Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill

If they were councils, that would not be so bad, but they will not be councils. That member knows they will be little, toothless boards. The member thinks that if we have enough toothless boards, the Government will have something that people really want. Well, I was at a meeting in Papakura last night and I know that is not what people want. They do not want a toothless board; they want a council that can make real decisions and spend the money, not have to go begging for it from the regional council, the super-council, the greater council, or whatever one wants to call it. They do not want to go begging. These people have pride. They want to be able to make their own decisions for their community. It is really important that people take part in their community.

One of the things that people talk about a lot is that people are not as involved in politics as they were many years ago. I do not see it that way, because I have a huge membership—

How many?

Huge; I get close to a thousand. I have to say—

That’s not so big in National Party terms.

The National Party in Manurewa has about five members, and that is exactly the point I am making. People are not involved.

People want to be involved, but they want to be involved locally. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not what the Government understands. The Government thinks that big is best. People in Auckland realise that big is more expensive. They fear that their rates will go up—and they most certainly will. People who live in areas where there have not been so many leaky buildings think that their council will have to share the costs faced by other councils that need to fix up their mistakes. They feel that although they had no say over those decisions, they will have to pay. They feel quite strongly about that. They also feel that many of the little organisations that have survived because they have been helped and funded by their local council will not be able to get the same help in the future.

People in my area talk with a lot of passion about the swimming pools and say that kids can get into the pools without a charge being made to them. That is very, very important.

And they’ll still be able to.

The chairman of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee says they still will be able to, but that is for the Auckland Council to decide. That is not certain.

Not the Auckland Council; the local board will decide.

The local board may do, if it has enough money, but it has to go begging for that money. I do not think that members should be so dishonest as to say that of course swimming pools will be free. They may not be, and that is the trouble. People realise that they may not be free.

Then we have a situation with libraries. The select committee had some good submissions on libraries, but what will happen in areas where libraries serve across a boundary? That will quite possibly happen, so people will feel that the ownership of something will be taken away from them. Members should reflect on that issue over the next 16 hours of debate.

Ha, ha!

Twyford Phil Twyford Link to this

The member for Tauranga, who sat on the select committee because the Government could not find enough Aucklanders—

He never said anything.

Hon Steve Chadwick Link to this

He never said anything; he turned his back on the Māori people. He may feel smug that he has a big majority but Winston Peters once thought that he had a big majority as well. When a member stops listening and becomes a know-all, that is when he or she is on the way down.

The ordinary people, the mums and dads, feel that they are losing something in this deal. My challenge to the Government is to explain to people, over the next 16 hours of debate, how people will find things.

Carter Hon JOHN CARTER (Associate Minister of Local Government) Link to this

I take this call because there are three or four things that we need to clarify, but first there is one point that I want to make about the whole system of how the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee worked. All the members who were involved will understand this, and, indeed, most people in the Chamber will understand it, but the public will not as much. I repeat what I said earlier, in my speech in the second reading of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, when I thanked all the members of the select committee—and there were quite a number of them across the whole of the hearings. There really was a lot of cooperation, and the bill, I think, has been the better for it, because primarily the matter was not political at the select committee. It was about a whole bunch of politicians being really intent on trying to get the legislation as right as we could, given that there were political views. I think it is important to say that.

The point I want to make, for a start-off, is that when we are in a committee listening to submissions, it is a judgment call, at the end of the day, as to exactly what the public have said. We can judge it by the numbers, we can judge it by the strength of arguments, or we can judge it by a whole lot of other factors, but of course there will always be different views expressed on different issues. So for a start-off I say we can never please everybody. That is the first point. The second point is that finally it is a judgment call, and, funnily enough, politicians and Governments get it right most of the time and sometimes they get it wrong. A question was asked earlier by Phil Twyford about what happened with regard to the Rodney boundary. I want to say, as I said last night, that I got it wrong. What I thought I heard the submissioners tell us in Rodney was—

How many other mistakes are made?

Carter Hon JOHN CARTER Link to this

I am happy to concede that I got it wrong, not the select committee. I guided the National side of the committee.

