Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) Link to this

Before we broke for lunch I was talking about the need for Auckland MPs to be engaged in this debate. There has been a sad lack of engagement by Auckland MPs. In particular, I really hope that Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, the MP for Maungakiekie, will show some interest in this matter by taking a call. Local government is hugely important to the people of that electorate.

Earlier on I was talking about the Asian Advisory Board and speaking in favour of that amendment, which has been put up by my colleague Raymond Huo. The electorate of Maungakiekie is an interesting example of just how diverse the Auckland region is. Let me tell members about it. The population described as Asian—a very large category, of course—numbers 22.3 percent. It is a very significant group. It is made up primarily of Indian and Chinese people. Pacific peoples make up 19 percent of the electorate. I am making the point that diversity is very, very marked in Auckland, and perhaps some members are not familiar with that.

NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) Link to this

I want to pick up on the comments made by some of the previous speakers this morning. Ms Ardern made a number of comments about youth representation. It is true that there were some pretty impassioned speakers on the subject of youth representation at the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. We held a number of public meetings on the issue and we received some great contributions from across Auckland on the issue. But as I said to Ms Ardern the other day, a number of issues will be dealt with in the third Auckland bill. The issues around youth representation, Pacific representation, and support for groups with disabilities have been flagged as issues that will be addressed in the next bill.

I say to those listening that all the Supplementary Order Papers that have been put forward by Labour members are just an opportunity for Labour members to talk about issues other than the issues they do not want to talk about—which are the issues within this legislation. The reason they do not want to talk about the issues within this legislation is that, as many members have already noted, the Labour Party supports a unitary authority for Auckland.

Labour has moved to a position where it actually supports 20 local boards. So we are in a position that is unique: we are, inarguably, on the cusp of one of the most important changes in local government in terms of Auckland’s governance, but we are in an odd situation whereby the Opposition is spending a whole lot of time talking about everything but the legislation, because it actually supports the legislation. Labour supports one council, and it supports 20 local boards.

I must say it took Labour quite a while to come to the position of supporting 20 local boards. The reason it came to that position is that when we were going through the select committee process Mr Twyford recognised that he was in big trouble with the Labour Party caucus. He was in trouble because he had argued for only six local entities, and some members of his party were frustrated. Su’a William Sio and many other Labour members did not want to campaign in 2011 as the party that argued for no local representation.

I am proud to be supporting a bill that will finally deliver a strong regional entity for Auckland. It will finally deliver grassroots democracy for Auckland. I want to touch on another issue that has been raised during the debate today, particularly by the Green Party, and I acknowledge Catherine Delahunty and the contribution she made when she sat on the select committee. A lot of myths have been spoken about the powers of local boards. I want to make this very clear: the people who came to the select committee said they wanted funding. They also said they wanted decent functions and powers. The Government delivered on those things for the people of Auckland.

Members opposite said that the Auckland Council will have the ability to override a lot of what the local boards do. That is absolutely false. Provisions in the bill, in clause 13D in particular, make it very clear that, with some exceptions, decisions will be made at the lowest possible level in terms of non-regulatory activity. So any member who stands in the Chamber and says anything different is speaking a load of hogwash.

Today we are delivering to the people of Auckland a strong, regional entity with strong local boards. I feel for those community board members who came to the select committee and said they had been constantly overridden. We are finally delivering to them the local democracy they need. I am proud to be supporting this legislation. It will finally give them a strong local entity so that they will be able to deliver for their communities. Any assertion to the contrary is wrong.

The other point I want to make is that the third Auckland bill will contain an independent dispute resolution mechanism, so if there is a situation where the Auckland Council tries it on and tries to grab more power, the resolution mechanism will enable the local board members to be able to go through that process and ensure they do get responsibility over local matters.

I am very proud to be in the Chamber to support this bill. I am proud to support one strong regional entity for Auckland, and 20 to 30 local boards. That is also what the Labour Party supports. It is disappointing that members opposite stand and talk about everything but the core parts of the legislation, at this historic time in Auckland’s history—indeed, in New Zealand’s history. I am proud to stand in support of the legislation.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) Link to this

I comment firstly on the words of the previous speaker, Nikki Kaye. The principles that she espouses are so dear to her heart; I have no doubt about that. I sat in on the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee a number of times, and I acknowledge that Nikki Kaye participated very fully. She asked a lot of questions, but the reality is that what she wanted to achieve, and what she believed that she had achieved, simply did not happen. The process was made a mockery of, and so was Nikki Kaye’s contribution to the process and that of the other National members on the select committee. I congratulate certainly my colleagues on this side of the Chamber, but also the Green Party on the quality of its contribution to the debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. I acknowledge Catherine Delahunty, who was at the select committee, and Sue Bradford, because they both listened really hard and agreed with us about the basic principles of democracy.

We talk about grassroots, but the proposal that National is saying is so absolutely fantastic—to break up 30 local boards—will turn into the competitive tendering model that is exactly the way the National Party is renowned for acting. I will name a few local projects within Waitakere. My colleague Darien Fenton has talked to me about the North Shore and the projects there. I want to talk about Project Twin Streams, which is absolutely renowned and came second in an international prize; the parenting day that is run in Waitakere; Trees for Babies; Violence Free Waitakere; EcoMatters Environment Trust; WeedFree Trust; and all the projects that support our children. I ask Nikki Kaye to take another call. I really congratulate her on getting on her feet, because that is a bit of a first for National members. I would like her to take a call and explain very clearly how—with this many boards and the competitive approach—we will see funding for really worthwhile projects like those I mentioned, which encapsulate a whole city, if not several different areas. The Government simply says that these local boards will be able to deliver those projects with a minimal budget and with no support at all, but we know what will happen and what they will actually be given.

We note that the Government has absolutely ignored the recommendation from the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance about a Social Issues Board. We on this side of the Chamber would be very keen for Nikki Kaye to take another call and explain how youth will be represented on the Auckland Council. The member who is gesturing at me, Paul Quinn, may also like to take a call on the issue of Māori seats. Never mind the rhetoric about what happened, how the Government listened, and how the community groups were great; I think Government members should front up and explain really clearly how this bill will deliver for community and minority groups in the greater region of our city. It simply will not, and the National Government knows that. It has no interest in seeing delivery for those groups.

The people who are giving the Government advice and who are saying how wonderful this bill is are the business people of Auckland. Theirs are the only positive comments I have seen about this bill from any group throughout the region. I would like National members to justify their actions, which we on this side of the Chamber—and, I know, the Green Party—see as absolutely immoral.

I acknowledge again all those submitters, because the common sense that came from those submissions at the select committee, and the unity of purpose, was absolutely second to none. But it all fell on the deaf ears of National Party members. They simply did not listen, including on the issue of their multi-member wards, which we know are just a sham because of the size of those wards. My colleague Phil Twyford talked about that issue. It is a ratio of one councillor to almost 50,000 people.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

I want to get back to another topic. Mr Key called for an uprising in Rodney. He did not mean Rodney Hide, although he got that as well, but boy did he get one in Rodney District! That was because of the Cabinet decision that was suddenly announced out of the blue to exclude north Rodney from the super-city. It caught locals and the Auckland Regional Council by complete surprise. They were shocked and horrified. Let us remember that the Government wanted to split the Rodney district at the Pūhoi River and Makarau River, severing the northern townships and settlements, as well as isolating six regional parks that all Aucklanders treasure: Mahurangi, Scandrett, Tāwharanui, Pakiri, Te Ārai, and Ātiu Creek. So the people of Rodney organised. They organised a meeting, which was held last week and was packed with angry residents. Speaker after speaker expressed their views about the very dumb idea of merging Rodney north of Wairoa with the Kaipara District Council.

The Auckland Regional Council voted unanimously last week to demand that the Government leave the Auckland boundaries alone. That decision was undemocratic, just like the rest of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. I have to say that the Prime Minister has marginally redeemed himself on this one by making yet another U-turn. Possibly it is because part of Rodney is in his electorate. Perhaps that is the reason. The people were up in arms and on the march, and he would have paid for it in his electorate. Mind you, people do not forget that quickly or easily. This Government will pay the price for mucking Rodney around.

I am really pleased that the Government reversed its decision, because it was a decision that we would have all paid for. Services and the quality of life in the northern townships and settlements in rural areas would have declined. Rates would have gone up, some of the coast’s exceptional natural beauty would have been lost, and the regional parks would have been put at risk. Greedy developers would have moved in, and the Kaipara District Council would have had no chance of stopping them. I say again that the process was appalling. The northern boundary change was never put out for public consideration. Most—well, all—Rodney residents had no say on the issue, even though they made enormous efforts to be heard by the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. They came along and put in a huge amount of effort to be heard, yet suddenly out of the blue came this decision. Why did they have to be put through all that trauma? Why did they have to go through that? I say good on Rodney for organising, and good on it for the uprising. I do not mean Rodney Hide. I say good on the people of Rodney, and all power to their arms.

