Hipkins Chris: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2859. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 If we needed yet another example of the arrogance that has taken hold of this Government in the last few weeks we just got it there from “Queen Margaret” talking about the chattering classes. Anybody who did not agree with the current Government is part of the chattering classes—the chattering classes! Well I have to say that the people in Upper Hutt are interested in this piece of legislation because this legislation means that Nick Smith and Fran Wilde who have been plotting and scheming to cook up an amalgamation in the Wellington region can do so and take away the rights of Wellingtonians to have a say on it by way of referendum. We know that the plotting and scheming to do away with the democratically elected local councils in the Wellington region has been going on for some time in this Government. 
Moana Mackey 
: She just said: “What’s that got to do with the bill?”. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: What’s that got to do with the bill? Maggie Barry or “Queen Margaret” wants to know what that has got to do with the bill. This bill basically allows the Government to do away with the local authorities in the Wellington region without the people of Wellington having a chance to have a say on it. Actually if someone passes me a copy of the bill I might read it to her slowly so that she can actually understand what is in the legislation. I cannot believe that she managed to speak for a whole 5 minutes on it. Someone might have thought she might have read it. I think that is probably the longest speech she has given in the House but clearly she has not actually read the legislation. The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill removes the ability of the people from Upper Hutt to have a say on whether they want to be amalgamated with Lower Hutt or with Wellington city or the Kapiti Coast. At the moment they have an ability to have a say on that but it will be taken away by this arrogant out-of-touch National Government. 
What did the Government do to build the case for doing this? Well first of all it followed the Nick Smith playbook: manufacture a crisis—come out with a whole lot of bogus statistics and make up a crisis. When was the last time he did that? Oh with ACC! How did that turn out for him? How did that turn out for Nick Smith in the end when he manufactured a crisis in ACC? It did not work out quite so well for him. 
It all came unravelled when we found out that the statistics that he was using were totally bogus. His own officials came out and said that his statistics had been bogus and they replaced them on the website with a statement. The statistics were up there on the website but the Department of Internal Affairs replaced them with a statement that said that “there are issues with the data both in terms of its accuracy and in terms of the picture that was given for some councils.” The Department of Internal Affairs officials basically said that Nick Smith was not telling the truth. Their own Minister was not telling the truth about the true picture of local government. It is an indictment on the Government that Nick Smith’s own officials did not believe him. His own officials actually went so far as to put a statement on a website that said he was wrong and that he was not telling the truth. 
Of course there is a bit more to this as well because this Government rushed this legislation in. Did it talk to the people who were going to be affected by it? No of course it did not. The chair of Local Government New Zealand said that a number of its members had expressed concern at the lack of any consultation on the proposed changes before they were signed off by the Cabinet. Oh now that is a bit familiar. Where have we heard that in the last few weeks? I think just about every teacher principal and school board of trustees in the country shared a similar concern for another set of changes the Government was pushing through.  
This is not a Government that does things with people; this is a Government that does things to people. It does not actually care what the chattering classes—as Maggie Barry calls them—think. It knows better—National knows best. That is the mantra of John Key’s Government—National knows best. National will do whatever it likes. It will forget about referendums or anything where people might actually have a say. National will do just whatever it feels like. And this bill is yet another example of that in action. This bill has been introduced without the Government consulting properly with the people who are going to be affected by it and without consulting with the people who might know something about local government—because this Government certainly does not seem to. 
This is another quote from the Department of Internal Affairs the Government’s own officials and this is quite an indictment really. The department is worried that there is risk as to whether “all the proposals will work”. This is the Government officials saying they do not know whether the proposals in this bill are actually going to work and then they further go on to argue that the assumptions that the legislation is based on “are not or only partially tested.” It is a bit like the crazy idea to increase class sizes.