Hon JOHN CARTER (Associate Minister of Local Government) : I seek leave for the Committee stage of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill to be a 16-hour debate, with members having unlimited numbers of speeches of 5 minutes each, and for the provisions of the bill to be put at the conclusion of the 16-hour debate as one question.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): Is there any objection to that course of action? There appears to be none; it is agreed to.

Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) : I seek leave for an additional matter regarding the ability for members to take multiple calls and not be limited—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That was in the leave sought. That is the case.

Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government) : I will give an overview of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill: it is the second of three bills that together will result in Auckland’s regional and local affairs being governed by one mayor, councillors all being elected from local wards, and local boards having real authority.

The Government has kept its eye on the goal shared by all Aucklanders, which is to be a truly world-class city based on effective regional governance, on regional matters, and on strong local representation. Throughout, we have sought one mayor, one council, and one plan for Auckland. That is what we will now have. We have not worried about those who confuse—and I put the Labour members in this camp—listening and being responsive with backing down. There has been no back-down on the principles we put forward when the royal commission first reported. When the Government announced its first high-level decisions, the Prime Minister said that the aim was to allow Auckland to, firstly, think regionally; secondly, plan strategically; and, thirdly, act decisively. That remains the goal and that is what is to be done by this bill.

We have shown it is possible for a Government to make decisions in a way that takes account of others’ views and that is still speedy and effective. That is what good Government is about. We want local government that gets on with it and gets things done, rather than just endlessly talk about it. We want local government that listens and will change its mind, and will have the courage to stand by its assessment of the fundamentals. We want local government that does things in a transparent way and makes decisions in an open way. That is the sort of decision making we have seen with this bill.

Phil Twyford: Like on Māori seats!

Hon RODNEY HIDE: We were challenged by the royal commission to make the changes needed in time for elections, a little over a year from now. Much to Mr Twyford’s horror, this Government is on track. We are on time, and, unlike—as Mr Twyford admitted—the Labour Government, we are delivering for Auckland. I remind listeners what Mr Twyford said Labour delivered for Auckland.

Hon Member: What did they do?

Hon RODNEY HIDE: Well, apart from the Hon Judith Tizard, it delivered nothing.

The report of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance was not the only thing known about the need to reform local government in Auckland. Auckland’s future has been debated for decades. In fact, I say to Mr Twyford that Michael Joseph Savage stood on a one council policy in 1919. Forty years later the New Zealand Herald ran a series of articles about the need for a change. Various efforts were made, but they were all too late and they were all too little. The result is the Auckland that we have today—a structure that actually has no defenders. I have not heard any party in this Parliament stand up and say that what Auckland has now is optimal or good.

This Government will not wait. Auckland deserves better and Auckland deserves it now. The royal commission heard about endlessly increasing rates, suffocating red tape, transport bottlenecks, delayed development, and lost opportunities. This bill will not solve those problems, but it will give Auckland one mayor, a council, and local boards with the powers, structures, and authority to do so.

In an area that is home to 1.4 million people there are many diverse neighbourhoods and diverse needs. The Auckland region must be able to attract and keep people; operate efficiently; offer an unparalleled lifestyle; and enable business, arts, and sports to flourish. Many of the things holding Auckland back relate to the way the city is run. Important Auckland-wide matters get tangled up in the competing interest of local councils, and community concerns get tangled up in the local councils’ perspective on Auckland-wide matters. It is time for a fresh approach. This is the beginning of a process that will lead to better connections across the region, better value from rates and central government funding, and community control of what matters in our neighbourhoods. The price of doing nothing is far too high, not just for Auckland but for all New Zealanders. Let us make Auckland, this great place, even greater. Let us make Greater Auckland great.

The Auckland region has tremendous natural advantages. One-third of New Zealand’s population lives there in an outstanding natural environment, and it is New Zealand’s principal business centre and gateway to the world. But there are weaknesses, and these decisions are all about addressing them. Those weaknesses are due to the structure of governance in the region, with competing leadership, duplication of facilities, complex and fragmented decision-making processes, and weak accountability. That is what these bills will fix. The functions that require region-wide decision-making must have governance arrangements that meet that need, thus the move to a single city. Just as important, the functions that are best performed at the local level should have advocacy in decision making at that local level. That is why we have strengthened community representation.

There were 3,500 submissions to the royal commission, there were 2,500 to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, and there has been intense media coverage. I and the Associate Minister, the Hon John Carter, have fronted up to meetings, so too have Cabinet Ministers, and so too have Government MPs. We have fronted up to meetings, news conferences, and interviews. Our decisions and the Cabinet papers leading to them have been published. Every possible criticism has been made. Every possible position has been supported. Everyone has been able to have a say. We will meet the challenge of the royal commission to have the new Auckland Council in place for next year’s elections.

Through this process Aucklanders have shown that they care passionately about their region. As a consequence, I have every confidence that the new structures will bring forward people able to give Auckland and its communities the representation they so desperately need to create a world-class city. Thank you.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Labour—Manurewa) : We heard the Minister of Local Government talk about the high-level decision that the Government has made, and, indeed, it was very high. It was far too high to involve the public in the very early stages when the Government embarked on this plan. The Government did not have any select committee hearings on the first bill on this reorganisation of Auckland governance, the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill. Things were put in place so that it was inevitable that all that was left to debate on this second bill, the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, was how the new super-council would operate. I think that is something that people in Auckland do not understand.

Many people made a lot of preparation before they went along to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. These were people who had given years of their lives working for ratepayer groups, community groups, and local clubs etc., and they felt that something was being taken away from them. Something was going to go, and they had no control over that. I said earlier that I thought John Carter chaired the meetings very well. But the trouble was that a lot of people did not understand how things worked. I hear Rodney Hide saying how good it will be to have one mayor for Auckland. It may well be, but a lot of people want to keep their local mayor.

I think one of the things that the Government has not understood is the relationship that people have with their present councils. We saw it when we went out to Henderson. We saw the people of west Auckland making submissions. They were passionate, and they believed in Waitakere. They even believed in Bob Harvey. That surprised me somewhat. They spoke with real passion about Bob Harvey.

In south Auckland, of course, we have Len Brown. People think that he does a great job. He gets around and sees the very young people whom others feel a little intimidated by. He talks in their language, and he gets around schools and public meetings. In Papakura, Calum Penrose has real passion. As mayor he is out until 2 a.m. making sure that kids get home safely. That will not happen with the new super-council with a super-mayor. Perhaps that is what people are really upset about. People are mourning the passing of their councils. That is something the Government has not fully understood.

I am proud to say that in South Auckland we elect Māori and Pacific Islanders on to councils, and that is really important. When the Government decides how many wards will be elected and how many people will be in each ward, I hope the Government does not count out those Māori and Pacific Island people who have put themselves up for election. It is very easy for those who have money, who can advertise, and who can write to people to get their message across, but in South Auckland the real value we see in having councillors who are Māori, Pacific Islanders, and even Asians is that they understand the people in their area. That representation reflects the area, and that is hugely important. Unless the representation reflects the area that people live in, we lose something that will be very hard to recover.

Nikki Kaye: Why did you only want six councils?

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

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

Simon Bridges: How many?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: Huge; I get close to a thousand. I have to say—

Simon Bridges: That’s not so big in National Party terms.

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

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

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

Hon John Carter: And they’ll still be able to.

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

Hon John Carter: Not the Auckland Council; the local board will decide.

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

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

Simon Bridges: Ha, ha!

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

Phil Twyford: He never said anything.

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

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

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

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

Hon Steve Chadwick: How many other mistakes are made?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hon Phil Heatley: Was that 27 percent?

PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, 27 percent were in favour.

Hon Phil Heatley: That’s the Labour Party polling.

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

Nikki Kaye: The royal commission didn’t recommend a referendum.

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

Nikki Kaye: Because we listened to the royal commission.

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

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

Simon Bridges: Spell it!

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

Hon Member: Corporatisation!

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

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

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

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

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

In my remaining time I want to talk—

Phil Twyford: Say something interesting!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hon John Carter: Sue, you’ve got it so wrong.

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

Hon John Carter: You have.

SUE KEDGLEY: Well, perhaps he would like to turn to clause 13D and look at the critical principles for how we allocate the decision-making responsibilities of the Auckland Council. The bill holds out the prospect that the local boards will be given some delegated responsibilities, but then subclause (2)(b) states unless “(i) the impact of the decision will extend beyond a single local board area;”. Well, what decision will not? It goes on: “or (ii) effective decision making will require alignment or integration with other decisions that are the responsibility of the governing body;”. What decision by a local board, a local community, will not require alignment or integration, and therefore can be vetoed by the Auckland Council? Then it states, and this is the most waffly of all, unless “(iii) the benefits of a consistent or co-ordinated approach across Auckland will outweigh the benefits of reflecting the diverse needs and preferences of the communities within each local board area.” What waffle!

What that provision is actually saying is that the Auckland Council has the power to veto any decision that is made by any local board. The local boards will be completely subservient to the all-powerful Auckland Council. They will have no staff of their own and no resources of their own. The Auckland Council will hold the purse strings and will allocate some money, provided that—and this is spelt out—every other local board gets the same amount. When we actually look behind all the spin we see that all that the local boards are able to do, all that they are responsible for, is to identify and communicate the interests and preferences of the people to the Auckland Council, propose some local by-laws—which the Auckland Council has to agree to—and a few non-regulatory activities that are allocated by the Auckland Council.

Aucklanders should be under no illusion: if John Banks is the Mayor of Auckland, he will have extraordinary, almost Draconian, powers. He will appoint his inner cabal. He will be able to appoint all the chairs, the deputy chairs, and the deputy mayor. He can appoint himself the chair of any committee he likes. These are powers, I might say, that no other mayor in New Zealand has. He sets the agenda. He decides the council plans and the budget.

He decides what processes and mechanisms the Auckland Council will have to engage with the people of Auckland. What does that mean? He will decide—he and he alone, the bill says—how the Auckland Council will consult Aucklanders. What say the mayor decides he cannot be bothered consulting Aucklanders, particularly if we have some contentious legislation or contentious issues, such as selling off assets? That, of course, is the hidden agenda behind all of this. He will get to decide how the council will consult the people of Auckland. The Local Government Act contains specific consultation mechanisms. Does paragraph (aa) of clause 9(3) override the provisions in the Local Government Act that local councils are required to follow? The Act spells out quite clearly consultation mechanisms for major things such as the sell-off of assets. I am assuming that this bill means that the mayor can ignore those provisions, which every other council is required to follow, just as this Government has ignored the provisions of the Local Government Act in ramming through this major change without requiring a poll.

The people of Auckland need to look at these provisions and understand the implications of them. I speak not just as someone who has been peering at this legislation, looking at all the clauses, and realising we could drive a tractor through them; I also speak as a former city councillor. I know from my 8 years on the Wellington City Council that once the mayor gets to control the inner cabal, the chairs, and the councillors, he will—and I say “he” advisedly; it will be a “he”, it seems—appoint them all and they will be beholden to him. He will able to set the agenda for Auckland and ram it through.

He will also be able to veto virtually any decision that any local board has made. There will be 20 to 30 of these tiny local boards, with four to nine members. They will be so fragmented, so tiny, so impotent that they will not be able to represent the grassroots interests of local communities. Local government works best if it represents the grassroots, if it represents local communities. Well, I can tell members that this set-up is far from being grassroots. The council will be huge. It will probably be the largest organisation in New Zealand. Certainly, I believe that it will have more assets—$28 billion worth—than any other organisation in New Zealand. It will have up to 6,000 staff—that is, if Rodney Hide and John Banks do not get rid of most of the staff. It will be a huge organisation, and, really, it will be a form of state government; it is not local government—apart from these funny local boards, which are just community boards with a different name.

