Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: I move, That the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 21 June 2024 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

I acknowledge that this bill is proceeding at pace. However, this bill must be passed and proceed quickly so that the changes can apply for the 2025 local elections, so that councils and communities can decide on whether they want to hold a poll in 2025 and will have certainty about ensuring that that will happen, and so that election service providers can start preparing for the new local electoral time frames and communicate these to their local authorities.

Despite the speed at which the bill needs to be passed, the Government values hearing from all New Zealanders about the proposed changes. That is why we are proposing that the select committee process takes place but, given the circumstances, I respectfully ask the Justice Committee to consider the bill thoroughly and report back to the House by 19 June. Giving the committee additional authority to meet outside the usual hours will support it to meet this time frame. I invite the House to support this motion.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I stand to speak to this motion and continue to insist that the voice on this side of the House be heard with respect to a truncated time frame. I take the Minister’s point that next year is the local body election. He didn’t seem to expand any further on exactly why that particular date has been chosen, only giving ourselves one month instead of what would normally be a six-month process. I get six months might take us—well, it will take us—closer to October and, of course, if the local body election next year is in October then of course I can understand that. But that still allows perhaps a little bit more flex, if you will, in the time afforded to the select committee to undertake such an important piece of work.

The other challenge that I put to the Minister is that in the four and a bit weeks that have been afforded to this particular process there is a long weekend and for members there is a scrutiny week; I must ask the question: will the committee and will the membership of that committee have enough time to be able to make sure that they can give this bill the due recognition and also the public the opportunity to find their voice on this very important matter?

Mr Speaker, you’ve heard in the House this evening just how passionate the House is about this matter, and we should be; local democracy and democracy is an important thing to continue for us to uphold and make sure that voices are heard on this matter. Which is why, Mr Speaker, I want to express to you and to the House here this afternoon my concerns around a truncated time frame without, seemingly, a far more clearer rationale for each and every one of us specific to the time frame of the local body elections which are scheduled for next year. And, once again, I raise that in the next four weeks we’ve got Budget week, we’ve got a long weekend, and we also have a scrutiny week which is calling upon the time not just of this House but of officials that are required to support this process. I’m sure, like the rest of the country—and I know my whānau right across the country are looking forward to Budget week; they want to sit down and interrogate it. We’re asking them now to consider another important piece of legislation in a truncated time frame and we want to express our concern for that particular matter.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Foreshadowing for the House that Labour MPs would propose that this Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill should be referred to the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill. I’m raising this with the House because the Justice Committee is the wrong committee to consider this. The Māori Affairs Committee has, in the previous Parliament, considered the original bill which amended the legislation to remove the barrier for locally elected councils to make a decision about the way that they conduct their representation inquiries and to decide on Māori ward representative structures. And so—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Just to support the member, it’s already been referred to the Justice Committee, so that decision’s gone, and we’re talking about this motion, which is around that time frame around 21 June.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also rise to question the timing. I think it’s far too short given that even with this rush, we’ve already had over 50 mayors sign a letter saying they don’t agree. I imagine that many of those councils and Local Government New Zealand, let alone iwi, hapū, and others, will want to speak.

I also think it’s unfortunate that we have heard very little about the sensible half of the bill, which is talking about a longer period for postal delivery and a longer period in advance of the election. I think it would be thoughtful, whether it’s through the Minister or through whichever select committee it goes to—which has been decided, I understand—to consider dividing this bill into two halves. It is a marriage of two completely different issues, one on which I imagine we would have unanimity in the House, and one on which we have not. So I urge people who know the legislative process to see if we can make that divorce of two halves.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve just been sitting in the House listening to the debate in relation to this referral motion. And I too want to support this side of the House in relation to the truncated time frames for the select committee process for this bill.

The concern I have is actually quite practical. There’s only a four-week period, so, therefore, if the bill goes through tonight, it gets sent to the select committee, and the chairman can ask for submissions tomorrow. To give the community an opportunity to actually be able to submit on this, you would at least look at around a five- possibly 10-working-day submission period. So that’s two weeks gone. And then, therefore, in that two-week period, which is also during a very, very busy time for Parliament, officials would need to brief the committee. If the committee requires to, they may need to actually appoint an independent adviser, given that this particular bill removes a constitutional arrangement that had already gone through a select committee process and the House in a previous bill. So that in itself has to happen within the two weeks.

Then they would have to hear submissions. And given we have seen, as other members have talked to around there being a number of people that are opposing it and have actually said that they will want to submit on this, which is 50 mayors and a whole number of other people supporting it—those hearings of submissions may take two to three days, which again impinges on the time for members of this side of the House to be able to actually hear submissions, consider them. And then they possibly will be left with maybe a week or around six working days for there to be a draft report, a revised tracked version of the bill, drafting instructions, and then the actual draft legislation for the committee to deliberate on and then seek, basically, amendments for.

