Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLocal Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8273. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Tuesday 17 November 2015(continued on Thursday 19 November 2015)Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment BillSecond ReadingDebate resumed.DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to take a call on the second reading of this Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I think it is worthwhile justtraversingwhere the Green Party is coming from since we are the only party in the House that is opposing this bill. Originally we said when we discussed it as a caucus that our recommendation was that we would support it to the select committee. We were quite keen to support it going to the select committee because the select committee process is where we hear from the experts—that is where we would hear firsthand from Auckland Council about how this bill would impact on it and the pros and cons of the bill. We would have the Parliamentary Counsel Office. It would devise the bill itself for us and pick up any mistakes. We would have the opportunity to deliberate and to discuss with each other what we thought were the pros and cons and maybewe would be able to make some amendments if that was worthwhile. It would be the true spirit of democracy.What I have found is that it is in that select committee process when members from all sides of the House are actually interacting with each other that we see true democracy in action. The submission processis also where we involve our citizenship in the democratic processes of this country. We believe that that is incredibly important. So because we could not take this bill to the select committee and because we have some serious concerns about the erosion of local democracy and the way this Government constantly tries to take over the control of democracy and power from local councils on balance we decided that as a point of principle we would not support this bill.I heard members in the House last night saying that Auckland Council wants the bill and I have no doubt it does. We particularly do not want to hold up the planning process because we recognise its importance for basically setting out the plan for the future of Auckland. However we have seen in this House time and time and time again particularly in relation to Auckland constant incursions into the running of Auckland by this Government. Other members have said it is basically because when the Government set up the super-city it did not get the right mayor andit did not get the right council and we in Auckland have been punished ever since.This is another example of a select few in Cabinet—mostly none of them are from Auckland—trying to get their influence on to what is our major city. We know that if Auckland does not succeed the country does not succeed. Auckland is the economic powerhouse. But if you look at the constant meddling that this House has been putting forward in terms of the running of Auckland we have to have some serious concerns about just what this Government is up to. Since 2009 there have been 16 separate pieces of legislation dealing with the governance of Auckland.Phil Twyford: What does that tell you?DENISE ROCHE: What does it tell you. It tells us that there has been a constant barrage from this Government about who runs Auckland and how it is run. So we have taken a stand that is not that popular in this House and I can understand that.However it is a principled position.We are not going to a select committeebecause under urgency we do not get the opportunity to do this.We know that when the Minister put forward this bill and announced it it was September. He was saying at the time that essentially the Government wants this bill in place because it wants to make sure that it has some processes in place before the expiry of the special housing accord in Auckland which is I have to say a pet project from the Minister for Building and Housing. We do not see that as actually a good reason for invoking urgency. We could have gone through a process where we invited submissions where we set up the select committee where we got the expert evidence and where we got a regulatory impact statement for heaven’s sake that actually outlined the pros and cons of this legislation. This legislation is designed to fix up mistakes from the original legislation. If we pass this under urgency without that due process then we risk making more mistakes. If you look at those 16 pieces of legislation a whole bunch of them are about validating stuff. It is about having another tinker because the legislation has not been true and sound. There is merit in that old cliché that the faster you go the bigger the mess. We have seen that. We have frequently seen that when it comes to Auckland and Auckland governance.The other reason we had serious misgivings about this bill is not just the encroachment on local democracy in Auckland but also the encroachment on local democracy right across the country. I guess one of our guiding issues one of the things that concerned us the most was that if we allow this constant sort of undermining of local democracy—even though in this part it is just about the appointment of hearings commissioners—then we are actually saying to the Government that every single time it has overtaken due process and undermined local governance and local councils it is OK. Well we would like to say on lots of issues it is not OK.I guess the thing that really really brings this issue back home is what happened in Canterbury with Environment Canterbury the regional councilwhich was the ultimate in this Government’s exercising its power to completely get rid of local democracy. If we just recap on that issue we saw councillors replaced by commissioners. We saw councillors who were duly elected by the citizens of Canterbury sacked and replaced by Government appointees. That is why we have serious misgivings about this Government appointing hearings commissioners.We know that the Auckland Unitary Plan Hearings Panel that was set up by this Government to hear and develop the plan for Auckland despite the fact that it was appointed has actually been doing a good job. It has got a bigger job to complete. The reason this Government has got this piece of legislation here today for us to push through under urgency is that the Government has set its own deadline—July next year—by which the unitary plan hearings panel has to report back to the council on the recommendations for the plan. It has said it has got to be by July next year. There is absolutely no reason—no real reason—for that to happen. The Government is arbitrarily choosing a deadline in order to put pressure on a unitary plan process which is again a democratic process. We know it is democratic because there are over 5000 submissions still to be heard. But if you speed up that process then what gets lost? The unitary plan is far too important for us to have a process that is lacking in democratic principles. By having the Government set an arbitrary date we are actually starting to erode democracy in another way.We will be opposing the bill. We are the only party in the House that is opposing the bill and we are doing it because of the constant encroachments on the democratic processes and principles in Auckland. Thank you.RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): It is always a challenge and I have said this before when you rise at No. 7—Phil Twyford: What would you know about local government!RON MARK: What would I know about local government? A teeny-weeny little bit. I have to say in response to the question from the honourable member if I had known as much about local government when I first entered Parliament as I know today having spent 4 years as the Mayor of Carterton—and elected unopposed in one of those terms—I would have been a better MP.I think that many many of the speeches that I have heard and sadly a lot of the commentary that has come from Ministers as they have sought to justify legislation that they have advanced through this House have been made from a baseline of pure ignorance about local government matters and a total lack of understanding of the consequences of those pieces of legislation that they put through and inflict upon the ratepayers and the people of those communities—which is quite a sad thing. But I am hopeful that there is a greater degree of understanding now between Local Government New Zealand and the Government and this bill probably gives a “smidge” of hope that there is some meaningful conversation going on between this Government and local government which is absolutely essential given the enormous amount of damage inflicted by its erstwhile Minister Mr Nick Smith when he rammed through this House and justified the production of the local government amendment legislation back in 2013.I do recall as a mayor sitting in the company of many other mayors and deputy mayors and chief executive officers and senior managers of local government territorial authorities throughout New Zealand the absolute anger at some of the assertions of this Government about what local government was and was not doing how competent it was and how capable it was. It astonished me to the point that I actually sent an email to the Minister of Local Government at the time—who is now the Speaker Mr David Carter—and copied it in to the Prime Minister making the observation that I could not understand why the Government would be so rude and behave in such an ill-informed manner and be so derisive of local government given the large number of card-carrying National Party members who were mayors deputy mayors and senior councillors within local government incorporated. As I said in my email I hoped that they expressed their dissatisfaction at the next election and I know a good many of them certainly did.What stands out in this piece of legislation and the point in time that we have arrived at now in the House is the irony. I say to the honourable member Phil Twyford that I was a little bit gutted because he took my first paragraph off me when he started his contribution last night in the second reading but I am going to repeat it here today because I think it actually says something quite pertinent.We are in the second reading. Normally this would be post a select committee hearing—a time when this bill would have been put on the Table and New Zealanders and particularly the ratepayers of Auckland would have had an opportunity to make submissions to express their views express their concerns ask their questions and seek some satisfaction and some surety around any of the issues that they might have spotted in this bill. This bill is designed to enhance the hearings process. This process that we are engaged in right now ironically is undermining the parliamentary hearings process. I do not get it. How blatantly obvious must this have been to the Leader of the House and the Government whips when the proposition was first put to them: “Oh we’ve got this item sitting at No. 15. We need to bolster up the urgency. How about we chuck this on the Table? We’ll just flick off the select committee stage. We’ll run it through ram it through.”The truth of the matter is that if the Government really believes in enhancing the hearings processes and expediting more efficiently whilst giving people the opportunity to have their say on the Auckland Unitary Plan through their submissions—if it seriously believes that that is what it is doing through passing this bill then why would it undermine the credibility of the process of the passage of this bill by removing the hearings process from this bill? I do not get it.Someone over there—maybe Mr Seymour because he is to paraphrase him sometimes a very very bright chap.But as we know very very bright chaps can sometimes be quite amazingly thick very intelligent people—Jami-Lee Ross: Ron Mark would know about that.RON MARK: Well there he goes “Mr Mouth”—what is his name? I keep forgetting it but he is a “whipper” apparently in the National Government. But someone surely must have understood the irony of the situation—Jami-Lee Ross: You’re proving the thickness argument.RON MARK: —that they were putting on the Table right now. That man will find out just how stupid his statements are come 2017 when he wants to come talk to me will he not? But we will hold it until that day. We will move on from here because the ignorance of that man is not worth commenting on.I would only say to the Government that it is sad that we are pushing this bill through under urgency. We could have actually had the first reading done a month or so ago. We could have moved it through to select committee and even if we had said—well it is a very small bill. It is a very tight bill. It has got the support and looking at the departmental disclosure statement there has clearly been some very good conversation with Auckland City. Auckland City is on board with the bill—it has been involved in it. I read in the departmental disclosure statement that its consultations have been done via emails and other communications.It would appear that if we had had a select committee process it would have been a pretty straightforward matter from the Auckland City side. It most certainly would have given the citizens of Auckland an opportunity to come along and voice their concerns. What would their concerns have most likely been? If one takes 5 minutes to have a look at the Auckland City website and look at the unitary plan and the processes it has to go through—I mean it is very clear that Auckland has decided on a vision statement which is to be the world’s most livable city. Of course to make a vision statement worthwhile there has to be a plan. This is the unitary plan we are looking at. The plan has to determine what can be built and where.There is no shortage of controversy in Auckland around that very question of what can be built and where. Auckland is suffering right now from a massive housing shortage and it is very clear that the initiatives of the Government have not done anything to alleviate that problem. Auckland people quite rightly in their submissions on the unitary plan would want to have those conversations. To “create a higher-quality and more compact city … provide for rural activities”—under the Auckland Unitary Plan and the hearings that would be heard on this I have no doubt that there are some serious concerns being raised out of Rodney and out of rural Auckland. Although people might say that their plan needs to provide for rural activities that mere statement suggests to me that the people who wrote it actually do not understand rural New Zealand.It is not just about rural activities—being able to get down to the river for a picnic. This is about how the economic units within the rural part of Auckland City actually operate and are permitted to operate under the unitary plan. I have no doubt that amongst those 5000 submissions that are yet to be heard there will be some very strong views from rural Rodney.The bill as it lies on the Table right now is designed to expedite the hearings process. New Zealand First has already said in the first reading that it has no trouble with those provisions. The only concern we have is around reducing the quorum from three to two—it seems a bit strange—but having concurrent committees running under different chairs as well seems to fill that gap. It seems to make up for some of the concerns we have. I will leave it there.In conclusion let us have a conversation during the Committee stage. We will have more talk around the quorum and why the Minister thinks that is OK and we will take the bill from that point. Thank you very much.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā tēnā koe; e ngā mema o Te Whare Pāremata tēnā koutou katoa. In the second reading debate on the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill I just want to say that I am astounded that members opposite can take such a long time to say that they will vote for and actually agree with what we are trying to achieve with this bill because it is a very clear and simple piece of legislation. The key provisions are that it will reduce the quorum of the hearings for the Auckland Unitary Plan from three to two members allowing up to four hearings to be held concurrently. This should allow the council to complete its Auckland Unitary Plan hearings by July next year which is the legislated deadline.I see no need to filibuster this bill—it is a very simple piece of legislation. So I will not be giving one of the waffling speeches that we have heard from members opposite. This is an excellent bill. I commend it to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take another short call this evening—in this alternate universe of urgency—on the second reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. Of course in the normal progression of legislation we would be in this speech reading sections of people’s submissions to the select committee and using departmental advice to support our presentations and potentially supporting presenting and explaining the amendments we might be making to this bill. But we cannot do that today because the use of urgency by the Government has again denied people that ability to participate in this decision-making process and has thus removed the depth from this discussion in this House. We do not even have a regulatory impact statement to support this piece of legislationto be able to add even a little bit more depth. So we have been given this legislation—as was the previous piece of legislation under discussion the Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill—under urgency with no clear rationale for the urgency.I have looked and I have listened to try to understand where the urgency is in this and I cannot see how the changes that are in this piece of legislation could not have been anticipated and brought to this House in time for at least a truncated select committee process to have happened. One of the provisions in this bill seeks to validate 28 February 2014 as the closing date for submissions so that submissions received between 14 January and 28 February can actually still be considered as they have been. The need to do that surely could have been anticipated fairly early last year. It also I understand validates a practice of hearings panels holding concurrent sessions which has been common for quite a while. So I again cannot see how the Government could not have recognised that earlier and brought it to the House to enable submissions.There is even the fact that Minister Nick Smith announced his intent to introduce this legislation back in September and now we are in mid-November rushing this through under urgency. If the key provisions of this bill were identifiable early last year and announced in September—only in September but still—I cannot see why this is happening under urgency and that is a key reason that the Green Party is unable to support this piece of legislation.We feel as if we need to actually make a principled stand in support of people’s ability to participate in the decision-making process. This at the heart refers to the Auckland Unitary Plan and the process for developing that and that plan is no small thing. That plan is responsible for the future shape of Auckland.The Auckland Unitary Plan covers building regulations for mixed housing zones where public open space is and what it looks like building height and the character of our houses in the different areas—the very very heart of what makes a city. It defines the urban boundaries. It puts the rules around sustainable urban design. It puts in protections for fresh water and significant ecological areas. It covers the heritage nature and protections for Auckland the provisions for mana whenua and then as well—something so close to the heart of Aucklanders—all of the transport infrastructure around where transport corridors are the air quality provisions and the parking spaces which is something very dear to my colleague Julie Anne Genter’s heart.This is such a significant plan with such deep meaning for Aucklanders. It is the future of the economic powerhouse of our country and this is legislation that relates to the delivery of that plan. It is no small matter and the bill should not be passed through under urgency.JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. The purpose of this bill is to refine the massive Auckland Unitary Plan hearings process so that the panel can deliver all of its recommendations on the proposed unitary plan to Auckland Council by the statutory deadline of 22 July 2016.Labour is supporting this bill which will amongst other things drop the panel’s quorum. Clause 4 of the bill will amend the principal Act section 136(1) to reduce the quorum for a three-member panel to only two. This should provide enough flexibility to deal with the thousands of submissions on site-specific issues that Auckland Council deals with.As everyone in this House knows Auckland aims to be the most livable