Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: I move, That the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

I wish to start today by acknowledging the previous Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who oversaw the initial work of this bill and whose vision for a stronger local government system and a fairer local electoral system takes another step forward today. To put it plainly, the local electoral system is the tool we use to find people who will make important decisions on behalf of their local communities. Like any tool, it needs the occasional tune-up. This bill makes changes to several Acts that will improve the way that individuals and communities are represented by, and can participate in, local government actions.

The bill does this by establishing a fit for purpose process for councils to consider Māori representation, providing for more flexibility for different representation arrangements at Auckland Council, and updating the recount rules for local elections.

Let’s start with Māori wards. This Government took a first step to change this in 2021, when we amended the poll provisions in relation to the creation of Māori wards. The polls against Māori wards were discriminatory. No other type of ward was subject to the same poll. Even the possibility of a poll was a bigger barrier to Māori representation than most people had thought. The first stage of changes was necessary to help councils get ready for the 2022 elections. Almost overnight, Aotearoa went from having just three councils with Māori wards to 34. Last October, 66 councillors were elected to represent Māori communities. The perspectives they bring will make a real impact on local governments.

Now we are looking towards the future. This bill sets out an enduring process for councils to consider Māori representation. New Zealanders will be able to have their say on the issues in a new engagement process that will be run by councils. This process will ask, “What value can Māori representation add in your area?” Representation decisions cannot happen in a vacuum or be swept under the rug. There must be a conversation, and this bill ensures that will happen.

What this bill does not do is require councils to have Māori wards. These are important, local decisions. Māori wards might not work everywhere, and that’s OK. There are lots of other ways to improve Māori representation, and I saw different approaches to Māori representation around the country when I visited the 55 rural and provincial councils last year.

Councils and the Local Government Commission will be pleased to hear that this bill changes some of the time frames of the representation review process. Officials in the Governance and Administration Committee heard that representation review time frames have been too tight, and I appreciate that feedback. We have made a change so that everyone gets a bit more time going forward. This means that we will have a fairer representation review process that works for everyone.

As we all know, the North Island severe weather events have caused extensive damage to many communities and councils’ assets and infrastructure. Recovery from these events will require a substantial amount of councils’ resources, and will continue to be the councils’ focus for some years to come. At the committee of the whole House stage, I will be introducing a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to delay the commencement of provisions relating to the requirement for councils to consider Māori representation.

As mentioned, the bill puts in place a new requirement for councils to consider Māori representation. Councils who are required to do a representation review this year would be required to consider Māori representation if they don’t already have Māori wards. Councils would have to familiarise themselves with this process and put it into practice from April 2023. However, several councils who are required to undertake a representation review this year have also been severely impacted by recent weather events. Several other councils are also under the pump on many other fronts, as councils told me last year when I visited them.

I think it is important to reduce the impact of new regulatory requirements on the sector at the current time, especially those councils affected by the extreme weather events who need to focus on recovery. Considering Māori representation remains important, and we encourage all councils to have these conversations with their communities. However, in the context of the massive impact of the extreme weather events, we need to offer affected councils some regulatory relief and some flexibility to determine what is manageable. Councils who are required to do a representation review this year can still optionally decide to consider Māori representation. The new requirements for councils to consider Māori representation will not come into force until the day after the 2025 local election. This is when councils start thinking about their representation process, and the type of representation they want.

I stand by these changes which will strengthen council governance in the future, but we need to be reasonable when implementing new requirements on councils during an emergency response and recovery phase. Announcing this SOP now provides clarity and certainty for councils on when the new requirement will take effect from, and what it means for them.

Next, I want to talk about Auckland. Unlike all other councils, who have the right to set their own membership size, Auckland Council has been constrained. In 2010, when Auckland Council was set up, it was limited to only 20 councillors. Auckland’s growth means that each councillor now represents almost 86,000 residents. For reference, that’s about the same population as the New Plymouth district. The bill gives Auckland Council the flexibility to determine its own representation arrangements, just like anywhere else in the country. The bill also establishes a streamlined process for Auckland Council to review its local board boundaries. To be clear, this bill doesn’t change anything overnight for Auckland. What it does do is give Auckland Council more leeway when it comes to considering whether it fairly and effectively represents its local communities.

Finally, I want to talk about recounts. In 2009, we had some very tight elections, where council seats were decided through a coin toss. Sometimes a coin toss is the best and fairest way to settle a tie. But I think it pays to make sure you’ve got the right result by doing a judicial recount before you toss the coin. Unfortunately, the current legislation says that the coin toss comes before the recount. That seems a bit backwards to me. So in 2019, it meant that people who had been told they were elected, either by a close margin or by a coin toss, were then told they were out of a job after a recount. We’re changing the law to make sure that election outcomes are fair, understandable, and mana-enhancing.

The bill makes three changes to put the system right, including an automatic judicial recount for tight election results—this aligns local government elections with parliamentary elections—a new ability for candidates to withdraw from the election after a judicial recount if there is still a tie—this is for candidates who don’t want to seal their fate by a coin toss—and, finally, the bill requires councils to wait to have their first meeting until any recounts are complete, the exception being for urgent business that can be conducted without the involvement of any candidate affected by a recount.

This is a highly technical piece of legislation, and I would like to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for its work on the bill. I want to acknowledge all the submissions on the bill from local authorities, organisations, and individuals. The committee received 49 written submissions, with the majority supporting the intent of the bill. I would also like to acknowledge the 19 local boards in Auckland who provided feedback. Many submitters provided helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into this bill.

The committee has recommended several simple changes to the bill that help clarify its intended effect. These include clarifying the rules of engagement for councils to follow when they consider Māori representation. For the record, there is not a requirement for councils to use the special consultative procedure. Councils know their communities best, and they should engage with them however they think is right. The committee also recommended some changes to the timing of the review process, which I hope councils will be pleased with.