Then there is Hunua. Poor old Dr Paul Hutchinson—

SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this

One important area that has not been given much attention so far in this debate is the matter of how the new super-city is going to deal with water. Given Auckland’s high annual rainfall and the increasing incidence of weather bomb problems, the Green Party is concerned that the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill recommends that the management of Auckland’s stormwater be separated from the management of Auckland’s water and waste water. This decision adds weight to worries that Watercare Services is being shaped into a neat, vertically integrated business, funded by revenues from water and waste-water charges, and ready for a possible sell-off. That is the deepest fear we have. That business model would be upset by Auckland’s stormwater challenges, but then public services do not always lend themselves to market solutions.

At the moment I understand that North Shore, Manukau, and Waitakere deliver the three local water services in an integrated way. North Shore City Council, for example, recognises how intertwined the three water services are, whether or not people like it, and understands that they need to be managed together, for a whole host of reasons. Super-city proposals to break up the water service divisions of North Shore, Manukau, and Waitakere will not serve anyone’s interests well. In the old days, stormwater was managed by council roading departments, but even that will not be possible under the new governance proposals, because roads are to be managed by a separate transport infrastructure agency, which will have little interest, I imagine, in stormwater.

Auckland’s stormwater cannot be allowed to flow through the widening cracks in these reforms. Integrated management of our stormwater assets, ponds, and flow paths is essential. It is also imperative that all water management and control remain within public ownership, with clear accountability mechanisms, transparent pricing, and a strong focus on meeting both ecological and human imperatives. This is a debate that will continue when the third governance bill comes before Parliament later this year, but I think it is important that we signal our concerns now about the negative outcomes of clauses 23 and 24, which are already embedded in the legislation we are dealing with today.

A second and related issue is around who will really plan the super-city, and how. The Government has talked a lot about how the new arrangements will aid effective planning for the region. Indeed, one of the reasons the Green Party supported the super-city proposal to some extent was that we could see that the region would benefit from far more coherent region-wide planning in areas of critical infrastructure such as water and transport. We want to see sustainability at the heart of the new Auckland configuration, and a city where there is a strong, healthy, safe, and fair society living within its environmental limits. The Greens also believe that Auckland should have the right to determine its own destiny without being effectively controlled from Wellington or elsewhere.

We are concerned by recent events that indicate a major shift in the locus of decision making. For example, the Minister of Transport, the Hon Steven Joyce, is leading the charge by seeking to build a four-lane highway from Pūhoi to Wellsford. Despite having had a close association with the Rodney and North Shore Districts over many years, I have never sensed a huge upswelling of local support for such an option, not in the way there was, for example, for the Albany to Pūhoi realignment or for the Northern Busway. The Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway has never figured in any 10-year plan before now, and it is not part of the Auckland regional transport strategy. From what I can gather, the Minister is simply not listening to Government transport officials, who are really uncomfortable about promoting a four-lane motorway when its benefit-cost assessments simply do not stack up against other transport projects. That is putting aside all the arguments about the use of motorways at all, when investing in public transport would be a far more appropriate option.

I further understand that, in the process of establishing the new Auckland transport agency to replace the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, the Minister has indicated that he wants Auckland transport to basically be centrally controlled from Wellington, probably by the New Zealand Transport Agency. Auckland’s right to determine its own future is also being challenged on another front by the existence of the Auckland Transition Agency, whose job it is to construct the detail of the new city. As part of its work it has already completely cut across the Auckland Regional Council’s regional policy statement processes, while the Government itself continues to undermine the Auckland Regional Council’s growth strategy on issues as diverse as motorways, as opposed to public transport; sprawl and coastal development, as opposed to containment; and, of course, through the recent Resource Management Act changes.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour) Link to this

Thank you. Mr Chair, for the opportunity to take another call on the Supplementary Order Paper I put forward. It seeks to establish an Asian Advisory Board. Professor Manying Ip, in her endorsement of such a proposal, gave the simple reason that the sheer demographics would mean that Asians could not be ignored in any plans for Auckland.

Apart from those permanent residents, we cannot ignore other demographic factors. For example, the number of international students arriving in New Zealand rose dramatically from the mid-1990s, peaked at more than 120,000 in 2002, and then stabilised at about 95,000 in 2005. Asian students comprise about 87 percent of all international students, with about two-thirds coming from China.

Permanent Asian residents in Auckland, on the other hand, make up 13 percent of the population. As is noted in the royal commission’s report: “Stakeholders from ethnic communities are concerned about how engaged local authorities are in the issues of concern to them, and how their communities are assisted to participate in council processes.” The royal commission’s report notes that ethnic minorities are under-represented on Auckland’s councils. After the 2007 elections, 84 percent of the members of Auckland’s councils identified as European, 9 percent as Māori, 4 percent as Pacific, and 4 percent as Asian.

As a list member of Parliament, based in Auckland, I had the opportunity to attend the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee public hearings in Auckland. The submission by the Families Commission confirmed that the Auckland region is the most socially and ethnically diverse in New Zealand. Effective representation of those socially and ethnically diverse groups has an important role to play in local government, because it will enable them to contribute effectively to their own good and, therefore, to the greater common good.

Local bodies have historically failed to provide meaningful representation and to achieve the participation of ethnic minorities. This is a good opportunity for the Government to remedy the situation. The establishment of advisory panels for Asian communities, along with the Pacific communities, is sensible and meaningful, and it will be effective. This area is not addressed in the Government’s current legislation. Labour supports the establishment of Pacific and Asian advisory bodies. We believe they should be given a statutory purpose, with direct links into the Auckland Council to ensure that they are recognised and are required to meet with the entire council on a regular basis.

Many speakers have emphasised how important Auckland is to New Zealand. Our country is small, so we must be smarter and more diligent. It is particularly important nowadays, when we are living in a world where commercial trade and financial flows are globalised. We cannot afford to become isolated, and that is evidenced by the trend towards small bilateral and regional free-trade agreements. Countries in other regions are becoming increasingly connected by a complex web of trading arrangements. By engaging Asians—our Kiwi Asians—we will help to strengthen the web of trading arrangements.

I am grateful to the Prime Minister, the Hon John Key, who acknowledged, when addressing Peking University in China in April this year, the importance of the free-trade agreement with China, which was signed by the then trade Minister, and current Labour leader, the Hon Phil Goff. Let me quote the Hon John Key: “When we signed the Free Trade Agreement last year we opened an important door, and now our task is to boldly walk through it.”

Similarly, in respect of the super-city bill—and taking into consideration the Supplementary Order Paper that would set up an Asian Advisory Board—we have opened an important door. It is up to the Government to walk through it. Thank you.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Labour—Manurewa) Link to this

First of all, I congratulate Nikki Kaye. She is the only National member who has spoken since 10.30 this morning.

Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government) Link to this

I first of all acknowledge the work of Dr Paul Hutchison in helping us with the issue of the southern boundary, and in working through it.

I am puzzled by the Labour Party. On the one hand it does not support the super-city, but I wonder whether Mr Phil Twyford—

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) Link to this

That was a most relevant contribution from the Hon Rodney Hide. I was astounded to hear Phil Twyford’s confusion, let alone how it typifies the confusion of the whole Labour Party. It is absolutely mind-boggling that Mr Twyford’s amendment suggested that the boundary should be south of Franklin’s existing boundary.

Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government) Link to this

I am sorry that Labour MP Carol Beaumont has not spoken on her very interesting amendment, because we know that Labour wanted to extend the Auckland super-city to include Hamilton, Taupō, and Tauranga. Carol Beaumont has put forward an amendment to clause 12. The amendment inserts new subclause (6), which states—and I ask members to think about this; Labour members especially, because Mr Phil Twyford has said he will support this amendment—“12(6) This subsection applies if, at any elections held at the same time for a member or members of the governing body or local board and a member or members of Parliament, a person is declared to be elected as a member of the governing body or local board and that person is also declared to be elected as a member of Parliament.”

That would mean that a member would have to resign as he or she could not be a councillor, a local board member, or an MP all at once.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) Link to this

I must say that I enjoyed the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee a lot more than I am enjoying this debate. There was much less shouting and bad acting, and there was actually a lot more concentration on the issues at hand. I would like to return to one of the issues at hand, which is that I acknowledge the comments made by some of the earlier speakers about the people who are marginalised through the structural processes of this bill. It was good to hear from Nikki Kaye that youth and disability groups will receive some attention in the third bill, although I did not hear any acknowledgment of the call by Pasifika and Asian groups for advisory committees. I certainly did not hear any more acknowledgment or recognition of the issues of Māori seats and mana whenua, so I am going to return to that topic. I want to talk about it in terms of the history of local government and Māori representation.

Local government has an appalling history of addressing mana whenua issues in Tāmaki and, indeed, right across the motu. That is parallel with a fairly bad record on environmental issues. If members do not believe me, they should just ask the kaitiaki of Tīkapa Moana, the Hauraki Gulf; or ask Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei about Ōkahu Bay; or ask Ngāti Te Ata about the Manukau Harbour, which has been used as a toilet for a long time, ever since the council moved the toilet there from the Waitematā; or ask Ngāti Te Ata about the wāhi tapu on the Āwhitu Peninsula. Beyond Tāmaki, right across this country, public toilets and landfills, and marinas and subdivisions have regularly been built on wāhi tapu and kai moana beds, all legally consented to by local government. There are endless ghastly instances of sacred sites and food sources being trampled on by local councils.