city in the world. Auckland is a city that is growing really fast at the moment. Consequently it faces a number of pressing issues including a serious housing crisis issue and my office in South Auckland sees the fallout from this every day.The unitary plan that is proposed by this bill is a tool that would assist Auckland to meet its economic and housing needs. It is an appropriate and balanced way to deal with this issue while protecting and enhancing what is most important to Aucklanders. The unitary plan will determine what is to be built and at which location as well as create a higher-quality and more compact Auckland.The Government still seems to have absolutely no firm idea of what to do to tackle the housing crisis in Auckland in the face of the most urgent housing need that is happening there right now. Just yesterday Simon Collins in the New Zealand Herald reported that every 3 days in Auckland at least one family is seeking housing help because they do not have any other place to live. They are homeless and they are living in cars. Many families are homeless and living in cars right now in Auckland and 50 percent of the people in those families are children. This figure he reports is likely to be an underestimate.Just last week in my electorate office in Manukau East in South Auckland our office saw three families who were homeless and living in cars and who were in desperate need of assistance. Two of these were families with young children and the other was a man in poor health and with disabilities and he has a young daughter. It is appalling that there is nowhere for these families that are living like this—living in cars in this First World country Aotearoa New Zealand—that is a permanent place for them to call their home. For mothers and especially for women with young children it seems that it is only in occasional circumstances—where they are victims of domestic violence—that these families can actually go into a house right away.Our office works on a regular basis with Housing New Zealand as well as with Work and Income. I must say that our office works quite well with them. However the highest priority that they can give a family is A20. In the whole year that I have been a local MP in Manukau East we have only given a family an A15 as the highest priority. I do not actually know what it would take for a family to get to an A20 but our office in South Auckland has not actually seen a family with a priority of A20 not even families with children who are homeless.The special housing areas have been a complete flop. We heard last week that only 102 houses have been completed even though Nick Smith had promised 39000 such homes would be built. The latest Quotable Value data in Auckland tells us that housing prices have risen by $22000 in the month after the Government announced its brightline test coming into effect. Yet again an attempt to control the speculation in housing that has been a notable failure.The average price of a house in Auckland is $918000. There are so many families in Auckland that cannot afford that in Auckland. Right now the Government needs to urgently establish effective measures to control the housing crisis in Auckland. May we recommend that a solution could be a large-scale State-backed affordable housing development as well as a ban on foreign speculators buying existing homes in Auckland. Thank you.JOANNE HAYES (National):Ata mārie e Te Mana Whakawā ka huri au ki ngā mema o Te Whare Pāremata ka nui te mihi atu ki a koutou.[Peaceful morning to you Mr Deputy Speaker. I turn to the members of the House of Parliament: much appreciation to you collectively.]I rise to take a very short call on this bill. I am really pleased to hear that the Opposition supports this bill because the amendment bill is about the ability for the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel to hear all submissions on the unitary plan and it is about the housing issues in Auckland. It is an opportunity as I said last night for people who have some of these idealistic ideas about what Auckland City should look like into the future whether it is a “Kumbaya” State or whatever it ends up being. At the end of the day this is a very short bill and it allows local government to get on and do what local government is going to do into the future for the benefit of Auckland. I am pleased to commend it to the House.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Before I launch into my comments about the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill can I state for the record that today marks 5 years since the tragic deaths of 29 miners at Pike River. Can I state for the record my acknowledgment of that Pike River community my acknowledgment of all the families who have lost loved ones and my acknowledgment also for the Hon Damien O’Connor who has been a consistent voice on behalf of that community. Sadly the tragedy is more enhanced because on reflection and after the royal commission report we know that those deaths could have been prevented. This House needs to take note that we have to unite ourselves around ensuring that we have legislation that protects the lives of all workers throughout this country. I want to table that for the record.I initially raised that acknowledgment of the Pike River community because legislation arising from the tragedy would have been a piece of legislation that I think this House would be united about if it came through urgency. However that is not the case.I now want to get on to the bill. I want to respond because last night members of the Government continued to crow about the fact that this bill would enable Aucklanders to have a view to have a say. The fact of the matter is that the Auckland Council has already heard 9000 submissions with regard to the Auckland Unitary Plan but what this bill does is it prevents Aucklanders from having a view on this piece of legislation. It prevents Aucklanders also from giving this Parliament the benefit of their experience knowledge and expertise.The reason why I say it prevents them is that under normal democratic processes—and we have one of the best in the world—in the first reading the Minister in charge the Hon Dr Nick Smith would have referred the bill to a select committee. The second reading would have enabled us to begin to talk about what Aucklanders submitted on this particular bill. It would have enabled us to thank them for their submissions and thank the members of the committee but that is not the case—that is not the case here. So we do not have the benefit of receiving the views of Aucklanders with regard to how they see things happening already under the structure that this Government forced upon them back in 2010.This is where I think Ron Mark made it clear that nobody can figure out this Government.On the one hand the rhetoric was that it is giving Aucklanders a view but in this particular case it is not. It is not going to give anybody a view and that is quite sad. So we miss out on that opportunity and I suspect if this went out for public consultation we would have heard like many of our colleagues the voices of the people of Auckland tell this Government that it has screwed up. It is its cock-upwhich we are now having to deliberate on with this bill.As I itemised last night Government members can crow all they want but the reality is that this bill fixes the errors that the Government made back in 2010 again because of a collapsed democratic process that it undertook during that period. This Government has a habit of believing that it knows best. And let me give you an example.You see prior to this Government changing the legislation it was councils that had the powers and ability to appoint hearings commissioners. What the principal Act did was it took that power away from Auckland councillors and gave it to the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation. So now we have the Ministers appointing the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel—and this is not to denigrate the members of the panel because I have the deepest respect for the members of the independent hearings panel. What I am pointing out is this Government did not trust Aucklanders enough to choose their own panellists on the hearings panel. It could not trust them because it believes it knows best.So the Government gave itself the power to appoint members of the hearings panel. It thinks it knows best but here is an example—and this is one of many examples of the cock-up. When it repeats the same mistake over and over again people are inclined to say how incompetent this Government is. You know it attempts to provide this image of itself as some kind of master of the universe when it comes to running this country but these little things add up. I would say to Aucklanders take note. This is not the only mistake or cock-up that this Government has made; there have been several. And it has not just been for Auckland; it also applied as we saw in the bills that we debated last night.I want to say that the bill enables the Ministers to add other members to the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel and I do not have a problem with that. But here is another example of this Government not trusting Aucklanders. If I were to view the membership of the independent hearings panel the only two people who I would recognise as Aucklanders—and again you know I have the deepest respect for the membership that is there; they are professional people with lots of expertise—are Desmond Morrison and John Kirikiri. I do not know the other members but I would have thought given they are hearing the unitary plan of Auckland that the membership should by its very nature of overseeing the unitary plan of Auckland have an interest in Auckland and should live in Auckland. I have no disrespect for the others because I know that this is an area that requires expertise but as an Aucklander I feel surely there are enough Aucklanders with the same expertise and the same professionalism who can deal with this.Again by giving itself the power to appoint members of the independent hearings panel this Government sends clear signals that it does not trust Aucklanders. It does not believe there are any Aucklanders good enough to make up the bulk of the panel. So by way of advice I would ask about that.I am glad that the legislation does say that the Ministers must consult. Well I am not sure. I will have to look during the Committee stage at whether the word “must” is in there or whether it is up to the Ministers but I would think that if they really trusted Aucklanders and valued the views of Aucklanders then they would be consulting not just with the chair of the independent hearings panel but also with the Māori Statutory Board as well as with the Auckland Council. But I would imagine in my gut that Aucklanders would want to see more Aucklanders on that panel because this is about our lives and this is about our neighbourhood. And as parochial as that view may be it is rightly so because we are talking about Auckland now and in the many many years ahead. When the Government members got up last night and crowed about this bill being a bill that provides Aucklanders with the ability to share their views the Hon Phil Goff said it was a cock-up and that is what it is. It reminds me of a Samoan saying: “E fiu lava e nana le tamaimoa i lalo o le tanoa ae ioio mai lava.” meaning that the hen could attempt with all her might to cover up the little chickens but we will hear the little chickens making their noise. We know they are there. So as much as that Government attempts to try to cover up its cock-up and cover its mistakes we all know—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No no. Order! I know that the member is using fowl analogies but that expression is not one that can be used.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: The point I wanted to make is that this Government continues to try to cover up the mistakes it has made but we know—Aucklanders know—that this is a consistent pattern of an incompetent Government that attempts to rush things in and attempts to prevent Aucklanders from having a view and the mistakes have revealed themselves in this House.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I am rising in support of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I must say in response to that last speaker Su’a William Sio that if I am fortunate enough to be in the House for the length of time that colleague has I hope I do not end up being as cynical and as unconstructive as that last member who spoke.Quite often in the last few weeks I have got up and spoken about bills pertaining to Canterbury. It is great to see the Government supporting Canterbury and in response I want to get up and support another region that is important for New Zealand’s growth and development—that is Auckland. I think it is only fair enough to support the biggest city.When I look at this bill I think I look at it in terms of efficiency effectiveness and economics. When we look at the detail we see the efficiency of reducing the quorum from three to two members the effectiveness of increasing the panel size and the economy of scale of allowing the panel to report back in stages. Overall I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the question That the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 14Green Party 14.Bill read a second time.In CommitteePart 1 Substantive amendmentsHon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Before starting discussion on the provision itself can I join with my colleague Su’a William Sio in acknowledging the fifth anniversary of the tragedy at Pike River. I had the occasion at that time to go down and visit the families. I know the absolute tragedy that that represented for them—the loss of their loved ones the 29 men who put up their tickets going into the mine and never came out to collect them. I acknowledge also the tragedy that there has never been closure for those families—those bodies remain in the mine. So today as we debate this bill we are also thinking of those families 5 years out and would want to express our condolences to them for their loss and hope that the measures that were put in place will stop any further avoidable tragedy which is exactly what happened at Pike River.As we get into Part 1 of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill which contains the substantive amendments I want to make the point that it would really have been good to test out the provisions that are set out in Part 1 at a select committee so that we could get feedback from those parties that are most immediately involved in this process. The tragedy of this debate in urgency at 9.45 in the morning is that we are debating measures that we have never had the chance to test against the experts in the field the people who should have been here in Parliament to give their view on the changes that are being proposed.Auckland Council members should have been heard before a select committee hearing so they could spell out what their views were on it. I know that they are generally in favour of the changes that are being recommended. We should have had David Kirkpatrick the chair of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel before us to explain how that process had worked and whether these are precisely the measures that are needed to facilitate the timely and effective hearing of the submissions being made on the draft unitary plan. We should have had the chance to hear from the officials from the department. They are in the Chamber but they cannot answer our questions here. However they could have answered our questions before a select committee. That is why we have select committee hearings.These are significant changes. By and large I am in support of the changes but rather than support them blindly without having heard the arguments around them I would like to have tested those arguments and questioned the officials before a select committee. I note that my colleagues from the Green Party are opposing this bill and they are opposing this bill not so much because they oppose the substantive provisions but because they oppose the process.What we have not been told and what the Minister in the chair Mr Lotu-Iiga may be able to tell us this morning is why we are having urgency. I know that on the surface we are having urgency because it will be really good to get this bill through before Christmas so that the amendments can be implemented. But my question is slightly different from that Minister. My question is this: if the Minister the Hon Nick Smith was able to announce what the bill was doing and the bill was drafted on 16 September—more than 2 months ago—why was it introduced yesterday at 10.30 I think it was at night? Why is the management of this House so bad that the introduction was left so that we could not have the normal procedure of looking at the provisions of this bill before a select committee? That is a straight question. It deserves a straight answer.The bill was drafted and the Minister announced it months ago but now it is being pushed through under urgency and we do not get the chance for a proper select committee process to make sure we have got it right. That is bad process. There is no one in the Chamber who could stand up and justify having urgency as good parliamentary process. It is not. Mistakes happen. They are not picked up. The public is not given the chance to have their say. We heard members of the Government wax eloquent about the importance of this hearing process so the public could be heard. What an irony. What a contradiction when we are debating something where the public has not been allowed to be heard. That is wrong. Everybody in the Committee knows that it is wrong and because we did not have had that select committee—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I call Chris Hipkins.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Thank you very much Mr Chairman—that is an interesting call. I am very happy to take a call on this Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I will be a little slower standing up next time.I do want to just begin my remarks though by picking up some of the comments that some of the National members made in their contributions in the first and second readings last night where they were talking about how important this bill was to ensure that the public got to have their say. They were waxing lyrical about the importance of committee processes and the public hearings and public submissions process and how important that was. I did think that that was somewhat ironic given that this very bill which they claim is going to enhance those processes is going through Parliament without any such scrutiny itself—without any such public submissions process—without really any good reason.Why could the Government not have simply done this using regular sitting time? This is not something that necessarily would languish for a long time in a select committee. It still could have gone through the regular legislative process. With a bit of competent management on the Government’s part—and I suspect that that was the biggest barrier that it faced in doing this properly—it could have actually got this through within a reasonable period of time and still had the democratic process respected and adhered to. There are very few bills that go through this House that are not improved through having a select committee process and often the select committee process allows us to pick up what seemed to be minor or trivial things in the drafting of a bill that actually turn out to be quite substantial.Given that we have ended up having to amend legislation yesterday that went through under urgency—we have amended it again under urgency because there were errors in it that were not picked up when it went through under urgency the first time—I think that this legislation certainly could have been quite significantly improved or maybe it could not have been but certainly we will never know because it did not go through that process. But it is possible that we will end up having to come back and amend it.Anyway Part 1 of the bill deals with the substantive amendments and the first one that I want to talk to is reducing the quorum required for hearing sessions from three members to two members. That may seem like you know a rather inconsequential amendment to many people but the difference between having three people hearing your submission and two people hearing your submission can actually be quite significant. It can actually make quite a difference and it can certainly make a difference to the submitter’s sense of having been heard. The Labour Party is supporting this bill through because we agree with the intent of the bill but I think that this is something that we should certainly consider and tease out a little bit more as this debate progresses.The whole point of having a process like this is to ensure that people feel that they have been heard. No such process like this is ever going to result in everybody being happy with the outcome because consensus on many of the issues that we are talking about will be almost impossible to achieve but people are more likely to accept the outcome if they feel they have been heard. So the first question I think the Committee needs to turn its attention to is: if people feel the process is being truncated and they are not getting their full chance to be heard by a full committee will they end up feeling that they have been heard? I think you know that that is a legitimate question to ask.There are some questions around logistics. Reducing the quorum required from three members to two members of course does not mean that there cannot be more members on the panel and I would hope that in most instances there would still be more members than that on the panel. The quorum is the minimum required. As we know from select committee hearings although a quorum may be two or three members for a small select committee there are often six members present hearing public submissions and that is a very positive thing. So it is important to remember that a quorum is the minimum required and that for administrative purposes this will probably make life easier in terms of scheduling the meetings but I would hope that the people involved will take their responsibilities quite seriously and ensure that they attend as many of these hearings as possible. Therefore members of the public when they are making their submissions will be heard by more members than that.This bill also allows the possible number of appointed Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel members to increase from seven to 10 excluding the chairperson. It is kind of interesting because on the one level we are lowering the minimum number required but increasing the maximum number required. With regard to my initial comments about people needing to have the sense that they are being heard it is quite possible that they will be heard by—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Chris Hipkins.