Thank you Chairperson. The advantage of addressing the House immediately after the Deputy Minister is that he has outlined everything and put it into true perspective. I do not want to sound like that old record of His Master's Voice, which repeated exactly what was said by others. I am going to stay away from those comments because the hon Deputy Minister has done that excellently. Thank you very much, hon Deputy Minister; you deserve an increase as well. [Laughter].
Chairperson, I only want to address the fears of people who are affected by some of these changes and who prefer to fall into province A rather than under province B. Their fear always is that they are not going to get better services in the provinces that they will belong to than the one they were in before. The committee took that very seriously and asked the Department of Provincial and Local Government to commit itself to what was said by the people there.
The department assured the committee and the public at large that, in fact, there is a special budget to address all the shortcomings in that particular area. Deputy Minister Hangana can attest to this. These people said nothing will change even if there can be some improvement in terms of service delivery in those areas. This is what people are afraid of. I want to thank my colleagues from the opposition because they were honest enough to tell us that they are not in favour of these two pieces of legislation and that they are going to oppose them. Their argument was that the will of the people must be tested. They were honest enough to tell us that.
But the issue is if that is the route we had to take in whatever legislation we are passing in this Parliament, they must tell us that we must test the will of the people in whatever legislation that is passed. Some of us will be happy to revisit the property clause. We will be happy to revisit the matter of the acquisition of land in this country.
If that is the route they want us to take, namely, to test the will of the people, we would be ready to do that. But let us not play big in a very narrow passage because this is not a fact. Emotions in those areas are high already. Let us not play politics by making some of these unnecessary comments.
Chairperson, as I have said, my reliable, dynamic, wonderful, calculated Deputy Minister has done his work. Why should I waste time? What I can do is to thank my colleagues in this committee. Colleagues, again, you are stars - some people are just the moon. You are so good. If I had to choose other members who must serve in my committee I can't go next door, I will choose the same members who are in my committee. Let us support this Bill. Thank you, Chairperson.