In the last few years some councils have faced the mirror to some degree with regard to the marginalisation of tangata whenua as first-nation people, and, indeed, in terms of other groups that are not made up of older, wealthier Pākehā people and that have not managed to get on to local councils. Some of that leadership for change comes from Tāmaki, from Waitakere City Council and Manukau City Council. Manukau City Council, in particular, has been strong on te Tiriti dialogue and cultural recognition. That is not to say it has a totally healthy te Tiriti - based relationship with mana whenua, but at least it has sought advice from wise heads. We look to lose a lot if we lose that kind of spirit. In contrast with that, the Auckland City Council has not been a shining light of cultural respect towards tangata whenua. From the community board level, where in many instances it has failed to give donations and grants to Māori groups, right through to the mayoralty it is hard to recall a single act of real power-sharing instigated by Auckland City Council, despite the best efforts of advisory groups, including the leadership of Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei. What does this mean for the future?

Su’a William Sio has talked about the structural failings of this bill. He is correct that local council rhetoric, or indeed Crown rhetoric, about diversity is meaningless without a structural reflection in the law. We have a sorry history in local government in terms of te Tiriti abuse, but we had an opportunity to change that. The mana whenua and Māori seats issues were like a small light at the end of a dark tunnel of structural racism and privilege. But what the hell—what have we done? We are saying Pākehā can represent all those other issues; we do not need the Māori seats. Yet Pākehā have consistently failed, and have demonstrated an absolute inability, to respond to Māori views and values. We certainly cannot be said to represent Māori, so why do we not have the Māori seats?

It is, indeed, with great regret that I continue to raise this matter. I do feel that a really strong opportunity for change was lost here. As I said in an earlier speech to the Committee, the issue was about what the submitters wanted. It is with great sadness that I hear people talk about the need for a strong, forward-moving, regional, unified new authority, when the core opportunity for it to have strength, unity, and a regional perspective on many issues to do with resource management, with the environment, and with justice, which would have been heard through the Māori seats, is lost. Kia ora.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am pleased to be speaking again in the debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. It has certainly been a long time coming. It has been at least 50 years since concerns and grumblings about the governance of Auckland started. It has not been working and there have been many attempts to fix it. Once the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance got going, consulted, and reported back, it was clear the Government had to move fast. Although the previous Government started this process, it is the current Government that will be finishing it, and that is what this bill is about. It is the second bill of three. Basically, the commission said that reform was urgent, and it stressed that doing nothing would be a high cost to Auckland. The region was suffering from bureaucracy, from stifling red tape, roads were blocked, and businesses and the economy were suffering. That is why we are here today.

I want to touch on the voting system. There has been debate about it already today, and certainly the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee had a number of submissions regarding whether we should have the single transferable vote (STV) system versus the first-past-the-post system. There were a lot of submissions for STV. It was felt it would be more democratic and perhaps would give greater representation of ethnic minorities—very valid points. It is good in theory but I think, unfortunately, it has been very poor in practice.

Essentially, with this bill, which will be in place for the local body elections in September 2010, all of Auckland will be facing a totally new system. It will be totally foreign. Aucklanders will be voting for the Auckland Council, for one super-council if members like to call it that, and 20 to 30 boards. It will be a whole new system. The history of STV in the Auckland area is that it is used for the district health board elections, which have occurred in 2004 and 2007. Quite frankly, I will not say it is a disaster but the number of invalid votes is absolutely phenomenal. They have got worse not better, and the voter turnout is getting poorer, as well. Voters are turning off. Why are they turning off? I guess that is the question. Is it due to the voting system? Is it due to apathy? Who knows? Certainly, I think the voting system is critical. We have to get it right. I think that for the first election the voting system needs to be simple so that people can understand it. It should be first past the post, and after that Aucklanders can decide for themselves what voting system they want to follow. I think that, on balance, the committee felt that would be the best way to go forward.

I want to talk a little bit about remuneration. We had some submissions on the remuneration of the new local board members. Under the current system, community board members get quite a modest salary. It is very modest indeed for the work that they do; one could almost call it voluntary or altruistic-type work. The submitters said to us that that means that the individuals who currently step up either can afford to step up or have the time on their hands to step up, and that possibly people who would like to do so but cannot afford to stop their day job or whatever are precluded. The new local boards will be quite different, with new roles and responsibilities. A paragraph in the commentary on the bill suggests that the Remuneration Authority—we cannot tell it what to do—align the remuneration of the new local board members with the level of responsibility of their work. Hopefully, it will follow through and a whole different range of diverse people will step up. That would be a very good thing.

I want to talk a wee bit about the mayor. I think the election in 2010 in Auckland will be quite exciting. We already have a couple of candidates. Certainly, the new Auckland mayor, he or she—and, who knows, it might be a she—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

I want to ask National when Tau Henare will take the call. When will Tau Henare take the call on this particular issue? Tau Henare has had a lot to say publicly on this issue and about the Minister in the chair, Rodney Hide. Tau Henare’s colleague and the spokesperson for Ngāti Whātua, Ngārimu Blair, was reported today as saying that he supports the one person, one vote principle. He supports one person, one vote in here too. He wants to know why Tau Henare is being muzzled. Why can Tau Henare not vote according to his conscience and what he has said publicly in this Chamber? I think it is fair to say that Ngārimu Blair has a very appropriate name. He was named after Ngārimu VC, who has had the highest honour for bravery that a New Zealander can get. We are not asking Tau Henare to be nearly as brave as his relatives; we are asking him to do what he is asking other people to do, and work on the basis, as the Minister has said, of one person, one vote. Why will National not let Tau Henare vote according to his conscience? Why can he not do what Mike Minogue used to do on a regular basis? Georgina te Heuheu has done it, as have a number of other National members. It used to be their kaupapa. It used to be the way that the National members did it, and they were proud. They would say something outside, and they would follow it up inside.

I ask two questions, really. Why does National not have the courage of its convictions to take the whip off Tau Henare? There is not a word, not a whisper, and not a murmur from National about that. Even given that, why does Tau Henare—who has so much to say outside, including some pretty direct descriptions of the Minister in charge of the bill, Rodney Hide—not follow up in this Chamber what he has said outside? It is all very well being a lion in front of the TV cameras, but if he is a mouse in here, there is not much point. What is he doing? Apparently he is in a competition with Nikki Kaye for a list spot in Auckland. They know that they will have some problems there. Jackie Blue has gone already; she is not even part of that competition. But a fight is going on for the last list—

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) Link to this

I also want to talk about the Auckland boundaries. I come from the Bay of Plenty, and we proudly set up a Bay of Plenty hub. We had a great meeting with Phil Goff and the mayors of the region, and we talked about the super-city because every region in the country is starting to ponder it. It was very clear from the democratic leaders of our region that we want to have a say. The good people of the Bay of Plenty want to have a say on what the correct and appropriate boundaries are if local government reform extends after the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. I told those mayors they could bet their bottom dollar the reforms would extend to the Bay of Plenty. Rodney Hide will not stop as the Minister of Local Government. After the Auckland super-city legislation, he will move out into the regions. I told them it was time we got together so we can design our own future.

When we look at the boundary issue in this bill, we see what a botch-up has been made. It has caused concern and anxiety. People are marching on the streets because they know what is right for them, and that the lines drawn on the map are simply wrong. Those lines are stupid, and it took leaders in the community like Mike Lee from the Auckland Regional Council to say how ridiculous it is to manage the natural assets of the region by separating off an area from the Auckland region and saying we could manage it as one. It was great to see people like Mike Lee stand up and fight the good fight about boundary changes. We can be sure that members around the country from different regions are telling the Government that Rodney Hide, who is a coalition partner and the Minister of Local Government outside of Cabinet, is wielding such power of influence over the National Government—the tail is wagging the dog—that he will extend his fingers down into the rest of New Zealand and will tell them what to do. He will go out there and say that the Government is listening and that the door is always open, and John Key will bounce around behind him and say that his door is also always open and the Government is listening to the good people. But the Government has drawn the lines on the map.

Government members think they know best how local bodies want to manage their own communities of interest and the regional council configuration of local authorities. They have got it wrong in Auckland, and at the last minute they changed what they originally proposed, because the good people of Auckland got up and said that the Government had got it wrong. It took an eleventh-hour visit up to Rodney for a bit of deep and meaningful conversation for the Government to say it would change the boundaries and Rodney could come in. Poor old Dr Paul Hutchison really misses out. The good people of Rodney win, but poor old Dr Paul, who has been a fantastic member for the National Party, advocating for his constituency, has been trampled. The mana of the Māori Party has been trampled because the Minister, who listened and knows best, said there would be no Māori seats on the new Auckland super-council. He said there would be no Māori seats and no representation, as he knows best. He said he will work out a mana whenua relationship; that will please everybody, and then they will go away. Well, the good iwi of Auckland will not go away and the iwi of New Zealand will not go away on this issue. The iwi of New Zealand will remind the Government, after the 2010 local body elections, that they were ignored and trampled over.