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It is quite possible that they will end up—[Interruption] It is an excellent excellent judgment on the part of the Chair. It is quite possible that they will end up being heard by more people if they end up having a full panel of 10 excluding the chairperson. I would quite like to know however why the chairperson is excluded from that calculation. If the maximum number is currently seven plus the chairperson why move to 10 plus the chairperson? What is the justification for having the chairperson counted separately from the overall number of people involved in the hearings? I would quite like to hear the rationale for that from the Government.The bill enables the hearings panel to make recommendations on the proposed plan in stages rather than in one final report after hearings are completed on a particular topic if it chooses to do so. My reading of this—and again I would seek some clarification from the Minister on that—is that the panel can give progress reports which it can carve off particular sections of the plan to give focus to at a given time and that that may in fact speed up the process or at least give more certainty and clarity to the people who are affected by certain parts of the plan if that makes sense. I just want to check that my understanding of that is correct and that actually what this means is that the plan itself can be progressed not as one plan but as strands of the one plan and that that might actually speed up the process. That seems to me to be quite a sensible thing to do.I would like to get some context from some of the other members who may be speaking in this debate who have a little bit more knowledge of the Auckland planning process and of some of the contemporary issues that are being dealt with in that planning process. What some of those issues in Auckland might be that would be carved off and dealt with in smaller chunks rather than in the overall planning process and final report-back I do not have a sense of so I would be interested in hearing from either the Minister in the chair Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga preferably or from the other members who are involved in this particular process.As I said I am not too familiar with the specifics of Auckland but I am certainly familiar with the processes of local government around my own area around the Wellington region. I do not agree with Chris Finlayson who said that that debate is completely irrelevant because nothing ever happens in Wellington. I think that probably says more about his contribution to the wider Wellington debate. But I do think that these processes can be difficult for members of the public to navigate. If people want to have a say in the overall direction of their city then simply saying “Well here’s the process. Here’s the whole plan. What do you think about it?” could be quite a daunting prospect.However if the third amendment—which I am speaking to which allows the panel to make its recommendations in stages—also allows the panel to hear particular parts at a time and pick off particular issues at a time that potentially will make this process more accessible to members of the public. They will be able to focus their attention in on submitting on the issues that they know about and that they care about and they will not end up being overwhelmed and distracted by a whole lot of things that are not of concern to them and that are peripheral to their areas of expertise and knowledge.Having participated in other local government processes of a similar nature I can say that I think that could potentially be quite welcome. As I have said certainly I have seen people participating in the planning processes of local councils. They go along with a particular issue that they care about and then someone will ask them questions about a whole lot of other issues that they did not submit on and do not really care about and they find the process quite baffling and overwhelming. If there is a way to ensure that that does not happen and that their contribution can actually be adequately heard and can be appropriately targeted it can make a difference and that is ultimately what this process is all about. Local government is local.Grant Robertson: Ah!CHRIS HIPKINS: Well—Phil Twyford: Well it used to be.CHRIS HIPKINS: It used to be local—it used to be local. But local government should be local—perhaps I should put it that way. Therefore the more participation from the grassroots from the ratepayers and from the citizens the better and the better that the final decisions and the ultimate plan that come out of the end of this process will be.Grant Robertson: He doesn’t believe in central control.CHRIS HIPKINS: I do believe in a certain amount of central control—Grant Robertson: Only when he’s the whip.CHRIS HIPKINS:—particularly when it comes to parliamentary processes but—CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): In my first contribution to this debate and addressing my remarks to Part 1 may I first also join with my colleagues in remembering the fifth anniversary of Pike River and how the events of that day shocked the nation stopped us in our tracks and have to some extent reshaped our nation.As with all major events you always remember where you were when they happened. I happened to be standing on a grass verge in Mana waving a sign in support of my colleague Kris Faafoi. Of course none of that mattered. The most important thing was what was happening on the West Coast. But at least one of the good things that emerged post that was getting my colleague Kris Faafoi into Parliament.Following on from my colleague Su’a William Sio who talked about good process the thing that is really the most disturbing about this piece of legislation which on the face of it looks relatively minor is that it is about good process. It is actually about bad process and fixing bad process. There are some significant questions that the Minister can and needs to answer. I have got a couple of them to pose in this contribution.The public should be aware that this Government has made a habit of passing shoddy rushed legislation under urgency with no select committee scrutiny. Another trend has been to truncate the select committee process. There are too many pieces of legislation that are going through this kind of process. As a result you end up with unscrutinised law and you end up coming back and having to fix it which is what is happening here. This Government claims that it is transparent but nothing really could be further from the truth when you look at the sheer number of pieces of legislation that pass through so quickly that they are riddled with errors and mistakes.My comments specifically relate to clause 6 in Part 1 which is amending the part on the right of appeal to the High Court on questions of law. It replaces section 158(6). According to the departmental disclosure statement it is: “A minor and technical amendment … to fix an error in the drafting of the principal Act relating to the procedural requirements for the filing of appeals on questions of law with the High Court.”My question to the Minister is what the legal implications are of this. Given that we do not have a regulatory impact statement we do not have the advice from parliamentary counsel and all we have is a departmental disclosure statement and the amendment has been described as minor and technical what are its implications in law? I would ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Sam Lotu-Iiga during his contributions on Part 1 of the bill to tell the Committee whether or not there has been a legal opinion provided on this particular clause clause 6 which makes the change that “Notice of the appeal must be filed with the High Court and served on the Auckland Council no later than 20 working days after the Council notifies the matters …”.Given the impact and the import of the principles behind this piece of legislation and given that Auckland is our biggest city the processes that are being set out in law under the unitary plan are significant and have significant impacts. By making that change surely there must be some kinds of legal implications. I think the Committee needs to know what they are. If they have not been sought then the Committee needs to know why not. I also want to make reference to clause 8—GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to oppose this bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I am sadly and reluctantly declining to answer the member Chris Hipkins’ challenge. He asked whether any member in this Committee on either side who is an expert on the Auckland Unitary Plan could stand and make a contribution. I do not claim to be an expert on the unitary plan; as a former Aucklander though I know the city is an amazing lovable city. It is one of the most livable cities in the world. Although often the arcane world of unitary plans and how the Resource Management Act applies and the minutiae of the Auckland Council is somewhat far from the everyday experiences of Auckland in that sense in the physical sense it is the footpaths the paths the public transport the State highway network that the council is involved in part-funding—that is what Aucklanders experience. It is important that it gets done right gets done democratically and we have an efficient but democratic process.So I am not an expert but as a former Aucklander I want to make a contribution. I have got a few substantive points on Part 1. The first is that I would also like to respond to Chris Hipkins’ question around clause 5. This amendment bill amends the way the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel can form its recommendations. Previously I assume in the original transitions legislation it implied that the hearings panel could make a single report with a series of recommendations no matter how many hearing panels or topics it discussed. What clause 5 in this amendment bill does is allow the panel to make a series of recommendations on a series of topics.I guess I am asking for Government members or the Minister to make a contribution on this question because I believe it is debatable. What is the best way to engage and consult the people of Auckland and the constituent communities? Is it easier to have a single report with a series of recommendations that you can go through one time and then make a single submission on or is it more convenient and more open in terms of consultation to have a series of reports coming out? You know I genuinely believe it is debatable. Is a single series of recommendations easier to follow or a series of individual topics? I would invite the members to weigh in and share their views on it.In terms of the other substantive points on Part 1 of this bill the first is the quorum being dropped from three members to two. I think I would like to echo some concerns we have seen from the Labour members on this point. We as a parliamentary chamber I doubt would restrict our select committee or parliamentary House quorum requirements. It is a question of the seriousness that the public see in terms of the reputation of the panel members. I think it is a live question: what is the importance of going from three to two? When you are debating recommendations with those hearings panels obviously it is hard to break a tied vote if you have only two members. A third member makes sure clear decisions and recommendations can be put forward.Second we see an increase in the possible number of appointed hearings panel members from seven to 10. In this clause which I believe is clause 7 it furthers a track record of the current Government to move from having independently appointed or separate consultation appointment processes for important decision-making members such as on the hearings panel which can issue recommendations to having an appointed policy approach. I think we have got to have a debate on this issue because when you see the Government stacking appointed members alarm bells should be ringing. When you have a body such as this hearings panel which is hearing from the Auckland communities hearing from the council and making recommendations on the Auckland Unitary Plan it is important that we have hearing members who are representing diverse communities.When you look at the Government’s track record particularly the member Steven Joyce’s track record when it comes to the university and polytech councils what we have not seen is diverse communities or multi-gender positions granted. What we have seen is—I do not know whether this is in order—old male pale and stale. People from the business communities are dominating those appointed boards. [Interruption] I definitely was not talking to you Mr Chair. So I think we have got big concerns around further appointed members. Obviously it is good that we have got greater consultation requirements including the Independent Māori Statutory Board along with the Minister of Conservation and the Minister for the Environment. However I would question the Government members again: why only those two Ministers?I would like to support the amendment in the name of Phil Twyford which comes to include the mayor as well in the decision-making consultation requirements to appoint new members or a new chair to the decision-making committee. I think it is critically important we get Auckland voices involved in those conversations and I think it is entirely appropriate entirely legitimate and entirely consistent with good decision-making to make sure that we get the Auckland mayor involved. At the moment we have got a Minister for the Environment based down in Nelson involved and I think Aucklanders when they are seeing new hearings panel members appointed would ask questions. Why do our democratically elected Auckland Council members not get a say but the Minister for the Environment based in Nelson does?Now my third substantive point comes to clause 8 which is the concurrent hearings. Currently the hearings panel does a hearing hears from the public and makes a recommendation. This amendment bill allows for concurrent hearings. Again this is a serious issue for debate. I think we should have a debate on that in this Committee stage because I can see both sides of the argument. On one hand it is more efficient. We can have multiple hearing panels having multiple public hearings so that the public can have their say I guess in a more timely and efficient manner.Efficiency and timeliness are good values to espouse but they can come into conflict and run up against the values that this House shares of having good decision-making and open consultative democratic input from the public. If you have two concurrent hearings—there are numerous stakeholders and communities involved in Auckland that have a wide variety of views on a wide variety of issues. Just take someone involved with a housing development which is a very topical issue in Auckland. You could have concurrent hearings dealing with the same issue happening at the same time and it would be impossible for the same person to be in two locations at the same time so let us have that debate. Do the efficiency benefits of allowing concurrent hearings outweigh the potential consultative and democratic pitfalls or is that a decision where that has been thought through and a balance has been found?Looking at clause 7 in Part 1 which inserts new section 161(8A) we see the Minister for the Environment not the conservation Minister—and I would like to flow on from this. I know there is a genuine feeling in Auckland that Auckland is being run not from Auckland of course but from Wellington and there has been a historical level of concern I know in this House. More than a hundred years ago there was actually talk of an Auckland party forming to make sure that Auckland interests were adequately represented and when you see a Minister for the Environment based in Nelson making these key appointments to the hearings panel and not the Auckland mayor or the Auckland Council it continues this.When you see a bill which is what we are debating in front of us that is around decision making and that is around consultation with the public and you have a legislative process that does not give those Aucklanders or the public a say with no select committee process—I would like to touch on the irony that we see in this. We are debating a bill around having good process and doing it in a terrible process which of course is under urgency with no select committee process. Hopefully a Government member can explain why on earth we are in urgency for this bill—a bill that was announced more than 2 months ago but a bill that was only tabled and introduced in this House at 10.30 p.m. last night. If we are going to take Auckland seriously and if we are going to get Auckland moving which is what I believe this House genuinely values genuinely wants why can we not take good process and consultation seriously? Why can we not have a more considered and deliberative approach not just seeing a bill late last night that was to be debated the next morning through all stages? Why can we not have a good deliberative process?What we see—and this is my last substantive point—is that this bill also validates previous errors in law. This is exactly what happens when you go through an urgency process. Mistakes get made they do not get picked up they do not get amended in the Committee stage and the country is worse off as a result. The people are poorer both in a financial sense from longer operating hours for this House and also in terms of respect for this House where we should be putting good lawmaking and considered deliberative legislative processes up there as aspects we aspire to. This House is united in its support for Auckland. We want to make sure there is a good unitary plan one that the majority of Aucklanders can get behind through a good consultative democratic process. There are legitimate questions around having appointed panel members. There are legitimate questions around whether the drive for efficiency over democratic input—RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I am going to come back to an issue that I signalled was puzzling to New Zealand First when we first read this bill yesterday. It stood out quite glaringly. The proposal to move or—sorry I am just looking for it now. Clause 4 “Section 136 amended (Hearing procedure)” which seeks to reduce the numbers of members on the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel from three to two. Going back into the primary legislation this is dealt with there under section 136 “Hearing procedure”. Section 136(1) says: “At each hearing session no fewer than 3 members of the Hearings Panel must be present.” This bill under Part 1 clause 4 simply replaces the numeral “3” with the numeral “2” which raises some interesting questions.The member for the Green Party Gareth Hughes actually raised one of them. If we end up in a situation where you have two people sitting on that hearings panel and there is a disagreement—bearing in mind that under clause 5 of the bill this panel has had its powers amended through the amendment to section 144 of the primary legislation where the hearings panel is now able under this legislation to make recommendations on the proposed plan including any recommended changes to the plan at the end of the hearing of those submissions. If we end up in a position where now because the panel can report back in stages and it can make recommendations in stages as opposed to having to wait until the entire hearing process is over—can the Minister in the chair Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga tell the Committee how you break that stalemate if at the end of that phase of the hearings the two members sitting there disagree on a recommendation?Normally Minister anywhere else in the world people recognise the need to have an odd number so that you can have a debate and someone can adjudicate and there is a casting vote in there. But now we are going to report back in stages—and I am surprised that Mr David Seymour has not raised this matter. Being such a bright lad he would have picked up on this very very quickly I have no doubt.But reading back into the primary legislation that Part 1 is amending in clauses 4 and 5 we know two things now: the rules around the hearings have changed and the members on the panel can report back and make recommendations at the end of a session on a topic. When they have concluded hearing submissions on that particular topic everyone has left the room and they are sitting and discussing “Should we put through our recommendations now on that topic?” if on the weight of the evidence they have drawn different conclusions and they disagree then where does the tie-breaker come in? Where? I am going to ask the Minister because this is very important. We are reducing the quorum from three to two.There is also another issue. If you go a little deeper into the primary legislation—I think you have got to go to section 144. If I might just whip back there briefly and have a look at section 144 “Hearings Panel must make recommendations to Council …”—no I think it is under a different section. There is another little issue that pops up. For there to be a hearing there has to be a chair of that panel. Under the unamended legislation you had a quorum of three and if the chair did not turn up the two of them could vote for one person to be the chair. Now if there is a quorum of two and the chair does not turn up where is it in the legislation that says that the other person who did turn up automatically becomes the chair? I do not know—well if you do not have a quorum you do not have a quorum and you cannot convene. I guess the question around the appointment of chairmanship might not be relevant in there but under the rules where you had—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Next page.RON MARK: Yes it is over the next page. I know I was looking at it and I thought: “Well where does this work?”