Twyford Phil: Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Bill — Third Readings 
Twyford Phil: Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:663;Page:11624] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I want to make some acknowledgments in this speech. I acknowledge the people of Auckland. I acknowledge the people who turned up to public meetings all over the city in places as diverse as Pukekohe Warkworth Wellsford Kumeu New Lynn Waitakere Papakura Grey Lynn Mount Albert Milford and Birkenhead—have I missed any out? There were dozens of public meetings over the last year and a half. I acknowledge the thousands of people—I think 3000 Aucklanders—who submitted to the royal commission and the more than 1000 people who made submissions to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee on the second and third bills. I acknowledge the 10000 people who took part and voted in the people’s referendum which was put on by the Our Auckland campaign group 97 percent of whom said they rejected the Government’s super-city model. I acknowledge the 8000 Aucklanders who marched down Queen Street in the hikoi demanding a democratic Auckland and guaranteed representation for Maori on the new council. 
All of these people all of these Aucklanders asked for a democratic super-city to be set up that would look after their communities and give them a voice in the future of the city. They were told by this Government that they were scaremongering. They were told repeatedly that the Government was listening to them and that it would put the “local” back into local government. John Carter said on many occasions in the select committee that the Government was listening and it would do what they wanted. He said that the Government was going to give local boards real powers and make the council-controlled organisations accountable. 
Well what do you know; the final outcome is every bit as bad as people feared and suspected a year ago. The Government has not heard. It has listened but it has not heard. Sure in these bills that are about to be passed into law we have seen a number of minor concessions. The fundamental provisions in the bill have been tweaked in an attempt to convey the impression that this Government has heard the people of Auckland but it has not. I say to the Government that having a couple of public meetings and publishing a brochure is not accountability and transparency as we know it in our system of Government. It is more like public relations. When Mr Hide says that he will consult mayors and the people of Auckland about the people he is appointing to the directorships of the council-controlled organisations he should forgive the people of Auckland for being cynical because for the last 18 months they have had direct experience of Mr Hide’s definition of consultation. 
Allowing the council to appoint the chair and the deputy chair is not accountability as we know it in our system of government. These things are just tweakings; they are minor adjustments around the edges. The Government has not altered the fundamental course that it chartered when it brought this bill to the House for the first time. It has insisted on going ahead with its corporatisation agenda which will consign three-quarters of the city’s assets and operations to the control of handpicked appointees. It is fundamentally shifting accountability and control of civic life in Auckland out of the public domain and into the boardroom. Aucklanders made it very clear that they did not want a bar of that. This Government has not listened and it has continued with its agenda. 
For the last 12 months the people of Auckland have demanded that the voice of local communities be preserved in the super-city. They have asked that the powers of local boards be enshrined in legislation to guarantee that local boards have real decision-making powers. For the last 8 months the Government has been promising that it would heed those requests. It has not. It has gone ahead and retained the framework it put in place with the second super-city Act and it has created 21 toothless talk shops instead. 
I want to talk about who should be held accountable and who should be held responsible for these changes. It is very interesting to see that the Prime Minister has kept a very low profile in relation to this issue in recent times. We have not seen him front up alongside the Minister of Local Government but let us make no mistake about it; the Prime Minister is cheek by jowl with Rodney Hide on this effort. The Prime Minister and Cabinet have signed off every single piece of this reform agenda. National is responsible to its boots for what it has done to Auckland. The people of Auckland will hold it responsible. 
The Minister of Local Government is an easy target. He is an easy target because of his extremist ideology and because of his status as a fallen perk-buster. That makes him a convenient whipping boy for everybody who wants to find whoever is responsible for what this Government is doing to Auckland and hold them accountable. But John Key and his Cabinet have signed off every single thing and they will be held accountable by the people of Auckland for this assault on our democracy for the weakening of our public institutions and for the contracting out of local government to hand-picked appointees. All of this must be laid squarely at the feet of this National Government. 
Next I want to talk about the issue of costs. What sticks in the craw of Aucklanders more than anything is that they did not ask for this whole thing. They were not given a say in the shape of the city they were not listened to when they raised serious objections but they sure as hell will have to pay for it. We managed to get hold of a copy of the  
New Zealand Herald  
for 2012 and this is the story on the front page: “Rates explosion. Thank you Rodney”. That headline is a prediction from the Labour Opposition. That is what will happen. The “Minister of Ratepayers” as Rodney Hide likes to be known—the champion of accountability and transparency—has had to have every little piece of financial information dragged out of him in the last few weeks. A month ago the only thing that Aucklanders knew was that there was a $34 million loan for the Auckland Transition Agency. But over the last few weeks more and more information has come out. When the Budget was released we found out that there was another loan to fund the Auckland Transition Agency. Subsequently as the Minister told the House last week we found out that the costs were up to $160 million. But the Minister refuses to acknowledge that other costs have been incurred that are part of the transition exercise. He will not accept that the $14 million spent by councils doing transition work at the behest of the Government is a transition cost. He will not acknowledge that $26.5 million spent establishing the water organisation is a transition cost. So this self-styled “Minister of Ratepayers” is trying to define away $40 million - odd of transition costs. He refuses to accept that those costs will be borne by the people of Auckland. 
There is a bombshell waiting for the Auckland ratepayer and that is the next story I predict about the cost of the Auckland super-city; the cost of redundancy. Dozens of senior executives will be made redundant; that is a fact. There are dozens of them and they have gold-plated redundancy agreements. The Minister will not acknowledge this but the cost of those redundancies I am informed by sources in Auckland could be as high as $47 million. It beggars belief that this Minister refuses to acknowledge that any modelling or projections have been done about the costs of redundancies. We are coming to the end of this debate— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I regret to advise the member that his time has expired.