I ask members to just let me make this point, because it is an important point to make. I thought I heard the people of Helensville and Kaukapakapa, and of the towns in what is called the western corridor, absolutely say they wanted to be part of the Auckland unitary authority. I thought that was what I heard them say. They said they wanted to stay as a rural local board if they could, but they certainly wanted to be part of it. We also heard from the submitters of Whangaparāoa and Ōrewa that they too wanted to be part of the Auckland unitary authority. But when it came to the northern part, I thought I heard the people there say they wanted to stay out, and, indeed, I guess, I was guided a bit by the people from Wellsford, which is at the very bottom part of the Northland electorate. So I recommended to the select committee, and particularly to the members on the Government side of it, that we should draw the boundary to the north of Ōrewa and Kaukapakapa. I got that wrong, because, of course, when the story got out we received a volume of submissions from the north side, saying they wanted to stay in.

I am happy to concede that the Government then made a decision. I worked with Rodney Hide and took a recommendation to Cabinet, and then to caucus, to say the boundary should be moved. I am pleased that the Government listened and was prepared to make that change. I think we need to acknowledge that that is exactly what happened. To Mr Twyford, who questioned why it went wrong, I concede responsibility for that.

But I make this next point, because I need to put it on the table. I will move on to a point that actually matters. I will talk now about the local boards, because I heard the Hon George Hawkins make comments about whether the boards will work. It has been the intention of the select committee to empower the boards. To anybody who stands up and says the committee did not get that right, I tell that person to look at the committee’s voting record regarding the local boards. Every party that was part of the select committee voted for the local boards as they are. All parties voted for those powers: Labour did; the Greens did. Sue Bradford, I have to say, was probably the most strident member in asking the officials what the powers of the boards meant. She was constantly asking whether the provisions of the bill would give powers to the local boards. The officials kept saying, yes, they were based on the principle of subsidiarity, etc.

The boards will have tremendous power. They will be able to make their own decisions for their communities. The members of the Labour Party—George Hawkins, Phil Twyford, and Su’a William Sio; they were the people who were there, mainly—and the others who were there all agreed that we had got the power right. When it came to the voting, it was unanimous that on that particular matter we got it right.

Let me explain, in principle, how the system works. When the new unitary authority is established, one of the functions of the Auckland Transitional Agency will be to go and look at the local boards, when it knows what the local boards are—the area of the local boards, who they are, how many there are, what they will be, and their names. It will take that information from the Local Government Commission and it will ask, in the case of, say, Devonport, for example, or Waiheke Island, which is definitely going to be a local board, as is Great Barrier Island, which of the activities that happen right now in Auckland City matter for the local board of Waiheke Island, or for the local board of Great Barrier Island, or, as I say, if there is a Devonport local board, or a Papakura local board in George Hawkins’ area. The Auckland Transitional Agency will go to those boards and tell them which of the functions currently carried out by the respective councils are not regional functions, but are local functions that matter to the people. The Auckland Transitional Agency will prescribe to the boards those functions. Alongside that, it will advise them of the size of the budget the council is giving to allow those activities to be carried out. So the boards will be allocated that budget.

That sets the benchmark. Those local boards then get the authority to carry out those functions and will receive the funding for them. Once that is in place, the only way they can be removed is by negotiation. The unitary authority cannot come along and say it is too bad, but even if the Auckland Transitional Authority gave a board responsibility for providing swimming pools for free, or whatever the function might be, the board cannot do that. The fact is that any change has to be done by negotiation and agreement. If there is disagreement, then in the third bill we will establish an arbitrary committee that can make a decision as to who is right and who is wrong. So those authorities and those functions will be protected. If the unitary authority tries to remove them arbitrarily, it will go against the principle of the bill. It will go against the principle. So the boards are empowered.

I ask members to take the time—and I say this particularly to the Green members, because Sue Bradford asked this constantly, and I say this to the other Sue, Sue Kedgley—to please study what is happening. All the members who were there at the committee agreed that we actually got it right on this matter. It was and is our intention to empower the local boards. Phil Twyford did not vote against it, George Hawkins did not vote against it, Su’a William Sio did not vote against it, and Sue Bradford did not vote against it. They thought that the committee had got it right. It is important for people to understand that it is the intention, and, indeed, it will be the outcome, that the local boards will be able to do those local things.