New Zealand is a representative democracy. Local government is an important part of the democratic system. This bill strengthens our local democracy, and I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of National, as the member of Parliament for North Shore, to talk on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill, second reading. I acknowledge the comments made by the Minister of Local Government in regards to this bill; it’s just a shame that I, basically, don’t agree with the large majority of them, and, on that basis, National are opposing this bill. We’re opposing this bill for no surprise, really. When you think about the work of local government across this country, and particularly in the way in which they’ve dealt with the disaster relief that we’ve faced, do you think they’re sitting around at the moment going, “Well, great, we’ve now got a bit of legislation that’s going to introduce more regulation into what is already a hugely busy space for local government.”? It really epitomises a Minister that is very much out of touch with the local government community across this country. While he may have visited 55 of those councils, this bill reflects that he has not done much listening in terms of the key issues that local government face.

Let’s walk through a few of those, because I don’t see any of them in this legislation that’s on the Table tonight, and that’s a great shame, because it’s another example of Government legislation that is a wasted opportunity—a wasted opportunity in terms of actually dealing with some of the core issues that Kiwis are facing at the moment. But oh, no, no, let’s put in place some regulation which feels good but which isn’t going to deal with the underlying matter!

Let’s start with Auckland Council and we’ll work backwards for reasons that—why not? Auckland Council’s got, currently, 20 councillors. I’m not sure how many ratepayers that members on this side of the House—how many emails they’ve had from ratepayers saying, “Can you please, please, please pass legislation to increase the number of councillors in Auckland?” Right? I don’t think—well, I can be clear on that: I have not received one email in regards to requests to increase the number of councillors in Auckland. Actually, to the contrary, I think most ratepayers are happy that we’ve got 20 and that is enough, thank you very much, Minister. But this desire to increase that by nearly an additional third, to take it up to around 29 just so that it’s in line with everywhere else in the country, is idiotic at first principle, and it’s not driven by a desire by those that pay our rates across this country; it is driven by a desire of others to have some form of consistency to solve a problem. It is a solution looking for a problem; it is not necessary or required, and all it is going to do is increase the bureaucratic burden on ratepayers across this country. Nine more councillors—that’s probably going to result in about 100-plus-plus more bureaucrats in the background supporting those roles. The Minister references representation—well, I’m sorry, I think it is fair to say that there is an adequate number of those councillors in place, doing an already challenging role, but this isn’t going to bring much to the party.

Let’s talk a little bit about the other key aspect of this bill, which is in regards to Māori wards. The key element of this bill is that it actually places the requirement on councils to require councils to decide not to implement Māori wards, right? It’s a regulatory requirement by central government. So this is, again, a Government where Wellington knows best, Wellington knows what our local communities need and should do, and in their wisdom they have decided that, actually, what we’re going to do—and, you know, they probably thought, “Well, this sounds quite smart.”, but it’s not really. It’s not smart. It’s “Let’s actually make them pass a motion and do a whole lot of consultation around actually considering that we’re not going to implement Māori wards.” Well, for what purpose is that?

This side of the House has not opposed the concept of Māori wards, but what we do oppose is more forcing by central government upon our democratically elected individuals across our councils, who are democratically elected by their ratepayers to undertake the work that they do—and they undertake very good work, in the main, across this country for their communities. But now central government comes in over the top and says, “Well, no, no, we don’t, sort of, trust what you’re doing.”, because that side of the House do not trust local government. They do not trust what those individuals across the country do. They pay lip service to the good work which local government undertake, and the reform and regulation that they are pumping through this House day in, day out—and I won’t talk about three waters, but it is a good example of where they believe that big government and centralisation trumps local communities and local decision-making. The clear contrast between that side of the House and this side of the House is that we trust local government. We will work with local government, not against them. We believe and understand and respect democratically elected individuals in local government. We don’t need regulation like this that comes in and places requirements on our councils around their community table to make decisions around things that they’re not going to do.

It is a shame that, in the contrast of all of the challenges that we face as a country, this is as good as it gets from a Government that is obviously under a lot of—and my colleague Maureen Pugh made a comment, and I agree with you: this is a joke, but it’s a shame that this isn’t a joke. This is real, and this is a Government that believes the best piece of legislation that they can put through to empower our communities, to empower local government, to improve the way in which local government impacts Kiwi households across this country is to implement more regulation to make them ensure that when they’re making a decision around Māori wards, they need to consider when they’re not going to do it. And that is as good as it gets.

So, look, we’ve summarised, I think, the two key components of this piece of legislation. I don’t see anything around providing the support to local government, around funding and financing. I don’t see anything in here about infrastructure and dealing with the infrastructure deficits. I don’t see anything in here around actually helping councils around capability and competence. I don’t see anything in here, actually, around workforce. I mean, workforce, I hear, is quite a significant issue in local government, is it not? Well, maybe on this side of the House we just haven’t caught up with what is in vogue, but what I can tell you is what is in this bill is not in vogue. This is not going to make any material impact or benefit on our communities, and that is a great shame.

The one and only element of this bill—and we said in our minority view, and I think we were quite generous, actually, when I read the statement that says while there are positive elements of this bill; I think we probably could’ve said, well, there is one positive element. It is in regards to the coin toss. You go back and you think, “Crikey, is that the biggest issue that New Zealand is facing, around legislation around how we do a coin toss when an election is tight?” Well, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you at home watching this at 7.44—of course, daylight saving is now in play, so it’s 7.44, for those who haven’t changed their clocks—yeah, this is the biggest factor that this Government believe is a priority in this country for local government, a little bit of legislation on how we do a coin toss when the vote is tight.

