Logie Jan: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8330. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on this the third reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. The Green Party as we have expressed already is not able to support this bill as it is passing through under urgency without the proper democratic process—without enabling the people of Auckland to have input into changes to the oversight of a planning process that is absolutely critical to creating the Auckland that every person in Auckland desperately wants and has been waiting for for a long time.The detail of this bill is that it reduces the quorum required for hearings sessions from three to two. There have been issues raised with that in the point of where the decision making will happen if there are locked perspectives when you have got an even number. There have also been issues raised around the increased potential for a narrowing of perspectives to be leading the direction of the plan when you have got only two people rather than three. Other concerns that have been raised around that point are just around the fact that well one person may not be paying attention one person may not be available—then what in terms of things being able to go forward?So we think that those are actually genuine points that it would have been useful to have enabled Aucklanders to have input on around their experience of the process so far and their desire for how they would like this process to look.This bill also allows for an increase in the number of Government-appointed panel members from seven to 10 and again for us this is a core point of difference between our vision of democracy and what it seems this Government’s is. We believe that in appropriate decision-making the people closest to that decision and who are most affected by a decision are the ones in the best place to make that decision not people based here in Wellington who actually may not even be able to see the gaps in their understanding of the realities in those communities.It is particularly galling that this is happening under urgency and again taking away the right of the people of Auckland to have input and comment on that. It is not a small thing when the Government has voted down consciously through the Committee stage of this bill the opportunity to enable Auckland Council to appoint those people.So it becomes very clear that this is not about the needs of Auckland; this is about what this Government wants. And then again it is imposing its vision its will on top of local government and that is not how our constitutional Government arrangements are supposed to work. Central government has a specific role and local government has another role and they should be freed up to be able to deliver that for their communities for those locally elected members to be able to be accountable to the members of their community.This bill again overrides that and it needs to be pointed out that this is happening under urgency to amend a piece of legislation that was introduced under urgency and that there have been 16 separate bills dealing with Auckland local government issues since 2009 since this Government has been in power. This is the fourth Auckland transitional provisions bill since 2009 because the Government put through the initial legislation under urgency overriding local democracy and it did not get it right. So many hours and so much money have been wasted in this House fixing up mistakes that would not have happened if there had been good decision-making.It seems to me that this Government has an idea of efficiency that is all about realising its vision as quickly as possible. It does not seem to understand that efficiency is best served when as many people’s views as possible can be gathered together to produce the best result in the best time frame to enable that to happen. It is about the quality of decision making and democratic rights and we have to oppose the bill.