Labour set up the Bay of Plenty Regional Council (Maori Constituency Empowering) Act that allowed three seats on the regional council. That was Mita Ririnui’s bill in 2001, and the good old Nats, the way they used to, let Georgina te Heuheu cross the floor because she felt strongly. But that is not the case any more; they are all muzzled. They all get up in the Chamber and rave, and say they will go out into the community at community rallies and hīkoi, but nothing has changed. The people were not listened to. They were trampled over by the Minister in the chair, Rodney Hide, who dances on the head of a pin about consultation and listening and ignores the good people of Auckland. I think the rest of New Zealand needs to look very closely at this. In the next election they need to watch the power that the minority ACT Party wields over National.

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Labour) Link to this

I want to touch on some of the points that were raised this morning. I know we have moved from the issues around Māori representation and on to ethnic representation and boundary issues, but my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard raised some relevant issues. It is important that we go back and revisit those issues, because I get the impression that the Government is trying to move this thing along so that the real issues, the ones that people think about on a daily basis, are swept over so we can move on to the mechanical or technical aspects of this legislation. The real debate gets swallowed up and lost.

The Hon Trevor Mallard mentioned the contribution of the Hon Tau Henare, a former Minister of Māori Affairs. I want to revisit some of the comments he made. This is not an attack or challenge to Tau Henare, but to all the Māori members of the National Party. My colleague Steve Chadwick mentioned the absolute support that I received in 2001 from the Hon Georgina te Heuheu on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council (Maori Constituency Empowering) Bill, and I know her views on Māori representation in the proposed Auckland super-city remain the same as they were in 2001. She has been very public, although guarded, in expressing her views. When she has spoken in the Chamber, those views, in a subtle way, have challenged the Minister sitting in the chair. She has come out in the open and admitted upfront that she is in support of Māori representation. I am wondering why the Hon Georgina te Heuheu does not come down to the Chamber. I know we are not allowed to comment on why people are not here, but it would be very helpful if she could be consistent in making her views clear to the members of the House.

There are Māori members of the National Party who have not been upfront about their views on Māori representation in the proposed Auckland super-city. I think it is basically because they have been muzzled. Although I acknowledge that some of them are new members, and it will take some time for them to settle into some of the to-ing and fro-ing of political life, there is a time when people have to stand up and be counted. They have to get up and speak their minds. It would also be very helpful if the only remaining member of the Māori Party in the Chamber, Hone Harawira, got to his feet and shared some of his whakaaro with us, because I know they are quite relevant.

We spoke today about boundaries. It is very easy for the Minister to draw boundaries around the proposal for the Auckland super-city, but there are boundaries that overlie the boundaries that are proposed in the legislation. Those are the boundaries of tangata whenua—of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, Tainui, and many other iwi who hold mana whenua over that particular area. Before we go any further in speaking about the carve-up of that great city, some consideration has to be given to those ancestral tribal boundaries. I know there has not been sufficient debate on that in the Chamber today.

I am told that there were 287 submissions made to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, and I am told that the Hon Tau Henare was very thorough in terms of his consultations around the area. He even went to Waiheke Island to listen to submissions. What he did not say in the Chamber is that those submissions from Māori were made on the basis of their traditional boundaries. In other words, they and they alone have mana whenua over the Tāmaki-makau-rau district. Anyone proposing anything that would affect their mana whenua had an obligation to listen very carefully to what they had to say. For the past 24 hours in this Chamber, the Government has said that it listened. Its members have said that so many times that I think they have convinced themselves that they did listen. In fact, people are ringing in, sending emails, and texting saying “Why didn’t the Government listen to Māori?”. I have to text them back and say: “Well, actually the Government is saying …”. Now, if that is not the case, then they have a case to present to the Government. But I do not think the Government will listen to that, either. In Māoridom we have an old saying: “Mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu. Mā te hinengaro, ka mōhio he aha te māramatanga.”

[With feathers a bird will fly. With a mind, one will know what enlightenment is.]

You see, everything around the Auckland proposal for Māori brings up the issue of assets capture. In other words, there is a fear that ratepayer assets will be transferred to some sort of conglomerate that in the future will ring-fence and dispose of them. That is a real fear for Māori in the Auckland area. What will that mean for Māori assets? I think it will mean a lot, as it did in the Bay of Plenty when the Bay of Plenty bill was introduced. There is also the issue around the Government listening but not hearing, as has happened in this case.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) Link to this

I will make some comments on the issue of boundaries, but first I observe how good it is to see a spark of life on the Government benches. We on this side of the Chamber were getting quite downhearted, noting that there have been only two speeches by National members since 10.30 this morning. We have sent George Hawkins over there to try to even up the numbers. One would think the debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill was a game of soccer in the park on a Saturday morning the way it is going.

One of the most extraordinary and bizarre episodes of this Government’s mishandling of the Auckland governance reforms is its attempt to lop off the northern and southern ends of Auckland. It proposed to consign 25 percent of the land area to outside the super-city. The proposal had heads shaking all over the city of Auckland. In an exercise that was really designed to integrate and build a more cohesive Auckland, here was the Government lopping off 25 percent of the land area, including some of our most important, beloved, and spectacular natural assets. If we look at Rodney District we see that the Government proposed to put the very precious northern beaches—those north of Waiwera—and a number of our regional parks outside the Auckland boundaries.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) Link to this

I am very pleased to take a call on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. As a Christchurch MP I can say that if we ever approach local government restructuring in Canterbury, I only hope that we do it a hell of a lot better than what has been done here with this rushed, inconsistent, and often flawed process.

In my view, local government is about two things. First, it is about representation. The bill should be about the best possible representation for the people of Auckland. Second, local government is about the relationship between those people who have been elected to run the super-city and those who have elected them. It should not be about any of us, in effect, as central government politicians. It most certainly should not be about any agendas that central government politicians might have.

One of the things that struck me about the bill from the outset is the potential it presents, in bringing together the Auckland councils, for privatisation of Auckland assets. That remains a very real and key concern. We are bringing together in the Auckland super-city some $28 billion worth of assets—most notably, assets such as Ports of Auckland and Watercare Services. They are very much two glittering prizes for privatisation, and certainly many in the investment community would look at them as such. There is nothing in the bill to protect those assets. I acknowledge the very good work that my colleague Phil Twyford has done to promote that issue, through a website and other means.

But I believe that in other policy settings the Government is going the other way, towards the potential for privatisation. I note most particularly that in March the Government announced a review of foreign ownership, to make it easier for foreigners to invest in this country. Even more recently, it announced that any Australian investment body wanting to buy assets in New Zealand can now do so up to a limit of $500 million—that is, half a billion dollars in assets. Of course, the net effect, even though the investors are our good friends from Australia, is the same. It still has the potential to drive our current account deficit to become even wider, to drive our dollar further upwards, along with our interest rates, and, in effect, to make us beggars in our own land.

Water is the basis of the new economy, and Watercare Services will be providing water to over a million New Zealanders in Auckland. If we have in Mr Hide—and this is not anything contentious—a very strong belief in the privatisation ethic, and if we have embodied and articulated in him a belief that core services do not even stretch to the provision of such essential services, in my view, as libraries, then the potential for privatisation is very strong.

Another comment I will make is around the formation of the new community boards or councils. I support them as a very good concept, but the key for any community board or council is the resourcing and funding it receives. In Christchurch we have about half a dozen of these bodies. They are served by very well-motivated people who work very hard on behalf of their particular sections of the Christchurch community. But I have to say that their powers are very limited. They can, for instance, decide where a bus stop can be sited, but they have no power over transport issues, like the running of bus services. They can fund the resowing of a sports field, but they do not have the capacity to purchase or create a sports field. I think the key to the successful future of the boards in Auckland comes back to the same thing. It comes back to the resources and funding they have, and the protections that are in place to ensure that publicly owned resources remain in public hands. I am not convinced that that is provided for in this bill.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) Link to this

As an Auckland member I have been very interested in this debate about the difference between Rodney and Franklin. Ostensibly, both are in the same sorts of circumstances. Rodney was all-in, then it was half out, and now it is back in. Franklin was in, then half out. Government members say that the formation of local boards is about the watershed, not the community of interest, but the main principles of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill are around community of interest. That is the way the Government has argued the formation of local boards. I will get to that issue.

Apart from the boundary issue looking like a complete muddle, a complete shambles, the mystery for me was unanswered until the penny dropped. A Minister responsible for the bill, John Carter, is also the chairman of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, and is also the member of Parliament for the district that got its way. A Minister responsible for the bill is the chairman of that committee. That is a complete conflict of interest, of which I know no precedent in my time in Parliament. That Minister is also the local member for one of the highly disputed territories. I bet that the honest, hard-working member Paul Hutchison wishes he were the Minister. He would have fixed it for his people. Why was he left out in the cold?