That is a disgrace—that is an absolute disgrace, because it shows that this Government are out of ideas. This is as good as it gets, ladies and gentlemen, in regards to legislation to improve this country’s issues, of which there are many. An opportunity is forgone this evening in which tangible and positive change could’ve been put through that would deal with the core issues facing our communities: unblocking the pipe, reducing the regulation, reducing the bureaucracy, getting our local governments focused on core services, and getting them away from the distraction of non-core services. All of those elements—a forgone and missed opportunity. On that basis, we’ll be opposing this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. Can I first just acknowledge those who submitted on the bill, the other members of the Governance and Administration Committee, and the officials who worked tirelessly on the bill. As the Minister said earlier, I also want to acknowledge the former Minister of Local Government who introduced this bill into the House, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta.

I’d like to just correct some of the odd comments from the speaker prior to me, Simon Watts, particularly regarding Māori wards, and the comments that this bill would somehow force councils to have to reject Māori wards. It’s quite wrong. What we’re doing is ensuring some consistency with other matters that come up every time there is a representation review at a council. When we introduced legislation in 2021 around Māori wards at the time, the then Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, said we would be bringing enduring legislation back to the House, and this is what this bill does.

Our councils, every few years, have to undertake a representation review, and in that they consider other decisions, such as whether they have wards, how many wards they have, the boundaries of those wards, the number of councillors they have, which voting system they use—whether they use first past the post or STV. They have to consider those matters every time as part of their representation review, and that includes consultation with their communities, so it’s entirely consistent for us to be adding into our legislation that Māori wards also need to be considered. That is all this bill is doing. I note that around half or so of the councils that had the opportunity prior to the last local election chose to add Māori wards to their councils. We’ve have had very good feedback on how that is running. On one of the councils in my electorate of Nelson, we have an excellent Māori ward councillor, Kahu Paki Paki, who’s doing an excellent job, and I want to mihi to him tonight for the work that he is doing in our community to ensure that, for the first time, we actually have a Māori councillor on our council representing an important part of our community.

As previous speakers have also mentioned, there are other things that this bill does, such as increasing the number of potential councillors at Auckland Council, to be, again, consistent with other councils that can also have up to 29 councillors. So from a consistency point of view, it doesn’t make sense for a small council to be able to have up to 29, and then for a large council like Auckland, with its larger population base, not to have the same opportunity to have that level of representation.

So before I finish, I do just want to acknowledge my good friend Tasman Mayor Tim King in the gallery today. And just to acknowledge that, yes, Madam Speaker, I do trust my councils and mayors like Tim King. This Government backs the local government; it’s why we’ve been putting so much energy into ensuring they have the right systems in place to deliver for our communities. I commend this bill to the House.

I love the “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” irony of the previous speaker Rachel Boyack, who said this Government backs local government, when they’re passing legislation after legislation, taking roles away from local government and centralising it against their will such as in the Water Services Act, and under the Resource Management Act they’ll be setting up these new agencies. Unfortunately, words might be fine; it’s what you do that actually matters. And this Government unfortunately has made a track record of great theatrics, great talking, great announcements, great ambitions, and extremely poor follow-through and confusion on what they’re actually doing on the ground.

Now, we’ve heard from the Prime Minister that this is a Government that’s going to focus on the bread and butter. We hear the “bread and butter” on many occasions. They’re going to focus on bread and butter and drop distractions and get to priorities. And then, lo and behold, we get a chance to speak on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill, second reading, which is all about the real important issues of local government, which is ensuring that people do not get a chance to have a referendum on whether they should introduce Māori wards into their electorate, which is fundamentally what this is about. It strikes me as a strange priority and indicative of a Government that has got muddled and confused about what is important to New Zealanders.

When they look at local government generally in New Zealand—and we all are under the bailiwick of some council somewhere—I think most New Zealanders look and see real pressure on local governments. They see pressure to deliver good quality services, and to actually make sure—well, I get emails from constituents today, for people in the Epsom electorate, complaining about the fact that nobody ever sweeps the leaves out of the gutters any more and that contributes to flooding. It is all the basic stuff about local government. There’s a lot of pressure—a lot of pressure about getting the roads open and moving and not having cones everywhere. A lot of pressure around water services, getting the sewerage stuff—all the basics of local government—and a huge amount of work that needs to be done.

And what is this Government focused on? It’s only ever focused on the electoral sort of stuff. So what did they do? I remember it was only a couple of years ago that they rammed through, under urgency, urgent legislation to change the way that local government operated in terms of Māori wards. And just a reprise on that, because this legislation confirms all that and sets it in stone for the short time that this Government will remain in office, at least—where in the past if a local council wanted to introduce Māori wards into the council, they had to ask the people. When they did, in most cases—overwhelmingly—when they asked that question, people said, “No, we don’t want it.” Why don’t they want it? Well, there’d be a host of reasons why they didn’t want it. But primarily I think most people just don’t want to divide New Zealanders into different groups; we all regard ourselves as equal New Zealanders and we don’t want to focus on difference so much as what unites us. There’ll be a whole host of reasons why people opposed it.

But when they did, that wasn’t good enough for this Government. So the people, when they were asked, said no, and so the Government said, “Well, we’re not going to ask you any more and we’ll just get local councils to just introduce these wards and not ask the people.” So that’s what happened last year. Lo and behold, a whole lot of councils did introduce these wards and we’ve just heard from the previous speaker saying that it’s been a great outcome. I haven’t seen great evidence of that. But, you know, time will tell. Time will tell whether, as a country, we’re better off for it or not. But we think, on this side of the House, that people should have a say on these matters. And the logical thing, if you’re going to change the way that we organise our electoral arrangements, is you should ask the people, not just do it on the basis of a bare majority under a Government.

Why do we worry about these things? We’ve got good reason to worry about it, because this is also the Government that has fundamentally changed the way that local democracy works in New Zealand by passing the Canterbury regional council bill, which moved away from two basic democratic principles: one, equal voting rights for all New Zealanders—and I hear sort of moans and groans from the other side as if this doesn’t matter. Equal voting rights for all New Zealanders—a pretty important basic constitutional principle that this Government moved away from in the Canterbury bill. Because what happens in Canterbury under that legislation is that everybody gets a vote—one person, one vote—for 14 councillors, and then after that, everybody having had a vote, including Māori, Ngāi Tahu get to appoint two more. So it is unequal voting rights depending on ethnicity.