Dr Jackie Blue: No, they are not.

SUE KEDGLEY: I can hear a National member saying: “Oh no, they’re not.” The New Zealand Herald has pointed out that the commentary is full of the distinct roles that the boards will have. It states that there will not be a hierarchical relationship, that the local boards will have distinct roles. But, the New Zealand Herald said, anyone looking for the distinct roles in this bill will look in vain. That is what the mayors of Auckland have said. The Mayor of Waitakere, Bob Harvey, said that the local boards will be so subservient and impotent that they will be like sewing circles.

If people actually take the time to go through the bill, they will find that, basically, the Auckland Council of 20 councillors will be the governing body—it has even been given that name. The local boards will have the ability to consult their communities, but, beyond that, they will be absolutely subservient. They will not have any staff of their own. They are not able to own property. They are completely creatures of the Auckland Council. Sure, they can advocate in their communities, but anything they decide can be vetoed by the Auckland Council. I think that when Aucklanders realise that, they will be bitterly disappointed. They have heard all the spin. The Government has said it has listened to the people of Auckland, made changes, and given the boards powers. But if people actually analyse the bill, they will realise that, behind all the spin and the double-speak, the local boards are just as subservient as they always were. I can see John Carter trying to leap to his feet; he has done a marvellous job of spinning this, of saying that the Government has given the boards powers, but the truth is it has not given them any powers.

Hon JOHN CARTER (Associate Minister of Local Government) : I really, really need to respond to that member, Sue Kedgley. The first question I have to ask myself is why she does not speak to the person in the bench next to her, Sue Bradford, who actually supports exactly what the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee did, along with the Labour Party, and along with every other party represented on the select committee. We worked hard. I hope she is listening, and not listening to Phil Twyford, who supports what we did in the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill in this regard. I draw to Sue Kedgley’s attention the fact that the select committee was unanimous. I really need Sue Kedgley to listen to this; I wonder whether Phil Twyford will allow Sue Kedgley to listen to me. The fact is that the whole select committee unanimously backed this part of the legislation.

Let me explain to Sue Kedgley and to some others who did not listen—such as Andrew Williams, Bob Harvey, and a journalist called Bernard Orsman, who just did not want to understand what is happening—how this works. The Auckland Transition Agency has the responsibility, come 2010—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The member Phil Twyford cannot stand in the aisle and conduct a discussion. There is another way for him to do that.

Hon JOHN CARTER: Thank you, Mr Chairman, for interrupting. You can interrupt me any time you wish. The fact is that in 2010 or before, once the Local Government Commission has made its decision about how many boards there are and where they are, it will look at those functions. I say to Sue Kedgley that Waiheke Island is a classic example, or Papakura, if it gets to be a board. The Auckland Transition Agency will then look and ask what the current functions of the Papakura District Council are, and what current functions the Auckland City Council carries out on behalf of Waiheke Island. These are the sorts of questions that Sue Bradford asked in the select committee, because she wanted to be convinced that the legislation was right. These are the very questions she asked. The answer she got was that the Auckland Transition Agency will look and say what Auckland City Council currently carries out for Waiheke Island, or Papakura, or wherever it might be—for example, Devonport. The local boards will be allocated those functions by the Auckland Transition Agency.

Alongside those functions, the boards will be given a budget to cover the cost. Sue Bradford, the Labour Party, the National Party, and the Māori Party all questioned to make sure we got that right. So the fact is that those functions will be allocated to the local boards. Once they are allocated, they become the domain of the local boards; the unitary authority cannot take those functions off them. For example, if there happens to be a Manukau local board, in whatever form, and one of the things that is allocated to the Manukau local board is its swimming pool, and the fact that it is a free swimming pool, it will become the domain of the Manukau local board. I tell Ross Robertson to listen, because he really needs to understand this. It is really important. His party supported this, so he needs to understand why it did. George Hawkins, Su’a William Sio, and Phil Twyford supported it. The whole committee supported it. The Manukau local board gets allocated the responsibility of looking after the Manukau swimming pool. It gets funds to allocate it. The local board then makes the decision as to whether access is free. The local board makes that decision, not the unitary authority.

As things progress, the unitary authority carries out the regional functions that it is responsible for, and if, for some reason, the regional authority or the unitary authority decides that it should have a say in what happens, then it has to be by negotiation. If the local boards say that they will carry on doing their swimming pool, or those functions that Waiheke Island has been allocated, or if the Papakura local board says it will carry on doing what it is doing, then the unitary authority cannot interfere with those responsibilities and functions. That is what Sue Kedgley’s colleague sitting next to her, Sue Bradford, ensured happened. Sue Kedgley needs to read the whole bill. She can wave it round as much as she likes. I will take my jacket off and wave that round—it means about as much.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No, you won’t.

Hon JOHN CARTER: I am trying to explain to the member how the bill actually works. In fact, if it helps I will take a lot more off and wave everything round, and see if that helps her understand what is going on.

The point is that we have made very clear steps to ensure that the local functions that the local boards want to have are granted to them, that those functions are funded, and that the boards have the ability to carry them out. Regardless of what the member thinks she is reading here, I say she should talk to her bench mate, Sue Bradford. She will tell her; she questioned the officials time and time again. I tell Sue Kedgley to talk to the Labour members; they questioned the officials time and time again. So did we, on this side of the Chamber, to make sure that we got it right. When we came to vote on the provision, it was unanimous, because we know that we are empowering the boards, and that is what the people of Auckland wanted to happen. That is what the Minister of Local Government said would happen. That is what I said would happen. That is what the select committee said would happen. That is what will happen. The people in the communities will have their voice. The people in the communities will have their local democracy. The people will have their heart. That is what they asked for and that is what they will get.

I say to Sue Kedgley that I understand that if one reads this bill by itself, one could misinterpret it. I understand why Bernard Orsman actually misunderstood it. Having read it for 10 minutes—I know he is a clever journalist—he suddenly realised that the Labour Party had got it wrong, the Green Party had got it wrong, the Māori Party had got it wrong, the National Party had got it wrong, the select committee had got it wrong, the officials had got it wrong—[Interruption] No, Bernard Orsman was right, just the same as Sue Kedgley says she is right! Funnily enough, everyone who had been working on it for all those months—all the select committee members, the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Māori Party, and the National Party—had apparently got it wrong, according to Bernard and Sue Kedgley.

I say to her, to Bernard, and to those others to please understand that we will be allocating functions to the local boards; the Auckland Transition Agency will do that. They will then allocate the funding to allow them to carry those functions out. The unitary authority cannot interfere with those responsibilities unless it is by agreement. If it tries to interfere it actually goes against the principles of the bill, which are most important, and it can be taken to court. But I tell the member that in order to ensure that a whole lot of litigation and ratepayer money will not be wasted, we will in the third bill put in a disputes tribunal that will rule on those instances. That is what the member’s colleague on her bench asked to make sure would happen. She was assured that it would happen. I know it will happen. The Minister said it would happen. I will make it happen. The select committee will make it happen.

I ask members in this Chamber to please understand that these boards are empowered. They are not weak-kneed. They will have the right and the responsibility to represent their communities, because that is what Aucklanders have wanted. That is what we will give them. The most important thing we could do, while we had the regional structure in place to look after those regional issues, was to ensure that the heart of Auckland was looked after, retained, and allowed to get on with its life. We have made sure that that has happened. I tell the member not to misread the bill, and not to misrepresent what is happening, because we have given the boards more power than they ever thought they were going to get. They will do such a good job for their communities.

The member can wave the bill round as much as she likes and I will wave anything she wants me to wave at her. But I tell Sue Kedgley to understand and to talk to her bench mate, because it was unanimous at the committee. There is more work to be done, but by the time those local boards get out there they will do everything their community wants them to do. They will have the money to do it, and they will have the muscle to do it. That is what this bill is all about. That is what the select committee has brought back to this Committee. It is what Aucklanders wanted, and it is what they will get. Thank you.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : This is my first opportunity to speak on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill tonight. I have to say that I am concerned that we are here in the Chamber and are once again rushing through important legislation under urgency. The process the Government is adopting is becoming a little bit of a bad habit. We are seeing this, week after week. Here we are making major constitutional changes for New Zealand’s largest city, in which a third of New Zealand’s population lives, and again these issues are being progressed under urgency.

I want to respond to the honourable member Jonathan Coleman. He may think that people on the North Shore do not care about this issue, but actually they do.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: They do, and they’re in favour of it.

DARIEN FENTON: They are not in favour of it.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: How would you know, Darien?

DARIEN FENTON: Because I have been to the meetings. That member has not been to the meetings. He was not at the select committee to hear the submissions from the North Shore. He has not been talking to people on the North Shore and he is not listening. Is that member saying he disagrees with the Mayor of the North Shore? Is that what the member is saying? The mayor is saying about the process that after all the community effort to have their voices heard, and all the Government’s contrived flip-flops, back-downs, and Cabinet-level tantrums, we are essentially back to square one. I would be interested to hear a response from that member.

I think what we are seeing again is that National thinks it is fine to ride roughshod over the people of Auckland. National thinks it is fine to pretend that a process has been undergone, and then to override that process by making decisions even before the select committee outcome is known. I have to say that Aucklanders have been appallingly let down. Firstly, National took away from the people of Auckland the right to vote on the proposals in a referendum under the Local Government Act. Then National set up the rushed process of a 3-week select committee in order for it to make decisions, and then at the same time made decisions in the back room with the ACT Party.

I saw submitter after submitter being given just 5 minutes to say what they thought. The submitters were important community groups from the North Shore, west Auckland, and right across Auckland. I know that each of them had spent a lot of time preparing their submissions. I know they had spent hours and hours getting ready to present their submissions, only to be rushed through when they arrived at the select committee. They were given 5 minutes to say what they thought and then there were a couple of questions from the chair. It is just not good enough.

What we have also seen is that National thinks it is fine to ignore the people of Hunua and, by and large, the people of Rodney District until they have created enough stink—a huge stink—to make National nervous. Then we see Mr Key—that nice, pragmatic Mr Key, that nervous Mr Key—doing yet another U-turn on Rodney District. I am pleased he has done a U-turn on Rodney District. I am pleased for the people of Rodney that that has happened. But what is obvious about that U-turn is that National and John Key care more about what Rodney Hide says than about what the people of Auckland say about the Māori seats. The Māori Party’s questions this afternoon about the difference between caving in to the demands of the people of Rodney District—and I support their demands—and the demands of the people who marched in the street and who went on the hīkoi to demand that there be Māori representation, are really interesting. I do not understand the difference, and I would like to hear from the Minister what the difference is.

What is also obvious is that National does not care about the workers in the process and in the transition—those workers whom Nikki Kaye says she cares about, whose jobs are in jeopardy. The uncertainty must be awful for them. Let us imagine what it is like for those people in the process at the moment, not knowing whether they will have a job in October 2010. Yet National expects those workers to keep working, to contribute, to do the things in the community they do very well, and to keep being positive. That is completely unrealistic. I do not know how the National Government thinks things will keep ticking over while those staff wait to hear whether they have been sacked. How on earth does the National Government imagine that those community organisations will survive? The chair of the select committee, John Carter, praised those community organisations every time they came before the select committee. He praised them. He told them that he appreciated them so much and that he had not realised how much the community organisations did in Auckland.

