Martin Tracey: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13900. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to provide New Zealand First’s contribution on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2). New Zealand First will be supporting the bill. First of all can I also add my congratulations to Ross Robertson who had a landslide victory in theŌtara-Papatoetoe Local Board elections 2000 votes ahead of his closest competitor. Knowing the job and knowing the man I know that he will do an exceptionally good job at representing that local board area and the work that it must do. Can I also congratulate Penny Webster who is the Rodney councillor the returning local board members for the Rodney Local Board—Steve Garner Brenda Steele James Colville Thomas Grace—and the new member PhelanPirrie.It was interesting that Mr Twyford—and I just want to make some comments about MrTwyford’s contribution to this bill with regard to the delegations and with regard to him minimising the true powers that the local boards have. Ms Beaumont I think better summarised actually the work that certain local boards have done. For example although there certainly are delegations around parks libraries and reserves the land-use delegations are often held by local boards.The local boards do have budgets in their own right which they use for things. The Rodney Local Board for example is funding night schools. In 2009 the Rodney Local Board area lost all night schools and all adult and community education with the cuts by the National Government to that particular budget line. The Rodney Local Board has funded in the last financial year the restarting of adult and community education in the Warkworth area. This year it will restart adult and community education in Helensville and next year it will restart adult and community education in Wellsford. So those are the budget lines that the local boards have. It is also dealing with youth employment issues in its area. It is partnering withNgātiWhātuaNgāRima o Kaipara around a joint housing project where the Unitec will be coming into Helensville. They have purchased some of the houses from Hobsonville which are now behind the college there. The Unitec will come in and partnering withNgātiWhātua will be running its pre-apprenticeship building course in Helensville because there is no public transport out of Helensville for anybody to go to any technical college.So there are many many things that the local boards do. They have done well in the 3-year period that they have been in place. They certainly need the delegations to continue and as my colleague Ms Roche said particularly as the new board members will be sworn in within the next 14 days. However I know that the governing body and the local boards in the non-hierarchal co-governance model which is Auckland is not a two-tier model. It is not a senior-lower model. We certainly do not need a parliamentary model because this is about local communities not about party politics. Again I disagree with Mr Twyford. I think if you have a local ticket that is fine but I think it is deeply saddening that party politics from Parliament have actually ended up around what are local body electorates which are supposed to be about communities andpeople who work hard in their communities representing them. So again I disagree with Mr Twyford on that. I think perhaps Mr Twyford needs to talk to somebody on the local board outside his own party possibly.I would recommend that during the discussions that the next governing body and the next local boards have around these delegations—and the movement of more boards coming to the Government asking for more delegations to be handed down to the local boards which is a conversation that has been taking place over the last 3 years—that the staff inside the amalgamated city do not continue moves to have the chairs of the local boards created into mini-mayors. This is a move that is concerning around these other conversations. It might be administratively easier but it is certainly not democratically better. So I think the new board members and new governing body members need to strongly watch for those sorts of moves.But at the end of the day this system—although the two rural areas should have remained out of the amalgamated Auckland; Rodney should not have been pulled into Auckland nor should have Franklin—for the more urban part of Auckland this is working well. The two rural areas have been exceptionally effective in taking that voice to the governing body and making sure that we argue back for the things that our rural areas need but there is a lot more work to be done there.The true place that the Government and the Parliament need to set their minds to is around the council-controlled organisations. If this model were to be rolled out anywhere else in the country firstly I would strongly suggest they wait another 3 years and see how Auckland works. But the model around the council-controlled organisations must be altered. The governing body and the local boards seem to have lost control of what are called council-controlled organisations. So when this bill comes back because I believe it will then that is one of the things I hope to see in the amendments. But at this stage New Zealand First will definitely be supporting this bill.