But the second principle that it offended against was the idea that councillors should be accountable to the electorate. The one thing that keeps Kiri Allan on the straight and narrow as an MP is she knows that if she does a good job she will remain in office. If she does a bad job, people will throw her out. That’s the same principle that applies to all of us: we face the ballot box and if we’re no good, we get chucked out. Governments have come and gone over the years. But under the Canterbury legislation, the Ngāi Tahu appointments can never be thrown out, because they’re appointments as of right. So two fundamental constitutional principles thrown out the door by this Government on a bare majority with no consultation with the people and with no consultation across the House. So we’re pretty concerned about that.

So when it comes to the approach that the Government has taken in terms of local government democracy, we’re not impressed one iota and we certainly won’t be supporting this bill, which is not as heinous as the Canterbury regional council bill, but it is still one that offends that basic principle. When we’re going to make changes at how we organise our electoral arrangements at local government, we should ask the people through a referendum, and this bill doesn’t allow for that. In fact, it moves away from that. It does a few other minor things which may be of interest to some people, probably not to most people. But on that score I think it’s more a missed opportunity bill than a constructive bill, given all the challenges that we face at local government.

This is a bill that we won’t be supporting and we don’t support, and we don’t hope that it passes. We call upon the Government to reconsider and maybe at the last moment change their mind and go back to a principle where if a local council decides it wants to change and set up Māori wards, which they’re perfectly entitled to do, they should first ask the people and, if the people want it, then it will go ahead. If they don’t want it, then it won’t go ahead. That’s a fairly simple thing, it’s not hard to understand, and it’s where we were for most of our history and where we should return to. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, too, echo the words of my colleague and thank our Governance and Administration Committee for a really good time going through this bill. We thank all the submitters, especially all of the city councils who came in and made their views heard during the select committee process. We did a bit of a split between me and my colleague Rachel Boyack in terms of—I’m just going to take the Auckland part in my speech today and explain some of the intricacies there.

Now, Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city. It is now up to 33 percent of the population in New Zealand. Right now, currently in Auckland, one councillor has to represent 86,000 constituents or residents. Let me repeat that again: one councillor has to represent 86,000 constituents, whereas members in the House probably represent around 60,000, I think is how the Electoral Commission divides up electorates in this House.

I know, for instance, in my home area of East Auckland, we have one councillor in the Howick ward that actually cuts across three different electorates. Their job is to liaise with the MPs in Pakuranga, the MPs in Botany, and the MPs in Takanini as well. Therefore, that also echoes the local board boundaries as well. That job is very immense, and it doesn’t naturally actually fall into communities of interest. You can imagine, just by the three electorates I’ve just described to you, whether it’s from Pakuranga—we’ve got the Howick community there. In Takanini, and even in Flat Bush and Botany, it is a very diverse Asian community, whereas in Howick and Pakuranga it’s a long-settled predominantly European community, and then you’ve got in Takanini a really large Indian but also Pacific community as well.

So having a ward councillor that has to cross that whole entire boundary is actually a really demanding job. What this bill will actually do is streamline the process to review how these boundaries are set in the local boards and also in the wards within Auckland Council as well, to be able to increase the numbers of councillors to the Auckland Council according to the growth rate of our population and the demands of our population.

A fact that has been often talked about in this House is that from 3 million to 4 million, it took this nation 30 years to get there, in terms of population growth. But from 4 million to 5 million—so the last million of growth that we’ve had in our population—only took us 16 years, which is about half the time it took for the previous 1 million of population growth. So with a changing demographic in New Zealand, with a changing landscape of Auckland, we need to have a political and a local democracy that actually reflects the way that that city is now shaping up to be and changing. So, therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I’m pleased to take a short call on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. The Greens are not represented on the Governance and Administration Committee, so we weren’t involved in the hearings on the bill, but we strongly support the bill and its purpose to improve the processes by which individuals and communities are represented through, and can participate in, local government elections.

This bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. The Greens would like to see much more sweeping electoral reform to ensure that 16- and 17-year-olds have the vote in local authority elections so they can help chart their future and so that we improve representation in councils across the country through using a proportional voting system, in the same way that this Parliament has become much more representative and much more diverse through MMP. The Greens think that STV should be enabled at local authorities throughout the country. That’s why there are two Supplementary Order Papers in the name of Golriz Ghahraman which the House will consider in the committee stages, to put in place voting for 16- and 17-year-olds, and to ensure that the electoral system does cover that single transferable vote system so that voting is proportional.

So this bill is much more modest in its ambitions in terms of providing a revised process for councils to decide their representation arrangements and to make sure that they consider Māori representation as a fundamental step in that process, and to also simplify the process that unitary councils, such as Auckland Council, can go through to adjust local board boundaries, as well as the coin-toss issue and making a fairer decision when an election result is tied.

But I really must take issue with National’s comments on this bill. They are really forgetting history. We heard from Mr Goldsmith that it offends the fundamental principles of democracy. When he started talking about the Canterbury regional council legislation—it was, of course, the National Government which completely removed the ability of Canterbury electors to vote for a regional council for a whole nine years. It totally threw out the ability to use the ballot box. So it is very rich for the National Party to be opposing this bill. It simply ensures that when councils are considering Māori representation, there is not that extra barrier that they have at the moment of having to have a poll of electors. If councils want to establish an additional general ward, there is no requirement that there is a poll of electors. So why would we have a differential rule in relation to the establishment of Māori wards? So this bill makes it fairer by removing that requirement for a referendum. I hope that Mr Goldsmith looks at National’s initiatives in the local electoral law—getting rid of a whole regional council for nine years is getting rid of the fundamental principles of democracy. This bill is actually seeking to improve them.

