Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8310. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to carry on from the comments of the Hon Phil Goff and just briefly underline really for the record the irony and the bad taste that Part 2 leaves in the mouths of members on this side of the Chamber validating the most elementary mickey mouse mistakes that were made in the first round of the amending legislation that created these problems.It is clear I think looking at Part 2 clause 9—one of the first things the chair of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel did was extend the deadline for public submissions in early 2014. It was one of the very first things that he did. What kind of thought was put into the amending legislation to set the original deadline for submissions? How many submissions were accepted unlawfully?Hon David Parker: How many were excluded?PHIL TWYFORD: Well how many were excluded? Possibly none but I mean it just makes a mockery of the whole process.Hon Member: She might know. They will have done some research.PHIL TWYFORD: Well I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair Louise Upston. She has already offered one contribution. I think the Committee deserves an explanation in the absence of select committee hearings. So that is the first issue—the validation around the closing date for submissions.Secondly the concurrent hearing sessions: how many sessions were held concurrently and unlawfully? This has been going on all year. The hearings panels have heard thousands and thousands of cases and what this bill does now under new section 171(2) in clause 9 is it basically requires that any session has to be treated retrospectively as if it had been held in accordance with the provision to allow for concurrent hearings and as if it had been chaired by someone who had been authorised as the chairperson.So that immediately raises the question: how many of these sessions were chaired by a member of the panel who had not been lawfully authorised to chair those sessions? What a mickey mouse outfit. I am not blaming the independent hearings panel. It—Hon David Parker: Why not?PHIL TWYFORD: Well the independent hearings panel members are good professional people of high calibre who have been put in the invidious position of operating within a legislative framework that was rushed and poorly thought through and shot full of holes—full of errors. And here we are within 2 years back in the House cleaning up the errors that were made then retrospectively.Of course given that we are pushing this legislation through under urgency—no select committee process. I think we had a 40-second contribution from the Minister in the chair. We have not had any substantive input into this debate from Government members other than that very very brief contribution from the Minister in the chair and really no substantive contributions from the Minister for the Environment. We do not even have the Minister who is responsible for this legislation here for this debate. It is just—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! You cannot say that—you cannot say that.PHIL TWYFORD: I withdraw that. I apologise. I know that is against the Standing Orders.So those are the validations. The other main section is the schedule “Consequential amendments” and the amendments to section 115 point back to new section 144 in clause 5 which we have debated here. It is consequential to the provisions that allow the hearings panels to make recommendations to the independent hearings panel on the basis of a number of submissions on one particular topic without waiting for all of the submissions and the evidence to be heard before they make its recommendations. I just want to repeat that we have real concerns about whether that will make for a piecemeal and incoherent consideration of what is a very complex set of interlocking issues that the panel will be considering. The other sections—sections 124 148 and 150—again all point back to the concerns that we raised under clause 5.