I will talk about one other thing in that regard. George Hawkins raised the issue of libraries. I suspect that in regard to libraries what may well happen is what a good number of submitters said: that the best library system we could have is one that is unified for service delivery across Auckland. That makes sense to me. But, of course, the local community will want to have an input into where its library might be located, etc., and it will still be able to. The unitary authority will set an overarching policy in regard to library services, because the best way to run them is on a regional basis, but the local boards will still have an input into how that works. There will be cooperation and agreement on it. That is one example.

Swimming pools are another example. Manukau, for example, already has, and will be given by the Auckland Transitional Agency, the responsibility for running its swimming pool. It will decide whether the pool is free; not the unitary authority. I say to Mr Hawkins that the local board will make that decision. The local board will be given the funding for that activity, if that is what it wants to do. It can provide free access to swimming pools for its people, because that is how the system works right now. But it will be the local community that will make that decision, not the Auckland unitary authority.

That is why we talk about empowering the local boards. That is the reason why we have written the legislation in the way that it is: because the community asked us to make sure that we give responsibility to it to make the decisions that matter to it—and we have done so. One of the things I would like to suggest is that some of the journalists also have a good study of this issue. I will talk more about it later, because my time is running out and someone else will want to take a call.

Locke KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

I want to talk a little bit about representation in Auckland and making any new body there much more representative of its total population. I think the Government has underestimated the feeling amongst Aucklanders that their very culturally diverse city is not being fully represented in all its aspects. That is particularly reflected in the debate over the refusal of the Government to allow specific Māori seats. There is also under-representation of other ethnic communities, new migrant communities, and Pasifika communities. If we look at the voting for council positions across the Auckland region, we see that there has been very much a dominance of people with European names.

One of the ways of overcoming that, apart from the Government changing its mind and reinstating Māori seats, as recommended by the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, is to introduce the single transferable vote (STV). I support my colleague Sue Bradford’s amendment to clause 23A to replace first-past-the-post voting with single transferable voting. What it means is that cultural minorities do not need to get, say, 50 percent of the vote to get in. If the new, multi-member wards have, say, three representatives, then the candidates need to reach a threshold of 25 percent; if they have four representatives, the threshold is 20 percent, and it is much easier for minorities to be represented. It is a very successful system that is used in Wellington and many other places in New Zealand. I think the citizens of Wellington really like the system. It is used successfully in the Australian Senate. It gives good representation to minority parties, including the Green Party.

It would also be valuable for the mayor of this Greater Auckland body. We already have two candidates for mayor—John Banks and Len Brown—and others may come into the race. If there were, say, five candidates, then the winning candidate might gain the very important position—unfortunately, it is too important in terms of its powers—of mayor with just 25 or 30 percent of the vote, with the vote being split between the five candidates. However, if we had STV, then each successful candidate for a one-position vote, such as the vote for mayor, would have to get 50 percent or more of the vote, after preferences are distributed from the losing candidates upwards. So it is very important.

Sure, people say that perhaps later on we can have STV, but would it not be best to start out with the right system? It is much harder to change systems. In changing systems sometimes we have the problem of incumbents who are sitting there under the first-past-the-post voting system not wishing to change to STV, because it might endanger their particular position, even though a more representative system would be the result. We have tried in the past to have STV in Auckland through petitioning. A few years back the Greens and others were involved in a petition. We tried to get 10 percent of electors to sign it in order to force a referendum on STV. It is a hard struggle to get the right number of signatures for such a petition. It is a lot of work. It would be much better if we started off with the best system.

The report of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee acknowledged the popularity of the STV voting system. It was more popular amongst submitters than any other system. In a place like the North Shore, for example, if there were three or four representatives in a ward, STV would allow minorities and people from different parts of the North Shore to be elected.

Twyford PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) Link to this

I acknowledge the gracious apology—the mea culpa—from the Minister in the chair, John Carter, over the Rodney boundary shambles. I think that is the best description for it. John Carter makes it difficult for a member of the Opposition, because he is so reasonable and nice. On this side of the Chamber, we fantasise that there might be a Government with more people with the kinds of principles and integrity that are exhibited by John Carter. But I do not think we will let that member off the hook so easily. I do not mean to be ungracious, but I want to explore the issue a little more.