In terms of what happens in Auckland, as the previous speaker, Naisi Chen, noted, there is the ability to increase the number of councillors to up to 29 councillors to ensure better representation in Tāmaki-makau-rau, and the ability, through the bill, for the council to amend the boundaries of local boards without having to go through that multi-step process with the Local Government Commission in terms of doing a whole restructuring of local government—the process for amending board boundaries at the moment is far too complicated. I really acknowledge the values of the Auckland boards. In virtually every bill concerning the Resource Management Act, the local boards in Auckland have individually provided submissions to the Environment Committee, for example, and brought the perspectives about their local area into focus. So it’s a very good initiative to ensure that their boundaries better fit their communities of interest.

One concern the Green Party has about the proposals around Auckland is that the regulatory impact statement says that the Remuneration Authority has advised that it’s unlikely that they will increase the size of the governance pool that council uses to fund councillor salaries, which, effectively, means that if Auckland Council decides to increase the number of councillors, the salaries will reduce because they’ll be having to spread the same pool over more people. That problem isn’t unique to Auckland, but to ensure that we have transparent local government and we avoid the risk of corruption, we need adequate salaries for councillors to encourage a wide variety of people to stand so that it’s not just those who can afford it and so that there’s no risk of people taking bribes, essentially, because their income is very low. So that issue of the governance pool is something I think that does need to be addressed.

The Green Party strongly supports the bill and think that the National Party doth protest rather too much and that it has obstructed Māori wards virtually every step of the way. That makes no sense at all because we want local government to be representative of everyone in Aotearoa, and that ensures increasing the amount of Māori representation at councils around the motu. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It will be no surprise to people watching at home or listening to Parliament that ACT will not support this bill. But I just want to lay out some of our concerns. Firstly, this bill was introduced by a Minister who is no longer in the portfolio and, in fact, became so unpopular for her co-governance agenda that she appears to have been exiled to a small country in northern Europe. It’s still winter there—it’s still winter there.

As the Minister, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, stated, “Like any tool, this bill needs much more than a tune-up.” The Minister has stated he will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to delay the time for commencement of this bill, and you’d have to ask why it was so urgent and so imperative that the allowance for councils to introduce Māori wards without consulting their communities prior to the last general election was so urgent—according to the former Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta—that it must happen straight away. And yet this legislation is going to be delayed out for a year or more—which is quite convenient, because it will take the issue off the agenda, as far as this Government believes, during an election year.

But the reason that the Minister Kieran McAnulty gave for delay is that he couldn’t possibly impose such a bill—all of the administration, all of the regulatory shenanigans and paperwork—on local government affected by the severe weather in the first few months of this year. It’s the most remarkable admission. Because imagine that the Minister didn’t want to impose electoral regulatory red tape on councils but he’s more than happy to continue with the three waters reform that is incredibly disruptive to local government, particularly those who are trying to repair their assets damaged by cyclones and floods.

Now, the Minister mentioned that this bill is highly technical. Well, I’ve got to tell the Minister this is a teeny-weeny baby little bill compared to some of the other bills this Government’s dropped on this House, such as the 800-plus Resource Management Act or the 700-odd page three waters legislation currently before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. This is a teeny, teeny-weeny bill. It doesn’t make it any better. Rather than highly technical, I think the ACT Party would categorise this bill as slightly sneaky, and I want to describe why.

What are the problems with this bill? Well, instead of addressing the problems that local government has brought to the attention of select committees of this House that three waters reform are going to cause them—having their assets stripped of them and centralised in four new entities, having all of the staff who they rely on planning, engineering, all of those community engagement staff taken off them, taken off them, patched over, put into a water service entity—what they’ve asked for is to be allowed to continue managing their water assets and also managing the effects of land use in stormwater in a coherent and integrated way. That is at odds with what this Government’s local government agenda is seeking.

Local councils have also come to select committee—the Environment Committee—more recently and asked that the resource management reforms be amended or dropped because they’re going to take local decision-making by elected members on planning and land use away from councils and hand it over to an unelected centralised body called a regional planning committee, that local people and their elected representatives will have no control over. And, of course, the future of local government review: that interim report suggests that councils focusing on wellbeing and co-governance should be the objective of local government in the future. That is certainly not what the select committees hearing about the three waters resource management reforms have heard. And when we look at the submissions on this piece of legislation, it’s quite clear that there were very, very few submitters. I’m assuming if I was to ask the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, Mr Ian McKelvie, why that was, I would assume that’s because of the extremely limited time submitters were given to make submissions on the bill.

In fact, my parliamentary colleague Ian McKelvie was so disappointed at the time with the process that he was offered, he stated on the first reading—and I just want to acknowledge this. I mean, if he can honestly say he was looking forward to this bill coming to select committee because they could make some constructive changes, he would, but he can’t because he’s never seen the select committees change anything that a Minister has sent us yet. And apparently the member’s been here a little while. Well, look, I just want to offer this perspective. I’ve had the benefit of working alongside Ian McKelvie in the Governance and Administration Committee on another bill dealing with severe weather recently, and I know he tried hard—I know he tried hard. But what we have here today, this bill presented here at second reading, does little to assuage the fears of submitters. As one of them put it, and I’m going to read it out because it’s a very short submission, from a Karen Manson: “I oppose this bill.” According to Karen, the purpose of the bill appeared to “continue with Labour’s hidden agenda of co-governance a divisive agenda allocating different rights to different groups in New Zealand by virtue of their ethnicity”—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It’s sad. What a sad excuse for an argument.

SIMON COURT: —“with vague reference to Treaty principles … that are not written down anywhere in this Bill.” Dr Duncan Webb, that’s from a submitter who can see clearly through the agenda of Labour and the former Minister who brought this bill to the House. Labour clearly are going to press on with their co-governance agenda; it’s right here in this bill. Submitters aren’t silly, New Zealanders aren’t silly; they saw right through this attempt, Dr Duncan Webb. Then there’s the submission, actually, from a community group, the Newmarket and Parnell Business Associations, which submitted that what they’d like to do is to be able to get more alignment between their local boards and the areas that they operate in. And that seems perfectly reasonable.