Hon TAU HENARE (National) : I want to talk about the local boards, but let us go back to the start.

Lynne Pillay: Let’s go back to Māori seats.

Hon TAU HENARE: No, let us go back to the start. When the member can pronounce “Māori” correctly, I will start listening to her. We may as well start at the beginning. There is no such thing as “Mari”.

I want to talk about local boards and about how, throughout the process—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon TAU HENARE: That is all right. Members can laugh at the mispronunciation of the indigenous language. That is all right; I am cool with that. I am sure they are cool with it as well.

What we heard from the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee and from the people who came before that committee related to the real issues of democracy and local power. Some of the other things the Labour members talked about incessantly were power and democracy, and what local boards could look after. There was the obvious issue for Su’a William Sio about swimming pools.

Lynne Pillay: Did you pronounce that properly?

Hon TAU HENARE: Absolutely. I am from Ōtara. I was born and bred in Ōtara. The member can prattle on about where she was born and bred, but the fact of the matter is that local boards will not only have power to make decisions but also money to spend on local issues. There will be a requirement for local boards to create local plans, for goodness’ sake!

When one looks at most things in the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, one sees that not a lot of it can be argued against by Labour members. In fact, one of the things I have noticed in this debate is that when things get pretty hot and a wee bit aggressive from the Labour members, the only thing they can talk about—

H V Ross Robertson: When we get passionate, Tau.

Hon TAU HENARE: The only thing they can get passionate about is the Māori seats. For them it is not about local democracy any more, or about moving the city forward. It is not about taking 1.4 million people on a journey.

Lynne Pillay: What do you think of Rodney?

Hon TAU HENARE: What do I think of Rodney? I will tell members what I think of Rodney: it is a nice place to live, and it should be part of the super-city. As for Franklin, I am sure that the Local Government Commission will decide, in its wisdom, how things should pan out when we are through with our business.

But members should make no mistake; although we may get upset about Māori seats and about who is in and who is not, the real issue is local power. It is about power in local people’s hands.

Hon David Cunliffe: As long as they’re members of the National Party.

Hon TAU HENARE: It does not matter whether they are in the National Party. This is the unfortunate Fabian rant that we get.

Hon David Cunliffe: I didn’t know you knew Fabian.

Hon TAU HENARE: Oh, I know about Fabians, all right. Just talk to Phil Twyford.

Phil Twyford: Name one!

Hon TAU HENARE: I will name one: Phil Twyford. There we go. He is the chairman of the Fabians. This is all about local democracy, about people making decisions. [Interruption] “Spot”, who is trying to get the call, should sit down. [Interruption] Well, we would not know anyway. This is about local decisions. It is about local people making local decisions about local issues.

Hon Member: Yeah, right!

Hon TAU HENARE: Members opposite say “Yeah, right!”. Well, look at the power of the local boards. They can make plans—

Hon David Cunliffe: They’ve got no money.

Hon TAU HENARE: Yes, they have money. Of course they have money.

Hon David Cunliffe: They’ve got no staff.

Hon TAU HENARE: Oh, the member says “They’ve got no staff.” For goodness’ sake! These are the Labour Party members. They want to create employment, all right; they want to create employment for their no-hoper mates in the left-wing Labour Party communities out in the suburbs, where they think—

Hon David Cunliffe: Divide and rule!

Hon TAU HENARE: For goodness’ sake! The country listened to that twaddle for 9 years, and it decided that it was time to move on.

Hon David Cunliffe: Longer than you’ll last!

Hon TAU HENARE: Well, 3 years, 6 years, or 9 years—this is all about taking a city on a journey—

Hon David Cunliffe: Backwards!

Hon TAU HENARE: Oh no, not backwards.

Hon David Cunliffe: Rightwards!

Hon TAU HENARE: Absolutely not backwards, and not right, and not left. It is about taking Auckland on a journey. It is a city that needs to go forward as one, not as four, five, or six different entities. This is about taking 1.25 million people on a journey together.

Lynne Pillay: What about the Māori seats?

Hon TAU HENARE: There they go! Māori seats do not come into it. It is all about taking a journey to where the city needs to go.

Hon David Cunliffe: Into the deep blue night!

Hon TAU HENARE: Wherever it is, we need to make sure that in respect of the infrastructure and the power base the people of Auckland get a foot in and are listened to. This is about 1.25 million people taking a journey together, and making sure that it is the best city—

Lynne Pillay: What do you call those things that jump off cliffs?

Hon TAU HENARE: That member is a silly woman. This is about a journey that needs to take place. It is about taking the whole of the city on that journey. We cannot do that with four cities. We cannot do that with Mayor Williams, Mayor Brown, Mayor Harvey, and Mayor Banks, all worried about their own little patches. I am very proud to say that what the Government and the select committee have done is basically to agree with 90 percent of what the submitters had to say.

Hon David Cunliffe: I doubt that.

Hon TAU HENARE: Oh yes, absolutely. The big drawcard for the left was the issue of the Māori seats.

Hon David Cunliffe: It should be for you, too.

Hon TAU HENARE: Well, we lost that one. Ninety percent of the issues that were canvassed in front of the select committee have been dealt with in a manner that shows they were listened to. Members have made a big issue out of the Māori seats, and maybe we should. But at the end of the day that plays a small part in the game of this new Auckland super-city.

That is what I am trying to get at: 90 percent has been agreed to, not only by National but also by Labour, and by most of the people who came to give their submissions in front of the select committee. We all know that; we were all there. No one can tell me that there were all these issues, and that the submitters had a whole range of issues that they wanted dealt with. I repeat that 90 percent of the issues that were canvassed by those people who made submissions have been taken account of in this bill.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : This is my first opportunity to take part in this debate, and I appreciate the opportunity. Let us dispose of some straw-men arguments that were raised by the member who has just resumed his seat. I do not blame him for having a go, because we all know he is feeling pretty conflicted at the moment in terms of his loyalty to his party and his loyalty to his people. That party has—what is the technical phrase—“crapped” all over Māoridom with this decision.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is not acceptable.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It has not honoured Māoridom with its decisions on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill.

We agree that we need to take Auckland forward, and we also agree that we need stronger regional integration, and that Auckland needed changes. No one is arguing about that. That is why we set up the royal commission in the first place. Let us try a little game of join the dots. It does not irk Aucklanders that the Government did not consult them; it irks them that the Government pretended to consult and then did not. This process has been marked by the hallmark of this Government, which is sham consultation.

Can anyone tell me who it was who said: “I want to reiterate that the Government approaches this process with an open mind. We are listening to Aucklanders.”? Who could that have been? Was it the same person who chaired the Cabinet committee that dumped the royal commission report virtually within days of it hitting the table, and then put a 20-page micro-document called “Making Auckland Bluer” out in its place? That was no consultation. The Government did not come back to Aucklanders. It did not ask people what they thought of the royal commission’s $2 million, 18-month effort. The Government did not consult on it; it just made a decision. Then it threw the House into urgency. Join the dots.

The next step under urgency was to repeal the existing territorial authorities. That was the equivalent of—I ask members to remember—the Battle of Hastings, when William the Conqueror crossed the British Channel. He drilled holes in the boats, so there was no turning back. Well, that was what this Government’s action was about. It was about making sure there was no turning back. There was no consultation and no select committee process. There was a truncated debate in the House and that was it. Game over!

My city, Waitakere City, was 20 years in the making—the eco-city. It is a proud place, turning West Auckland from “Boganville”, with no “u”, to a place where we care about the arts, smart business, and communities. Westies were proud of Waitakere. I see the former Deputy Mayor of Manukau City here, and I know how deeply he felt about the extinguishment of the city that he had worked to build, without so much as a consultation. What about the referendum provision in the Local Government Act? Not conducting a referendum was the largest constitutional change in local government in New Zealand’s history. That Government—with its sham consultation—set aside the binding referendum provisions of the Local Government Act, which meant Aucklanders did not get a say, like the law said they should. The Government repealed the law in the same bill that it rammed through Parliament in urgency. Join the dots.

That action is the hallmark of the new National Government, that middle-of-the-road Government with the friendly face. Do we know the one? It was going to do everything Labour did that people liked, but with a new friendly team. Yeah, right! This is Muldoonism back with a smile. Join the dots. This was not just a lack of consultation; this was the veneer, the charade, of consultation. That was the first bill. Then the Government would set up a rushed 3-week select committee process. Aucklanders, in their hundreds, submitted. It was in their thousands actually, but hundreds, nearly a thousand, took the time to travel to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee to make their submissions in person. They got 5 minutes—sometimes 10 minutes—and then they were shuffled on and shut down. After they had done it the frustration showed from people who bothered to make submissions. They said it was sometimes worse than not being there at all. I give credit to members on both sides of the House who endured the process, because it was pretty gruelling. It was not that there was no consultation; it was that it was a sham consultation. Meanwhile in the background, in the Cabinet room, was the same Cabinet committee that had received the papers on the first bill and made its decision within days of the royal commission reporting. The same Cabinet committee was making the big calls even before the select committee had reported back.

There was also the special subcommittee on Māori representation. Mr Key knew well enough that if 10,000 people were marching in a hīkoi in central Auckland—and here we and the Māori Party are at one—he had to listen. But instead of real consultation—join the dots—he set up sham consultation. He set up a special subcommittee, and the previous speaker served on it. It went around asking people what they thought, which was a good thing, except the decision was made by the Prime Minister before they had even had the chance to see the report. What could be more hypocritical than going out asking people what they think and then making the decision before the result had even been heard? Ten thousand people marched in the hīkoi from all over Auckland. So the Government set up a special subcommittee and made the decision before it had even reported. That is no consultation; that is worse—join the dots—that is sham consultation. It is what this Government is getting known for—Muldoonism with a smile. Sham consultation! Shame on the Government!

Dr Ashraf Choudhary: Shame sham!

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Shame sham! It is the same sham, the shame sham. Members should say that quickly a hundred times and see how they get on.

With regard to Māori representation, nothing was set in stone, the Government said. Oh, was it not? Why, then, was the Minister in the chair, Rodney Hide—who I hope will take the next call to defend his reputation—so brave as to roar in public that he would resign if the principles for which the ACT Party stood were not listened to in the Cabinet room? Why did he say that? I bet Mr Hide a good bottle of wine that he already knew the way it would come out. I challenge the Minister to take a call and tell us otherwise, if it is otherwise. But, no, I do not think he wants to, even though he has the time.

Lynne Pillay: He’s looking ashamed.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: He is looking “a shamed”, and ashamed. It is the same sham, the same shame sham again. Members can say that quickly 50 times and join the dots.

What about the Government’s U-turn on boundaries? As if it did not have a bad enough reputation from all this shaming, it decided to drop half of Rodney District and half of Franklin District. It is pretty hard to lose half of Rodney District—it is quite a big area. It is pretty hard to lose half of Pukekohe—it is like drawing a line down the main street. Then the Government reversed its position on Rodney District, so no wonder Franklin District feels aggrieved, right? No wonder Franklin is feeling pretty annoyed, and that leaves the honourable member for Port Waikato—or whatever it is now called—Dr Paul Hutchison, roaring helplessly, bleating in the back paddock, and watching his political career washing out to sea from Port Waikato. It is washing down the Waikato; that is where it leaves him. He is up the famous creek without the proverbial paddle.

This bill is not a case of no consultation; this is sham consultation. Join the dots—this is Muldoonism with a smile. This is what the Government is now known for. Aucklanders will not forget it, and they will remind the Government in 2011 that 3 years was too long.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) : Well, what a bitter, bitter rant that was.

