Dyson Ruth: Local Government Borrowing Bill — Second Reading 
Dyson Ruth: Local Government Borrowing Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:675;Page:20984] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 It gives me a lot of pleasure to speak in support of the Local Government Borrowing Bill. It is quite a rare opportunity to support something that has been introduced by the Minister of Local Government the Hon Rodney Hide as an ACT member of Parliament. That is not generally Labour’s position on such matters but this bill is worthy of support. The bill certainly went through the Local Government and Environment Committee very smoothly as well. I commend the select committee for the way it considered this bill and I also acknowledge and thank the officials. There were not a lot of contentious issues under debate during the process but the select committee nevertheless gave the bill a decent and rigorous amount of consideration. The officials—as usual actually—paid a lot of attention to the issues as they were raised by both submitters and members of the committee. 
This bill had its background under the previous Labour-led Government in 2007 when an inquiry was instigated into local government rates and particularly the funding mechanisms that were available to local authorities. The recommendation that really triggered this bill was that “local government look favourably on making more use of debt to finance long-term assets. This should include the issuance of bonds (including infrastructure bonds) on the capital market not just shorter-term borrowing from commercial banks.” 
As the member who just resumed her seat Louise Upston noted there are a variety of ways in which capital can be raised. The member was nearly salivating by the time she finished her speech as she talked about the hocking-off of New Zealand’s strategic assets that National is planning should it win the election at the end of November. National is proposing to sell off assets to as it says Kiwi mums and dads—except that Kiwi mums and dads already own those assets. We already own our lakes our dams and the power companies that National wants to sell back to us. It makes no sense at all. The Minister of Finance was obviously trapped not just at his own National Party conference by his own delegates but also in the House today. He has spun the story that Kiwi mums and dads will be at the front of the queue to buy those assets which they already own and that there will be some magical protection against all these assets being hocked off to foreign owners. 
But that is not true. There is no mechanism at all either intended or in existence that will stop our dams our lakes and our power companies being sold to foreign owners. If National thinks that is OK then that is what it should be campaigning on instead of this spin which is rapidly becoming undone. If we had a choice between what this bill proposes and hocking off the family silver as National wants to do we would certainly go for this. Likewise this is not only better than privatisation but also much better than the public-private partnerships that the National-ACT Government is so keen to promote. 
I mentioned earlier the Local Government Rates Inquiry and that the concept of a local government bond bank was also proposed by the Capital Market Development Taskforce. Again that was set up by the previous Labour-led Government in 2008 and reported back to the current Government towards the end of 2009. The Government then said it supported that recommendation but all it has done is put in a minuscule amount of money a mere $5 million to establish that fund. That was in the Budget of last year and there has been no other progression since then. 
This is good legislation. It is nice occasionally to have such unanimity but even better I guess is the fact that all of us in this Parliament know that through this process and by supporting this legislation there is the potential for the ratepayers of New Zealand to save about $25 million in interest. That has to be good. As a Cantabrian I know that we will have a lot of very good use for any additional funding we can save out of our council budget. On that note I remind the Minister of Local Government that he has already abolished one of our councils in Canterbury. The Canterbury Regional Council was abolished in a disgraceful way by the current Government. I put on record the fact that we do not want the Christchurch City Council to be abolished as the next move as part of the setting up of some super-city. We are keen on keeping all three of our councils: the Waimakariri District Council the Selwyn District Council and the Christchurch City Council. 
Labour is very keen on full democracy being restored to Canterbury and our regional council being re-established as well. Everyone else in the country had a vote for their regional council except us in Canterbury. We have done our penance for whatever sin the Minister thought had been committed by Environment Canterbury. We would like our full democracy restored. In the meantime I will be pleased to watch the progress of this bill.