1. Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) Link to this
to the Prime Minister
Does he accept the view of nearly two-thirds of Aucklanders expressed in Reid Research polling that there has been insufficient consultation on his proposed changes for Auckland governance; if not, why not?
Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) Link to this
No; because the consultation with Auckland is ongoing, as it has been since the royal commission was put in place by the previous Government. The commission received 3,500 submissions, and yesterday the Government announced that there would be significant consultation exercised in the form of a select committee process taking place. I am rather surprised that Mr Goff wants to talk about polling from Reid Research Services, given that it was the same company—
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Time and again, you have seen the Prime Minister give an irrelevant answer at the end of his replies—they are actually irrelevant all the way through. I ask you to bring him to order; otherwise the House will go into disorder.
The Leader of the Opposition may not have liked the answer, but he asked a specific question about polling, and I was simply referring to the fact that he came third, behind Helen Clark, in a poll conducted by Reid Research Services. That is not my problem.
Mr SPEAKERThe member has raised an issue that obviously concerns him. There is a dilemma—as the honourable Prime Minister has pointed out, the question asked about polling, and he did include a reference to polling in his answer. It is one of the risks, when members ask opinion-type questions, that the answers they get will invariably have a political tone to them. I ask the Prime Minister not to overdo it.
Mr Speaker, you know that the Prime Minister’s answers are disingenuous in this regard. If you look at the question, you will see that it is very straightforward: “Does he accept the view …?”. It is almost a yes or no answer. You know that the Prime Minister was going to go on to make what some people have termed a smart answer at the end of it. That will cause disorder. You have made continual rulings on this issue. I am asking you to bring the Prime Minister to order.
I have ruled on the matter, and I have asked the Prime Minister not to make an excessive practice of it. But the member knows that there is nothing precise about questions that seek opinions. There are some very precise questions on today’s Order Paper, but where opinions are sought the answers will sometimes tend not to be what members perhaps want. I invite the member to ask a further supplementary question.
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I remind the member that I gave him a yes or no answer. The answer was no, and from that point on there was an enormous noise coming from Opposition members. If they want to do that, they will continue to get dealt to because that is the way they are treating us.
Order! [ Interruption] The Leader of the Opposition will not interject when I am on my feet—and of course he was not the only one; he was just the loudest. The Prime Minister has made an absolutely valid point that where there are significant objections during an answer, invariably they will be responded to. We know that is the way this House works. If members want to get precise answers, they need to ask precise questions and be silent while they listen to the answers; otherwise there will be politics injected. That is not all bad, because, after all, this is a place of political debate.
Do we take it from the Prime Minister’s answer that he is arrogantly disregarding the views of Aucklanders—expressed in a ratio of 2:1—that this Government has not consulted, despite its promise in its manifesto that it would do so; and is the public wrong and Mr Key right, yet again?
Why is he continuing to insist on putting forward a bill that would have eight out of 20 councillors of the proposed Auckland Council elected at large, when almost every Aucklander and every group in Auckland that have been questioned on this have said that that is precisely the wrong way to go, that it is undemocratic, and that it will produce unfair and unbalanced representation?
Firstly, I think it is a gross exaggeration for the Leader of the Opposition to say that every Aucklander is opposed to the currently proposed structure. Secondly, there will be a select committee process and Aucklanders are free to go through that committee process, which follows on from the 3,500 submissions received by the royal commission. I know that the Leader of the Opposition will find it difficult, but when the first bill comes into the House he will have to decide whether he is for or against the super-city, because he does not yet know, and certainly Mr Carter does not know—that is for sure.
Will the Aucklanders who make submissions in the select committee process that the Prime Minister refers to, be treated with the same contempt that submitters in Auckland have been treated with over the last 2 days when making submissions on the Resource Management Act, whereby the chair of the committee gave them a third of the time they were promised to make submissions, after they had spent hours preparing them, and whereby submitters and community leaders have regarded the National Government process of hearing submissions as absolutely hopeless?
Submitters will be treated fairly, but those comments are a little rich, coming from a member of the previous Government who seems to have forgotten the way it treated people when the Electoral Finance Act was going through a similar process.
Why is the Prime Minister insistent on denying Aucklanders their right under the Local Government Act to be polled on this major restructuring, which the Minister of Local Government says will last for 50 to 100 years; why is he afraid to let Aucklanders have their say?
There are a number of reasons. Firstly, a simple referendum, as the Minister of Local Government pointed out, would be a yes or a no. The issue is highly complex, and I do not think a yes or no answer would do it justice. Secondly, it will not be lost on members that the reason there was a royal commission that received 3,500 submissions and heard 550 oral submissions was that the then Labour Government knew how dysfunctional Auckland was, and why it needed to change. That is one of the things that New Zealanders liked about the former Prime Minister—at least she knew her mind.
Why did the Prime Minister say, just last week in Westport, that the Government would amalgamate councils only if people wanted to, saying: “The Government would not impose such a change.”; and why is he doing, arrogantly, exactly the opposite of that in Auckland, when people in his own electorate, by a 72 percent majority, say they do not want what the Prime Minister is imposing on them?
The Leader of the Opposition should get his research unit to look at the speech I gave to Local Government New Zealand back in 2007. Secondly, it is my view that there is widespread support for a super-city at the top tier. There is some debate about what the second tier might look like. That is what the select committee process is all about.
Has the Prime Minister told Mr Hide yet that Mr Hide’s proposal that he would pay for some of the restructuring by privatising assets is simply not acceptable; if not, why not?
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question invited, in the first instance, a yes or no answer. But if there was a no answer, it was “if not, why not?”. It is commonly accepted that a Minister will answer a question of that nature.