Hon David Cunliffe: It wasn’t bitter!

Dr JACKIE BLUE: It was. I say to David Cunliffe that he should see his elected MP, Nikki Kaye, and have a chat with her. There was a lot of talk about the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee being a sham, but in actual fact I was a member of that committee, and I want to reassure the member that the process was not a sham. It was a genuine process. The chair, the Hon John Carter, made sure that every person who wanted to be heard was heard. People were heard and they were listened to. As a result, there have been significant changes to the original bill. They were heard, and that is the democratic process. I want to reassure members that that was the case. That member was not there, and he is not aware of it, I am sure, but a very genuine, democratic process was at work.

The process basically started under the Labour Government. There was a problem with the governance of Auckland. It was not working, it was dysfunctional, there was turf fighting, and we needed to move forward. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance started the process, and we will finish it. We will finish it so that the new set-up will be ready for the local body elections next year. We are on track and we will get there. We are doing well.

I want to talk about the local boards, because the changes in respect of the local boards are among the most significant changes that have occurred in this bill. They have a lot of powers. The committee went to all areas of Auckland—we went to see the people; they did not come to us—and the submitters we heard were very worried about losing their voice, their identity, and their representation. Well, the local boards will have real powers. I hope that when the people we saw read about the bill and read the commentary their fears will be allayed. The local boards are being made to listen to the community. They need to consult the community. They need to make a plan. They need to write up a plan. There are no ifs or buts about it; they have to listen to the community, because that is part of their job. The local boards are new entities. They are not the community boards that we have now. They are not the local councils that we have now. They are new entities altogether. This legislation gives them powers to go forward so that they can consult their communities and represent them. The people in those communities should feel no fear. They were very fearful, I must admit, and I was quite surprised how fearful and passionate they were. It made a deep impression upon me. But I am very confident that the local boards will do the right thing by them.

There was talk about having community councils instead of local boards. I am not sure of the detail and the arguments behind it, but I imagine that there would have been a lot of confusion between community councillors and city councillors. At the end of the day, the whole point of changing the term to “community council” was to give the job more status. Well, this legislation does give the job status. The new local board members, when they are elected, will have real status and real powers. They are legitimate and the legislation will back them. The local boards will have dedicated budgets to provide local services. They will have the money to front up and provide the services that the community needs. It is not lip service. The Auckland Council will need to have a funding policy so that it can fund the different local boards and devolve money to them in an appropriate way.

I want to go down a bit of a sidetrack here and talk about the remuneration of the local board members. A paragraph in the commentary on the bill talks about it. A few submitters talked about the fact that the current community board members are paid a very modest amount of money to do what they do. It is almost voluntary work—altruistic work. That means that the individuals who step up to do the job are people who have the time or the money to do it. It is a luxury. That prevents people who could do it and want to do it, but who do not have the time or the money, from stepping up. The committee had a discussion about it and we heard from the submitters. I will read out the paragraph in the commentary. Although the committee does not have any power to say what will happen, we have stated that “While we recognise that we cannot set the remuneration levels of local board members, we urge the Remuneration Authority to give serious consideration to this issue. We consider that the remuneration provided to local board members must be sufficient to attract good-quality candidates and reflect adequately what the job involves.”

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) : Earlier Mr Tau Henare talked about “a journey”. To continue on that analogy, the National Government has used the—

Hon Tau Henare: The journey.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO: The member talked about “the journey”. The National Government has used the term “roadway to recovery” as an analogy. If the Auckland Council structure is the vehicle to take the Auckland region forward, then we need a vehicle that can fit everybody in. If it is a canoe, then we need everybody to be paddling in the same direction. But we hear from the other side of the Chamber about a bicycle. How many people fit on a bicycle? One. I also heard the member for Tauranga say that the Government is listening. If it was really listening, then we would not be rushing this bill through under urgency. If it was really listening, we would not have dealt with the first Auckland local government reorganisation bill under urgency. That bill snuffed out the life of eight local territorial authorities. If it was really listening, it would have heard the voices of the thousands of Aucklanders who marched to downtown Auckland in support of Māori seats. If it was really listening, we would not be flip-flopping on Rodney boundaries at the eleventh hour. After all the community efforts to prepare submissions and to take time off work to speak to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, all we have from this Government is flip-flops, back-downs, and Cabinet-level tantrums.

If the Government was listening, it would have heard the resounding voices of Aucklanders who are not happy that the Government is listening only to the Minister of Local Government—who represents a party with less than 4 percent support from this nation, and who seems to have so much influence on this National Government—and not to the voices of the rest of Aucklanders, who will be affected by the changes that are being brought about. The Mayor of North Shore says Rodney Hide’s super-city is a “time bomb set to explode grassroots democracy”. Aucklanders were promised their big chance to have a say; Aucklanders were promised that they would be listened to, but the only person the National Government seems to be listening to is Mr Hide, the Minister of Local Government. Aucklanders have said, and members of the select committee will have heard, that that is not right. They have said it is not right that a member of a party that has such small support on a national level should have so much influence. They have likened it to the dog’s tail wagging its head. I say to Aucklanders who are listening—[Interruption] OK.

So what is happening? Significant change processes are now occurring on a number of fronts; I believe they will ultimately prove unsustainable. Franklin is split in two, with Waiuku in and Pukekohe out, and I have been told that if Franklin is split in two, then one side of a street will belong to the Auckland super-city and the other side will belong to the Waikato region. If people on the latter side of the street need resource consent they will have to travel an hour and a half to Hamilton to try to get that consent.

Representation on the Auckland Council is undercooked: 20 councillors to represent 1.4 million people is a nonsense in the local government sense, especially with around 30 local community boards with subsidiary status to the council, including subsidiary status to the Auckland Transport Agency and to Watercare Services. The agency, in particular, will be a very powerful organisation. It will hold sway over the boards and, I suspect, the Auckland Council. I believe that the Government has replaced democracy with powerful bureaucratic institutions, and I cannot see an employee of the Auckland Transport Agency fully listening to the members of the Māngere local board on an issue of some roading maintenance on one of our local streets, without some ultimate political sanction from the council way down on Queen Street.

I have heard the Minister in the chair, Mr John Carter, say that the local boards have been given powers. That is right; we were at the select committee. The beauty of the select committee report is that to some extent it reflects what the community was saying. It includes a minority report from the Labour Party and it includes a minority report from the Green Party, but the difficult thing for most Aucklanders to accept is that although the report might reflect, to a large extent, what was submitted by them, it does not align with the ultimate bill that this Government has put forward. Ultimately, the local boards do not have those powers unless the Auckland Council grants them to them. There is no funding that is not dependent on what the council delivers. There is no staff, unless the Auckland Council says it is OK. We have not even decided what those boundaries are, other than what is already in the bill.

I come back to the issue of consultation. The word for consultation in Samoa is “soalaupule”, which, if one were to translate it, literally means “to share authority” or “to share power”. There is an expectation from Aucklanders, when the Government says it is listening, that it is hearing what Aucklanders are saying. I do not believe that this Government has actually taken the time to listen to the words that have been said. It said it would listen—that is good; that is part of consultation—but then it went and did what it wanted to do in the first place. It has flip-flopped around because some of its major supporters were not happy. Actually, maybe they were not supporters; when I asked the Hon John Carter whether he was aware that the people who are most irate about this proposal were National’s supporters, he said that they were not its supporters, but rather its members. They are National Party members who are not happy about the way that this Government is ramming through this process without giving due consultation to the public in Auckland.

Why is consultation important? It is important because these are significant changes. The people of Auckland have rights under the Local Government Act, and they were not given the opportunity to use those rights. They were not listened to. They have not been listened to and the only person the National Government seems to be listening to is Mr Hide. I think the members of the public are now wondering why the Government is listening only to Mr Hide and not to the people of Auckland.

The Government wants to listen to him, anyway. Mr Hide has been open about it: he wants to gut Auckland governance. He wants to sell off the assets that belong to the people of Auckland. The National Government is in agreement with that. Mr Hide does not want any Māori representation. He does not believe in being inclusive. He actually sees a small minority being able to govern the Auckland region. The National Government agrees with that, but it has stayed away from it and allowed Mr Hide to get all the blame. Mr Hide does not have anything to say about that, because whether we like it or not, for the ACT Party—a minority party with less than 4 percent support from throughout this nation—any publicity is important. Mr Key and the National Government are staying away from all of that blame. The blame is on Mr Hide, but the real culprit behind this is the National Government, which is egging him on and allowing him free rein to gut local government in Auckland and not listen to the public, even though the Government uses those words. They are hollow words. Aucklanders are listening to this debate, and they know they are hollow words.

Last week there was a newspaper article; many members would have seen it. There was a picture of Mr Hide in an article in a suburban newspaper. The picture shows Mr Hide with his hand extended. That picture reflects how the general community feels about this legislation: it is gutting democracy and it is undemocratic. Because the Government is rushing this process through it is not listening to the people of Auckland, and therefore it is getting things wrong. The flip-flops on the boundary issue recognise that fact, and reveal that the Government is getting things wrong. I am afraid that because it is getting things wrong, and because it is not listening, the people of Auckland will have to pay for the mistakes of the National-ACT Government.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) : Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. I must say we have heard a very confused and inaccurate account from Su’a William Sio, because he is the man who said “Waiuku in, Pukekohe out.” Well, he is totally wrong about that. He has been on the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, but he has not even got the basic facts right.

Hon John Carter: He couldn’t find Pukekohe.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: That is right. It took him several hours before he finally made it there. He got there one afternoon, I believe.

This bill does include the formation of the new Auckland Council established as a unitary authority, and of course it deals with the council’s boundaries. The southern boundary is of huge importance to the electorate I represent, Hunua, and particularly to the people of Franklin. As soon as the royal commission had reported and the Government had made its response, I called two meetings. One of those meetings happened to be in the northern part of the Hunua electorate, between Beachlands and a place called Ōmana. I must say that 30 to 40 people turned up, a very low turnout given the importance of this issue. The one thing that they expressed was that they wished to ensure that a rurally orientated board finally represented the rural part of their electorate. The others were quite happy and content to go to Manukau. But the Pohutakawa Coast Times,in its editorial and on the front page of the paper, said the issue was ho-hum; that is all it said.

The next day I had a meeting up in Pukekohe. It was hardly advertised, but 700 people turned up. They had some very, very important messages. They were loud and clear, and they were passionate in their messages. They wanted to keep Franklin intact. They also wanted to keep the name of Franklin, although the royal commission, of course, had wanted to change it to Hunua. Hunua is a name that translates into the meaning “high, infertile ground”, which is diametrically opposed to the rich, fertile soils of Franklin that produce so much of the food that goes to the good people of Auckland and elsewhere in New Zealand.

Subsequently, the Franklin District Council put up the proposition of a unitary authority separate from the new Auckland Council. I believe it had a very good case that was supported by four polls held over a period of 18 months, which showed that more than 85 percent of the population supported it in its bid to have a unitary authority. I must say it was always going to be a hard call. The royal commission had not supported that, and the Government’s response did not support it either. I must say a very strong case was led by a passionate council and a passionate mayor, Mayor Mark Ball. They argued that they supported local government being reorganised in urban Auckland, but that it was inappropriate to extend Auckland City beyond the northern boundary of the existing Franklin District; that Auckland’s urban problems were not Franklin’s; that Franklin had its own water supply, its own sewerage, and its own stormwater system that were separate from Auckland’s; and that it was imperative to safeguard the class I and class II soils that provide the food basket to Auckland and, of course, to the rest of New Zealand. This is what Franklin is famous for. Indeed, the mayor and council were passionate in terms of wanting to ensure that Franklin could be separate from Auckland.