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance spent a long time considering the issue of boundaries. If members have taken the trouble to read the commission’s report, they will know that the royal commission presented some very thoughtful and persuasive arguments about the environmental and planning reasons for the Auckland boundaries being left where they are to include all of Rodney and Franklin. The commission made the case that a city the size of Auckland, growing as fast as it will over the next 50 years, faces a huge challenge in managing and containing its growth so that it does not continue to sprawl endlessly into the countryside. The simple rationale for having those extended boundaries is that in order to stop that endless growth we must have a peri-urban or rural fringe area of sufficient size beyond the urban limits but within the boundary of the authority. If we do not have that, we inevitably get the building up of huge development pressures on the other side of the urban boundary, and the leap-frogging of development into the rural area beyond the city boundaries, where, typically, we have rural councils not unlike the current Rodney District Council and certainly not unlike Kaipara District Council, which simply do not have the resources and wherewithal to manage and control that growth.

That is precisely the situation we would have seen if Rodney had been partitioned as was proposed. The northern beaches that have been protected and safeguarded by the Auckland Regional Council in the face of huge development pressures would have been subject to a carve-up and, I would confidently predict, some inappropriate development in the years to come.

The reasons the royal commission put forward were compelling, yet the methodology this Government used to decide the boundaries of Rodney seemed to be pretty much a case of: “Oh, a whole lot of National voters are getting cross with us about this boundary, so I think we’ll just cut the problem in half and make half of it go away.” To be quite frank, that is mediocre thinking and decision-making, and it does not do much credit for this Government.

I will quote David Shand, one of the royal commissioners, who said last night about the consultative process that this Government has run: “The consultative process has been a bit of a shemozzle.” For members who are not familiar with the term “shemozzle”, it is Yiddish, meaning a confused situation. Mr Shand said “I think people are pretty dissatisfied with the way the consultative process has been run.” I would say that that is an understatement. In June, just a few weeks back, the Business Council for Sustainable Development commissioned a poll by ShapeNZ that quizzed more than 2,000 people, and 31 percent were opposed to the super-city, while 27 percent were in favour. More people opposed the super-city in every council area of Greater Auckland than supported it, except for Auckland City, which was the only area where there was a slim majority in favour of the Government’s proposals.

Heatley Hon Phil Heatley Link to this

Was that 27 percent?

Heatley Hon Phil Heatley Link to this

Yes, 27 percent were in favour.

That’s the Labour Party polling.

Kaye Nikki Kaye Link to this

This is the Business Council for Sustainable Development. Of the people polled, 63 percent said they believed that the consultation process run by this Government was inadequate. Only 13 percent said they believed that the Government’s consultative process was adequate. Here is the clincher: 70 percent of people polled in a sample of more than 2,000 people said they believed that the Government should hold a referendum. That is a very interesting question. I think we should come back a number of times during this debate to the question of why this Government chose to confiscate the right of Aucklanders to a referendum on this forced amalgamation under the Local Government Act.

The royal commission didn’t recommend a referendum.

Kaye Nikki Kaye Link to this

As it stands, every other citizen of New Zealand who is affected by a forced amalgamation is entitled to a vote on whether their council should be subject to a forced amalgamation. We have to ask ourselves why the Government would choose to take that right away from Aucklanders.

Because we listened to the royal commission.

The member for Auckland Central wants to know why we disagree with the royal commission. No one says the royal commission got everything right. I have not said that, and no one on this side of the Chamber has said it. The fact is that 70 percent of people polled in June in the ShapeNZ poll said they should have a referendum. Some members of the Committee, including the Minister of Local Government, have claimed that the issue of the super-city is so complex that we could not possibly put it to a referendum. I ask members of this Committee to think about the referendum on MMP, because that was the last major constitutional change to our system of government. What did we have? We had a royal commission and two referenda. I put it to the Committee that the change of Auckland governance—the creation of a new system of regional government—is in fact the most significant constitutional change to our system of government that we have seen since the introduction of MMP.