. If you have a quorum of three coming to a decision is easy. It might not be to everyone’s agreement but it is easy. I would like the Minister to please take a call. I would like the Minister to have a ponder on that and to consult because I think we have a wee problem: you might end up with a stalemate.One of the things that is very important—because New Zealand First agrees that amending the legislation so that the panel can report back in stages is very important. Those of us who have done this sort of work in the past know that you get a pile of submissions. You can get submissions if you take Rodney for example on land use or if you take central Auckland they will be on housing. There will be issues that will be quite contentious but at the end of the hearings on that topic a number of drop downs will be obvious. To wait until the entire hearing process is over before one reports back on that is maybe not the soundest idea and that is why I am assuming the Government has really gutted out section 144 of the primary legislation and trimmed it down—simply deleting the words “after it has finished hearing submissions” in section 144(1).I understand that—I understand that. The ability to hear the evidence take the stuff that is immediate and obvious make a recommendation and report it back there and then when it is timely fresh in the mind and it is current—that is all good stuff; I understand that. But it is a problem if the quorum has dropped to two and people cannot agree.So I think the Minister might want to have a think about that and maybe have someone scratch out an amendment or maybe change that idea and stick with the three because moving out the size of the panel from seven to 10 is a good idea. Given the size of Auckland City given the complexity of the problems that Auckland faces and given the varying views that will come before those hearings panels—you have got 5000 submissions yet to be heard—I understand about having more people on the panel having panels sitting concurrently and being able to appoint chairs to other panels that are sitting concurrently. I understand all that. It is all about expediting. It is all about moving things forward quickly in a timely manner and efficiently without undermining the democratic process and without undermining people’s rights to have a say. So I would just ask him to have a look at that please and make a comment to us. Give us some satisfaction that things will not be messy at that point.The Phil Twyford amendment—we would just signal at this point in time that we think it is a very good amendment. We think that the democratically elected representatives of the people of Auckland—this is a really simple point—should have a say in who the Minister for the Environment appoints on to that panel. It is really simple: this is about democracy. This is not about the Government having people appointed to the independent panel who fit the Government’s agenda and the Government’s thinking and who are able to produce results policies decisions and directions that just coincidentally fit with the philosophical belief of the Government of the day.Having said that I have to put my hand up and say that I was always surprised and grateful that the Government selected me and appointed me to a couple of district health boards in my time while I was out of the House reflecting that it was able to take on board people with differing views and different philosophies looking for that mix. We would hope that if this legislation goes unaltered from what is before us right now the Government will make sure that those people who are appointed to that independent panel are not political lackeys but we would prefer that the Phil Twyford amendment goes forward to allow the people of Auckland through their democratically elected representatives to have the say in who is appointed to that board.It seems to me from some of the speakers before—and I refer to Chris Hipkins’ comments—that those of us down here in the Wellington basin do not understand everything about Auckland. We know what we know through people whom we know and our own family who live up there and from what we read. I am one of those lucky people. My partner is an Aucklander and so I probably understand a heck of a lot more than I did before I met her but I would not dare to stand up and say that I would be eminently qualified to sit on an independent panel looking at the Auckland Unitary Plan or to say that I understood intimately and in detail the issues that were vexing the people of Auckland.So we come back to the Phil Twyford amendment and say that we believe it is a good amendment. It is worthy of the Government’s favourable consideration—well worthy of Government approval; it is as simple as that. Not consideration—it is worthy of approval in the interests of enhancing democracy. Thank you.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to encourage the Minister in the chair Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga to take a call for a couple of reasons. One is that the House is not giving this bill the benefit of a select committee process and there are certain questions—a number have already been raised—that I think deserve an answer from the Minister. I know this is not his bill. He is not the Minister of Local Government; he is not the Minister for the Environment. We heard a bit of a pitch last night in his opening speech which I think was an audition for the role of local government Minister—and he knows about local government. I mean he is a former councillor on the old Auckland City Council. He might even be considering a new career in local government—that is quite possible. I think that it would be good for this debate if the Minister would as H V Ross Robertson used to say get up on his hind legs—Sue Moroney: And “courtesy is contagious.”PHIL TWYFORD: —and “courtesy is contagious”—and answer one or two questions that have been put to him. So I look forward to the Minister taking a call.I want to speak to my tabled amendment to clause 7 but first let me just provide the context. On the question of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel and appointments to the hearings panel section 161(1) of the principal Act provides that the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation are to establish a hearings panel comprising the chairperson and three to seven members. That section also provides that “Ministers may appoint additional members after the initial appointment of members so long as the total number is no more than 7 members and a chairperson.” So that is the status quo—that is as things stand.What this bill does is it increases the maximum number of members who can be appointed to the panel. Members have already rehearsed the reasons why: we need more flexibility we need more concurrent hearings and therefore a bigger pool of members is going to aid that outcome. But what the bill does through clause 7 is it allows the Ministers to appoint the additional members to a maximum of 10 plus the chairperson only after consulting a number of other people. This is I think where it gets interesting. It says they have got to consult the Auckland Council whose plan it is—the democratically elected representatives of the people of Auckland who have to live with the consequences of this plan—the Independent Māori Statutory Board and the chairperson of the hearings panel.So the first question that I want to ask of the Minister the Hon Sam Lotu-Iiga is: why the Minister of Conservation? Why—why? I mean Maggie Barry has a lot of opinions on a lot of things but is she an expert on urban development? Is she an expert on town planning? Is she an expert on environmental law and the Resource Management Act? I suspect the answer is no.I will just give you a little insight into how much the Minister of Conservation understands about matters of local government and planning. This is the Minister who was recently quoted in the North Shore Times her local rag complaining about the level of spending on public transport by Auckland Council. She was asked whether she uses public transport and she said that well she would but she can never find a car-park at the park-and-ride by the Bayswater ferry—just cannot find a car-park. That is her excuse for not using public transport.Well Heather du Plessis-Allan from TV3’s Story programme went and stepped out the distance between Maggie Barry’s house and the ferry terminal the Bayswater ferry and the distance is fewer than 500 metres. So Maggie Barry the Minister of Conservation whom this bill lays down as one of the two decision makers to appoint the panel—that really shows her affinity with and understanding of local government matters because obviously public transport is a critical factor. So Minister why the Minister of Conservation? I would really appreciate that explanation.If we were running this bill through the normal select committee process we would have the opportunity to ask these questions and the officials would—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Oh Phil Twyford.PHIL TWYFORD: So—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): But let us come back to the bill rather than to Ministers walking to ferries.PHIL TWYFORD: Rather than Maggie Barry?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Rather than Ministers walking to ferries.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes OK. So that was my first question: why is the Minister of Conservation one of the decision makers? I mean I can understand why you would have the Minister for the Environment being a decision maker. What my tabled amendment does is it would require the decision to be made jointly by the Minister for the Environment representing the executive central government and the Mayor of Auckland who is someone who has arguably the biggest electorate of voters in the country and who is elected at large across the entire region and is accountable to the people of Auckland. Why not make it a joint decision and reflect the spirit of partnership that we have heard in some of the brief contributions from Government members in this debate?It was interesting to hear Joanne Hayes say: “Oh this is a good bill. Basically it allows local councils to get on with their job.” Well that is not a philosophy we have heard articulated from Government members any time in the last 7 years. What we have seen—and Ron Mark spoke about this earlier in this debate—is that local government has been the sort of whipping boy of choice for the National Government for the entire last 7 years. The decision in the principal legislation to have central government appointing all of the members of the panel typified the kind of “Government knows best”—running Auckland from its luxury offices in Wellington because the Government knows best and it does not really care even though it is the people of Auckland who have to live with this plan and live with the consequences.So you can see it actually when you look back through the local government agenda of this Government over 7 years. We had Rodney Hide right through to the way this bespoke planning process for the unitary plan was put in place. The appointment of the commissioners I think is emblematic of this Government’s attitude and I think that it would be if the members opposite are true to their rhetoric about working with Government—and we have already said in this debate that they have been dragged kicking and screaming over the last 7 years finally to some kind of acknowledgment that they have to work with Auckland.The reason that we are supporting this bill is that it is practical. The Auckland Council has asked for these provisions because it wants to get the unitary plan put to bed before the local government elections next year. So this bill is worth supporting for that reason notwithstanding the objections raised by our Green Party colleagues but I would urge the Government to think seriously about this tabled amendment and consider allowing the appointment of the panel members to be made jointly by the Mayor of Auckland and the Minister for the Environment who I think is probably the logical person to do that.It is interesting. In Richard Harman’s blog post this morning he points out that David Seymour who made a contribution earlier this morning in this debate is talking about reopening and reviewing the super-city legislation which really is the platform for any kind of consideration of this debate. The unitary plan is the big kahuna that basically flows on from the establishment of the super-city. It was a bespoke process. They had never really attempted something on this scale—a spatial plan on the scale of the Auckland Unitary Plan—and it would be unkind to say that they are making it up as they along but—Hon Ruth Dyson: They’re making it up as they go along.PHIL TWYFORD: —they are in fact making it up as they go along. And this bill rectifying drafting errors from the earlier legislation validating—and we will talk some more about the retrospective validation clauses later in this debate. It is a kind of a Heath Robinson contraption this whole bespoke process.So I would ask the Committee and particularly the Government members—and I see we have got a new Minister in the chair now the Hon Louise Upston. I would ask her to take a call. We did not hear once from the Minister who preceded her in the chair the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga but I assume she has been briefed. We have not had the benefit of a select committee process. We have not had any substantive—Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Normally at this stage of the debate members would come to the Chamber armed with the select committee report we would come armed with public submissions from the members of the public who took the time to make submissions we would come armed with the advice from the ministry we would come armed with the legal advice from the Parliamentary Counsel or we would come armed with the regulatory impact statement. Alas none of that is available to us and I want to state that at the outset because I think it is important. Even though the members of the Government are hanging their heads in shame because this is not the kind of practice that this House normally accepts I would hope that they would give the time to members of the Opposition to analyse each and every one of these single clauses in this bill because we have been denied the expert advice that we would normally receive if this bill had gone through the select committee process.I wanted to ask the previous Minister in the chair Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga given that he is a member from the Auckland region whether he would stand up for Aucklanders and help the Opposition by answering some of the questions that my colleague Phil Twyford and others have asked. I want to continue along that line and hopefully the Minister who is now in the chair Louise Upston is able to answer those questions given that we have had neither the benefit of the expert legal advice we would normally receive nor the regulatory impact statement—which is just bad practice. This is not the way that legislation ought to be made.I would like to ask some general questions first because the fact that we are debating this bill highlights that mistakes have been made and we are validating some of those mistakes. My first question is this: when did the Government first find out that the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel was undertaking a process that legally it should not have? When did it find that out? I understand that the Minister drafted the bill some time ago but yet at the last minute—and the House does not have very long to go—we are now being forced into the position that we are currently in. So I would be really interested in when the Government first found out about the mistakes that needed to be validated with this particular bill.The other question is a general question that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. How much is this exercise going to cost altogether and how much will be borne by Auckland Council? I say that because all of the independent hearings panel’s expenses and all of the secretariat support that it receives is paid for by Auckland Council. Therefore it is paid by ratepayers. Members in this House may note that there has been this huge debate in the Auckland region where many of us have blamed the mayor and the council for the significant hikes in rates that the ratepayers are having to carry but many people do not know that it is the result of the burden that has been imposed by the legislation that this Government forced on Aucklanders back in the early days in 2009.So the question is: how much is this exercise going to cost and what additional costs will it add to the work of the independent hearings panel which will be carried necessarily by Auckland Council? And just a general question on that: will central government provide any incentives to Auckland City to meet some of these expenses? That is an important point that I would like the Government to answer because there will be many Aucklanders seething with anger over the fact that the Auckland Council continues to hike up its rates. But they need to put the pieces together—it is largely a result of what the Government has imposed on Aucklanders.I now want to turn to the substantive amendments in Part 1 and in particular to clause 4 where we are asked to replace the quorum—TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): I am going to concentrate my contribution on clause 6 in the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. But before I do I just want to reiterate that New Zealand First is going to support this bill not because we like it but because we find ourselves in a positon where once again an error has been made by this Government and we are required to do this for the benefit of the over a million people sitting in Auckland so that their future can be defined.I want to point out that I am one of only two members of this House who was one of the foundation elected members of the Auckland Council at a local board level.Sue Moroney: Oh your fault!TRACEY MARTIN: No Ms Moroney it certainly was not my fault. I want to point out that the reason why this is important is that in the original legislation that set up Auckland City a trade-off was made around the right of appeal which is what clause 6 relates to. So a trade-off was made around the right of appeal which restricted the ability of people to appeal once the unitary plan was in place but that was traded off by having a draft unitary plan at the beginning of the process.I was part of the process that in 17 months put together the Auckland Plan which informed the draft unitary plan. The reason why this is a concern is that that draft unitary plan was supposedly one of the most open and transparent processes that every ratepayer in the greater Auckland area could actually submit on.There are two things—and this why this ability to appeal that is now being amended again from the original piece of legislation is so important. Two things: when the draft unitary plan went out for consultation it was only available online with huge maps that actually took a lot of broadband download speed and so rural Rodney for example could not access it. So the majority of the ratepayers in rural Rodney could not access the unitary plan maps for the draft unitary plan through the process that was put into place. That led to an urgent printing of one per library and then those people could then go to the library and look at the unitary plan maps and the heritage overlays which this bill also talks to and that is why it is so important that we address those issues.The other thing that happened too which concerns me again about this manipulation around the right of appeal is that when we finished the draft unitary plan consultation—and it went on and it went back to the councillors and went back to become the unitary plan which is what we are talking about here and what people are resubmitting on—certain things happened out of blue when the unitary plan now being consulted on came back. For example let us talk about the rural urban boundaries. There have been 79 percent of the submissions heard by these hearings.