I supported the submission of the Franklin District Council to become a separate unitary authority, and I worked hard with such luminaries as Sir William Birch, Lindsay Tisch, the excellent MP from Waikato, Mayor Mark Ball, and numerous others to see whether this was viable. But in our New Zealand democracy, which I celebrate—many of those in the Labour Opposition, who have just given us 9 years of the nanny State do not celebrate this—other voices were, nevertheless, opposed to Franklin being separate. They included Federated Farmers, interests in the Karaka area, interests in the Pōkeno area, and the chair of the Waiuku/Awhitu Community Board. There were also Tainui, Environment Waikato, and Waikato District Council, who were concerned about catchment and Treaty issues.

The Hon John Carter took the time to come to Franklin to hear the concerns of the local people, and so did many National members. But on balance the Government decided to oppose the idea of a unitary authority for Franklin. But I will make this point: not one member of the Labour caucus was prepared to put his or her head above the parapet to support the Franklin District Council’s submission. Labour members go on and on about the boundaries, but they failed to be clear or concise in terms of what they wanted. Where were Labour’s South Auckland MPs? I can see the Hon George Hawkins across the Chamber. He was not to be seen. There was no sight of, or sound from, him. The same goes for Ross Robertson, and, as I said earlier on, Su’a William Sio had a great deal of trouble in even finding Pukekohe.

The only realistic options remaining were to go to the Waikato River as the boundary, as the royal commission had suggested, with Environment Waikato taking on the catchment responsibilities, or to stick with the old Auckland Regional Council boundary, which cut through Colombo Road in Waiuku and the back of the racecourse in Pukekohe. Many people, including myself, described this as absolutely the worst of all options. I know and have confidence that the Local Government Commission will push those boundaries south. I know that will happen, and I do not believe anyone in this Chamber would oppose that. But, again, this time there was vigorous debate, with Federated Farmers, the Auckland Regional Council, the Waiuku/Awhitu Community Board, members of Enterprise Franklin, the arts boards, and many others supporting the royal commission’s proposal. But many others did not support that take.

Unfortunately, the Franklin District Council did not have a formal fall-back position, because it was so deeply disappointed at not maintaining a separate unitary authority. But one would have noted that today Mayor Mark Ball was reported in the New Zealand Herald as saying the existing southern boundary is better than moving the boundary to the Waikato River, as at least it has some sound rationale behind it and is not just the result of political interference.

My own view was that the principle that should be followed was that if a unitary authority was not possible, to keep as much of the existing Franklin intact as possible. However, in the end a decision had to be made, and the Government has done that. Clearly, some of our people will be pleased, but many others are deeply disappointed. There has been vigorous debate and vigorous consultation. There will be a new Franklin board, not a Hunua board, with strengthened functions. At the very least the boundaries must go south of Pukekohe and Waiuku, and no one can say that a huge effort has not been made to keep Franklin intact.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) : I start by acknowledging Paul Hutchinson. I think that everyone on this side of the House would acknowledge that Paul Hutchinson is a nice man. He is a good man.

Hon Members: Who?

LYNNE PILLAY: Paul Hutchison.

Dr Paul Hutchison: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. This afternoon we have had several mispronunciations of my name. As I pointed out, the Hutchinsons invented the thumbscrew. My name is Hutchison.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sure the member will respond to that.

LYNNE PILLAY: In case I botch it up again, I shall refer to the member as “Dr Paul” for the purposes of this debate. Is that OK? Dr Paul has advocated really strongly for his community. I think he had very valid arguments. I was at the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, and I saw him come in with Sir William Birch, and I thought there was a guy who cared about his community. He came to support his community, and it was a very compelling argument. But the biggest problem was that Dr Paul is a nice guy. Dr Paul did not go back to his caucus and say that if the caucus did not support his argument, he would throw his toys out of the cot.

Another nice person in this Parliament is John Carter, who was a great chair of the select committee. Many times he agreed with the people submitting, but he had to toe the party line. Of course, he ended up taking a real hit. We have seen him stand up in this Chamber and say that it was his fault and that he got it wrong. Well, we know that John Carter did not get it wrong. He was under instruction, but the instructions changed. He is a good party man and he toed the line, as well. He did not say he would throw his toys out of the cot, he would not work any more, he could not be part of the Government if it did not meet his wishes, etc., or the wishes of his constituency, as Dr Paul could have said. No, both members toed the line.

Why did the Government give in to a party that my colleague very generously said has less than 4 percent of the vote? Generally, the ACT Party has less than 2 percent of the vote. I have to say that the Minister of Local Government has been very silent in this debate, for a guy who is never quiet in question time. I think we would all invite the Minister to take a call on this issue. [Interruption] Under instruction? I do not think so. I do not think the Minister needs to take instruction, because he can say “This is my line in the sand, and if you do not support it, I’m going to throw my toys out of the cot.” The question is why his argument was so compelling for the National Government, when we had very eloquent members in a rather robust way running very important arguments as to why we should have Māori seats on the Auckland Council. Why was the Minister’s argument so compelling? I would really like to hear a call from the Minister on that question.

Jackie Blue referred to Labour members as being bitter, having chips on our shoulder, and all those things. Our party is not like that. I congratulate the Government on its absolute consistency right from the word go. The Government rammed through the first reading under urgency. Did the Government say it would wait and consult on the royal commission’s recommendations as it had promised and as we would have done? No, it did not. It completely disregarded those recommendations. It rammed through the first reading of the legislation, which is very controversial, under urgency, and it took away the right to have a referendum. That was a compelling right for all New Zealanders to have a say on this issue. Auckland’s future is New Zealand’s future, and it is vital to every citizen in New Zealand that we get it right.

Who is “we”? Whom do we mean by “we”? It is the people of the Auckland region. It is westies, people from South Auckland, people from central Auckland, and people from the North Shore. It is also people from the rest of New Zealand. It is also the Auckland councils, which have worked really hard and have accepted, despite what members opposite have said, that there is a need for an overarching way of working together. The members of those councils are not Luddites, but they want the opportunity to get it right. It is also—and this is so important—the community organisations, which work together and are absolutely committed to enhancing the lives of every citizen in every part of the Greater Auckland community. By and large, their voices have been totally ignored by the Government. Yes, we accept that the Government has buckled on some things, claiming that it has listened to the people and will deliver these trophies—but only because it had no choice. Those issues meant so much to the public out there that the Government buckled.

But what does that buckling mean? The Government accepted that the idea of at-large councillors was not going to run. It was an absolute no-brainer to not retain it, so great was the opposition to it. But the large, multi-member wards are at-large councillors in disguise. That is what they mean. The change has not answered the concern.

If the Government was so responsive, why did it not respond to the thousands and thousands of Aucklanders who marched into Auckland in the hīkoi of protest at the lack of process and the lack of consultation, and in support of Māori seats? Tau Henare has so eloquently and so robustly said, not in this House but in other parts of this building, how important it is. I cannot wait for the Māori Party member who is sitting beside him to take a call. He and Tau Henare are sitting over there like two great mates who both support Māori seats, yet they are pussycats in here.

I am sure the Minister in the chair will wrench himself out of the chair and take a call. That Minister has already said that he wants the Auckland Council to stick to core business.

John Hayes: Who’s this? A long lost soul!

LYNNE PILLAY: Who is this? It is Rodney Hide, the ACT member of Parliament who is the Minister of Local Government. There is no dissension from National, because National agrees with his agenda, despite the nice words, of councils sticking to core business. He says that councils should stick to their core business of roads, rates, and rubbish—that that is the job of councils—and, by the way, let us privatise them, as well. As part of this whole process, the Government had the ability to support a line that would prevent key assets from being privatised, but, again, the Government has shown its true colours, ramming the bill through all its stages under urgency.

What is so important about the urgency process? When we have the usual process there is time during the debate on the second reading, the Committee of the whole House stage, and the third reading for the public to consult, get on the phone, send their emails, and ask what the Government is doing. This Government has deprived the public of that process, and that is an insult to the people of Auckland.

SUE BRADFORD (Green) : I rise to speak—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but there is too much cross-chatter; it is very difficult to hear the member. This is a 16-hour debate. There is plenty of opportunity for people to take calls, but if they want to discuss things, that is what the lobbies are for. Interjections are fine, but there is a lot of cross-talk that has nothing to do with the debate.

SUE BRADFORD: I rise to speak in support of an amendment to clause 18 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill in my name dealing with the question of the northern boundary for the new Auckland City. I realise that many people breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when the Prime Minister announced that the Government had decided to reverse the select committee recommendation and allow all of the current Rodney District to stay within the Auckland City boundaries. The Green Party sees it as really important that the most strenuous guidelines possible are applied to metropolitan urban limits to prevent turning what is left of the green fields and bush between Ōrewa and the Dome Valley into one long series of Auckland suburbs. We therefore commend the Government for listening to the many submitters from places like Warkworth, Leigh, and Matakana, who, for that and other very good reasons, did not want to be assigned holus-bolus to the Kaipara District.

I believe, however, that there is still a case to be made for cutting off the northernmost part of the existing Rodney District and dealing with it differently. I am therefore putting forward an amendment, which is on the Table for members interested, that basically draws a line from Tauhoa in the west on the Kaipara Harbour, through to the northern part of the Dome Valley, and then through to Pakiri Beach on the east coast. I suggest that the western side of the district, that northern part, goes to the Kaipara District Council, and the eastern side, including Wellsford, goes to the Northland Regional Council. Those northernmost parts of Rodney are rural in nature, as anyone who knows the north will know. In many ways they have a closer affinity with Kaipara on the west and Northland on the east than they have with urban or peri-urban Auckland.

Places like Port Albert, Tauhoa, Wellsford, Tomarata, and Wayby, where I used to live, have quite a different culture from the townships of Warkworth and others further south. In fact, as anyone who has lived or lives in the area knows, it is actually very tribal. There is a lot of quite friendly—and sometimes not so friendly—rivalry between the districts, even slight local dialects. A number of people from those districts, including iwi from Oruawharo Marae, and from Te Uri o Hau more generally, have clearly called for the northern boundary of the super-city to be drawn at the Hoteo River, south of Wellsford. I note that people in the district have just today collected over 260 signatures in 3 hours asking that the area north of the Hoteo goes north and does not stay in the super-city. They ask that we “leave the rest of south Rodney to get on with being part of the super-city. Let us get on with milking the cows and other things rural.” Wellsford and surrounds are already in the Northland electorate for the purposes of general elections; the chair of the Auckland governance special select committee knows that very well. People are as likely to go north to Kaiwaka, Mangawhai or Whangarei for services, recreation, and shopping as they are to go south to Auckland. On the west coast there is, of course, a strong affinity to the Kaipara Harbour with its northern centre in Dargaville.

I strongly believe that it makes a lot of sense to divide off the northern most parts of Rodney and not push these essentially rural communities into a forced marriage with the huge new Auckland super-city. I call on all other parties in the Chamber to seriously consider supporting this amendment. I realise that it may be a little abstract for those who do not know the district, but to make this alteration would be hugely beneficial for the people and communities directly affected. I am really sorry that the select committee did not come to this conclusion during its consideration of the bill and went for the much broader cutting-off of half of Rodney from just north of Ōrewa, which really was a pretty crazy idea. The Government has made the right decision in reversing its decision on that, but I call on it to reconsider and actually take the sliver across the top, the northern part of the district, and do the right thing for the people of that area.