Have we ever heard anything as ridiculous as defining an electoral boundary on a watershed that runs contrary to a community of interest? The bill is devoid of logic and principle at that level. It is devoid of logic and principle and shows all the signs of a Government that is unravelling—as if we needed another example after the emissions trading scheme. The Government has a deal with the Māori Party one day and a deal with Labour the next. If the Māori Party deal only goes as far as the select committee, the Government thinks it had better get back into bed with Labour if we will still have it. What a shambles! Here is a Government that is embracing “Muldoonism” with a smile that is looking raggeder and raggeder by the day. But I will move on to the next issue.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) Link to this

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. In terms of the boundaries, one has to ask why the Government is so determined to hand over Auckland’s dams to the Waikato Regional Council. We heard many contentious issues as we listened to the people of Auckland take the time to submit on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. One of those issues was the northern and southern boundaries. It is quite good that the Government decided to change its mind at the eleventh hour on the northern boundary. I suppose it did so because its secret agenda had been revealed for all to see. The Government was linking itself closely to Mr Hide’s business people who want to develop that part of northern Rodney without having to go through the normal council consent process.

But we have to come back to the southern boundary and to recognise that the bill proposes to partition the Franklin District, with the north joining the Auckland Council and the southern part joining the Waikato District Council. Some members of this House would have received a recent email from Mr Colin Bull, who feels strongly about this issue. So strong is his belief that he believes that the National Government, to which he is affiliated—I am not sure whether he is a supporter or a member of the National Party, but nevertheless he is quite close to it—is making the wrong decision. Funnily enough, when the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee was in Papakura and then in Franklin, listening to submitters, I said to the chairman, the Hon John Carter, that National will get bitten by this bill. I could hear the anger of the submitters, and I said that I thought they were mainly National supporters. He turned to me and said: “What do you mean, saying they are our supporters? They are our members!”. People there were fund-raisers for the National Party, and they are the people the Government will have a problem with.

One of the media headlines yesterday was: “Nat MP critical of super-city boundary back-down”. The member for Hunua, Dr Hutchison, said: “… the boundary goes through the streets of Waiuku,”. The southern boundary is critical because not only will critical water supplies—54 percent of Auckland’s total water supply—be cut off but also prime regional parks land, including three major regional parks, all paid for by Auckland ratepayers and all managed by the Auckland Regional Council, will be given away. The boundary divides the towns of Waiuku and Pukekohe, separating the residents of northern Franklin from essential services and infrastructure. Earlier today, the chair of the Auckland Regional Council stated in a press release: “This is absurd and definitely not good local government.” The call we make to the Government on behalf of the people of Auckland is that it is not too late to change the southern boundary, to save face, and to get things right. The Government should listen to the people of Auckland.

The other area that is contentious, in so far as the people of Auckland are concerned, is the local boards. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance came out, after 18 months of extensive research and consultation, and said that, yes, there would be a unitary authority, and underneath that unitary authority there would be local boards of sufficient size to meet and manage the existing needs of the ratepayers of Auckland, and also of sufficient size to recognise that the transition from the existing eight local territorial authorities to a single unitary authority would take time. It would need more time than the Government gave the people of Auckland when it rammed the first Auckland bill through under urgency. During the select committee process people felt they were not given enough time. The process was hasty and rushed, and, of course, the experience of many Aucklanders is that when Governments do that, they get things wrong.

SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) Link to this

It is very good to take a call in this debate. I say to the members of the Opposition that if they pipe down a little they will be able to hear me, and I know they want to hear what I have to say. I wanted to take a call this morning, but like the National Party and like the Government I have been too busy listening. National members love to listen. I have been listening carefully to what members have been saying.

I was interested to hear what Carol Beaumont had to say right at the end of last night, and I was interested to hear Kelvin Davis earlier this morning. Of course, Carol is the fresh, dynamic face of Labour. She is a unionist, I think. She is clearly a more dynamic, fresh face than Kelvin Davis is, because Kelvin is only a principal. Unionism is a much better career path to get ahead in the Labour Party. What they both said was interesting, and it had a superficial appeal. They were saying that it does not matter that people say they are listening, listening, listening; if they are not listening and it is just a mantra, it does not mean anything. I agree with that. What they are saying is perfectly right. Too often, I think, in politics we have mantras and we say things, but if they do not have meaning behind them, they are not worth the paper they are written on or the air in which they are expelled. So that is no good. It is a bit like Phil Twyford and the secret privatisation agenda campaign he has been running. What is it called?

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this

I am glad to see that John Carter is the Minister in the chair, and I am wondering whether he could answer a question. I must say I was delighted that the Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide, actually rose to answer one question I asked, but I had one other question, which the Minister has not yet answered, and it concerns the clause dealing with the role of the Mayor of Auckland. Subclause (3) of clause 9, “Mayor of Auckland”, states that the mayor and the mayor alone has the power “to establish processes and mechanisms for the Auckland Council to engage with the people of Auckland, whether generally or particularly”. Does this power override the Local Government Act? Can this particular clause override the consultation procedures set out in the Local Government Act? I would be very appreciative if the Associate Minister of Local Government, John Carter, was able to answer that question

I am worried about what might happen in a year or so. If, for example, John Banks achieves his ambition and becomes the Mayor of Auckland, and then achieves his further ambition to sell off some of the Auckland Council’s $28 billion of assets, Aucklanders might wake up and ask why they had not been consulted. They might ask why no one had gone through a consultation process on such a major issue—or even on a minor issue—and they might be puzzled as to how it had happened. Then they would realise it was because of a provision in this bill. If John Carter is not able to answer this question, then maybe another member of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, like Phil Twyford, can. Maybe George can answer it. Was a legal opinion given on it? I think it is a very serious issue. Did someone on the committee ask why the mayor has such extensive powers and is able to choose the mechanism by which people are consulted? I wonder whether the select committee was given a legal opinion as to whether this provision overrides the Local Government Act. It is a serious concern, and I do not want Aucklanders to wake up in a couple of years’ time and ask how it happened. I do not want them to find that it happened because Parliament was asleep or had not recognised the implications of this particular clause. So I would really appreciate it if Mr Carter could answer that question about the mayoral powers of consultation.

I know that Mr Carter has become irritated with my questioning some of the functions that he believes the local boards will have, but let me take this opportunity to congratulate John Carter on providing excellent and impartial chairing of the submission process. The only thing I would say is that when I was there I felt he raised the expectations of submitters that a whole lot of new powers would be given to the local boards, and I think they will be deeply disappointed when they discover that the powers are very limited—especially by the veto power of the Auckland Council.

The other issue I want to raise is the cost of this huge transition. Rodney Hide said in a speech that local government representatives were coming to see him to complain about the tens of millions of dollars of costs being imposed on local government by the National Government, the Government of the day. Yet this bill will impose a huge amount of cost on Auckland ratepayers. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance estimated that the cost of the transformation from the eight existing councils to the super-city would be $120 million to $140 million. In answer to questions raised in the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee the Government members could only say they thought it would be about the same amount—$120 million to $140 million. As for the benefits, they hoped the super-city would bring annual savings of between 2.5 and 3.5 percent. So the first question is where the $120 million to $140 million will come from, especially given that Vote Local Government approved only $10 million for the implementation of the recommendations. Where will the rest of the $120 million to $140 million come from? Why have we not been given proper costings, not just some vague estimate by the royal commission, of how much it will all cost? We now know that Auckland ratepayers will have to foot the whole bill. Also, what are the estimated savings?

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) Link to this

I want to pick up on the issue of costs, which was raised by the previous speaker, Sue Kedgley. A very interesting little group in Auckland—the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board—has raised a very real issue of concern about what will happen to the status of the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Act. The Act was passed last year by the Labour Government. That issue is also of concern to Labour members. The board had a meeting with the Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide, and I heard back—as I am the Opposition spokesperson on arts, culture and heritage—that he was incredibly dismissive and rather arrogant. He listened but, again, went away. We do not know what will happen. The Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board has no confidence, and it is feeling huge anxiety.

The board has an enormous responsibility to use rates from the region to fund the Auckland Festival Trust, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust, the Auckland Theatre Company, Auckland Zoo, Coastguard Northern Region, the New Zealand National Maritime Museum, NBR New Zealand Opera, the Stardome Observatory and Planetarium, Surf Life Saving Northern Region, and WaterSafe Auckland. Those are huge amenities and they are managed by the funding board. The board members met with the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Christopher Finlayson, and he did give them a better hearing but he could not give them any reassurance whatsoever. We are debating the second Auckland bill under urgency, and there is absolutely no transition planning about what on earth will happen to the funding board. I think that is shameful.