There is no good reason why it should not have gone to a referendum. There is no reason why Aucklanders should not have had a say about whether they wanted the Auckland super-city. This Government had every opportunity to develop and advance the proposals for the Auckland super-city, to consult, to give people a say, to refine the proposals, to put them through a select committee process, and to then put the final, fully finished, and completed proposal in front of the people. I have yet to hear any convincing explanation in this Chamber from this Government about why that was not done. This whole process was a shemozzle, according to David Shand, and it has had the effect of—

Spell it!

S-h-e-m-o-z-z-l-e. The way this Government has mishandled the whole governance reform process over the last 5 months has made Aucklanders suspicious, mistrustful, and anxious that this Government is corporatising their democracy, that it wants to run Auckland as if it is a business, and that the final goal is privatising our assets. Not only that, but that suspicion and that mistrust has spread south down through the map to all other parts of New Zealand. People fear, quite rightly, that the Auckland super-city is a guinea pig for local government reforms that will be rolled out around the rest of the country. The Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide, said that the reforms were being modelled in a way that would enable them to be “replicated around the country” and that “if the super-city worked well, it could be a model for the rest of the country”. So is it surprising that people are scared that this whole corporatisation of democracy in Auckland is going to be rolled out around the rest of the country?

Hon Member

Corporatisation!

Twyford Phil Twyford Link to this

Well, I guess National was doing some polling, because it did not take very long for John Key to back away from that idea. He distanced himself very quickly and said, as he always does, “Oh, that’s just Rodney talking.”

Bridges SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) Link to this

It is very good to take a call on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. I will start where Phil Twyford and his contribution finished by talking about the great weight that Labour puts on the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance and also on a referendum. But the royal commission, which Phil Twyford puts great weight on, said that a referendum had only superficial appeal. I give the member a bit of advice as a new member like him: something National is doing very well is listening and then, once it has listened, acting. We do not need to have a referendum on these things to know what to do, and that is one of the big reasons why our political party has been doing well in recent polling.

I want to start in this 16-hour discussion—and I am sure we will hear from Phil Twyford a number of times—by commenting on its length. It is quite right that we take our time with this bill, and that we have the time to go into some detail where it is necessary to deliberate, to consider, and to really get into what is a very significant step forward for this country. The interesting thing about that is the view—again, Phil Twyford has talked about it, and it is big point that Labour members made in their minority report and in their contributions in this Chamber, if we can call them that—that we are getting the process all wrong, and that we are not taking enough time. I think having a 16-hour debate shows just how well we are taking the time on this matter. We want to air the views. We did that, of course, in the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee so ably led by John Carter; I will come to that very soon. But I want to say again, with some degree of seriousness, what a privilege it is to have been on this select committee. I do not want to get all teary-eyed on Phil Twyford, but I will be able to say to my grandchildren—God willing—that I was on the select committee and that we did something to make Auckland a lot better than it was.

One of the things that made the select committee so successful, probably the critical thing, was not George Hawkins—he was good, and I will come to him—but the very able, skilled, and calming chairmanship of the Hon John Carter. In his entire time on that select committee he did not get angry, he did not talk over people, he listened a lot, and when it was necessary he made interjections and comments. He did a tremendous job, and I know that all members on the select committee share my view on that. Without going through all the members of the committee, I say that it was a very positive committee, it worked well together, and—I will come back to this—it listened very, very hard to the people of Auckland. Because of that we have been able to make a number of improvements to this bill. As John Carter said time and time again on the select committee, we took the bare bones of the legislation and put flesh and muscle on it. That process was very good and it was a privilege to be a part of it.

Because we are here for 16 hours it is worth pondering for a moment the importance of the task that we face and that we in the select committee faced. We were dealing with the biggest city in Aotearoa New Zealand by a very, very long way. We were dealing with a very diverse—vibrant, but diverse—city where I, and I am sure I am no different from many in this Chamber, have family and whānau in the North Shore, out in the east, out in the south, and out in the west. It was a privilege to see the unique characteristics of all those parts of the city, and one of the standouts for me was seeing how different the characters of various communities could be in the city and isthmus of Auckland.

In my remaining time I want to talk—

Say something interesting!