I am not pretending to be an expert on exactly where the boundaries should be, although I have given a rough outline in the Supplementary Order Paper. The Local Government Commission is the expert on this, and I hope that other parties in the Chamber will see their way clear to supporting this very sensible amendment.

Hon JOHN CARTER (Associate Minister of Local Government) : I will respond to one or two points that have been made by Opposition members because, again, one or two issues have been raised that are wrong. I listened to Su’a William Sio, for example, say that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rodney Hide, had so much influence over the Government that the Government had bowed to his every wish, to his every direction, and to everything that he wanted and that this bill was now before the Committee in the way that he recommended. I ask the Minister in the chair—perhaps he can nod and indicate—whether he supported having councils at large. My understanding is that the Minister did. Does this bill, coming back from the select committee, have a provision that there should be councils at large? No. Does that mean that the Minister got his way? I think not. I ask the Minister in the chair whether he supported the single transferable vote (STV). The Minister is nodding. Did the committee recommend that there be STV? I do not think so; we recommended there be first past the post. Does that mean that the Minister got his way?

The point I am making is that the Opposition members need to understand that this is a coalition that works together. We win some and we lose some. We make good policy and we end up representing what the people want, and that is what has happened in this bill. The Minister in the chair can be commended for the leadership he has shown in regard to responding to the wishes of the people of Auckland and in being part of a true coalition of people who are working together to make sure that this place is better for New Zealand.

There is another irony. When we started out there was so much ranting, raving, and negative comments that the legislation would never work, that what the Government had put before the House was dreadful, that the bill before the House was shocking, and that we sent it to the select committee but the select committee would not do anything. I thought I should draw to the Committee’s attention that one of the things recommended by the Government was that there should be no at-large councillors. The coalition Government said that all councillors would be elected from wards. You know, that is what the Labour Party supports. They say that all councillors should be elected from wards. They said that, so the Government thought that if we were going to have people elected from wards, maybe we should have multi-member wards. Guess what! That is what the Labour Party said should happen: that members should be elected from multi-member wards. To be fair, Labour said there should be only two members per multi-member ward, but nevertheless—

Phil Twyford: Under STV!

Hon JOHN CARTER: I will come to that.

The next thing that Labour members said was that Franklin and Rodney should have their own councillors. Guess what! The Government had said that Franklin and Rodney should get their own councillors.

Phil Twyford: Where are you getting this from?

Hon JOHN CARTER: It is actually from Mr Twyford’s script. The next thing they said was that the local boards should be able to fund community initiatives. Guess what! Bless my soul! Can members believe that that is what is going to happen? The Government is going to do that. Goodness gracious me! Do members know what else Labour members said? They said that local boards should make decisions about local decisions in place-shaping. Labour asked for that, and do members know what is going to happen? That is what the Government said is going to happen. Do we agree on that as well? Goodness gracious me! The next thing Labour members said was that the mayoral office should have some resources. Do members know what is going to happen? The mayoral office is going to have some resources. Goodness gracious me! They also said that the mayor should lead development in draft plans and budgets. Do members know what is going to happen? The Government is going to make sure that the mayor can lead development in draft plans and budgets.

There is another page of stuff here. Labour said that all of Rodney should be included in Auckland. As I said, I got it wrong. The Government has decided that that is what should happen, so that is what is going to happen. The next thing that happened, of course, was that Labour said that asset-protection provisions were required. We already know that they are in the Local Government Act, so that is exactly what is going to happen.

When I start going through the points that Labour members were worried about, it is no wonder they got to the stage where it is really difficult for them to debate, because a lot of the stuff that they said should happen was already going to happen or is happening. We picked those points up because the people of Auckland said we should. We listened and it is what the public wanted. It is silly for members opposite to say that someone got this, the Minister did that, and so on. The Minister wanted to make sure that we ended up with the best legislation to represent Auckland, because if we get this legislation right and if we get Auckland right—and we will—that is good for New Zealand.

I say one thing for Rodney Hide: he always wants what is best for this country. In the same way, so do the Prime Minister and the National Party, as does this National-led coalition Government. The one thing that the Opposition cannot understand is that we have a Minister of Local Government, a Prime Minister, and a coalition Government that care about this country and are looking to deliver for it. If we sometimes have ideas, put ourselves out there, say what we would like to happen, and do not get our way, that is the reason we do it. We make those decisions and we are prepared to have a bit of give and take in the interests of this country. Surely no one can criticise us for having that sort of attitude.

You know, I have said to the audiences at the many public meetings that I have attended in Auckland that I would love to stand there and tell those people that they can leave it to us and that we will get it 100 percent right. Then I have said to them that if I was a betting man, I would bet that we will not. We will not get this 100 percent right, because it is an ongoing process.

John Hayes: Yes, we will.

Hon JOHN CARTER: Let me tell my colleague that, funnily enough, as this is an ongoing process, we will continue improving it, adding to it, and making it work in the way that it needs to, which is what Aucklanders want us to do.

When members opposite say that the Government did not do this or it should have done that, and that it did not get this right or it did not listen to that, then I say that this is not just a 2-minute process. It is not something that we can click our fingers and get right in one shot. It is an ongoing process. When the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rodney Hide, embarked on this process, when I was alongside him embarking on it, and when the Government was there as part of this whole thing, we knew that this process would be continuous. We knew that we would continually have to go out, look, listen, and make sure that we had it right. This is a step in the process. I want the Opposition to understand that we have moved a long way from where we started, and we will continue to move. As we listen, as we learn, and as we make progress, we will continue to improve this legislation.

Opposition members must remember that a third bill is in place. We have come a long way from where we started and we have done a lot in this bill, but there is yet more to be done. Believe you me, this Minister in the chair, the Hon Rodney Hide; this Prime Minister, John Key; and this coalition Government will be doing a lot to make sure that in the end we get this process as near right as we can.

I will finish on this note: the one thing that the Labour Opposition is really cheesed off about is the fact that we at least are doing it. Labour members did not do it.

H V ROSS ROBERTSON (Labour—Manukau East) : Kia ora tātou, nō reira, Mr Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution in this debate. What a sham it has been. The Government talked about consultation and then did exactly what it wanted to do. So much for consultation! We have just heard from the Hon John Carter, who said that the Government consulted. Well, I say to Mr Carter, the plan has stripped democracy from residents. That is still the case, because the Auckland Council has all the power. It will decide the plans, it will own everything, and it will employ the staff. That is exactly what the real situation is. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Rodney Hide, can cloud it and do what he likes, but the reality is that we know otherwise.

But what has happened to Franklin? Better still, I ask what has happened to the hapless member for Franklin, Dr Paul Hutchison. He spoke out strongly against the boundary changes, but he has been ignored by the Prime Minister, he has been ignored by Rodney Hide, he has been ignored by the Hon John Carter, he has been ignored by his local mayor, and he has been ignored by his colleagues. What has happened to the honourable member Paul Hutchison is that he has learnt that loyalty is expendable in politics. He has been shafted by his own colleagues, who have their own political agenda. Penny Webster, the Mayor of Rodney District and a former ACT member of Parliament, and the local member for that area, Dr Lockwood Smith, spoke out strongly and they were listened to. The people of Rodney will be thankful for their action because of what it has achieved. But the people of Franklin will be asking what Dr Paul Hutchison did. The answer appears to be very, very little, because Franklin has been gutted and Rodney is intact. There is a message in that for the people of Franklin.

What we see with this legislation is a constitutional outrage. The Government is rushing it through in the dead of night, under urgency. That is what is happening. The Hon Rodney Hide should get off his hind legs, take a call, and justify what he has done in this Chamber tonight. The Hon John Carter should get off his hind legs and defend what his Government has done to Franklin.

Chris Tremain: He’s been up for the last 10 minutes.

H V ROSS ROBERTSON: He did not touch on Franklin. He should defend what has happened to Franklin. We have seen an abuse of democracy. The Government has ignored the Mayor of Franklin District, Mark Ball, and the local National MP, Dr Paul Hutchison, and even the good people of Franklin have been ignored over the boundaries. Waiuku has been cut in half, Tuakau has been sold out to the Waikato, and the southern rim of the Pukekohe race track is now in the Waikato region. So when the cars race around there, half of the time they will be racing in Auckland and on the lap right at the end they will be in the Waikato. What we are seeing is absolutely illogical and it is an abuse of executive power. Where is the transparency? Where is the accountability? Where is the good governance demanded by the people of Franklin? It is a shameful act of jackboot democracy. That is exactly what we are seeing here.

The front page of the Manukau Courier says it all. It has a photograph of the Minister of Local Government, the Hon Rodney Hide, with his hand up saying: “Do it my way.” That is what is happening. It is jackboot democracy: “Do it my way.” We have a Minister who is out of control and who is imposing his rule on the faithful, loyal, good people of the Franklin district. Mark Ball—whom you will know, Mr Chairman, from your dealings when you were in the Opposition—is a decent mayor. He is a vocal critic of the hatchet job done to Franklin and he has every reason to feel aggrieved. He is a good, loyal servant of the people. He was there to serve others and he carried the same values and ethics into that job that he had when he was a police officer—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the member. I say to the members sitting near the member who is speaking that there is too much noise. Could they please show the member some courtesy.

Hon Parekura Horomia: He’s harassing us, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member is not to interrupt while I am on my feet.

H V ROSS ROBERTSON: Thank you, Mr Chairman. We have a former police officer, now the Mayor of Franklin District, who is standing up for the rights of the people in his area, and we have a Government that is steamrolling legislation through and cutting Franklin in half. For this mayor’s efforts, he has been left out to dry. He has been hung, drawn, and quartered. It is a shameful act of betrayal.

NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) : First of all, I acknowledge John Carter and also the Hon Rodney Hide for the leadership and consistent position that they have taken on this bill. The first point I will make is to say that tonight we are hearing a phoney war in Parliament. The reason we are hearing that phoney war is that the Labour Party has committed to one unitary authority—yes, that is what those members believe in; that is what they have argued for at many different stages throughout the progress of this legislation through this House—but when we come to the issue of local boards, we see members on the other side of the Chamber slip-sliding away. We have seen those members argue for six local entities. We have seen them argue for six to 12 local entities. Then we saw a press release from Mr Twyford arguing that there should be from 10 to 12 local entities. Now in the legislation we have seen them arguing for 14 to 20 local entities. We have seen the Labour members consistently slip-sliding on their position on Auckland governance.

It is no wonder we are seeing a real difference between two parties: the National Party, which has consistently said it wants one unitary authority and 20 to 30 local boards; and the Labour Party, which is confused and has said it wants anywhere from six to 20. But the real story is that Labour supports one unitary authority. The real story is that Labour actually supports the number of local boards that is similar to what National supports. So what are Labour members debating here this evening? It is very difficult for Aucklanders listening this evening to find out, because those members believe in one regional entity; they believe in 20 local boards. So what are they here arguing? We will have 12 hours of debate from a party that believes in one regional entity. Labour members believe in 20 local boards. So what are they here arguing? We will have 12 hours of debate from Labour members—they will talk about everything but those two things. They will talk about everything except having one strong regional entity, because they believe in it; and having 20 local boards, because they believe in it.

We will hear arguments about everything else, but I tell the Aucklanders who are listening tonight that Labour supports what National is supporting this evening. Labour supports this legislation. I challenge any Labour member to get on his or her feet tonight and argue against a unitary authority and against 20 local boards. They will not do it, because they absolutely support this legislation this evening.