Auckland has many good community organisations and facilities that deserve certainty and security of ongoing funding in this transitional phase. The ramming of this Auckland super-city bill through the House under urgency in order to be ready for the 2010 election causes uncertainty and anxiety for many, many organisations in Auckland. There has been nothing from the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage about the way that the funding board will be supported, and certainly there has been nothing from Rodney Hide about it. The Local Government Act, which was Labour’s reform of local government, talks about cultural, social, and economic well-being. Well, a lot of the organisations I have mentioned come under that cultural umbrella. We all want the super-city legislation to produce a vibrant city, but the arts community in Auckland has no security of ongoing funding, at all. That is appalling. At the end of this urgency period this bill will be passed, the Government having said with high-handed arrogance: “We listen. We know what’s best for Auckland. We’ll sort it out—don’t worry.” It came out with platitudes like “Don’t worry, your future is safe in our hands.” It is certainly an issue that the funding trust has no security of ongoing funding. It has funding until 2010, but what happens beyond the next local body election?

I think the arts community of Auckland, which is vibrant and is the heart of New Zealand’s economic driver as its major city, deserves better in terms of long-term security of funding for the iconic Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, the theatre company, opera, and all those other wonderful organisations, such as the Auckland Festival Trust. It deserves better. It is a funding agency, but it is caught in the transition from the protection it was given last year by the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Act to the new super-city. Those sorts of issues are absolutely major, and they give the good people of Auckland no confidence that, with the passing of this second Auckland bill, the Government will dot the i’s and cross the t’s during the transition period in these uncertain times.

I wanted to bring up the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board. It plays a wonderful part in the vibrancy of Auckland in connecting communities through the arts, festivals, and events. It deserves certainty.

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

Two or three points have been made that I think are worth responding to, but I will start by saying that one of the things we have been waiting to hear about from Opposition members is the actual principle about the things they consider are important. Opposition speakers have gone into a whole lot of minor detail. I am very disappointed in the Opposition’s debate, because the bill is significant. Passing the bill is one of the biggest things that will happen in the House during this term of Parliament. We are debating a measure that will affect a third of our country, the powerhouse of our country, and it matters. We are setting up a regional structure that will look after things in Auckland. With rare exception, I have not heard Opposition members saying that the legislation is important for New Zealand and that they support it. One or two of them have referred to it, to be fair, but they have not bothered to debate why it needs to happen.

In fact, most members opposite agree with the bill. But they should be saying so, because it is important legislation. If members agree with it, then they should be standing up and saying that it will be good for Auckland and good for New Zealand. Unfortunately, they are not telling the public about the wonderful opportunity that is being set up, which the previous Labour Government began and which the National Government has picked up and made happen. We will put in place a structure that will ensure that the future of Auckland is secure and that those things that matter on a regional basis will be dealt with. That is really important for us to say and to understand.

There has been some comment about the issue of local boards, and I think it is important for us to spend a little bit of time debating it. I know that some members—Sue Kedgley is one of them—are still concerned that we have not got it right. She and I will agree to disagree on that. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. One of the things the royal commission report talks about is local councils, and I suspect that much of it was influenced by one of its members, David Shand. He was a Labour candidate some time ago and a real leftie. He has disappointed me. The Shand report was a failure, and I suspect that his input into the royal commission report was not much better.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that the chairman of the New Zealand Community Boards, Mike Cohen, whom most members opposite will know, as do most of our members, has said that he is very pleased with the Government’s decisions in respect of the number of local boards we are putting up and the powers they are being given. I also draw the Committee’s attention to the commentary on the bill. It is important for members opposite to remember what Labour’s minority report says about local powers. Labour actually agrees with what the Government has done about local powers. Labour does not agree with the number of local boards, and I accept that. It says there should be 14 to 20 boards, and we say there should be 20 to 30. We are not that far away; the Opposition has shifted a lot. With regard to local powers, the Labour Opposition agrees with what the Government has said.

If we look at what the Green Party members have said—although I accept that they, and especially Sue Kedgley, have some concerns—we see that in the main they are not saying that what we are endeavouring to do in respect of local powers is wrong. They are just concerned as to whether we have got it right. As I have said, we will find out as we move forward. I say to listeners and to the Committee that the issue of local boards is absolutely important, and the majority of the Committee agrees with the powers that the Government is giving to the local boards. That is important.

There has been some debate about the issue of community groups, and I remind members that part of the responsibility for the transition will be determined by what is in the third bill on Auckland governance. I make the point that this is an ongoing process. We started with one bill, we are nearly finished now with the second bill, and there will be a third bill. A lot of detail will come through in the third bill that members will take a great deal of interest in, as they should. That detail will be part of what makes the whole thing happen. The third bill will address a lot of the concerns that members have. We will decide in the third bill whether we need to instruct the unitary authority or make a recommendation to the unitary authority as to how it should deal with the community groups and the funding issues that the member Steve Chadwick raised.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) Link to this

I will talk about the issue of the local boards, which is a very important issue. I think it is important to break up the Northlanders who are participating in this debate, because, quite frankly, we need more Aucklanders and fewer Northlanders participating. The issue of the local boards is one that has—

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) Link to this

Kia ora anō tātou. Mr John Carter, who is sitting next to you, Mr Chairperson, made reference to the fact that there is an absence of content in the speeches that we have been offering on this side of the Chamber in the Committee stage of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. That is gross. That is not only wrong but unfair.

I will start with the boundaries. There is no rhyme or reason why the people of Rodney have been put through a roundabout of emotional turmoil while National addresses its own constituency agendas as it tries to draw the boundary in Rodney. There was no principle there. It suited that party to ransack the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance to suit its own political, petty, short-term objectives. This side of the Committee has not done that. This side of the Committee has acted, in so far as the royal commission goes, with great integrity.

I put on record that the references I have made to mana whenua being unworkable and an assault on established democratic standards are revealed in that wretched Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Māori Party that says that everyone has to first declare his or her whakapapa. Something akin to a genealogical unit would need to be set up to establish how much of someone’s genealogy belongs to a particular mana whenua tribe. Those issues do not belong in civic space; they belong in the space of the marae. Complicated democratic procedures ought not to be entangled with matters that have to do with marae entitlement, customary ancestry, and the affairs of tangata whenua.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) Link to this

I was listening very, very hard to what the Minister in the chair, John Carter, was saying a little earlier, and I was wondering how he would design a car. I suspect that Mr Carter would perhaps design the steering wheel first and say that he has the steering wheel. Having done that, he might have stage two, where he might decide what the body of the car might look like, and he then would take another 6 months to decide on the body.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) Link to this

I think we have heard a number of good speeches recently. I commend my colleague and friend Rajen Prasad who has just resumed his seat, and of course the recent contribution from the Hon Shane Jones was excellent as well. I also think the previous comments of the Minister in the chair, the Hon John Carter, were useful in their challenge to us to provide a reasoned statement, as my two colleagues have just done, about the nature of our position on the local boards.

Let us go back to basics. In the first draft of the Government’s proposals, the idea of having a large number of very, very small local boards representing a minimalist view of the State—the Rodney Hide Cabinet paper writ large through the Auckland bill, core services only, no say in their own destiny, could not buy a pencil sharpener, could not hire a staff member, and could hardly make a decision at all—went down like a bucket of sick with Aucklanders, and rightly so. There is nothing like the Rodney Hide vision of the world that has peeled away public support in my part of the world from this Government, other than perhaps the funding cuts to adult and community education—the most expensive $10 million this Government is ever going to save in its 3 years in power.

But that was the starting problem. The Government threw the baby out with the bathwater. It was a deliberate policy of divide and rule. The Government wanted a super powerful unitary Auckland Council gerrymandered to be dominated by the right, with at-large councillors, for generations to come—a gravy train for John Banks; that was the idea—and it wanted to brook no disagreement from below. It would face no threat from a large number of disempowered local boards that were entirely captive to it, in terms of fund-raising, rating, policy making, employment, and definition setting. That was the case reasoned in the submissions, and I can go through the list but I will need more calls to do so. I have pages and pages of submissions from groups—everything from, starting at A, Andrew Body Ltd, Auckland City Council, Cheryl Backstrom from Parnell Trust, Waitakere Enterprise, Peter Buchanan—the list goes on and on. People rose up and said that this model was excessively minimalist and they did not want it, so change it!

Here is where we have to give the Government some reasonable degree of credit. The Government did pare back some of the worst excesses of the Rodney Hide model. It has given the local boards some say in the definition of their local role and in place-shaping; let us say that. But, as my colleagues have said, there are two enduring problems. The first is that there are too many boards. Thirty local boards is way too many. It is divide and rule, still. In my part of Auckland, in Waitakere City, that means going back to the bad old days of the boroughs. It means New Lynn borough competing with Henderson borough, or the Waitakere ward, or the Massey ward. It means internecine feuding, frankly, of the worst possible kind. Waitakere City residents were pleased to get away from that; they identify as west Aucklanders with Waitakere as an entity, and not so much with New Lynn, Henderson, or Massey. We do not want to get the worst features of the old system back again, and there is further work needed to make sure that the numbers are contained so that we have genuine communities of interest, with enough cohesion and power to have an upwards say to the Auckland Council. That is the scale issue.

