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.