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Mr Nash could you sit down please. I cannot see the speaker. Thank you.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you. Seventy-nine percent of the submissions on the unitary plan that have been submitted have been heard. There are approximately 5000 submissions left on these specific sections and this goes to the changing of the recommendations’ ability so that it can be done section by section.One of the sections that is to be done next is all the submissions on the rural urban boundary. For one example—one example out of only the Rodney area—in the draft unitary plan let us take the northern end of Warkworth. It was agreed under those submissions that the rural urban boundary would go as far as Matakana Rd. It would not jump the road and it was agreed by the community and the Rodney Local Board and it was put forward to the councillors.By the time it became the unitary plan that is being submitted on which this bill is dealing with that urban boundary had jumped the road and gone through four private properties. That change came after major consultation and at council level hence my concern that what we are talking about now is pushing through quickly to meet a deadline set in original legislation—actually set in the Local Government (Auckland Transitions Provisions) Amendment Act 2013. We are talking about pushing through quickly—with split hearings and with only two hearings people on each panel—around rural urban boundaries.The other special area that is going to be consulted on in this last section is the special character overlays. An example of why that is important—NUK KORAKO (National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The members will resume their seats while I am on my feet. I am not going to take it now but I am going to warn people that I will now be looking very closely at the speeches being on the detail of the bill not a relitigation of the history of the Auckland region.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Thank you very much Mr Chair. You can rest assured that I am not going to be talking about my role in the history of the Auckland region. I want to start with a question for the Minister in the chair Louise Upston relating to the departmental disclosure statement which suggests to us that advice provided to the Attorney-General about whether or not there would be a section 7 report would be available prior to the introduction of the bill. I can find no evidence of such advice on the Table. I have had a quick look at the Ministry of Justice’s website and I can find no evidence of that there. Again this is an example of when in a situation under urgency we do not have a select committee process. We have an assurance here in the departmental disclosure statement that this would be available on the ministry’s website upon the introduction of the bill. It is not—it is actually not available. This is a serious matter because I do believe that when we are talking about hearings that members of the public will be participating in—which is what is covered throughout the substantive part here in Part 1—there are questions of rights of natural justice. That is one of the main issues within the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in terms of the right to justice.The exact wording in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is about the observance of the principles of natural justice by any tribunal that has the power to make a determination over the rights of the citizen. That is one of these hearings panels. That is exactly what these hearings panels are doing: they are undertaking work as a tribunal on a matter of the rights of Aucklanders and the way in which their city will be created. So we thought—well I certainly thought I would see a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet come forward on this matter. I think that the Ministry for the Environment which was responsible for the drafting of the departmental disclosure statement also thought that we were going to be seeing a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet and we do not. So I would ask the Minister in the chair to explain to the Committee what is going on here. I think it is a reasonable question.The reason I do think that that question of the observance of the principles of natural justice by a tribunal—the clause from the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—is brought into the situation here is what is happening in clause 4. That is the amendment of the number of commissioners hearing is being reduced from three to two. What this bill does is increase the number of commissioners from seven to 10 which means that we are running into a situation where a hearing will be conducted by 20 percent of the membership. I want a Minister or a member of the Government to stand up and tell me whether they think that upholds the principles of natural justice. Actually making it a percentage figure somewhat masks the problem that emerges here—and Mr Mark raised this—which is that 20 percent is two people. That is just two people in a room. Does that uphold the right of an Auckland resident to fairly be heard in terms of their right of natural justice under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? We have already discussed the fact that once you get down to two it is not so much a quorum as potentially a collusion. If there are actually only two people in the room it is quite easy for those two people to be coming from a very very specific point of view.There is both a constitutional point and a very practical one which is that when someone has come forward with their submission and they are confronted by two people and one of them is playing on their cellphone are they actually being treated fairly and well when they are in the room? That is the practical point. Is that the best that we could expect for Aucklanders who have taken the time to make a submission about the Auckland Unitary Plan? But if we move to the constitutional end of it having only two people there out of a group of 10 runs I believe some considerable risks.The Labour Party is supporting this legislation but as a member who has not had the opportunity to hear from my colleagues who were on a select committee I have not properly heard any actual justification for this. I can guess what it is. I can guess the fact that it is because—and I cannot really talk about this; oh no I can actually talk about this in this part—they are going to expand the number of commissioners to 10 and then run concurrent hearings. So I can understand that but I do not believe that any Minister or any—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Sue Moroney.Hon Ruth Dyson: Is it Sue or me?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No Sue Moroney.SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you. That was a very excellent choice indeed. I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill and I want to focus my contribution on clause 4. But I just want to preface that a little by making sure that people know what my general concern is about this. And it is this point: I am based in Hamilton and when things go wrong in Auckland it has a direct impact on Hamilton. And at the moment we are seeing that come marching over the Bombay Hills in the form of Auckland’s housing crisis landing in Hamilton.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No. Order! I did warn members earlier that they are to speak to the detail of the bill—Part 1.SUE MORONEY: Sure. So for those reasons clause 4 really bothers me because what we are being told in clause 4 is that in respect of the decisions being made that affect 1.3 million people—because as of 2011 that was roughly the population of Auckland; my guess is that it is an awful lot larger than that now—just two people in a room are adequate to make decisions that will impact on 1.3 million people. My colleague Grant Robertson was doing the maths on what that means in terms of the number of people on a hearings panel and he came up with 20 percent. I cannot even do the maths because it is so tiny—the proportion of two people out of 1.3 million.I particularly want to address this issue while the Minister who is in the chair Louise Upston is there because I know in a different capacity she is the Minister for Women. And one of the things that really bothers me about a quorum being just two members of a hearings panel is whether we can be assured that there is going to be diversity of representation and opinion between those two people. If that is all a quorum requires then where is the diversity of opinion? Some people may be listening to this debate and think “Look these are environmental hearings by and large what on earth has that got to do with gender representation?”. Well here is the point: what all the research and evidence tells us is that we get this right when we have diversity of opinion in the room. We know that when there was one woman—or more—on boards of American companies they survived the global financial crisis better. Why is that? Not necessarily because the women are smarter but because they ask the questions at the table and they make sure therefore that the right decisions are made. So in clause 4 I want some assurance from the Minister in the chair that there will be that diversity of opinion in the room. And I query whether we can get that diversity of opinion in the room for those hearings panels if the quorum is reduced to just two.The other question I would like answered because this legislation—and it is very very bad form—is being done retrospectively is that I want to know whether this is being done retrospectively because in fact there have been hearings held by the Auckland Council where it has failed to be able to get a quorum of three. If that is the reason why we are doing this then I think that brings into some serious question the amount of scrutiny and the legality of decisions that have been made in the past—if the reason for this change is that the Auckland Council has struggled to get three people in the room at any given time. I am pleased to see that in Part 1 the Government is increasing the possible number of appointed Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel members from seven to 10 and that excludes the chairperson.I will come back to my original point because I think that when you increase the pool of people who can participate in these hearings and who have the expertise to participate in these hearings then we increase the opportunity to get diversity of opinion in the room. Again I will reiterate that that is important because when we get people—I think my colleague Grant Robertson described it as a collusion rather than a quorum—who are of the same mind then we stop questioning the outcome. That in my view leads to poor decision-making. That leads to the sort of poor decision-making that has ended up not only impacting on Auckland and the 1.3 million people there and the ratepayer base there but as I said at the outset now impacting on the city that I live in down the road. When they get it wrong in Auckland that ends up being a problem for Hamilton. Actually as many other speakers have said that ends up being a problem for New Zealand. Without a select committee process we have not heard why we are reducing that.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I raise it under Standing Order 265 which covers the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I would ask Mr Chair for your assistance here. We have a departmental disclosure statement that indicates to us that advice on the section 7 report is expected to be available upon the introduction of the bill. I have checked that website; it is not there. It is not on the Table—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will interrupt the member and say that I have following his speech asked the Minister to follow up with officials on that question. We have not yet had a response.GRANT ROBERTSON: Can I then receive your reassurance that at the point at which you get that advice you will transmit that to us by way of a ruling?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I have asked the Minister to make sure that that is made available to the Committee—either the report or the fact that one has not been made or has been made. It is an important point.DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take my first call in the Committee of the whole House stage for the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I do note that we are on Part 1—the substantive amendments—and I will restrict my comments to this part of the bill.Clause 4 talks about reducing the quorum of the hearings sessions from three to two and if we look through Part 1 the amendments are around appointing more hearings commissioners. The reason for that essentially—and we should go back to the reason for that—is basically so that they can get through the hearings process more quickly than they would with the current panel total of just seven members. Clause 4 talks about reducing the quorum from three to two which means that you can get through a lot more of the hearings quicker. I share the concerns that I think have been raised by other members of this Committee about what happens when you have those two hearings commissioners deliberating and they cannot make a decision because they are equally split. I guess I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair Louise Upston what the Government has in mind that would be the answer to that quandary. What we know is that the deliberation process is where a lot of the decisions get made and they are based on the weighted numbers. But if it is equally weighted then I guess we have got a problem.I would also like to talk about why we actually need to have this done in such a quick time frame when really this is the biggest unitary plan and the biggest use of the Resource Management Act’s planning processes ever to be had in New Zealand. One would have thought that there would be a lot more care taken with consulting around who will be on the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel deciding who would be on the hearings panel and then actually taking the time to prepare the submissions. We know that there are about 5000 more submissions that are yet to be heard but the Government has set up an arbitrary date by which the report and recommendations are to be back to the council—I think it was July next year.Part 1 we note does actually specify that that report can be made in bits so that as one section of the plan is covered off with the hearings the hearings panel can actually make its recommendations on that part alone and basically just sort of drip-feed the decisions and the recommendations as they come through. We do not necessarily have a problem with that. Where we do have a problem is the retrospective fixing up of mistakes that were made with the original legislation and the need for this bill being pushed through under urgency to fix up those mistakes.I want to talk about Phil Twyford’s amendments. I note that there is a new one on the Table which I will probably ask one of my colleagues to comment on—one of my colleagues who is more focused on the original legislation around the Resource Management Act. They would probably like to comment on the newest amendment that has just come through. I want to talk about Phil Twyford’s amendment around ensuring that the mayor in conjunction with the Minister for the Environment makes decisions about the appointment of the extra three hearings commissioners. The basis of our opposition to this bill is basically that the appointment process has been driven by the Government rather than by the council. We note that it does say that the Government—the Minister—will consult with both the Māori Statutory Board and the council. However consultation is way different from decision making—and I guess we see that a lot in this House where basically submissions are ignored quite frequently by the decision makers. I worry that that may be the result of the plan that we end up with given the huge process that preceded the whole draft plan.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call another member I will just indicate to the Committee that I have been advised both from my left and my right that the advice on the question of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting is available now on the Ministry of Justice website and no issues have been raised.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I move—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Sorry; Mr Doocey has the call and I would like to hear what he is saying.MATT DOOCEY: I move That the question be now put.