So I just want to come to some comments that another parliamentary colleague—Naisi Chen—made about representation. Well, look, Auckland has around 1.65 million people, 20 councillors on the full council. According to Naisi Chen’s calculation, that means we’ve only got one councillor for every 82,000 people in Auckland. But what that member omitted to point out was we also have 21 local boards with 149 local board members. That adds up to 169 representatives, which means for Auckland’s population that gives us a representation of just under one elected member per 10,000 people. That sounds pretty reasonable. For that reason, there’s no need to increase the level of representation. What it would be helpful to do for councils for local government, instead of messing around with co-governance and trying to sneak in more of that Government’s divisive agenda through the back door and under urgency and all the different ways this Government’s found to do it, what ACT would propose is, in fact, you give local government more power, more control over how they use their assets, how their communities develop.

Imagine, instead of central government taking all of the revenue that it collects from residential building, the GST on residential building, all of those invoices which add up to over $2 billion a year—instead of taking it all for itself, imagine if central government shared half the revenue from all of that GST with local government. Auckland Council, for example, would get $400 million a year to build infrastructure, develop community services and community assets and community facilities. That’s what ACT would do. If the Government really cared about increasing representation and getting more people enthusiastic about their local government, why not give them more power and control? Why not devolve to local elected members the ability to set their social and their economic direction for their community and to choose their own representation arrangements, not have them forced down their throat by this Labour Government. ACT will oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā koutou ngā iwi o te motu, e mihi ana ki a koutou.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Greetings to the people of the nation. I acknowledge you.]

Good evening, everyone. I stand to speak on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. Firstly, I stand in awe of the former local government Minister Nanaia Mahuta for her courage, for her perseverance, her boldness, and her humility and grace she has shown as a former Minister of Local Government, and in particular over the last recent years.

Māori Wards: as a former district councillor—over 12 years—what I can say is I wholeheartedly support this bill. Māori representation is a change I have longed for, not knowing I would be here today to speak to it myself. I reflect—I reflect, back in the days, what a lonely place local government would be if you were Māori. Even more shameful was having to endure six-yearly representation reviews, and Māori ward considerations could be vetoed just like that.

But you know what? My council, the Rangitīkei District Council, one of the most conservative at the time, broke the mould of conservatism and supported Māori wards, whilst, at the same time, an opposition group would be sitting in the gallery waiting to pounce with their polls. Guess what! Iwi at the time did not want them, to the disappointment of that opposing group. The Government took a first step to change this in 2021, amending the polls provisions to help councils to get ready for 2022 elections, removing discrimination. Hallelujah!

This bill sets out an enduring process—an enduring process for councils to consider Māori representation through a fit for purpose process. It gives the mana motuhake to the council. Whilst the new requirements will not come into force till 2025, it’s OK—it’s OK. We must consider those councils severely impacted by recent weather events along with others. Our Minister has heard the calling: good things take time. I wish to commend him, our Hon Minister McAnulty, for taking the time to visit 55 rural provincial councils last year and giving consideration to their feedback.

Auckland Council: Auckland Council has been hamstrung with a limitation of 20 councillors. It has grown and will continue—it will continue. Each councillor representing 86,000 residents—it doesn’t cut it. In my ward days, I thought that 1,500 was too much and onerous. Auckland needs to determine its own representation arrangements. Who knows better than themselves?

The recount and coin tosses: Well, I remember a time when the deputy mayor was appointed by the councillors. This particular year, there were two nominations. There was a tie. The mayor pulls out his coin and says, “Heads or tails?” and I thought, “What?”—that it was a joke. No, it wasn’t a joke. A very strange action in such an official capacity, mandated by the highest level of legislation: our Parliament. In this instance, it makes absolute sense to have a judicial recount before, at least, a toss of a coin. That is why I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

The next call is a split call. I call on the Hon David Bennett for five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the Waikato, the event of Māori representation on council has been probably quite late compared with what you probably expect in an area that is so dominated by Tainui in many ways, and it has actually proven to be quite an effective role that has been taken by Māori on boards and on councils. For many people that may have had a lot of apprehension prior to that, it has been proven that there was no need for such apprehension. In fact, some of the Māori members of our councils show a lot more economic nous than some of the greener members of our councils that take quite a different philosophy on growth. The long-term ambitions of our Māori communities is something that councils, as the Government, need to take as well—however, we don’t need to dictate that to councils, and that’s what this bill does. Councils are quite willing to get to that point themselves.

The actual point we should be going for is that we don’t actually need to dictate anything. A true partnership or relationship under the Treaty wouldn’t need dictation from this House. It would evolve, and it will evolve to that point in our lifetime—I’m pretty sure of that. We don’t need legislation like this to actually get to that point. That’s the fundamental issue I guess many of us have. You know, we don’t actually have any opposition to Māori council positions; we actually see that they’re quite valuable and quite effective in many cases, like in our local communities. However, we don’t need that community to be dictated to by this House on how it should determine its representation.

You know, in the Waikato, it may be that more than two seats might be actually appropriate, but in the end, that’s up to the council, the community, to decide; it’s not up for this House to decide. I can see the day when in the Waikato we won’t need any seats—and that day isn’t far away—because the representation is organic. We’re getting to a stage now where councils are getting into that long-term vision. You have to look at the Waikato Regional Council—we were there yesterday. What you see there about their long-term vision around water and other issues is very consistent with Māori views of the world and where we want to go, and it’s consistent with the wider community’s views of the world and where we want to go. I don’t think that is an inconsistency that this Parliament needs to then, you know, dictate how that will be.