The other point I make, which has been made by many other members tonight, is that the members of the select committee turned up and listened. They did not agree with everything that was submitted but they have shifted their position, and both Ministers have acknowledged that this evening. We have seen a shifting, a change in position. There are now no councillors “at large”—many people submitted against that and we listened. There is now no split in the boundary in terms of Rodney, because we listened. There are now much stronger powers for the functions of boards, because we listened. There is now decent funding for those local boards, because we listened. So what we have here this evening are strong local entities that will be able to finally deliver for their communities, and a strong regional entity for Auckland.

The Labour Party does not disagree with that. That is the key thing we are debating this evening, so what we will hear from that side of the Chamber is everything but those two core matters, which are integral to the future of Auckland and to the hundreds and thousands of young people in Auckland who want to finally be connected to their communities. And that is why members on the other side of the Chamber could not turn up and vote against it. That is why they slipped from six to 20 in terms of the number of local boards. They would not turn up and vote against strong, grassroots democracy. They could not turn up to this Chamber and say they would not give the people of Mount Albert a local board. They could not say they would not give the people of Papakura a local board. They were not going to do that, and that is why they slipped so much.

I am pleased to stand and support this bill. I am pleased to be here at a historic moment in Auckland’s history when we are finally delivering the unitary authority that the royal commission agreed with and that the Labour Party agrees with. I am also pleased to be supporting many local boards that will be able to deliver for their communities—finally—in Auckland.

The other point I make concerns the tremendous contributions of Simon Bridges, Jackie Blue, and Tau Henare to that select committee. They are outstanding members of the committee.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am having great difficulty hearing the member. I would like to hear what the member is saying, just as I like to hear all speeches.

Phil Twyford: You must be the only one.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am standing; do not interrupt. I like to hear all speeches. I think there needs to be some courtesy here. Interjections are fine, but keep the level down please.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Your point is well made, but you would also accept that this is a robust debate with a fair amount of passion in it. When buckets are thrown from one side of the Chamber and there is provocation, people will respond in kind. If it is the case that we are to sit here and desist from making our counter-contribution, then the member should not throw buckets across the aisle. It goes both ways.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Thank you for those comments. I have allowed a fairly free flow over the course of this debate. I am not shutting down the debate, but I would like to hear what the member is saying. I know that members want to take calls. We still have a few hours to go, and I am sure members will be able to express themselves and express the points they want to over the next few hours.

NIKKI KAYE: I acknowledge the contribution from Simon Bridges, Tau Henare, and Jackie Blue. I also acknowledge the contribution from the other side of the Chamber. I acknowledge at this point that the minority report from the Labour Party actually backs up everything I have just said. Labour members will not oppose one unitary authority. There is no opposition to it anywhere in the minority report, because they absolutely support it. In the minority report, they show that they have shifted significantly—from six to 12 local boards, to 14 to 20 local boards, and we could end up in a position where both major parties agree on that number of local boards for communities in Auckland.

So the people listening tonight can take out these messages from the debate. The first is that the Government has listened. We have listened in the area of “at large” councillors. We have listened in the area of the boundaries for Rodney. We have listened in the area of stronger functions and powers for local boards. We have listened in the area of providing decent funding for those local boards. But people listening can take this second message. The Labour Party is here to waste Parliament’s time for the next 12 hours and talk about a bill that it actually supports. I look forward to 2011 and to getting around the communities and talking to them about the fact that the Labour Party supported this legislation. This legislation will finally deliver a strong regional entity for Auckland, for the communities and the young people who want to be involved in their communities. It will finally deliver the public transport system we have always wanted. I am pleased to support this legislation, and I am pleased to support a Government that is making decisions, unlike the Labour Party, which will not make decisions. National is in Government today because we are prepared to make the hard calls and we are prepared to deliver for the people of Auckland.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) : Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. That, folks, was National’s contribution to artificial intelligence. That was a speech that, despite hours of studying the mirror and days of rehearsing, failed the test of being a political contribution and will be remembered as a variation on selling Girl Guide biscuits. That speech is reflective of how out of touch the member Nikki Kaye is and of how poorly—

John Hayes: Pompous arrogance.

Hon SHANE JONES: OK, so that is what we are getting from members on the other side of the Chamber. Rather than debating the issues, they have fallen into a tawdry type of behaviour, that of assassinating the personalities on this side of the Chamber who seek to uphold democracy. Of course, a number of those members are living proof—and it was evident during their contributions at the select committee—that stupidity is permanent but ignorance can be rectified, all of which they failed to develop.

I will turn my attention to the Māori Party. We set up a subcommittee, at great cost, to investigate whether there should be Māori seats. Despite the fact that Georgina te Heuheu had every opportunity to join that subcommittee—along with another Minister—she, a member who had earlier shown her colours as being willing to stand up for Māori seats, was nowhere to be seen. It fell to Tau Henare to lead that subcommittee. Of course, he is a person who knows that whoever strikes the first blow loses the argument. However, he led us on to the marae, and all the work that was done there was null and void because people were lied to. People were told by senior members of the Government to come and make their submissions.

The fatal flaw of the Māori Party’s argument was that it believed it could run a model that was very complicated. Dr Pita Sharples sought to sell it to the Government, and it was so far from what the average Māori wants in electoral reform in local government. In fact, it was so absurd that if one followed through the Māori Party’s obsession with the mana whenua argument, Pita Sharples himself would not be in this House. But the mistake that those members made was that they falsely believed they had such leverage over the party that ruled the Government coalition that they mistakenly thought their leverage was larger than the history and the integrity of the royal commission report. They went out, fomented a hīkoi, and left expectations amongst young Māori that they would deliver, but they never ever had the opportunity, they never had the ballast, to deliver on that. The egregious error that they made was that they thought they were better than $5.5 million worth of submissions, recommendations, and thousands and thousands of hours of deliberations. It shows the way in which they have over-estimated their relevance to this Government.

We supported Māori seats. We were the party supporting Māori seats when the Auckland Regional Council—despite the meanderings of Michael Bassett in the newspaper—created two Māori seats. They were snuffed out by Warren Cooper and that wretched Government of the early 1990s, but we are the party with the track record with regard to Māori seats. We did not at the end of the day, as I indicated to my fellow Northlander Mr John Carter, support mana whenua seats. We supported one person, one vote. We did not support the entrenchment of the interests of hapūs that are largely at war with each other, iwis that cannot agree on territory. We wanted that to remain in customary space, not to pollute or weaken civic space, which is what elections should be about in local government. Every opportunity existed for that innovation to be brought into local government.

National had no intention of ever satisfying the Māori Party or Māori voters. But why did Dr Pita Sharples continue to build expectations, and not only in the minds of Tuku Morgan and Ngāti Whātua? It is because Māori Party members overestimated their relevance. Kia ora tātou.

JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) : I would like to take the Committee back to comments made by Ross Robertson, because he made an absolutely factual inconsistency in error. He referred to the Mayor of Franklin District, Mark Ball, as being opposed to the southern border drawn by the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, and by the Minister of Local Government and his associate. I have to tell the Committee that if they looked at yesterday’s New Zealand Herald they would see that Mark Ball was absolutely united in his support for the place where the line is being drawn.

I would like to take the Committee back about 10 years to the first Knowledge Wave conference. I think I was probably one of the very few people in this Parliament who was actually in attendance at that meeting. That Knowledge Wave conference, which was organised by the Labour Party and by the then Prime Minister, Helen Clark, came up with the recommendation that if this country was to drive forward, if we were to aspire to the salaries and to the living standards of people in Australia, we had to have a truly Pacific city in New Zealand that would compete with Sydney and Brisbane. About that there is no argument. I want to commend Wairarapa constituent Dame Margaret Bazley, who was one of the commissioners on the royal commission that looked into this issue, and commend her for the wonderful job that she and her fellow commissioners did. I also want to congratulate Rodney Hide, the Minister of Local Government, and especially John Carter, the Associate Minister of Local Government, for the excellent job that they have done. They have listened to the people, unlike the Labour Government, which had 9 years following the Knowledge Wave conference to actually implement the findings of that conference and did nothing. The Labour Government wasted the space. This Government has been in place for 9 months, and here we are now taking decisions on this bill.

What I think is particularly useful about this bill, which will have subsequent application in the Wairarapa electorate, is the regional spread and the support it gives to community interests. This bill will create a unified Auckland Council, as per the Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Act of 2009. There will be a mayor, and there will be 20 elected councillors. What is most important though is that there will be local boards. It is the local boards that will have the real authority as part of this legislation. Certainly we have to look at the overall organisation of the Auckland area. We have to make sure that there is no traffic congestion. We have to make sure that sewerage and water are properly attended to. We have to ensure that Auckland is a vibrant, progressive, forward-moving city of world class. At the same time, we have to remember that local people have serious community interests. So it is important that we have local boards that will engage in democratic decision-making by, and on behalf of, communities in their area. I think that local committees will better enable the promotion of the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities within the local board area.

I see this legislation as having application in my electorate, particularly in the southern area of the Wairarapa where, from Mount Bruce south, we have three councils and 29 councillors looking after 38,000 people. We need to follow this Auckland model in the Wairarapa, because it will bring huge efficiencies to our particular area, and it will streamline the administration of our local bodies. If we follow this Auckland model, we will continue to allow the expression of parochial interests. Local people will be able to make sure that the council will consider the views and preferences expressed by the small local bodies and the decision-making power allocated to them by the council. I think it will be really important for the local communities to identify and to communicate the views of each entity that makes up that huge Auckland super-city.

It is really important that those councils get involved in local by-laws and that they engage in protecting local parks, particular trees of significance, and other recreational facilities. I see that local boards will be involved in planning and determining the priorities and wishes of communities regarding non-regulatory activities, and local boards must consult their communities by preparing a local board plan. I see this having absolute application again in the Wairarapa and maybe further to the north into the Central Hawke’s Bay area, where we have similar issues involving Dannevirke, Hastings, Napier, and right through to Wairoa. We have to look at how we can construct forward-looking local governance and local administration.

It is really important that in this legislation we allocate decision making to local boards. It is envisaged that in the legislation the council and the local boards will enter into agreements whereby the responsibility for a particular decision or class of decisions will be allocated between the Auckland Council and the local boards so that there are clear lines of responsibility and accountability. Decision making for a non-regulatory activity has to be allocated to the local board. That is what the legislation provides for, unless the decision affects a broader area or issue and therefore is not suitable for allocation to a single local board or council. Again, I see this as being exactly how a system could operate in the Wairarapa, where there would be an overall council and then separate small entities that would run, for example, Martinborough, Featherston, Greytown, Carterton, and Masterton and also give expression to those living in the rural hinterland. At the moment, many of those people are shut out from our decision-making process, and it is important that we bring them in.

The bill is very good because local boards will have to monitor the implementation of their agreement with the council, and this must be included in annual council reports. The council will be required by the legislation to set a code of conduct, which is something our political colleagues across the Committee could think about, and which will apply to each member of the local board. The council may delegate any of its responsibilities to the local boards within certain criteria. The Auckland Transition Agency will initially delegate powers and disputes tribunals and will establish ongoing negotiations between the council and the boards. The bill is particularly fine legislation. Again, I congratulate the Minister, his deputy, and his colleagues like Nikki Kaye, Simon Bridges, Sam Lotu-Iiga, and Amy Adams, who worked very, very hard on the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. With those few words, I say again that I support the bill on behalf of the people of the Wairarapa. Thank you.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) : Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I will start this speech by doing a couple of things. It is pretty important that we address the rewriting of history that appears to be going on tonight. I also want to address the rather delusional process that appears to be going on across the other side of the Chamber whereby National members think that if they say often enough that they have listened, the people of Auckland will believe them. Believe me: that is deluded. People know that National members have not listened.