The second issue is empowerment. It is one thing to draw a diagram and say that this is how we will make policy, and that is as simple as we have it. It has a few spider legs on it. It is another thing to give local boards the resources and the critical mass to carry it out. It remains the case that even after the moderation of this ghastly provision, local boards are still completely captive because they cannot raise a rate. They cannot even put a differential rate on without the Auckland City Council’s approval. An activist local board such as New Lynn, my own dear town, would not have the scale, nor would it have the resources nor the political clout to mount a project of the nature of the New Lynn rail undergrounding and civic transformation. That is costing $300 million and it could not be done under this model. That is the key example.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this

I have just a couple of points that I want to take up. Firstly, I want to finish the point I was making in my previous intervention about the huge costs of the Auckland restructuring. The interesting point is that we are told that the costs, according to the royal commission, are expected to be about $140 million. We have not been told where this money is coming from. The savings are predicted to be 2.5 to 3.5 percent. I want to mention that some papers have been written about the international experience of local government amalgamation. It has been found that almost always huge savings have been predicted, but they have not come about. For example, in South Australia the authorities promised savings of 17.4 percent, but achieved savings of a mere 2.3 percent only. We have been promised savings of only 2.5 percent in Auckland, but maybe if it is based on that experience there will be no savings at all.

It is interesting that the Government has barely mentioned—in fact, I do not think I have heard any Government members mention—that there will be savings to the ratepayer as a result of this extraordinary amalgamation, this disruption, this wiping out of very effective local councils and their replacement with tiny little local boards. Barely anyone has mentioned that there will be savings. Obviously, the answer is that there will not be savings. Indeed, there will just be huge costs, and those costs will be picked up as a liability by Auckland ratepayers.

The other thing that the international studies have given us is information on forced amalgamations. In my definition this is a forced amalgamation, because the people of Auckland never got to vote on it. There was an issue in Christchurch as to whether Akaroa should merge with Christchurch. The people there had a proper debate—an intense debate—a poll, a vote, and a referendum. It was won, and everyone accepted the amalgamation. People accepted it because they voted for it. But in Auckland people have never had the opportunity to vote on the issue; therefore it has the definition of a forced amalgamation. The international experience of forced amalgamations is that far from reducing parochialism, which amalgamation is allegedly intended to do, there is so much simmering resentment in the community about the forced amalgamation that all that results is more parochialism and more resentment. I predict, as Mayor Williams has done, that this is what will happen. We will get even more parochialism and resentment once the communities realise how limited their local boards are.

The second thing that I want to do is to pick up the point about not just the number of local boards but the fact that there are to be only four to nine members on those boards. I have an amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 53 in my name that says there should be a minimum of 11 members on local boards. I would agree with Phil Twyford, who said there should be 14 to 17 members—that is certainly a reasonable number. But to have four to nine members on local boards is ridiculous. If we have four to nine members, that will mean the smaller councils—for example, on Waiheke—would be able to look forward to having only four members. A gang of four could be running Waiheke. Having four people on a local board would give it no credibility. That is ridiculous. The boards will not have the ability to do place-shaping and to do local representation, if there are only four to nine members. I have an amendment, which I hope the Government will support, to increase the size of boards to a minimum of 11 members. I think most community boards have 11 or 12 members, so to get down to four to nine members on local boards is ridiculous. We would ask the Government to please reconsider that, because we cannot suggest that we will provide genuine local boards and local grassroots democracy with a mere four to nine members.

The other thing that we need to remember—and I am glad that my colleague Roger Douglas has come into the Chamber, and I want to support very strongly Phil Twyford’s amendment about preventing the sale of the $28 billion of assets—

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) Link to this

I thought I would take a call because I want to touch on the whole issue of community boards. As I listen to this debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, the real worry I have is that the debate is all about structure, and not about function. Actual structure follows function, and not the other way round. That point has been missed, particularly by the members of the Labour Party. It was really a problem for the royal commission, which tended to focus only on structure, and I think that is why in the end we got a rather poor report. That is why the mayor and the councillors spent the whole duration of the royal commission process seeking to protect their own territory while continuing to spend more money and to increase our rates.

It seems to me that any determination of the appropriate structure of local government must, as I said, flow from functions rather than from structure. The first thing we need to determine is what issues or functions will be delegated by central government to local government, and, having decided that, it will tend to determine the nature or the structure of local government. The principle that should underline the structure of local government is that those most affected by councils’ decisions must have the capacity to voice their opinion. That is why I favour closer to 30 local boards, as opposed to 20 local boards. They should have the capacity to voice their opinion. The principle is commonly known as subsidiarity: the idea that matters ought to be dealt with by the least centralised but most competent authority we have. For decisions over things like food, we do it ourselves, but when it comes to a local library and a local swimming pool it should be done by local people. The number of community boards, set at 20 to 30 in this bill, is a move in the right direction. I personally favour 30 over 20.

Community boards should be small enough—and this is the point not argued particularly well by Labour—to represent genuine communities and not just be more bureaucratic structures. Labour has this afternoon suggested more and more bureaucratic structures, whereas if we get back to the community, we will have genuine communities of interest rather than those advocated by the royal commission. In Manukau, where I come from, there are at least six and probably seven genuine communities of interest: Botany; Pakuranga; Howick; Manurewa, whose community board is probably bigger than almost 90 percent of local governments in New Zealand; Ōtara and Papatoetoe, which are probably two communities, but possibly one; Māngere; and the rural area surrounding Clevedon. These are genuine communities of interest, and they would all be able to make better decisions than the old Manukau City Council did. That is why I push for 30 boards rather than 20 boards—in Manukau there are at least six communities, and probably seven.

The big thing that we must do, and the thing that we have not done, is ensure that structure follows function. We have not been doing that. If we think about local government, we see that a lot of things will be done at the regional level, and are best able to be done at the regional level, but a huge number of functions of local government can be best carried out by local people in their own communities. Therefore, I congratulate the Government and the Minister of Local Government on moving from 20 to 30 community boards as opposed to the seven or eight that the royal commission suggested.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) Link to this

I want to go back to something Mr Carter said earlier, and that was with regard to what Labour stands for. Mr Carter was questioning whether Labour knows what it stands for. I found that kind of ironic, given that Steve Chadwick has just talked about the fact that Labour stands for looking for the social, cultural, and economic benefits of Auckland City, rather than just the economic benefits.

I think that what this bill has brought to light, if people have not already realised it, is that National’s priorities have not changed. They have not changed at all, and that is something I want to speak about a little bit before I get on to the local boards. Early in the piece, when a public consultation meeting was held in the Mt Roskill electorate, National decided that it would get out there and consult, even though many of the decisions had already been made.

National had one of those meetings in Mt Roskill, and given that I live in Mt Roskill I thought after dinner that I would walk up to the meeting and see what the National members of Parliament had to say and the way in which they listened to the local residents. I went there knowing that Jackie Blue would be there. Unfortunately, although Jackie Blue is the National member working in Mt Roskill, she did not really talk. I think she just said hello at the beginning, and then John Carter took over.

I found the meeting really interesting, and I gained quite an insight that night. I did not know any of the people at that meeting, and I sat there listening to what they had to say. I was pleasantly surprised that everything they had to say with regard to the concerns they had was aligned with everything Labour was pushing for. Members on this side of the Chamber cannot be criticised for not listening, because the things we have been pushing for are evident in the submissions that have been made and the concerns that have been expressed in all the public community meetings—not just the ones held by Labour but the ones held by National. I can attest to that because I attended one of them, and it made the whole issue of priorities spring to light.

We are seeing a return to National’s traditional agenda. Unfortunately, it has always been there, but it is has not been as overt as some might need it to be in order to be able to see it. One thing that does concern me—and we can see this; it is quite blatant—is that the National-ACT candidate for mayor of the super-city is John Banks.

One of the big issues that has been raised as we have moved round Auckland City has been the concern about the sale of public assets. I congratulate my colleague Phil Twyford on the Not Yours to Sell campaign he has been running. It is something that a lot of people have picked up on. It is a very real concern. The National Government can go out there and say it has no intention of selling public assets, or it can go out there and be very quiet about it, but we know that National’s No. 1 person—and ACT’s No. 1 person—who is running for mayor, John Banks, is renowned for his reputation with regard to the selling of public assets. So selling public assets is obviously high on the agenda for National and ACT.

One issue that has been raised across Auckland, especially in Manukau, is the fact that some areas of the Auckland region have held on to their public assets. Manukau has made a lot of revenue from the public assets the council held on to and chose not to sell. So when we discuss the details of this bill it is very important that we look at the underlying agenda. The underlying agenda is that National’s priorities have not changed since the 1990s. National still wants to sell our public assets at every opportunity, and its agenda is epitomised by the fact that someone like John Banks is its No. 1 person and is standing as the National/ACT candidate for mayor of Auckland.