In the end, the end goal of local government should be to represent and do the best for their community and to work with central government—and central government’s role is to work with local government as well. To achieve that does not require dictation from here. What it requires is an understanding of the long-term goals that we all want to achieve.

So we oppose this bill, but we see value in much Māori representation in our area, for example. But it’s the necessary representation that has come through things like Treaty settlements and that; it doesn’t need to be dictated through legislation. It’s been organic, it has happened, and the next stage of that will actually be to take that away. The next stage of organic growth will be to remove that and actually have councils that have long-term visions that represent everybody in their community. That is the long-term view that Government and council should have. It’s probably something that’s beyond this bill, but, you know, the reality is we take a very three-year cycle, or, as the last speaker said, a six-year cycle, she felt she was under—and that is part of the problem. You know, we need to take a longer-term vision in this House and in local government to achieve the goals the communities want.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak on this bill this evening because, for someone who has had a background in local government for a number of years—

Glen Bennett: Deputy mayor.

TANGI UTIKERE: Deputy mayor, previously, yes. I know that local government is vital for our community, and what this piece of legislation does—as much as the Opposition would like to belittle it—is empower local decision-makers to continue to provide democracy for their local communities. Because this is a bill that gives local councils choice. Much has been said about the situation for Auckland, and if we look at Auckland, current legislation caps the number of councillors for Auckland Council at 20. That means if that council wishes to engage in a conversation around their council table about whether or not it should or could introduce Māori representation in the form of Māori wards, it currently is prevented or limited from doing so. This legislative change will align Auckland Council with the same approach that other councils have around New Zealand. If they choose to have 20 elected members, including the mayor, that is a matter for them. The choice is theirs.

What I like about this piece of legislation is that it would be mandatory for councils to consider how Māori would be included in local decision-making and local elections. When I reflect on the fact that in Palmerston North we had at the last local body election the introduction of a Māori ward that delivered us two representatives for Rangitāne: Councillor Roly Fitzgerald and the new deputy mayor, Debi Marshall-Lobb—they have added so much value to that decision-making process already. It is a wonderful thing that Palmerston North and its community has been able to benefit from.

I’ve had the opportunity to be a six-time candidate in local body elections, and so I would just hate to think that a process of flipping a coin to determine whether someone is successful or not, and then actually going through a judicial recount and finding out, actually, the original decision was inaccurate—that is just a complete waste of time, let alone the mental anguish that you would put both of those individuals in that particular position through.

This is a fantastic piece of legislation. It is about delivering for local democracy. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a brief call on this bill, the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, with an excellent chair—who I see opposite—and other members in the House, it was an honour to shepherd this bill through. I’d like to thank all of the submitters. We had around 40 submitters who made very thoughtful submissions on this bill. We had a number of councils who submitted. We always appreciate that process, and us and the officials genuinely listen to the submitters as they make their submissions.

I’d like to pick up on something the previous speaker just mentioned around the coin toss. I’m very pleased that we have tidied up this area because members may not know that the example that the member cited happened in Whakatāne—2019 elections—where there were two candidates who, basically, landed on the same amount of votes. There was a coin toss undertaken, and one of those went into council—they actually got sworn in to council; unfortunately, they were actually on council. Then there was a judicial recount and they found out that it was wrong and they had to get taken off council—I mean, that’s just outrageous; it really is on many, many levels. So it’s certainly very good that we’ve tidied that up.

It is disappointing that the Opposition parties are not supporting this bill. At the Hamilton City Council—I’m the member for Hamilton East—we have two Māori councillors on the Māori wards. We voted for that, as a city, and brought them in and it’s working very well. The previous member said that it’ll happen organically, and it may do, but, look, there is no harm in giving the opportunity, which is, basically, what we’re doing, for councils to be proactive in this space. It is an excellent piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I learnt something from Simon Watts when he spoke earlier, and that’s to point out to the House that I come from Rangitīkei, in case they didn’t know. He made that point, I thought I’d just remind you. Interestingly, the Rangitīkei electorate has bits, parts, or part of, seven different councils, and so consequently we have quite a few differences of opinion amongst those councils, and some very different ways of doing things.

One of the objectives of this piece of legislation, and I’ll read it out, is: “The broad single policy and purpose of this bill is to improve processes by which individuals and communities are represented through, and can participate in, local government elections.” And we’ve got, frankly, a pretty dismal record of getting people to participate in local government elections. There are a number of reasons for that. One, in my view, has been the very divisive nature in which Māori wards have been established, or not established, since 2002. So, in other words, the process has always been flawed, and I guess this Government’s had a bit of a crack at tidying that up. I don’t know whether they have tidied it up, but we do have at least some consistency around the introduction of Māori wards now, because running a referendum to establish a Māori ward was complete nonsense when you think about it. That was brought in, of course, by the 2002 Act, which was instigated by a Labour Government.

I think the issue of Māori representation has been well canvassed in the House tonight, and the issue of how those are established and the rules around them are also well discussed in the House tonight. So I won’t go into that any further other than to say I don’t think we’ve got on top of this issue yet, and I think there’s some work to do on it. I do support Tangi Utikere and his comments about the Palmerston North City Council, because having observed that in action over many years, I’d have to say it’s in the best state I’ve seen it in, perhaps, forever, as a result of where they’ve got to with this last election. And they do have an outstanding deputy mayor who was appointed through this system.

A bit has been said about the Auckland Council tonight, and the truth of the matter is that unless alterations were made to this piece of legislation, the Auckland Council wasn’t on the same footing as every other council when it came to appointing Māori wards, for instance. But also their number of councillors didn’t enable them to do what other councils can do in that respect. We were assured, actually, during the select committee stage process, by the Auckland Council that it was highly unlikely they’d get to 29 councillors. I hope it is, because imagine a council meeting starting on a Monday and getting through to about Friday afternoon and they haven’t all spoken. Wouldn’t be much good to Auckland I don’t think. I think that was the point made by one or two of the earlier speakers. So there is a risk that you end up with an Auckland Council of 29 councillors and, frankly, it would be very hard to manage, I would have thought. But, none the less, I think the reasons behind the Auckland Council—other than the fact it takes it out too far—were relatively logical.

