Mark Ron: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2849. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (NZ First): It is with a degree of mixed feelings that I rise to speak to this bill on behalf of New Zealand First and to indicate that New Zealand First will reluctantly—very reluctantly—support this piece of legislation. I said earlier on today that the difficulty of speaking at about the No. 7 slot is that pretty much that all the things you really need to talk about have already been said and I do not want to bore the House by going through all of the detail and minutiae again. However that said there are some things that do need to be said.We have already heard in the blow-by-blow accounts of respective members of the Local Government and Environment Committee as to the circumstances that brought about this piece of legislation and that brought it to the House. The fact that we are passing retrospective legislation in this House does not sit well with New Zealand First at all—at all. That is a bad precedent. It is something that should not be visited in this House and the fact that we are doing it for a third time as has been mentioned is an indictment on those people who are responsible. I am not going to be so forgiving in my speech of some of the things that have led us to this point.The submission from the Christchurch City Council makes interesting reading as does the Department of Internal Affairs report to the select committee. There were some questions that were asked by the select committee before I was back in the House in November. It is interesting going through and reading the answers specifically when the select committee back on 27 November 2014 asked this of the department: “The committee requested copies of Christchurch City Council’s audit reports for each of the financial years involved. The committee also asked for information [as to] who undertook the audits each year; the cost of the audits; whether the audit reports raised any issues with the rates resolutions; and the name of the Christchurch City Council’s Chief Executive at the relevant times.”It is astonishing when you look at some things. Having been a Mayor of Carterton I am finding it really quite—I am going to try not to be smug and I will try desperately because that is not a good characteristic and we have been seeing too much of that in this House right up until last weekend. Some of the smugness has been knocked off some faces but I am going to try not to be smug. But I have heard consistently how super-cities are the be-all and end-all—how economies of scale solve all manner of problems. I have heard so much claptrap out of the mouth of Fran Wilde and the Local Government Commission toadies—and I will call them toadies because that is all I see them as—who said things like you will get the high level of expertise in local government that is required for the future only if you amalgamate all the councils into one. So let us look at this super-city in the south.This super-city in the south has managed to do something that Carterton District Council the third-smallest council in New Zealand has never done. I know from my experience that if you have a competent chief executive officer and competent staff when you are passing the resolutions for your annual plan—in which you lay out the rates the uniform annual general charges the targeted rates and the rates increases—your run sheet tells you as the mayor precisely what resolutions you must be passing. Your chief executive officer and his financial manager will lay down very clearly and specifically the requirements of the Act and those resolutions will be passed and they will be put on to paper into words prior to the rates bills going out and prior to the annual plan being finally endorsed and published. Without that being done the annual report does not get approved.Yet here is a super-city with all of the power that it can muster to be able to hire the best—and who were the best? Well going into this report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs we now know that the mayors were Mayor MooreMayor Parker—unfortunately the Hon Lianne Dalziel came in right at the tail end and has to clean up the mess. But we also have chief executive officers Dr Lesley McTurk and—get this; this is the high level of competence that a super-city delivers—Tony Marryatt.So who is the chief executive officer who oversaw the bulk of these stuff-ups? Well it was one Mr Tony Marryatt who became famous down in Christchurch for racking up Hooters bills when on the Christchurch City Council. It was one Mr Tony Marryatt who got an $800000 payout—I am pretty sure it was about that. Looking at Wikipedia it talks about an $800000 payout. Mr Tony Marryatt was the chief executive officer at Hamilton who got totally offside with the mayor and the council of Hamilton and was one of the people responsible for the massive loss that the V8 Supercars races made. It was Mr Tony Marryatt who caused a high level of anxiety amongst people in Christchurch that resulted in demonstrations and protests with about 4000 people turning up because he got a $70000 pay rise. Stop press! Tony Marriott got a $70000 pay rise as the chief executive officer at the very time he was stuffing up.Well I do not want to hear anybody talk to me and my people the good people of the Wairarapa—least of all the MP for the Wairarapa who thinks that super-cities are going to bring economies of scale and sharper people into the management—when this is the sort of thing one gets. Carterton has never had to face this. Carterton has never had to come cap in hand to Parliament asking that it validate its rates bills over how many years now because it made these sorts of mistakes.Stuart Nash: Nor Napier.RON MARK: Nor Napier no. Nor Gisborne no. Nor Masterton nor South Wairarapa. And yet we have got a whole bunch of people very learned people who dare to tell the Wairarapa that it will be better off because it is not capable of managing itself and tell it that it should be a super-city. Many of those people sit in the Government’s ranks as well. Well there is a very clear message in this piece of legislation tonight: smaller is often sharper. Smaller is often special—that is why the SAS is only small because it is very special. Smaller is actually capable of being more focused—Hon Member: Talk about the bill.RON MARK: Ha ha! Look you learnt a long time ago that great things come in small packages and you are looking at one of them right now!But smaller is actually sharper because the sensitivity levels on mistakes are so much higher. If Carterton increases it budget and overspends by $80000 on the scale and nature of its budget that is a 1 percent increase in rates. Carterton is highly sensitive to error highly sensitive to bad reports from the Auditor-General highly sensitive to its reputation thoroughly focused and more than anything very aware that if it makes a mistake of this nature its community is going to call it to task very quickly—very very quickly.It is an indictment that a city council of this size has made such a glaring error. As Todd Muller has said I will not hold the Auditor-General’s office very strongly to account but I will point this out. The audit for Christchurch City Council over those errant years when the errors existed or lay undetected cost Christchurch ratepayers this: in 2004 it cost $168000 for the audit that did not pick up this error $187000 the next year $205000 the next year—all the way up until 2011 when they were paying $268000. In 2013 Christchurch ratepayers paid the Audit Office $292000 to conduct the audit. Just explain to me: how did the Audit Office miss this? And why is this House sitting tonight dealing with the errors made by the Christchurch City Council—an offline super-city—that were not picked up by the auditors for $292000? Thank you.