I really don’t believe the four-week period is justifiable on the condition that because there is an election next year; surely more than four weeks can be spent on the select committee. Even if it was four months, which is still a debatable referral, it’s still truncated, it’s not the six months which is the usual, but it still would allow for proper time to consider submissions, proper time for drafting. It even would allow this side of the House to draft their own Amendment Papers, because I wouldn’t be surprised if the other side of the House brought it through the committee of the whole House pretty quickly. But, actually, it’s quite an important process—a practical decision that you are truncating a process for select committee which is on an important bill which we believe, on this side of the House, that members of the public should be able to have time to submit, time for members to consider it, and, therefore, to allow time for drafting. Instead, for something that is an election next year towards the latter part of next year, I believe that at least four months would be a reasonable consideration. It would again not have to impinge on scrutiny week, and just allows a bit more time for submitters who deserve to be heard on this. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Look, two things to say. One is, again, as I’ve said, I’ve been through rather a lot of the council’s representation reviews, and I think that what is not being recognised on the other side is that it’s not just our time frame that’s got to be considered but the councils’ collective time frames as well. They’ve got to go through and do a proper representation review, and the problem that we had with the 2021 changes was actually that that process was not allowed for, because there was not enough time allowed for it. So the introduction of the Māori wards never went through the process that would normally happen with a normal representation review.

I know that the time frame is a short time frame, but my encouragement for you is to allow that to happen so that the councils, then, have a decent amount of time to engage with their communities and to do that twice and do it properly. I mean, so that this legislation and the out-workings of this legislation will get worked through thoroughly by the councils, and I think that that is the thing to consider.

The other point I’d like to make is just in response to my former colleague, and fellow ex-mayor, Celia Wade-Brown. I think she’s quite right: this bill has two entirely separate components, and you could consider that one of them needs to be dealt with in time to make sure it happens for the representation review process. The other one, which is the postal bit, only needs to take place in time to allow it to take effect for the 2025 election; in fact, they’re on different trajectories in terms of time frame. So that is something that could be thought through.

But with what we have in front of us, I think we just need to get on with the job. As Barbara Edmonds has said, we can get it out the door today and give the maximum possible time for our communities to respond to this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. If I remember correctly, in speaking in response to both Andy Foster and the point at hand, the Māori Affairs Committee that heard the legislation originally—when we went through the process of submissions, there were thousands and thousands of submissions over that particular period. What that meant was that, at a practical level, we did have to split into a number of groups. We did have to consider the amount of time that we gave to oral submissions.

In this particular instance, the proposed time frame from the Government would actually mean decisions, for practical reasons, would have to be made that submitters weren’t able to be heard, they wouldn’t be able to hear everyone in this sense, and/or they would decide on a time frame which wouldn’t give people adequate time—i.e., five minutes for a submitter may or may not be enough time, given the sensitivity of the subject at hand, giving the tikanga the consideration that might apply. We know, for example, when Māori come to present in an oral submission format, there is time required to allow for mihimihi in that sort of context. If we only allowed people to speak for that short period—five and/or 10 minutes—it actually, at a practical level, doesn’t allow people to submit in an appropriate way.

The second part, in speaking to Andy Foster’s point, is that the interest of allowing quality submissions actually saves time in the long run—if people have a good amount of time to be able to prepare their submission in the first place rather than having to rush it. For the type of organisation like councils, they have to do a lot of work in the background to build their submissions. If their submissions are better, and, therefore, are in a better state, that improves our ability as members considering the submissions in front of us to then be able to prepare our questions. So it’s actually a lot more productive and punchier to address the overall concerns, issues raised, in those particular submissions.

I do think it’s too short, I don’t think it allows for appropriate tikanga to be respected in the oral submission process, and I’m raising my concerns on that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s good to go just straight after my colleague Shanan Halbert, because I want to talk about Auckland. We have a super-city. It’s a very big structure, and we’ve just been through the long-term plan in Auckland. It’s been an incredibly stressful time and all hands have been on deck. We would now be going into a period when all the ramifications of those decisions were being considered. But now we’re going to have this happen when there will also be implications from the Budget coming at our counsellors and those that really, really need to engage on such an important issue in Auckland.

One of the issues with the super-city is that it can be seen as sometimes more cumbersome rather than less, because it has to reach out into quite distinct local communities, and it is very, very important—

Cameron Brewer: Auckland’s already said no.

HELEN WHITE: I’d just take the point my friend across the House has just suggested, which is that Auckland said no. I think that’s neither here nor there in this situation, because Auckland is a huge part of New Zealand with a lot of people in it, and they don’t all say no, Cameron Brewer. They don’t all say it. It isn’t a case of one voice being the Auckland voice; in fact, I would say that is a really dangerous thought—that we’re talking about one voice dominating everything, and it being seen as something that is dominated by a single, unitary voice. In fact, I am talking about the opposite of that, Mr Brewer. I am talking about the need for Aucklanders with nuanced, intelligent voices and with different thoughts to have a say.

It was pointed out to me that we changed the law to allow up to 30 Auckland councillors to enable a Māori ward—OK?—and there are some very proud people on the other side of this House in regard to that decision. So I would like more time in the process to allow people to engage in a meaningful way in a process that is so important to them and to Aucklanders. I would like to hear some of those voices, and we won’t be hearing that many, regardless of the time, but we will definitely be hearing a deeper and richer communication from Auckland on this issue. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I move, That debate on this question now close.