The issue of recounts is quite an interesting one. Again, tonight, many people have talked about the fact that the toss of a coin decides who ends up on a council and who doesn’t. I think there was some logic in trying to ameliorate that situation, because it certainly isn’t practical and wasn’t a constructive way or a tidy way of getting through what could be a difficult situation in the event of a tie. Of course, those ties, under the old legislation, went to a toss of the coin, and then you could get a recount if you needed to, if you wished to, or if you were going to pay for it, actually. That’s no way to do something. So this is a better method of doing it than that.

I guess I’ll just touch quickly on the flexible electronic nominations, which I think is also a pretty sensible move, particularly in rural parts of New Zealand, because it’s not always so easy to get into the council to do what you need to do. One of my mayors, in fact, did attempt to put an electronic nomination in, only to be told it’s not legal. So it just shows that there were some grey areas in that piece of the legislation which, frankly, are pretty untidy. So that’s been tidied up.

The National Party can’t support this piece of legislation. I think the reason we can’t support it, aside from the issues raised by both Paul Goldsmith and Simon Watts earlier on, is the fact that local government in New Zealand has some massively challenging problems; these weren’t among them. I think the real problems that we’re going to have to assist Local Government New Zealand in addressing are issues around funding, the infrastructure deficit that we face in some parts of New Zealand—not all of them—and that relates to the history of how those councils are being run. So you get vast differences in the way councils are run in different parts of New Zealand. In fact, if you looked, as I said earlier, at the Rangitīkei, I have seven different mayors in one form or another—by one form or another, I mean either large bits or little bits, all of those council areas—and vastly different performance around their three waters infrastructure, for example, where some of them are completely established and in good order, some are not. So that’s one of the big challenges local government faces, and this bill does nothing to address that sort of a challenge.

As I said earlier, the other challenge that local government faces, and in fact we might well face it in central government too, in the future, is the lethargy—there’s probably a better word for it than that—of the voting population. The fact that we have several different methods of voting, different systems of counting the votes is very confusing. So whether it’s single transferable voting, or first past the post, or MMP, or whatever else we might want to invent, it’s very confusing for the average punter when they go to vote.

I think the other thing that needs to be tied up with respect to voting is—I think if people know they’ve got to go to a polling booth, they’re going to vote. Anyone who’s spent time, like most politicians have, delivering mail around mailboxes in town will know about a third of those mailboxes never get opened, and if they do, they’re set on fire, or the stuff in them’s burnt. So, frankly, about two-thirds of people get their ballot, the other third don’t, and that’ll be a fact. And actually there’s quite a chance that the third that don’t, a third of them are nicked as well and then filled in by someone else. So the whole system is fraught—

Simon O’Connor: Wouldn’t happen in New Plymouth—

IAN McKELVIE: Wouldn’t happen in New Plymouth; it absolutely, definitely wouldn’t. But the whole system is fraught. I think that these are issues that we should be addressing in this Parliament around local government; not so much some of the issues that are addressed in the course of this bill.

When you think of the time we spent in the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill, which fiddles around the edges of some things, and then think of the time we spent on the bill that’s about to come back to the House on Thursday—which is immensely important to a large part of New Zealand—we spent something like 24 hours on it, and we’re rushing it back through the House. So this thing has taken about a month or two months to get through the select committee stage and does very little. So you have to wonder whether we’ve got our priorities right in a lot of these areas.

As I said, the National Party can’t support this bill for reasons that at least two of my previous speakers have talked about—

Glen Bennett: Cross the floor. Cross the floor.

IAN McKELVIE: I can’t—to be fair, I can’t walk that far. You’ll get to that stage too. For various reasons that the two previous speakers have spoken about, we can’t support this bill, and, obviously, I support that or I wouldn’t be standing here speaking. Bad luck. But I do think that that there’s some serious challenges in local government, and as a Parliament they’re going to have to be addressed in the next year or so, and if they’re not, then I think we’re going to see the malaise around local government and the participation of our communities in it decrease as we go along.

So that’s my little contribution to this bill, and, finally, I’ll just thank the Governance and Administration Committee and all those people who helped us to get the bill to this point, and I wish for good luck. Thank you.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I do agree on one point of the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, and that is that there is a lot of work to be done in local government to get it right, and I’m glad that we are doing things.

I reflect back, about a decade ago, and I never imagined that I’d be standing in this place speaking on legislation that impacts local government in the way it does, particularly around Māori wards. Because a decade ago, I was deeply involved in New Plymouth, in terms of our challenge and our push to ensure inclusion, to ensure that we had Māori wards—and we won and we succeeded and we fought. Then we lost and it was taken away. And then we won and we fought, and, thankfully, this Government—and I was very proud, in 2021, to sit in the council chamber in New Plymouth as the Hon Nanaia Mahuta announced the work that was being done around Māori wards, that it was going to be something that was far easier and far more inclusive, in terms of the equality which fitted in other systems when it came to representation on our councils.

So I’m sad that we’re not getting full support this evening across the floor, in terms of this Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. I hope that we can draw more people in—people like Ian McKelvie who could maybe hobble across the floor with his Zimmer frame or whatever he has, what he needs. I’m sure he could do that.

I want to finish because we’ve talked and, I guess, traversed most of this this evening, so I don’t need to say a lot. But I have in my hot little hand—I raided my wallet—a $1 New Zealand coin. It does seem really unfair that, at the toss of this coin, which I’m going to demonstrate now and hopefully not muck up, that would signal a decision that would be made for an elected member, whereas, actually, if we went back and did the count properly, we might have got it right, as mentioned earlier.

So I won’t bore the House with any more amazing stories or analogies, because this is good legislation, and I commend it to the House.