break, and the House will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the patience of my colleagues on this side of the House while I just seek clarification on a few more questions from the member responsible for the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill, Rino Tirikatene.

Earlier in the evening, I think I made a convincing case that there is no justification for the bill, because the objectives that could be met through giving non-elected representatives of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu voting rights on Environment Canterbury could be fulfilled in other ways. But I just want to explore, in terms of Part 2, if the member could give some explanation of what qualifications the people of Canterbury and the staff of Environment Canterbury could expect people appointed to a role on a governing body to have that would make them suitable for the role.

I do know that Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu have a large amount of business and other corporate and community activity, where they have directors with a lot of experience in managing businesses and managing people, as a management role. But I’m wondering what qualifications the member might consider to be appropriate for people who are appointed to Environment Canterbury and what the expectations should be of staff at Environment Canterbury who are expected to provide what in other councils they might have called “democracy services”—in other words, staff who support the elected members, in the same way as we have Parliamentary Service staff supporting the elected members in the House, in Parliament.

So I’m wondering, firstly, what are the qualifications that Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu might consider appropriate for people that they want to appoint to Environment Canterbury, and that’s so that if the member wants people watching the debate tonight or reading about it tomorrow in a broadsheet or, potentially, a tabloid newspaper or even on the internet to understand exactly what they might get if this bill actually passes through subsequent stages and receives the Royal assent—which, at this stage, it’s still not clear whether that will happen. Just like the Rotorua representation bill, of course, which got to a certain point before it disappeared, we can only assume, into what I used to call file 13—the file under my desk. It was a circular-shaped file with an open top made of stainless steel, where things I never wanted to see again went. We called it file 13, or the rubbish bin.

So I’d ask the member to please clarify what are the qualifications for the Ngāi Tahu representatives. Do we expect them to be qualified as directors, do we expect them to have had experience serving in governance roles, and, because there is no current possibility that they could be voted out, in what way will they present their credentials that demonstrate they’re qualified to act in a governance role, having voting rights over the natural resources and the way that people use their land in Canterbury? So I want to understand a bit more about that.

Just thinking about what conditions might occur where Environment Canterbury would want to, say, if a staff member or an elected member might find that the conduct of a representative of Ngāi Tahu—if in a highly unlikely situation that conduct was found to be unsatisfactory, how do you see a process? Would it be a code of conduct process that councils currently operate, or would these appointed members be subject to code of conduct proceedings that have sometimes been used to call to account elected members who have breached the standing orders of their council or who have otherwise behaved in a way that’s considered egregious?

So I’d like the member to describe, firstly, what are the qualifications he expects these appointees to have, and on what basis can they be held to account through a code of conduct. Do you think they’ll be subject to the same rules as other elected councillors? Thank you.

I thank the member Simon Court for his contribution and questions. I think I’m able to deal with these relatively quickly. Clause 7(3) of the bill requires the appointees to be qualified to be elected, so that’s having all the other basic requirements that are for anyone who stands for public office. They have to be qualified to be elected, but other than that, it’s up to Ngāi Tahu—it’s their rangatiratanga—to be able to run their processes and find the right, suitably qualified individuals who will take on the positions at the council table.

I know that Te Rūnanga has very rigorous internal processes. They do that, whether it’s electing their local papatipu representatives on Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu—and I know that the calibre of the individuals that have been, just looking at the predecessors, are highly qualified in tikanga Māori, in tribal history, tribal connection to the natural environment. Obviously, they are connected to the papatipu within the actual takiwā, within the region of the Canterbury Regional Council, but they also have outstanding professional skills in environmental resource management—highly academically qualified individuals. So, rest assured, the calibre and the quality of the individuals that Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu will put forward will be at the highest level and will be fantastic contributors to the council.

I just want to touch, also, briefly, on the code of conduct. Yes, Ngāi Tahu representatives are the same in terms of having to adhere to the code of conduct of Environment Canterbury. They also have to swear an oath or declaration to the role that they are taking on board. It’s the same as every other councillor. As we know, as members of Parliament, we have to take a solemn oath, and that’s a requirement for all members of Environment Canterbury, including the Ngāi Tahu representatives. Once in that role, they have to act in the best interests of the community. Yes, they come from a certain perspective in terms of the background that they bring and the skills that they will be able to bring to the council table, but that oath is to act in the interests of the council of the community of Canterbury as a whole.