Bridges SIMON BRIDGES Link to this

It is bound to be as interesting as Phil Twyford’s speech. The “worm” went down very quickly after Phil Twyford started talking. The journalists all went to get a cup of coffee and they have come back to hear me.

I want to talk just a bit about the single transferable vote (STV), which Phil Twyford and Keith Locke mentioned. The Nats listened, and John Boscawen for ACT listened very carefully and had an open mind, on the issue of STV versus other electoral systems. But it was very clear in the end that when we are introducing a new system of governance on the scale that we are—a united new form of governance with one mayor, one council, and the new beefed-up local board structure that Aucklanders will have to come to grips with; I am sure they will—it was a step too far to add the additional complexity of an STV system. It would be confusing. STV operates in some of the local elections in Tauranga, where I live, and I do not mind admitting that I cannot work it out. Maybe Phil Twyford can work STV out—he is a smart guy; he is a Fabian socialist, I think they say—but it is a system of some complexity and we were already introducing a new system for Auckland.

One of the more interesting submissions we heard, in Papakura, related to Papakura’s different electoral systems. Under a mayoral system that is not STV, there is a 2 percent wasted vote. It was staggering to me that for the district health board election under STV the figure for wasted votes, from recollection, was 18 percent. We do not want to see wasted votes in the city of Auckland; we want them all to count, whether people are voting for “Banksie”, Mike Lee, Len Brown from “Browntown”, or whomever it may be on the council and on their local boards. We were open-minded about that submission. We thought long and hard about it, but, in the end, I think we came to the right decision in relation to STV and the electoral system.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Shearer DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) Link to this

I will speak on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. I am in a rather unusual position, because I became involved in this issue halfway through a by-election. The by-election focused on two key issues. One was the Waterview Connection tunnel, or non-tunnel. Unfortunately, on Friday the Government announced that a motorway will be constructed right through the middle of a community in my electorate, splitting Waterview in two. The other issue was the super-city. The overwhelming number of people whom I spoke to—and I moved around and spoke to probably 4,000 or 5,000 people—felt that they had not been listened to.

It is that issue that I will speak on this evening: the process by which the super-city has gone ahead. Most people would agree that Auckland needs a unitary city, and a city that can be world class. I think we agree on that point. There are many advantages in having a city that is joined up and much more coherent than it has been. But there is a way of doing that, and that way has not been followed in this instance. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance heard 3,500 petitioners and submitters, and $4 million was spend on the consultation process. When the National Government came in, it more or less put the report to one side within a few days of it being made public. Instead, the Government put out its own version of events and of the way that it saw Auckland proceeding. Most of the people in my area received a pamphlet. An entire report was reduced to a pamphlet that bore no real resemblance to the report of the royal commission. People were discouraged. They had been told that they could be heard before a select committee. But in this pamphlet they were told that there would be 20 to 30 local boards, that those boards would be toothless, and that they would be largely responsible for dog control, noise control, and graffiti. There would be a number of at-large councillors, which meant that only the rich could afford to campaign, and Māori seats were to be largely rejected.

I sat in on only a small number of the hearings of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, but I believe, as my colleagues have said, that it was a good select committee process and that it was well chaired. The great weight of the submissions to the select committee wanted to reverse many of the Government’s actions and change the way that it was moving forward. There has been change. The select committee process has created a very different bill from the one we started with, but it is still largely insufficient, and that is because of another part of this process. The other part of the process is that the bills were debated under urgency, with very little consultation. It was a rushed process.

Labour demanded a referendum. It is curious that there has been a push by the Minister of Local Government to have referenda on issues of great importance, yet he did not want or expect any referendum on the very issue of whether Auckland should become a super-city. People did not get a real say. The royal commission was ignored and the select committee process left a lot of disquiet and a lot of things unchanged. Māori representation, as we have heard, was rejected. That was rejected before the select committee even came out with its findings. The number of councillors was increased, but we need still more. The assets that Aucklanders overwhelmingly feel are at risk still need protection. Monitoring and accountability, the very key aspects of this bill, still need to be focused on.

