Blue Jackie: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
Blue Jackie: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6479] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to be speaking again in the debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. It has certainly been a long time coming. It has been at least 50 years since concerns and grumblings about the governance of Auckland started. It has not been working and there have been many attempts to fix it. Once the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance got going consulted and reported back it was clear the Government had to move fast. Although the previous Government started this process it is the current Government that will be finishing it and that is what this bill is about. It is the second bill of three. Basically the commission said that reform was urgent and it stressed that doing nothing would be a high cost to Auckland. The region was suffering from bureaucracy from stifling red tape roads were blocked and businesses and the economy were suffering. That is why we are here today. 
I want to touch on the voting system. There has been debate about it already today and certainly the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee had a number of submissions regarding whether we should have the single transferable vote (STV) system versus the first-past-the-post system. There were a lot of submissions for STV. It was felt it would be more democratic and perhaps would give greater representation of ethnic minorities—very valid points. It is good in theory but I think unfortunately it has been very poor in practice. 
Essentially with this bill which will be in place for the local body elections in September 2010 all of Auckland will be facing a totally new system. It will be totally foreign. Aucklanders will be voting for the Auckland Council for one super-council if members like to call it that and 20 to 30 boards. It will be a whole new system. The history of STV in the Auckland area is that it is used for the district health board elections which have occurred in 2004 and 2007. Quite frankly I will not say it is a disaster but the number of invalid votes is absolutely phenomenal. They have got worse not better and the voter turnout is getting poorer as well. Voters are turning off. Why are they turning off? I guess that is the question. Is it due to the voting system? Is it due to apathy? Who knows? Certainly I think the voting system is critical. We have to get it right. I think that for the first election the voting system needs to be simple so that people can understand it. It should be first past the post and after that Aucklanders can decide for themselves what voting system they want to follow. I think that on balance the committee felt that would be the best way to go forward. 
I want to talk a little bit about remuneration. We had some submissions on the remuneration of the new local board members. Under the current system community board members get quite a modest salary. It is very modest indeed for the work that they do; one could almost call it voluntary or altruistic-type work. The submitters said to us that that means that the individuals who currently step up either can afford to step up or have the time on their hands to step up and that possibly people who would like to do so but cannot afford to stop their day job or whatever are precluded. The new local boards will be quite different with new roles and responsibilities. A paragraph in the commentary on the bill suggests that the Remuneration Authority—we cannot tell it what to do—align the remuneration of the new local board members with the level of responsibility of their work. Hopefully it will follow through and a whole different range of diverse people will step up. That would be a very good thing. 
I want to talk a wee bit about the mayor. I think the election in 2010 in Auckland will be quite exciting. We already have a couple of candidates. Certainly the new Auckland mayor he or she—and who knows it might be a she— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: It should be shouldn’t it! 
Dr JACKIE BLUE 
: I agree. It would be great to have a female Auckland mayor. The mayor whoever it might be will have the huge responsibility of bringing the region together bringing all areas together. He or she will have to show vision and leadership. They will have 20 councillors to work with. Those councillors will come from all over Auckland. The select committee recommends that one should be from the Rodney District one from the Franklin District and so on.