I will go through the history of the process of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, because it is important to get it on the record. I start by saying that Labour has consistently sought reform of Auckland’s governance structures. Labour set up the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance because we believed that Auckland needed to have some change and because we want Auckland to be a successful international city that serves the interests of all the people who live there. Let us get that on the record first. The royal commission worked for 18 months and produced a comprehensive blueprint for strong regional governance in Auckland. That is very important. We are talking about a third of our population. We all probably agree that the success of Auckland is critical for the success of our whole country. Of course, the other reason this bill is so important is that local government plays a huge public-good role. Local government provides key services that people need and provides a way for people to have a say about local matters in their local communities. The bill is very important.

I take time tonight to acknowledge and recognise all of the Aucklanders who have tried so hard to have a say in this process: the Aucklanders who took to the streets to make their voices heard, the Aucklanders who filled the community halls to have their voices heard, and the Aucklanders who, despite the short time frame, managed to make submissions to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, and went along to that committee. I was at a number of the sessions of the select committee and was really impressed by the quality of the submissions that people were making. It is because they care, because it is an important bill, and because they do not agree with what the Government is trying to do here.

The protests that people made about the bill were really interesting. It interests me that probably the one part of Auckland that did not have people out in the streets saying: “Save our city!” was Auckland City. I think that is because we can see the level of dissatisfaction of citizens and ratepayers in Auckland City with the National lookalikes and the arrogance of that city council. But that is another story, and I will leave it for another time.

The process here was both a sham and a shame, as my colleague David Cunliffe was saying earlier. The Government went on to reject the royal commission’s work in less than 2 weeks. It rejected a great deal of the work and a lot of thoughtful contributions. Some of the work seems to have sunk without any sign of coming back to the surface. Again, I remind people of the manifesto commitments the National Party made. National said that when the royal commission reported it would then consult on the royal commission recommendations. As we all know, National did not do that. In fact, instead it rushed the first bill through the House under urgency and then allowed 1 month for people to get submissions together on this critically important matter.

Still we are seeing—and we are seeing it here tonight—that the Government will rush through legislation where there has been a lack of genuine consultation and a lack of detail about many important matters. Government members might say that all that detail will be in the third bill, and perhaps some of it will, but I remain very concerned that many factors have not yet been thought through. How will the different levels relate to each other?

Let me assure Nikki Kaye, who seems to be concerned that we will not be talking about all of matters that are in this bill, that she can rest assured. We will go through each and every matter, and we will make sure we consider Aucklanders’ point of view in terms of each and every matter.

I thought it might be interesting for members to hear some comments from the editor-in-chief of Suburban Newspapers, because he has followed this process very carefully. David Kemeys said: “We are listening, this is about consultation, they said. But they did exactly what they wanted.” When he says “they”, he means the members across the Chamber. “A Royal Commission, 18-month multi-million dollar inquiry—ignored. Select committee, more millions but thousands of opinions canvassed—ignored … This newspaper complained the plan stripped democracy from residents. That is still the case because the Auckland Council has all the power. It will decide plans, own everything and employ staff.” David Kemeys went on to say: “Watching Mr Hide pontificate on all this is irritating because his ACT Party clearly has more influence than it should, given its pitiful support level.” I think that point of view is shared by many Aucklanders.

I will also talk about missed opportunity. Having talked about the problems with the process, let us look at what we are missing here; let us look at the lack of vision and the lack of ambition of the Government. We all know that local government is not well understood. We all know, because it is a fact, that there are low levels of participation in local government elections and local government processes. That is deeply worrying. This is an important part of our democracy. And this bill will do nothing to improve that situation. It could have been a real opportunity for us to engage with Aucklanders in a proper manner, to commit to some key principles, to commit to an appropriate time frame, and to try to build a high level of consensus about the sort of Auckland that we wanted and the sort of processes that we wanted. Ramming this legislation through in the way the Government is doing clearly undermines that very important opportunity. It is a real shame. It is a shame not only for the people of Auckland, but also for the people of New Zealand, because—as the previous speaker, John Hayes, alluded to—this process provides a blueprint for what will happen elsewhere in New Zealand. Instead of people having some confidence that their views will be taken into account, that some key principles will be articulated, and that some real work will be done on making that happen so that perhaps people gain some real understanding of local government and its processes—hopefully with the very positive spin-off that they will participate in its processes and elections—we have once again really missed that opportunity.

If we look at some of the content of this bill, we see that there are fundamental flaws. There is still a centralisation of power in this arrangement. There are too few councillors to represent Aucklanders properly. The mayor’s powers have been increased, despite the fact that Aucklanders said too much power was in the bill. So much for Government members saying they have listened and made changes! In this case, the Government has gone completely in the reverse direction to what Aucklanders wanted. Then there is the issue of representation for Māori, which, again, the Government has not listened on, at all. The majority of submitters were quite clear: they wanted to see Auckland have real representation for Māori. I was extremely heartened by that. I was so pleased to see that so many New Zealanders held that point of view.

I think a number of the members across the Chamber need to be fairly aware that people will see through the Government’s claim that it is listening, which it repeats endlessly and hopes that Aucklanders will believe. Well, they will not. The member from Maungakiekie, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, needs to know that the people there will not fall for that just because he says it. I have to say the Hon John Carter is a very good salesman; he should get a job selling something because he is pretty good at it. He went to the meetings, and he did the business on behalf of the local MP. He went out there, did a couple of meetings, and said that the Government was listening. The reality is that the decisions were made, in many cases, outside of the select committee process. Let us not fool ourselves: this was Cabinet and it was Rodney Hide. During the course of this debate we will have more time to think about what Rodney Hide’s real agenda is.

I leave members with the thought that Aucklanders will not be sucked in by this. We will hold the Government to account, and so will they.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) : Normally I would be happy just to go with the flow of the kōrero and interject where possible, but I think there needs to be some clarification about some of the issues. First of all, there is all this talk about Labour’s support for the Māori seats. Mr Jones knows, more than most of them do, that that is clearly not true. In fact, Mr Jones is known to have told Mr John Carter and Mr Tau Henare that Labour would not be supporting the Māori seats.

When the Māori people of Ōrākei and all over Auckland called for a hui and invited all the Māori MPs to come back to that hui to discuss what to do to try to fight for the Māori seats, do members know who turned up? Well, I heard Mr Jones over there slagging off Georgina te Heuheu for not bothering to come along to the select committee, but did she turn up to the hui in Auckland? Hell, yes, she turned up. Regardless of the fact that a lot of the Māori people up there were not particularly keen on National’s position on the Māori seats, Georgina te Heuheu fronted. She fronted up to that hui. She was applauded for turning up and being honest. The only other MPs who turned up were the Hon Dr Pita Sharples and the honourable Hone Harawira. I did not see anybody from Labour.

When we heard about the Labour members’ commitment to the Māori seats, it was the first opportunity that they have taken to declare their position in support of the Māori seats. For about 2 or 3 weeks after the time that the issue was laid before this House, Labour members were deathly silent. They never took a position on it. They came out in favour of having Māori seats only when they realised that National would be desperately opposed to it, and they decided that they could get on to this issue. That is the only reason that Labour has come out in favour.

I will tell Labour members something else, too. Mr Jones clearly has a completely different opinion from the rest of the Labour members. Every single one of the Labour MPs who has spoken on this issue tonight has spoken about the “Māori seats”—Māori seats with an “s” at the end. Mr Jones got up and said that Labour never supported the Māori seats but that it supported only one Māori seat. Well, come on, I ask whether Mr Jones is right. I know that he expects to be the leader of the Labour Party in the very near future, but I ask whether he is right or whether the rest of those members are right, because it clearly is not the same position. When I hear all the Labour MPs talk about the right of iwi and the importance of mana whenua, and then Mr Jones gets up and says that Labour does not support mana whenua, that it does not support hapū, and that it does not support iwi, then clearly there are some major differences within the party on that side of the Chamber.

When it became clear that Labour had to get in on the act, there was a massive hīkoi through Auckland, but where were Mr Jones and Mr Parekura Horomia caught and where were their photos taken? At McDonald’s. They were not even clever enough to come with me around the back to Burger King, but they went right out and were snapped at McDonald’s, right on Queen Street. That was very good, I say to Mr Jones. That has really been—

Hon Shane Jones: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. For the record it was Burger King, and it was a cup of tea.

HONE HARAWIRA: I withdraw and apologise, I say to Mr Jones. I simply make the point that although I am happy to stand alongside Labour in this instance to fight for the Māori seats and I am not supportive of the Government’s position on this issue, I do need to clarify exactly where Labour is coming from on this. It was only when Labour saw that the Māori Party was going to get a run on this that it decided to come out in support. That is the only reason it came out in support.

To stop all those people on the other side of the Chamber from yelling at me, I will now turn my sights to Mr Rodney Hide, who has said, on numerous occasions, that the importance of this vote is about one man, one vote. Well, if it is true that in this country we believe in one man, one vote, then how come Winston Peters’ party got 10,000 more votes than Rodney Hide’s party, but Winston Peters’ party got no seats in the House and Mr Hide’s party got five? I say to Mr Hide that, clearly, the democracy he talks about is not the democracy that he is happy to enjoy.

It is also important to realise that when Mr Hide talks about one man, one vote, the democracy that he espouses is not the democracy that he enjoys. In this House Mr Hide enjoys not the one man, one vote, but an MMP form of Parliament. I from the Māori Party am more than happy to go with the one man, one vote in the seats in the House—this person sitting near me won his or her seat, this person won his or her seat, I won my seat, Mr Flavell won his seat, and Mrs Katene won her seat. That is what we call one man, one vote. There are no list seats in the Māori Party.

On the other hand, the ACT party, which talks all about one man, one vote, has had only one person elected into Parliament and he is Mr Rodney Hide. Who are the other people in that party? I happen to know that Mr Garrett’s wife did not even vote for him. So I want people to realise that the one man, one vote that Mr Rodney Hide espouses in the Chamber is simply not the democracy that he and his colleagues enjoy. Seriously, who on earth in their right mind would vote Roger Douglas back into Parliament!

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Sir Roger.

HONE HARAWIRA: Sir Roger, my apologies. The ACT Party is in Parliament because Rodney Hide won his seat and was able to bring in a suite of candidates. That had nothing to do with one man, one vote.

I think that we need to clarify these issues, because when we call for Māori seats in Auckland it is not because we are after a special vote, and Māori who would get to vote for the Māori seats would get to vote for only those Māori seats. They would not get to vote for the Māori seats and for some other seats as well. That is one man, one vote; one woman, one vote. It does not really matter.

I think that Mr Jones needs to sit down with his colleagues and clarify the situation. The Labour Party supports Māori seats—with an “s”; it is more than one. We are not supposed to stand up and say “only one”. The Labour Party also supports the principle of mana whenua. It has said so on numerous occasions. I think if Mr Jones is to achieve the aspiration of getting to the very top of the Labour Party tree within the next 9 years, because Labour will be in Opposition right up to that time, he really does need to clarify to the fullest his position on these very, very important issues. Thank you, Mr Chairman. Thank you e te Whare. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou. Goodnight. Kia ora tātou katoa.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Could I suggest that the Committee rise at this time.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, we cannot, because we are in a time-limited debate.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) : I am pleased to take a call on this bill, because the time is not yet up.

• Debate interrupted.