Jones Shane: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Jones Shane: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3643] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora no tatou. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak for the voices of Auckland that have been silenced as a consequence of the chilling erosion of democracy being orchestrated by Rodney Hide and Mr Brownlee this morning. It is good to see Mr Harawira back here after practising his salute with a Melanesian flavour to it. 
I stand to speak about the importance of the rights of those Aucklanders whose democratic entitlements have been swiped away as a consequence of the Auckland Transition Agency. Now we focus on their rights as employees. They cover a large and vast distance. My colleague earlier spoke about those who are disadvantaged those who occupy marginal positions. Their level of irrelevance grows by the hour in the mind of the National Government. It does not care about people who do not have powerful friends in shiny towers. It does not care about people who do not belong to the chamber of commerce who do not belong to other powerful professional organisations. All it cares about is turning the transition agency into a small unaccountable group of people who will be driven by profit. They will not think of the humanitarian considerations that employees deserve at a time when avalanche after avalanche of bad news is coming from overseas. The rights of children mothers fathers and grandparents are the rights that we should be concerned about and they have been completely forgotten. 
The Minister of Local Government stands up and gives lame accounts as to how Opposition members are either being trivial or not treating the House seriously. This is the highest court in the land. Aucklanders have every right to look to the Opposition to hold the Government to account in terms of speaking up for their right—given that to date we have failed to make any difference whatsoever in relation to their democratic rights—to be able to go to work and continue to contribute to and enrich the city of Auckland and its broader environment knowing that they will not fall victim as they did in the 1980s to Mr Roger Douglas’ foul schemes knowing that they will not fall victim to half-baked ideas from people who unfortunately will not be elected but will be appointed. The Government will not appoint Maori from the local tribes. It will not appoint tangata whenua and give them a decent fee to represent the indigenous dimension. Similarly the Government wants to appoint people on fat salaries who will not be accountable to us. They will smash the rights smash the entitlements and accept none of the obligations that fall upon good employers. 
So it falls to us to remind the media to remind our friends here in the broader Opposition and to remind the Government that these sorts of things open up ill will. These sorts of things cause people to feel that they no longer have a decent stake in the development of what is meant to be the super-city. This provision enables the creation of a mega-city over the bodies of good God-fearing decent workers. How can that possibly be sustainable? How can that possibly lay down a basis for productivity and for growth in the confidence of people who want better parks who want better goods and services but who fear they will be unable to achieve them because every time they have a request of a significant nature to improve their working environment it will have to go across Rodney Hide’s desk? His desk will be littered with applications for contracts and a variety of other foul schemes to erode and undo the good work that the very workers we are concerned about have created and contributed to. 
It might be said that we should not focus too much on those groups that we will get to speak about later in the day—that is the tangata whenua and the Pasifika. But those are the groups along with other vulnerable sectors of the employment force that this bill is designed to protect. I would like to hear from Mr Rodney Hide. How on earth does he think that instilling power in a small group of corporate-driven unaccountable people will enrich the rights of workers?