I will just touch on the matter of the matter of the size and number of the local boards. The royal commission proposed six councils, roughly modelled on the existing councils. We have all the facilities there. It would be a complete waste to see those go. The Government then announced it wanted 20 to 30 community boards. We have argued for fewer boards than the Government proposes, to enable them to be large enough to be viable and influential.

Dr CAM CALDER (National) Link to this

Thank you for the opportunity to rise and take the call on this very important bill, the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. Members of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, including my colleague Nikki Kaye, have collectively spent thousands of hours listening to the people of Greater Auckland on this very important matter—this hugely important matter—under the esteemed leadership of the Associate Minister of Local Government, John Carter. We have listened carefully and responded thoughtfully. A wide range of views have been expressed. As the Prime Minister has stated, the aim of this exercise is to allow Auckland to think regionally, plan strategically, and act decisively—a feeling probably completely foreign to members on the other side of the Chamber. Just as in days gone by the performance of the Auckland rugby team was held to presage a fearsomely competitive All Black pack, so in the future we believe that a strong, vibrant Auckland City, nurturing its diverse inhabitants and encouraging them to reach their full potential, will result in a New Zealand—our nation—able to do the same on the global stage. If we get it right in Epsom, if we get it right in Manurewa, if we get it right in Auckland, we get it right for New Zealand.

I personally do not agree with W Somerset Maugham, who said that in great cities men are like a lot of stones thrown together in a bag: their jagged corners are rubbed off until in the end they are as smooth as marbles. The decision to have 20 or 30 local boards means that the different and diverse communities in Auckland, which make up Greater Auckland, will be recognised and the communities of interest will be supported. We had a very erudite contribution from Sir Roger, who talked about the bedrock of the European Union: the concept of subsidiarity. A community of interest could potentially be 100,000 people in Auckland, as my honourable friend pointed out, or it could be 50,000. Its structures will be determined by the Local Government Commission.

Few folk in this Chamber or, I am sure, in Auckland or New Zealand have not heard of Sir John Logan Campbell, the founder of Auckland, whose gift to the people of Auckland—Cornwall Park, in the vibrant electorate of Epsom—is enjoyed by thousands of people from all the cities across the Auckland isthmus to this day. Sir Dove-Myer Robinson’s vision was greater than that of his fellow councillors at the time, and we are very grateful for the cleanliness of our beaches, which is largely down to him.

What, then, is the background to this Greater Auckland issue? The reality is that the problems with the governance of Auckland have been recognised for years. The indolent, unlamented, lackadaisical, late Labour administration sat on its hands for almost 9 years, then set up a royal commission. [Interruption] How long was it? It was 9 years. Then it set up a royal commission. We were challenged by the royal commission to make the changes needed in time for elections a little over a year from now. Hence the need for urgency. We are on track; we are on time; we are delivering for Auckland.

The report of the royal commission was not the only thing that made known the need to reform local government in Auckland, and this is what makes Labour’s dilatoriness and indolence so hard to understand. Auckland’s future has been debated for decades. Michael Joseph Savage, whose name may be known to members opposite, stood on a one-council policy in 1919. Why do they not dredge through some old copies of Hansard and get some inspiration for the future?

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) Link to this

That contribution from Cam Calder was the worst I have heard in this Committee, and I blame the Minister in the chair, Hon John Carter. Where are the members of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee? Where is Nikki Kaye? Where is the contribution from Simon Bridges? Where is the contribution from Tau Henare? Why are they being silenced in this Chamber?

To be fair, I acknowledge the Hon John Carter because, as the Associate Minister of Local Government, he was a good chair of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. He was welcoming of the public and he was very positive. In fact, as the themes from the submitters became prominent, he began to raise the expectations of the community. One of the very first things that the Hon John Carter said was “We will empower boards.” That was the very first thing, and overwhelmingly, as we listened to submissions from the four corners of the Auckland region, that was one of the things of concern that was raised. As I listened to John Carter chair those meetings, I wondered why National did not appoint him as the Minister of Local Government. Why is that? He should have been the Minister but, alas, as the Associate Minister his strings are being pulled by the Minister, Mr Rodney Hide.

In the submissions advocated by various representatives from the community, they were generally quite concerned about the initial Government proposal regarding local boards. After the royal commission had conducted its work, it recommended that there be six local boards that basically follow the boundaries of the existing main cities in Auckland. The Government’s response was 20 to 30 boards. It sent that out for public consultation, and that was it. Labour argued in its proposal for local boards that are large enough to have some influence but small enough still to be able to represent our various communities. Many of the communities that made submissions raised concerns about the powers to be clarified. They wanted powers to be identified in the legislation. They wanted funding to be put in the legislation. In fact, I recall one submitter even recommended that each local board be given $5 million per year to conduct their affairs.

There were issues raised about staffing as to how these local boards would be able to deliver their roles and organise their functions. Of course, that is a significant issue because there are about 6,000 staff throughout the Auckland region who work for local government. But there has been so much uncertainty about this particular process, and there is so much rush and hastiness, that everybody is afraid and morale is low. I suspect if we are unable to provide some guarantee to the 6,000-plus staff for the next 2 years or 3 years, many of them will leave. They will leave for overseas or for other jobs. Yet we have not yet completed this work. We have not yet identified the boundaries because the staffing will be determined on the basis of how big or small those particular boards will be. If we do not have sufficient staffing, it means that local boards will be competing for somebody to take the minutes, to look after the parks, or to put up a proposal on their planning.

People were also concerned about assets. They wanted local boards to be able to have control of some of their community assets—things like libraries and swimming pools. Social services is another area where people raised their concerns. They wanted to know about the art and community projects that are currently being delivered in Māngere and throughout the city. The problem in the Government’s proposal is that the local boards are still subservient to the local council.

NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) Link to this

I want to make the point that it is very clear from the speeches coming from the other side that Labour members have not read the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. Another point I want to make is specifically around the powers of the local boards. There is a clear principle in the legislation that decisions will be made at the lowest possible level, except for some exceptions. Another point that I pick up on, which the previous speaker, Su’a William Sio, raised, is around the issue of staff and support. In the legislation it is also very clear that local boards will have to be adequately and fully resourced. They will not be able to employ staff, but they will have to have enough staff to support the activities for their community.

Another point that I want to raise is specifically around an issue raised during the select committee process. We heard about Phil Twyford going around communities spreading the threat of Armageddon, telling the arts community that they would not have funding. But I want to make a very clear point that I ask Labour to listen to. Within the legislation there is a very clear principle—and this is backed up in the local government legislation—around the promotion of social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of the community. It is very clear; it is within the legislation. Any assertion to the contrary is absolutely wrong. Another point that I want to make very clear is that when Mr Twyford went around those communities, he also went on about at-large councillors, saying we cannot expect them to float around the community without a constituency. There was a hilarious moment in the select committee process when someone yelled to him: “Hey, Phil, aren’t you a list MP?”.

I say that the community did speak very loudly and very clearly on this issue. As a result it became another area where this Government can say it has listened, and we no longer have at-large councillors. The other point that has been made consistently today has been around funding. I do not think that any speakers have really talked about this. Again, I raise this particular issue with Labour because I do not think the members have read the legislation. The funding provisions in the legislation have the power to really empower certain communities within Auckland. There are issues in Auckland in terms of certain minority groups. We know there are issues in South Auckland. I draw members’ attention to this provision within the legislation. I asked Len Brown about those issues when he came to the select committee. I said to him that some people have said that they want one unitary authority to come to Auckland, for the reason that maybe there will be communities within South Auckland that will finally get the school pools that they want and that they really deserve in their communities. The principle within the legislation is that the funding formula must take into account socio-economic conditions. Mr Brown turned to me and said: “Nikki, you know what, that is the great white hope of this legislation.” The great white hope is that finally communities in Auckland will be able to have some equality in terms of services. Members on the opposite side are very quiet, because they are voting against a bill that will not only deliver the infrastructure for Auckland and strong local entities for the communities across Auckland but also potentially help some of the poorer people in Auckland. Members on the opposite side have not addressed that.

The last and final point that I want to make that Labour needs to understand is that, on the question of the number of local boards—and they need to stand up and really address this point—Labour has slipped from 14 all the way to 20. National said there should be 20 to 30 local boards. What is the difference between our 20 and Labour’s 20? Potentially, nothing. So we may actually agree on the number of local boards. In response to the arguments that have been raised about communities being cut up, all I say is that there will be a process in terms of the Local Government Commission. It will be up to the commission to define what a community of interest is. But I ask Mr Hawkins about saving Papakura with 14 local boards. I do not think so. Labour is supporting a provision that would mean that Papakura would not have a local board. The members on the opposite side know that, and there are members in constituency seats who are looking very worried right now. They have backed themselves into a corner.

At the end of the day, we are delivering legislation for Auckland that is historic, that will finally deliver some equity to local communities, and that will finally give them decent local representation. I am proud to support this legislation.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) Link to this

That speech from Nikki Kaye was just appalling. She stood there and said that members on this side of the Chamber have not read the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill and we do not understand it. Yeah, right!