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): This part is the substantive part of the bill and at the heart of this is a desire to allow the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel to conduct its work more effectively but without affecting the quality of its work. The Opposition supports this but we are tested in our support for it when we have successive Ministers in the chair who do not answer questions that have been genuinely put. We have not as a House had the opportunity to ask these questions in a select committee process so I think it is incumbent on the Minister in the Committee of the whole House to answer the questions. Mr Chairman I point out to you that throughout this entire debate the Minister has not taken one call in answer to numerous questions being put forward.So I am going to try going through this clause by clause to get the Minister to answer the questions. We want to support this bill but the Minister certainly is not making it easy for us in the process of urgency rushing this legislation through the House with no select committee scrutiny and no endeavour by the Minister to actually answer the questions that we are putting. That is a negation of democracy and ironically the clauses of this part are about democracy. It is about people’s right to be heard. If people want to be heard they also want their questions answered. So I say to you Mr Chair that we want the Minister to have the chance and to take that chance to answer the questions.The first thing in clause 4 is about reducing the size of the quorum. It is going from three to two. I had imagined that this reduction was to deal with exceptional circumstances when two or three panels might be sitting concurrently but I am starting to get the sense that this will be the norm. So my first question to the Minister is: will the norm for these hearing panels with 5000 submissions to be heard from January next year be two members or three? In exceptional circumstances I am prepared to go along with there being two. But I am concerned that that will be the norm. I also believe that Ron Mark deserves to have his question asked more than an hour and a half ago answered. If you have got two members and therefore you do not have a majority on the committee and there is a division on the committee how is the decision reached by the panel? If you have got two members and neither is the chair how do you decide who is the chair?These are practical questions Minister and this Committee the New Zealand public and particularly Aucklanders have the right to have answers to those questions. They are not time-wasting questions. They go to the heart of the effectiveness of the changes that we are debating. And remember Mr Chair we are debating half of this bill because we are correcting mistakes made in previous legislation that has been rushed through and here we are again rushing through legislation with no examination no answers from the Minister in the chair and no answers from the officials in the Chamber through the Minister.Secondly I want to address clause 5. Clause 5 allows the hearings panel to make recommendations on a particular topic after it has finished hearing submissions on that topic rather than making all of those recommendations at the end. I think I know why this is a good idea. I think it is because that gives the council the recommendations having been made a longer period of time to consider and respond to them. But we have had no explanation. I have been in the Chamber continuously through every stage of this bill. We have not had one Government member address what the reason for this change is. I think the Committee deserves better than that. I think the Minister paid her salary should get up and answer that question.I think it is an insult to the House actually that neither Minister who can answer the questions has been in the House for any part of the debate. This is Nick Smith’s bill. He has not been here to answer the questions. We could have had one of the other Ministers. We could have had the Minister of Local Government here. This House is being treated with absolute contempt when the Minister sits there dumbly and does not answer questions that are genuinely put.The third clause I want to look at is clause 7 and that is about the process of appointing the additional members. I accept that there is a good reason to increase the panel from seven to 10 but the process set out is that the Minister of Conservation and the Minister for the Environment jointly decide and then consult. And I ask why—Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Associate Minister of Local Government): I do want to take the opportunity to put to rest some of the concerns that the Opposition has been raising on the questions of the hearings sessions and the quorum. So I will make just a couple of points on that.The intention of the quorum of two is around site-specific hearings. It is at the discretion of the chairperson so not all sessions will have that smaller number. It is at the discretion of the chair. Those sessions are for hearing evidence. They are not for decision making. So again it is in the interests of how to get this work done and hear the evidence and the opportunity to do that is what you would expect for those who want to be heard. But that group the quorum being lowered from three to two is not a decision-making process.So the lowering of the quorum of the hearings session from three to two is only about—I want to reiterate—the hearing of evidence. It is not about the recommendations or the consideration which is done by the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel. So the hearings session is not a decision-making step.DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I thank the Minister in the chair Louise Upston for taking the floor to try to explain that particular issue around the reduction of the quorum for the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel from three members to two under clause 4.On the one hand I am a little more satisfied that this is not going to become the norm which is what Phil Goff was saying just now as part of his contribution. But on the other hand I am still vexed and actually quite concerned that although she has said that the two-person panel will be site-specific—and I can understand that because there are a lot of issues to be looked at—it is not going to be a decision-making process and that does actually create some concerns. That is because these people are going to tasked with the job and given the responsibility of making recommendations around a particular issue yet they will not be able to make that decision and will cast that back to a wider group who have not been part of hearing the submissions and sharing the evidence and therefore will not be fully apprised of the information in order to make that decision.In some ways it is comforting to know that this is going to be—using the word from the Minister’s mouth—exceptional rather the common occurrence but at the same time the panel is not going to be able to make a decision or make recommendations which will have to be passed back to people who have not been part of hearing the evidence around that. I do not believe that that is a good way of making decisions on issues. I know from my own personal experience of being an Auckland MP that people are extraordinarily worried about some of the issues whether it be height to boundary whether it be the concentration of houses whether it be heritage buildings—a whole range of different issues. So that raises I believe yet another concern that we have certainly as Auckland MPs as to what we are looking at in terms of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill.The second part of the Minister’s contribution I want to pick up on is the issue that Ron Mark raised before which is that going from three members down to two means that we actually do not have a deciding vote. Those panel members do not have voting role—I understand that from the Minister—but we may instead have two competing recommendations coming back from that two-person panel from which a decision is going to be made without actually understanding the full ramifications of the evidence that was heard. So that seems to me to make the situation worse rather than better.So we have dug ourselves into a hole of complexity and bad decision-making around this which will provide Aucklanders with no real feeling that they are getting a better process rather than a worse one at the end of this. So I thank the Minister for standing up and taking that—Hon Phil Goff: Brief call.DAVID SHEARER: —brief call on clause 4 but it still does not address some of the other issues.I come now to clause 7—I am sure that there will be other people who want to pick up on the Minister’s contribution just now. Clause 7 provides for the expansion of the hearings panel from seven to 10. Once again I think we support that and I can see the merits in having an expansion in the numbers excluding the chair. But the choice and the decision about who is going to be on that hearings panel is something that the Minister has not addressed and I think that this actually does cut to choice—to whether Auckland can decide who is going to be on that panel or whether it has to be done centrally and top down. I want to come to the I think very good amendment that Phil Twyford has put forward as part of that with the provision to have the Auckland mayor involved.JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am very pleased to take a short call on this bill. The Green Party objects to the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill partly because of the process—the lack of any select committee process and the fact that we are dealing with it under urgency—but also as other colleagues have explained because we objected to the principal Act and the fact that it is the Ministers not the Auckland Council who will appoint the members of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel.This Government does not trust local democracy neither in Auckland nor in Christchurch nor in wider Canterbury because in all of those areas it has got its hand-picked commissioners making major planning decisions rather than the councillors who are elected by citizens. In respect of this bill Mr Twyford was asking questions before around clause 7 which the Minister has not answered. I assume that the Minister of Conservation is appointing members of the panel because the Minister has responsibilities under the regional coastal plan and that the unitary plan which the Auckland Council is now going through the hearing process on actually includes provisions in the regional coastal plan. But it is absolutely wrong for Ministers to be appointing the panel members. It should be Auckland councillors and this bill does nothing to correct that.I would also like to talk to clause 5 and a very good amendment in the name of Phil Twyford which is quite similar to some concerns that the Green Party had on the original Act. They are that this bill is allowing the hearings panel to make recommendations that go beyond the scope of submissions. It is well settled in terms of the Resource Management Act that when a hearings panel is makings its decisions it confines those to the submissions that it has heard because otherwise there is the likelihood and possibility that we will get random ad hoc changes to the plan being made by the hearings panel that do not relate to the submissions that have been brought before it that do not relate to the evidence that submitters have presented and that go outside the scope of submissions. So throughout the Resource Management Act this limitation on the scope of submissions has ensured that natural justice prevails and that the panel is making decisions on the evidence that is brought before it on the submissions that are brought before it.So Mr Twyford’s amendment will be supported by the Green Party because it seeks to ensure that the panel can only make decisions and make recommendations that are within the scope of submissions—that there is not the ability for the hearings panel to act in a very arbitrary way go beyond that process and make recommendations to the council that may advantage particular parties and on which it has not heard evidence. So we will certainly be supporting that.But this bill highlights provisions that should have been tackled when the principal Act went through. They should have been tackled subsequently when they came to light and when the Government had adequate time to address them. Instead what has the Government done? It is ramming them through under urgency to limit the ability of the public of Aucklanders to actually have their say in this process about how their major document the Auckland Unitary Plan should be finalised and developed. It is again another attack on democracy and another example of the Government failing to trust local democracy by having all of the power exercised in the Beehive rather than by the council.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I just want to acknowledge that tantalising intervention by the Minister in the chair the Hon Louise Upston—just enough to get members interested in some real debate and information—but I do not want to deter the Minister from intervening again because there are a number of questions that have been put on the table. I did notice that we have been joined by the Minister of Local Government. She must have been following this bill. I am pleased that she has taken time off from her busy schedule of vilifying State house tenants to join us for this debate.I want to talk about clause 5 of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill and note that section 144 of the principal Act provides that “The Hearings Panel must make recommendations on the proposed plan after it has finished submissions”. It has to hear all the submissions all the deliberations and then make its recommendations and its findings in one go at the end of the process. We have been hearing about you know 5000 site-specific zoning submissions by the people of Auckland that the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel is desperate to get through so it can report in time on 22 July next year. I think we all understand the logic for this but it does raise certain questions and I would really appreciate the Minister paying attention to this and giving us a response. There is no doubt that clause 5 adds some practicality allowing recommendations to be passed on to the Auckland Council in a kind of drip-fed way which will expedite the whole process by allowing the council to consider recommendations as the panel goes through its work. I think we can all understand that.But clause 5 also raises whether matters will have been properly considered in the whole because none of the issues that the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel is considering sit in isolation. That is the whole point of the Auckland Unitary Plan. It is a holistic approach. It is an integrated exercise in spatial planning. All of these things are connected: all of the zoning considerations land use and so on. They all impact on each other. I think that the risk here with clause 5 is that you will get a piecemeal consideration of issues in isolation and the hearings panel may find that by the time it gets to the end of the process and it has made all its recommendations it may not in fact be happy with the tenor or the tone or the emphasis of some of the early recommendations that it made on the basis of considering submissions and deliberating on just one topic. So I would really like to hear what consideration the Minister and officials in preparing this legislation for the House gave to that issue because I think that is something that needs to be considered.I want to speak to my tabled amendment that Eugenie Sage just made some comments about. It deals with clause 5 and it replaces new section 144(5) with the following sentence: “The Hearings Panel is limited to making recommendations only within the scope of the submissions made on the proposed plan.” I think this takes us back to the principal legislation. When the amendments were made to the resource management reform legislation they allowed the hearings panel to make decisions that are beyond the scope of the submissions that they have received on the proposed plan and on any matter identified by the panel. This was controversial at the time and we debated this in the House because this is a break with normal practice under the Resource Management Act. It is an extraordinarily broad power that it gives to the independent hearings panel and that is significant because the nature of this bespoke process and intrinsic to the whole idea of the independent hearings panel is that it truncates public consultation. It reduces the say that people have. It cuts the Environment Court out of the process so we have to be extremely careful in ensuring that we balance the desire to streamline and speed up and simplify with ensuring that there are the proper protections about sound decision-making and consultation. If you look at the Environment Court the normal process—RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I want to start by thanking the Minister in the chair the Hon Louise Upston for the explanation to my questions on the issue of reducing the size of the quorum from three to two. I was writing frantically Minister trying to get it all down but from what was explained to the Committee the Government is saying that this relates to site-specific areas is at the discretion of the chair and is for the hearing of evidence not for decision making. It is not a decision-making process; it is for only the hearing of evidence.I have got that and I think I understand what was said. My difficulty is that I have got the primary legislation open on my laptop and I am going through it clause by clause trying to marry up what I have just heard with what I am reading in this legislation. So I am going to have to unfortunately ask the Minister to explain again for me. I am not a lawyer. I never went to university. Actually I started my trade as a mechanic in the army and worked my way through to end up commanding troops but it seems to me that something is not matching in here. So I am really going to need to defer back to the lawyers in the Chamber at the moment. I am looking at Mr Grant Robertson now and hoping that he will get a call to validate or maybe argue against what I am trying to propose.I have looked at clause 4 which amends section 136 “Hearing procedure” in the principal Act. If I go to section 136 of the principal Act I would assume that the entire authorised procedure for this Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel would be laid out clearly there. It makes no mention in there of the hearings panel being restricted to site-specific considerations only. It makes no mention of it only hearing evidence. In fact in subsection (1) it says: “At each hearing session no fewer than 3 members of the Hearings Panel must be present.” Well it is going down to two. It goes on to say: “(2) If the chairperson is not present he or she must appoint another member as chairperson …”. That is going to be interesting.As I said before if there was a quorum of three and the chair was not there then three would decide who was going to be the chair. If there is a quorum of two and the chair is not there we are probably going to spend half our meeting arguing about who is going to be the chair. It just seems a whole lot easier if you leave the quorum at three and then we can get a clear majority appoint a chair and move on. That is the first point.As I go through the hearing procedure provision I can see nothing of what the Minister has explained to us—and I absolutely accept that the Minister will have taken advice from officials. So what I would like now is for us to get advice as to where that advice we have just received appears in the legislation or is cross-referenced in the legislation because it appears to me that it does not appear in the legislation. If I go to section 164 “Functions of Hearings Panel” in the primary legislation what do I find? It is clear that section 164 “Functions of Hearings Panel” does not in any way in that very short section—section 164(a); (b)(i) (ii) (iii); and (c) (d) and (e)—restrict the hearing of a quorum of two. Help me please because I cannot see it.The Minister of Local Government is here. She is having a quiet chat so she might be able to take a call and help us understand this but I cannot find it. I find no reference within the legislation to the explanation we have just received—that it empowers and enacts those thoughts into reality. So I am asking for help guidance so that we in New Zealand First can continue to support this legislation through and support the Government in doing that.New section 144 inserted by clause 5 is very specific. We will just stay with the amendments to section 144 not what I have got in front of me on my laptop which is the primary legislation. New section 144 is very clear. It is headed “Hearings Panel must make recommendations to Council on proposed plan”. It says it must make recommendations. It does not say: “unless it is a quorum of two and therefore they can’t.” It says: “The Hearings Panel must make recommendations on the proposed plan including any recommended changes to the proposed plan.” It says “must make”. It does not say: “unless there’s only a quorum of two.”Subsection (2) of new section 144 states: “The Hearings Panel may make recommendations …”—may make recommendations. It does not say that it is not for decision-making purposes or recommendation-making purposes if there is only a quorum of two. It does not say that. I hate to be a pain but I am struggling and we want to support this legislation through—GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I do want to pick up on Mr Mark’s contribution. He should have become a lawyer judging from that contribution. He could defend himself from time to time as well which might help. But I believe his analysis was spot on. I do thank the Minister for answering the questions that were raised because as Mr Mark noted she did that genuinely on the basis of the advice she got from the officials.But there is an issue here and it does require us to look at the substantive piece of legislation that is being amended the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act. This Act establishes—beginning at section 128 and running all the way through to section 150—how the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel will work. The problem with the advice that the Minister gave us is that there is only one type of hearings panel. There is not a different range of hearings panels. There is not such a thing in law as a site-specific hearings panel. That is what the Minister said.She said there would be decisions made about whether there would be three or two members on that panel as clause 4 of this bill allows for on a site-specific basis at the discretion of the chair. There is nothing from sections 128 to 150 to create that. There is simply a thing called a hearings panel. If that is the case the hearings panel then has to do all of the things that the Act asked which as Mr Mark has just told us under replaced section 144 the title of section 144 is “Hearings Panel must make recommendations to Council on proposed plan”. It does not have an option. If there are two people at a site-specific meeting where we do not know who the chair necessarily is that group of two people is obliged by law to make a recommendation. So in respect of what the Minister has told us it is simply not the case in law.It may be the intention of the officials or the intention of the Government to create a situation where a panel of two would not make a recommendation but the problem is that is not what the law says. Mr Mark’s original question asked now nearly 2 hours ago still stands. The original question stands. What do we do when there are two people serving as the hearings panel who disagree on a recommendation? That is quite possible. That remains quite a possible situation. Under the law under section 144 even as amended by clause 5 of this bill they will be obliged to make a recommendation.So I ask the Minister again to stand up and explain to us how in fulfilling its role under the law a hearings panel now potentially made up of two people will resolve a conflict because Mr Mark’s question stands. I understand the practice that the Minister believes will now take place but that is not the law. A hearings panel of two who fail to make a recommendation on the proposed plan will be in breach of the law. They will be in breach of section 144 of the law. This is the difficulty caused by moving from three to two members as the quorum. We have not had an adequate explanation as to how the law will be fulfilled. I think the Minister might be able to get further advice about that because I suspect that the officials have talked about it. I am happy to give a bit of time for the officials to have their conversation about this.Dr David Clark: A coin toss.GRANT ROBERTSON: My colleague Dr David Clark suggests a coin toss. I think Aucklanders deserve better than that. I think Aucklanders actually deserve to know how this will work. We understand why parties in this Chamber with the exception of our colleagues in the Greens are supporting the principles of this legislation. We know that the unitary plan process needs to speed up. We know that there needs to be a more efficient process. But what we cannot be doing under urgency is passing law that is contradictory because we will be back yet again saying “Hang on a minute. Actually we don’t want a hearings panel of two to have to make a recommendation because what if they can’t? What if they can’t agree?”