In terms of the term, yes, the term of office parallels the term of elected officials. So, effectively, it runs for the same duration as the elected members.

There is no difference in terms of the expectations as to the behaviour and the quality of the work that they’re expected to do. I know for a fact that past representatives are—there’s obligations on reporting back to Ngāi Tahu in terms of the work that’s going on in their role, so that is probably more onerous than for other councillors in their reporting back to their respective wards that they represent. But they are high-calibre individuals that will enhance the decision making around the council table.

I move, That the question be now put.

I’m going to allow some more debate, but we are now beginning to move into the territory of becoming repetitive. We’ve been debating this bill so far for 2½ hours, so I’m now looking for focused, targeted interventions as it seems to me that the Part 2 debate is very much coming to a conclusion. However, Simon Court seeks the call.

Thank you very much for your patience, Madam Chair, and for the patience of those on this side of the Chamber who want to see this bill fully explored. So the member in the chair described candidates who are of a high calibre, who are qualified in environmental disciplines, potentially legal disciplines, history, archaeology, and, of course, tikanga. Based on the personal experiences I’ve had in meeting representatives from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu in their professional capacity, I would concur that those people would be suitable representatives to act in a governance role on any kind of organisation. In fact, the people that I know have such mana and appear so capable and competent, it strikes me as bizarre that Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, in conjunction with Environment Canterbury, would propose that they need to be appointed on to Environment Canterbury, because those are just the kinds of individuals of whom, were they to stand for election and to talk about the things that are important to their community and what they bring, I have no doubt would stand a very good chance of being elected.

So I just want to bring the member over to clause 13, “Council may establish Māori constituencies”, and just ask for a clarification. If these individuals of such great standing, professional people, competent people with a suitable track record to be in governance roles, then wouldn’t Environment Canterbury actually do more justice to the concept that they have representatives of the iwi’s takiwā—Te Wai Pounamu, the South Island—by actually saying we’re going to set up Māori constituencies, based on the Māori electoral role even? Or even whatever other electoral role they want to devise, whether that’s just Ngāi Tahu members—who knows what they might recommend.

But it seems remarkable that if these individuals—who I know and who I think the member might be describing, of such mana, standing, and competency. Wouldn’t it be far better for their personal credibility, for the credibility and integrity of Environment Canterbury, and, of course, local government as a whole, which has suffered terrible damage to its credibility over the past 18 months or so—particularly as some councils have taken the three waters bribe and others have said, “We’re not going to let out assets go”. Wouldn’t it be better for Ngāi Tahu and Environment Canterbury to say, “Look, how about we propose a Māori constituency and we hold an election where we put up some candidates we think are fine people, and actually give that constituency an opportunity to give them a mandate.”?

Does the member think that that mandate, having been elected, would confer greater mana and respect on those people taking a seat at Environment Canterbury, or is being appointed and having voting rights—does that indicate that they’re in fact more suitable than if they were elected? It’s quite confusing to understand even why these two elements are in the same bill: the opportunity to create a Māori constituency, and, of course, the extended membership rights, or special rights, accorded to those members of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. So I would like the member to address that discrepancy.

Why is it that these fantastic-sounding individuals couldn’t put themselves up for election and be voted in on their own merits, because it sounds like they’d make fantastic candidates, just the kind of people we’d like to attract to local government. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better for everybody in the long run if they sought a democratic mandate, if Environment Canterbury dropped this proposal to appoint members with voting rights and went down the road of actually doing the hard work and establishing a Māori constituency? Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

Simon Court’s amendment to clause 6 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 176 is out of order as inconsistent with the principles and objectives of the bill.

The question is that Simon Court’s amendment to clause 7 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 176 be agreed to.

The question is that Simon Court’s amendment inserting new clause 9A set out on Supplementary Order Paper 177 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s tabled amendment to clause 13 be agreed to.