We were looking for strategic leadership, but what we have is the gutted proposal that was first put forward, and it has wobbled along in a process that has been ad hoc and haphazard. It has been a shemozzle, as David Shand reported, right up to the very end. And now, at the eleventh hour of this bill’s progress, we find that Rodney, which was out, is now in. But what about Franklin? Half of Franklin still remains out. My advice to the people of Franklin is to keep pestering this Government, because if they make enough noise, then what will happen is that their area will be incorporated and they will be involved as well. This Government is not following any strategy. It is simply lifting up its finger and feeling which way the wind blows, and that is the process that has been followed on this occasion.

Labour has put forward a number of amendments. Those amendments will be tabled over the course of the next few hours. I hope very sincerely, on behalf of all Aucklanders, that this Government will listen to those amendments. Thank you.

Coleman Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Immigration) Link to this

What the heck was that speech all about? All I have learnt from that speech from David Shearer is that Labour has never had a policy on Auckland regional governance. What we have heard today is that Labour members want to have a referendum on this issue. Well, that is news to me. I am pretty sure that it is news to Phil Twyford, as well. The member David Shearer said that the Government was not listening, and now he has said that the Government is listening too much. I think that pretty much sums up the Labour Party’s approach to Auckland governance.

For those members it has just been a political football. They have not come to the table with anything constructive at all. They have said that there is something wrong with everything that the Government has done. They were against the super-city, then they are for it, and now, tonight, we hear that they want a referendum. The fact is they are not interested in getting Auckland moving. But I tell members that Mr Shearer and Mr Twyford had better get with the programme, because the Labour Party candidate Len Brown has already declared, yet members of the parliamentary Labour Party are saying that they are not sure whether they even want this reform.

We have to look at why we are having this reform and why we need a unitary authority. The reason is that Auckland governance across the region has not worked for many, many years. It needs an assertive Government and an assertive Minister of Local Government to take it by the scruff of the neck and to turn Auckland into the fantastic, world-class city that this country needs and the people of Auckland deserve. I can tell members that if we had left it to that mob over there, we would not have a decision. We would not have anything happening in time for the local government elections in 2010. There would be no progress. There would be no plan for infrastructure across Auckland. There would be no working together as a city to solve the issues.

In fact, what did Phil Twyford say about this? Phil said: “There was a feeling for quite a long time that the city wasn’t working properly, with traffic problems, crappy infrastructure”—excuse me—“and a downtown that looked like a bombsite. There was a lot of grumpiness about that. I think our Government was very late in coming to the party and doing something about that.” All we can tell from this is that Labour members are all over the paddock.

If there was another thing that Phil Goff should have added to his long list of apologies on Sunday, then I think it should have been an apology to the people of Auckland for the lack of leadership, the indecisiveness, and for not having a plan. Thank goodness that we have Rodney Hide and John Carter, who have put together a workable plan. They have listened to the people of Auckland. They have listened to the people of Rodney. Those people know that this super-city will be a winner.

The problem with the Labour Party is that it will go with whatever the polls show. Those members started off thinking that this would be the issue that would bring down the Government. Then they found that Aucklanders want a unitary authority. They want to get the city going. They want this, and it is a good plan. This Government supports it, that lot over there do not. Aucklanders will not forget that.

Kedgley SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this

I think that Aucklanders, far from wanting this local council restructuring as the previous speaker Dr Coleman said, will be disillusioned. When people see behind the spin and realise what is being set up in terms of the Auckland Council they will be utterly disillusioned. The people who are elected to the funny little impotent local boards with four to nine members—which, I note from the bill, are not even given the status of a local authority; they are unincorporated societies—will be very frustrated, and I think the people of Auckland will be extremely frustrated when they realise what is happening.

The mayors of Auckland, who have actually taken the time to read this bill, have reached that conclusion themselves. The Mayor of North Shore said that Aucklanders will realise that “behind all the government spin and double-speak” all they have got is “an all powerful super Auckland Council, a super Mayor with even more power than before, 20 to 30 completely powerless local boards with no statutory powers or resources in their own right, and no place for Maori at the table.”

Kedgley SUE KEDGLEY Link to this

Sue, you’ve got it so wrong.

The mayor went on to talk about the community backlash that will occur once people recognise that the best that these local boards can do is advocate their case to the local council, or try to plead their case for inclusion in the next local government plan. John Carter is telling me I have got it all wrong.