. So perhaps there does need to be an additional clause that says exactly what the Minister told us in her intervention—that if there is—TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I move the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We have had—[Interruption] Order! No no points of order; I am on my feet. We have had an hour and 50 minutes on this debate. There have been 21 calls and there have been only four members who have spoken against the provisions of the bill so I am prepared to accept a closure motion. The Committee can decide whether it accepts it or not.CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I absolutely accept your ruling. The Standing Orders are very specific about the form of words that a closure motion must take. The form of words the member just moved do not meet the requirements of the Standing Orders.TIM MACINDOE (Senior Whip—National): I believe that that may have been because of the absolute commotion and that my colleague—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No that is not a—[Interruption] That is not a reason. If the closure motion—TIM MACINDOE (Senior Whip—National): I seek leave for my colleague to be able to hear that you had given him the call because that was the problem.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No—there is some confusion about this so I will not accept the closure motion. I am now going to call Chris Hipkins.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I appreciate this opportunity to make a contribution to this debate. I want to turn my attention to clause 5 in Part 1 which amends section 144 of the principal Act. I want to talk to subsection (5) of that particular new section 144 because it deals with the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel and the recommendations that it can make. The issue that I want to canvass which has not been canvassed by any of the other speakers so far is the power that the hearings panel is being given to make recommendations outside of the scope of the submissions that it has received.The conventional wisdom if you read the rest of the section would be that the purpose of a hearings panel is to put forward a plan get the feedback on the plan and then make amendments as to how the plan may be changed based on those submissions. But this particular section gives the hearings panel a much wider remit than that. It says that the hearings panel can basically do what it likes regardless of what the submissions are actually saying. So the hearings panel could actually go through and say: “There’s some issues that we feel are important that weren’t raised by any submitters at all and we’re going to make recommendations based on that just because we feel like it.” It gives the hearings panel quite a significant scope.I think that that stands in a bit of conflict if you look at subsection (8)(c) which specifies what the reports of the hearings panel must include. A report of the hearings panel must include “the reasons for accepting or rejecting submissions and for this purpose may address the submissions by grouping them according to—” etc. etc. So basically it says that the hearings panel has to go through the submissions and say whether they are going to be accepted or rejected. But then it can throw a whole lot of other things on the table that it does not have to go through a similar kind of process for because the panel can just make recommendations in its own right without reference to submissions.It seems to me that if the purpose of the hearings panel is to get public feedback on the plan why would we give it this much much wider power to make whatever recommendations it feels like? Bear in mind that the recommendations that the panel makes that are not related to the submissions could well be things that the submitters would have had a view on and would have wanted to make submissions on had they known that those were the items being discussed. Potentially what this does is it means that the recommendations that come out of the report of the panel can recommend quite significant changes to the plans without bearing on the submissions. It seems to me that that cuts against the whole purpose of what this is all about.The other point that I want to deal with is section 144(1) in clause 5 which says that “The Hearings Panel must make recommendations on the proposed plan”. The question that I have got is: why is it necessarily a “must”? What if having heard all of the submissions the hearings panel decides it does not want to make any recommendations and is actually quite happy with the plan as it stands? Why the word “must”? I think again that cuts against the grain. When you consider that in light of section 144(5) in clause 5 which says that the panel’s recommendation-making powers are not limited to the matters on which people have been submitting it basically says that if panel members go through all of the hearings and they do not want to pick up any matters that were covered in the submissions they must make some up. They must actually come up with something because they are not given the option of not making recommendations. They are told that they have to make recommendations.So I think that I would like to hear a justification from the Minister on both of those points—first of all as to why they are given this wider power to make recommendations that fall outside of the hearings process. This is a hearings panel so why is it that the hearings panel has the ability to make recommendations on issues that it has not had hearings on and it has not received submissions on? The second point is why it is that it must make recommendations. And of course coming back to some other contributions to the debate I think that that raises issues around the constitution of the panel. What happens if the panel is unable to reach an agreement? It has been told that it must make recommendations but it might not necessarily be able to reach an agreement on what those recommendations should actually be.So there are a whole lot of questions here that have not been answered by the Government because aside from a very brief aside from the Minister that clarified one issue and actually probably raised more questions than answers we have not heard from Ministers around these quite detailed and specific questions members have been raising.TIM MACINDOE (Senior Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the question That the question be now put.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 56New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 63 Noes 58.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Phil Twyford to clause 5 be agreed to:replace new section 144(5) with:(5)The Hearings Panel is limited to making recommendations only within the scope of the submissions made on the proposed plan; anddelete from new section 144(8) “ and identify any recommendations that are beyond the scope of the submissions made in respect of that topic or those topics”.A party vote was called for on the question That the amendments be agreed to.Ayes 56New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 12.Noes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 58 Noes 63.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Phil Twyford to clause 7 be agreed to:in clause 7 insert the following subclauses:(1A)In section 161(7) replace “the Ministers” with “the Minister for the Environment and the mayor of Auckland Council”.(1B)In section 161(8) replace “The Ministers” with “The Minister for the Environment and the mayor of Auckland Council”; andin new section 161(8A) in clause 7(2) replace “The Ministers” with “The Minister for the Environment and the mayor of Auckland Council”.A party vote was called for on the question That the amendments be agreed to.Ayes 56New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 12.Noes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the question That Part 1 be agreed to.Ayes 107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 12Green Party 12.Part 1 agreed to.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I seek your guidance. I waited recognising it is completely at your discretion when Part 1 is put but I seek your guidance as to what remedies might be available to me having sought the call for a long period.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member will sit. No I am going to deal with your point. [Interruption] The member will sit. If you wish to have a call that is up to how your whips allocate the calls. We have moved on from there. We are now going on to Part 2 so there is an opportunity to seek a call on Part 2. That is what we are now dealing with. [Interruption] No. We are on Part 2.CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think in the heat of the moment you might have made a ruling that you did not intend to. The calls in the Committee stage are nothing to do with the whips. The whips cannot allocate calls in the Committee stage—in fact it is at the discretion of the Chair.The issue is that this bill is going through under urgency. I accept that Part 1 is done. We are through Part 1 now. Members who were seeking a call on Part 1 and did not get it have of course now got Part 2 and the title and commencement clauses. I just seek some reassurance that there will be some flexibility for those members who have not spoken on Part 1 but who do want to speak to those issues—that they will still get some leniency in being able to do so in subsequent parts of the bill.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member. I have a list of who speaks and who does not speak. Over the course of this urgency over the last 3 days I have sought to give the call to those who have sought calls. But the matter comes down to repetition and relevancy at the time. The previous presiding officer for Part 1 made that very clear and I have carried that through. Now we have the opportunity to debate Part 2.Part 2Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This is a matter relating to Part 2. It seeks further clarification based on the ruling you have just made. In respect of the antidote to repetition—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no—look you are trifling with the Chair. The member will sit. The member will sit. You are just wasting time. That is all that is happening here. I am seeking someone who wishes to take a call.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Part 2 has two clauses. The first clause 9 is a validation clause. What clause 9 does by adding new section 170 is validate the closing date for submissions on the proposed plan that was adopted by the Auckland Council. Also new section 171 also added by clause 9 validates any hearings sessions of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel that were held concurrent with another session. I want to come back and focus particularly on clause 9 but I will just mention clause 10 which is about consequential amendments. I have got a couple of questions about that as well.What we are predominantly dealing with in this part is validations. The word “validations” has a nice sound to it but what does it actually mean? A validation is what you do after the event to remedy a cock-up in earlier rushed legislation to retrospectively justify—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is a word that has been ruled out. The member will not use that word.Hon PHIL GOFF: A validation is what you do to remedy a mistake made in previous legislation and to retrospectively justify what has been done illegally and without authority.When we do these things retrospectively we need to look at what lessons can be learnt from how the mistake—if you prefer to call it that—was made. I am conscious that this clause validates changes that I think were made in the amendment legislation that was passed 2 years ago. The irony of what we are doing in this session today is that we are considering legislation that has not gone to a select committee.Let us think for a moment about what the purpose is of taking legislation to a select committee. It is on the one hand to give the public input to make sure you have got the solutions right and to give the experts input but on the other hand it is to allow the select committee to work in a bipartisan way to prevent mistakes from being made in legislation. So what we would have done in a select committee is we would have had the parliamentary counsel before us to make sure that the drafting was accurate we would have had the officials before us to give advice and unlike in the Committee of the whole House we would have been able to cross-examine the officials.I do not think that happened back in 2013 and the irony is that we are doing exactly the same thing again. We are rushing through legislation that has not been considered by a select committee and I can guarantee that we will be back again to repair more mistakes that are made because we are once again passing legislation in haste.I want to ask a couple of questions of the Minister in the chair. The first validation we are doing is the closing date for submissions to the Auckland Council of 28 February 2014. We are remedying a mistake that relates to events that happened 20 months ago. The question that I have is: what are the implications of leaving it for 20 months before you validate this piece of legislation which did not create the proper authority and why has it taken 20 months to remedy this? This is something that should have been brought to the attention of the House much much earlier.I think the second validation is something that has wider consequences—that is in this legislation that we are passing it allows the independent hearings panel to meet concurrently. But what we find in new section 171 is that we also have to validate the fact that they have been holding these panels concurrently for potentially a long period of time.So my question to the Minister is: what is the scale of this mistake that we are rectifying in the Committee today? How long have those hearings panels been acting without legal authority to do what they have been doing and what are the consequences of having left it so long to try to validate what the panels were doing without the authority of this House?These are significant mistakes. Yes we are rectifying them and yes the Opposition will support the Government in rectifying this situation but the Committee needs to know what the implications are and why it took so long.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to carry on from the comments of the Hon Phil Goff and just briefly underline really for the record the irony and the bad taste that Part 2 leaves in the mouths of members on this side of the Chamber validating the most elementary mickey mouse mistakes that were made in the first round of the amending legislation that created these problems.It is clear I think looking at Part 2 clause 9—one of the first things the chair of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel did was extend the deadline for public submissions in early 2014. It was one of the very first things that he did. What kind of thought was put into the amending legislation to set the original deadline for submissions? How many submissions were accepted unlawfully?Hon David Parker: How many were excluded?PHIL TWYFORD: Well how many were excluded? Possibly none but I mean it just makes a mockery of the whole process.Hon Member: She might know. They will have done some research.PHIL TWYFORD: Well I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair Louise Upston. She has already offered one contribution. I think the Committee deserves an explanation in the absence of select committee hearings. So that is the first issue—the validation around the closing date for submissions.Secondly the concurrent hearing sessions: how many sessions were held concurrently and unlawfully? This has been going on all year. The hearings panels have heard thousands and thousands of cases and what this bill does now under new section 171(2) in clause 9 is it basically requires that any session has to be treated retrospectively as if it had been held in accordance with the provision to allow for concurrent hearings and as if it had been chaired by someone who had been authorised as the chairperson.So that immediately raises the question: how many of these sessions were chaired by a member of the panel who had not been lawfully authorised to chair those sessions? What a mickey mouse outfit. I am not blaming the independent hearings panel. It—Hon David Parker: Why not?PHIL TWYFORD: Well the independent hearings panel members are good professional people of high calibre who have been put in the invidious position of operating within a legislative framework that was rushed and poorly thought through and shot full of holes—full of errors. And here we are within 2 years back in the House cleaning up the errors that were made then retrospectively.Of course given that we are pushing this legislation through under urgency—no select committee process. I think we had a 40-second contribution from the Minister in the chair. We have not had any substantive input into this debate from Government members other than that very very brief contribution from the Minister in the chair and really no substantive contributions from the Minister for the Environment. We do not even have the Minister who is responsible for this legislation here for this debate. It is just—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! You cannot say that—you cannot say that.PHIL TWYFORD: I withdraw that. I apologise. I know that is against the Standing Orders.So those are the validations. The other main section is the schedule “Consequential amendments” and the amendments to section 115 point back to new section 144 in clause 5 which we have debated here. It is consequential to the provisions that allow the hearings panels to make recommendations to the independent hearings panel on the basis of a number of submissions on one particular topic without waiting for all of the submissions and the evidence to be heard before they make its recommendations. I just want to repeat that we have real concerns about whether that will make for a piecemeal and incoherent consideration of what is a very complex set of interlocking issues that the panel will be considering. The other sections—sections 124 148 and 150—again all point back to the concerns that we raised under clause 5.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I want to speak a bit more to clause 9. I have found a remedy for my earlier concern in that Part 2 in relation to validations and consequential amendments effectively makes the past like the future is now intended to be. If members wish to bear in mind that this also could reflect the future—Hon David Parker: Very existential.Dr DAVID CLARK: A very existential way of looking at things. I shall speak to clause 9 but it does relate to clause 6 a clause that was not debated in the hour that I was seeking the call on Part 1. That goes to whether in the new world as in the old the bill will actually achieve its intended purpose because with the natural justice concerns that were raised by colleagues about two-person panels and whether or not they are making decisions—and bear in mind that we are now retrospectively making that OK in this legislation—we have got to acknowledge whether or not there are substantive decisions being made that the decisions that two people will make or in this case will have made are actually likely to have had a bearing on the outcome.For example there is a decision to extend the hearing of evidence or a decision to allow extra questions and answers. When those transcripts are recorded from hearings they become the basis of the reports so there are political calls made by those around the table. When there are very few people around the table there are very few people directing traffic and if it is difficult to ascertain who has the lead on that we may well find with that limited number of people on the panel that we end up with decisions that are shaped—even if they are not in substance taken—by the few members who remain on the panel.That I would suggest may lead to a situation where there are more appeals to the High Court on questions of natural justice which is something that was raised in passing—the issue of natural justice. If that is true and if there are more concerns raised about natural justice and more appeals to the High Court then we can imagine that actually the opposite of streamlining will be achieved. The purpose of this bill is to streamline the process but if it ends up in there being more court disputes it will achieve the opposite for those people who are trying to achieve a better way of doing things in Auckland.For example if there are only two people on a panel—and we are approving this retrospectively as well as being the future world—and one of those people attends to a text message does the person presenting to the panel have the ability to argue that their case was not heard by a quorum of the panel? I think we would all agree that if somebody took a phone call and went out of the room the quorum would no longer be achieved. But there are going to be points of dispute. When we get down to so few people hearing the evidence that is presented there is the potential for dispute and for litigious processes to tie up these hearings. I think that is a serious thing because if this bill is about streamlining and it actually achieves the opposite—because as members have pointed out in the debate on Part 1 there is nothing that limits decision making by those few people in the room.We have not had a convincing response from the Minister in the chair Louise Upston about how that might be so. Ron Mark raised the issue of the primary legislation making it clear that the panel can make recommendations and can make decisions along the way. How can we satisfy ourselves that those decisions will not be made by fewer and fewer people and be open to litigation because the quorum is so few? I think that this is a serious thing.If it is as serious as I believe it is—and the Minister I would hope might be able to allay my fears—I would hope it has been quantified by officials. Officials will say what the likelihood of litigation is as a result of these lower numbers of people hearing the cases. The chances of having more appeals will be “x” and that will increase the time taken to get resolution by “y” and we can estimate the cost to those who are making submissions and the cost to the council in presenting evidence in the High Court in appeals and so on to be “z”. It would have been quantified somewhere by officials surely—the cost of the risk of increased litigation.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to address two things. The first one will not take long. The first one is that I would like to know whether this new closing date for submissions of 28 February 2014 effectively puts out submissions that were made after that date. Are there submissions that were made after 28 February 2014 that because of this fixed date now being imposed are not going to be heard and do not have rights in the process? If so how many are there? I think that is very relevant to the decision that we are taking here as to whether we agree to that new date.The other point I want to make is in respect of new section 171(2) in clause 9 and also new section 115(ja) which is a consequential amendment set out in the schedule. The contrast here is to be made with what is happening in Christchurch. In Christchurch they had a need for a new plan as well as a consequence of the earthquakes. There was recognition that the normal plan-making processes would take too long. Normal plan-making processes include appeals to the Environment Court and at the Environment Court people have rights of cross-examination and can go into both the facts and the law. The reason that that process is being truncated in Christchurch is that they need a new plan and that would take too long and so there is some justification for shortening the process.There is also I think widespread recognition across most parts of the House that actually it does take too long to make Resource Management Act plans under the Resource Management Act. They take longer to make than it takes us to change a law in Parliament and therefore democratically elected local government officials cannot be elected on a platform and implement it because by the time the next election comes around they still have not finished the plan change which seems a bit nonsensical.Against that of course there is the need to protect the private interests and the legitimate interests of both private people and public organisations. Why is that? Well plans have enormous effects. They have multimillion-dollar effects. Whether you can subdivide land how many storeys you can build on a piece of land whether you can put a flat down below—all of these things have million-dollar consequences very expensive consequences. They also have lifestyle effects. If you are allowed to have a commercial zone right next to you then you are going to have to put up with a bit more noise and traffic. If you have a bar next to you that is going to be operating at all hours of the night then that has an effect on you. These things have an effect on people so what is the chance of changing that effect if you have not got a right to a fair process?When you have more than two people on a committee the chances are that the different concerns that are raised by people as to process are going to be more likely to be considered particularly if you have got a lawyer involved. This is where I want to go back to the Christchurch plan. This Parliament protected against unfair process by ensuring that Justice John Hansen a former High Court judge is in charge of that process there and therefore is more likely to impose upon his Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel—especially when he is there. But even when he is not there and he is authorising other forms of subsets of the hearings panel to hear submissions it is more likely to be a fair process. Here the hearing process retrospectively can be down to two people and the chairperson does not have to be there. That is what we are doing in respect of new section 171(2). We are saying that the chairperson does not have to be there. So I want to hear from the Minister in the chair Louise Upston as to what assurances we can have that in respect of these smaller panels we are still going to have a fair process.This is heightened by the provisions in new section 115(ja) where it says “the Hearings Panel may make recommendations to the Council in respect of a particular topic …”. If I am concerned about a particular topic and I go along to a hearings panel and it does not even refer my concerns back to the council what remedy have I got? It does not have to make recommendations in respect of my submission or the topic that I may raise and I have got no appeal rights to the Environment Court because we have truncated them. I will have had no cross-examination rights at the original hearings panel to highlight my concern or to show that some other information that is being presented to the council committee is wrong. So my rights have been severely truncated as a person whose life could be affected by say the fact that I have a tannery put up next door to my residential section—depending on where the planning line is drawn—or if I am a person who wants to bring forward affordable housing and I cannot do it because the minimum lot size is too high or the prohibition on multi-storey buildings is inappropriate around a transport node.All of these things have incredibly important effects not just on the individual but on society as a whole given the need that we have for more affordable housing in Auckland. I would like to hear from the Minister in response to those concerns that I have as to the fairness of the process particularly given—Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I want to thank the Minister for her earlier comments and I hope that she recognises that without the benefit of a select committee process we are bound to be asking her questions given the fact that we also do not have the benefit of legal advice or the officials’ advice.I want to refer to clause 9 in Part 2 “Validations and consequential amendments”. All of us or most of us in this Committee hate having to pass legislation that revalidates something particularly retrospective legislation. I note that in new section 170 in clause 9 we are having to validate the date on which submissions were received. Rightly some of my colleagues have asked well how many submissions were received that were deemed illegal that we are now having to validate so that they can be received? Hopefully the Minister will have a view around that.But the other thing is—and this goes to the crux of the credibility of the Government—when did it first learn about the need for validation legislation? That is important because as I understand the hearings had started in September last year. The hearings started last year and we are only now over 12 months later passing legislation that validates the work of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel. I think it is important that the Minister is able to tell the Committee when the Government first learnt that because if it learnt that at the beginning of the year why is it that we are only now passing this legislation?The other question that I think is also important is: how many concurrent sessions have been undertaken so far? Because we are validating practices that it is my understanding the independent hearings panel has been doing. We are validating their actions. Does that mean that the independent hearings panel has been undertaking concurrent sessions and site visits as the Minister said earlier? Does that mean that the independent hearings panel has been holding concurrent sessions with less than three members? Because we are now—Hon Ruth Dyson: Fewer than.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: Oh fewer than—fewer than as my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson says. Because the reality is that if we are validating practices that have been deemed illegal since September 2014 I would say that a lot of Aucklanders will be questioning: “Who did we present our submission to if this is what’s happening now?”.The other question I would like to ask is: did they all have a quorum? Did they all have three? Because we are now being asked to change the quorum from three to two. Obviously the practice may have been that it may have been difficult to get three but if the concurrent sessions have taken place which we are currently validating as a result of Part 2 clause 9 then what happened? We do not have the benefit of an official’s report we do not have the benefit of a select committee report and I think it is incumbent on the Minister in the chair Hekia Parata to tell the Committee so that we can have at least some clarity that we are passing this in the spirit of doing the right thing for the sake of Aucklanders.Is there anything else that has taken place as a result that we cannot see? Because here is what we have often seen: in addition to fixing the mistakes that the Government has made in the original legislation we have also been asked to accept that we need to speed things up. I absolutely agree but I do not believe that Aucklanders would want to sacrifice the quality of advice that the independent hearings panel provides for us because of the Government’s attempt to rush through things because I suspect that if we are unable to meet the statutory time frame that the legislation provides surely it would be for the benefit of the Auckland region that we take our time and get it right anyway? But all I am hearing from the Government so far based on the little information that has been provided to us is that it is so intent on speeding things through that I fear that we will be back here again and—Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I do appreciate the opportunity to make what is in fact my first contribution throughout this Committee stage on the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. Relating to an earlier point of order there are a number of members on this side who have not yet had the opportunity to make any contribution to this debate. Our whip has asked for some leniency to raise matters that may span across Part 2 and other parts. I have some specific new material that is important in the local Auckland context in my own electorate of New Lynn and I wish to put that on the floor of the House today. I am going to then draw some specific conclusions from that which I would ask the Minister in the chair Hekia Parata to comment on.These are serious matters that go to probably hundreds of millions of dollars of future investment in my electorate and they relate to previous expenditure of around $400 million of public funds invested by Auckland City Council Waitakere City Council and the Crown in the development of New Lynn to date. The jumping-off point for this issue is in fact in Part 2 in new section 170 added by clause 9 which speaks about the closing date for submissions on the proposed plan. It is the definition of “proposed plan” that I wish to reflect upon. Also the issue of concurrence of sessions in section 171(1) in clause 9 becomes important in this real-life example.I need to go into the facts briefly and I hope that if I have not completed it Mr Chair you will give me some leniency on the call. In New Lynn starting about 7 years ago a major redevelopment project was undertaken pursuant firstly to the old Waitakere City district plan and then to a special charette-based planning process that was crystallised in a concept document that was circulated for consultation in 2010. There was broad buy-in to that document. It was a published book. It was a vision for the future of the New Lynn town centre which has now become one of the main metropolitan hubs under the Auckland Unitary Plan. That was in 2010 published by the then Waitakere City Council.What that led to was a series of plan changes including Plan Change 17 which rezoned much of the area around central New Lynn which is now in a large special housing area. That is important to note and I will come back to that. That in turn facilitated the dropping underground of the double-tracked Western Line the realignment of several roads and the completion of a new urban transit centre in New Lynn that has in turn transformed the town centre. An issue has subsequently arisen that that transit centre made it possible for New Lynn to intensify housing development and I am advised that over half of the property within a kilometre radius of that transit centre has now changed hands since that investment took place. It is a dynamic and very different urban environment. There is a new development on what was the Crown Lynn clay pits and the recently vacated Monier tiles site owned by the Australian corporation CSR which has been purchased by a company called Avanda. That company is looking to build around 1800 apartments on a combined site area of I believe around 9 hectares. This is a very intensive urban development for which the planning is critical. Stage—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): So can we tie it to Part 2.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Yes. So the words “proposed plan” in section 170 relate in the minds of local stakeholders to the consultation document published in 2010 upon which the plan changes were based which were then reflected in the current Auckland Unitary Plan. The issue that has arisen is that the special housing area and the subsequent stage one consenting decisions appear to have been made and are arguably at odds with certainly the concept drawings and the spirit of the 2010 plan. That raises an issue for this Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel which is—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): And how does it raise an issue with Part 2?Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: With section 170. The Minister may wish to comment on whether the proposed plan that this refers to is the original plan upon which a large-scale development was based or whether it is the current plan at the time at which the concurrent hearings panel sits. That is the first question that comes out of this. The second is what is the interdependency between the plan and any special housing area—Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I understand that there have been a few questions on a matter relating to Part 2 and I just wanted to assist the Committee in its consideration. In the unamended Act there were potentially two viable closing dates for submissions being 14 January 2014 and 28 February 2014. Validating 28 February 2014 as the closing date for submissions helps protect the validity of those submissions received between those two dates—those were 14 January and 28 February 2014. Thank you.JAN LOGIE (Green): I just rise to take a quite short call on Part 2 “Validations and consequential amendments” which is seeking to fix up mistakes in the original legislation as I understand it. Because this bill is being rushed through under urgency we do not actually have the opportunity to hear from submitters about whether the mistakes that we are correcting were caused by a lack of clarity in the legislation or whether the situation was more complex leading to this misinterpretation as it might be.The Minister in the chair Hekia Parata has just stood up to clarify that the first point around the closure of submission dates is clarifying that there had been two dates as I understand it—14 January and then 28 February—and that this is to clarify and provide that clarity that those submissions that were received between 14 January and 28 February are indeed valid. So was that problem in the lack of clarity in the legislation or was that in the communication material that was sent out to people around closure dates? I am sorry if it is being obtuse but I am struggling to get the detail of that and that is because we have not had that select committee process.When I have been thinking about this issue and why the select committee is so valuable I have been realising that actually when we get the submissions around the details it helps us understand and fulfil our role as the Opposition in scrutinising legislation as well as helping the functioning of Government. We get to find out how legislation is operating at the community level through the submissions. Those submissions are often reported in the media which enables people in the community to then reflect on the impact of the legislation and the consideration of the implementation of that. Clearly that is not happening in this process and I really think that that particularly when it comes to fixing up mistakes and validations in consequential amendments is a significant point that we need to consider. It is about ensuring that we have a good lawmaking process and that people are able to consider what went wrong and properly interrogate that and that is missing from this process.There is the point about the closure of the submission dates and there is the point about new section 171 in clause 9 which validates any hearing session of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel that was held concurrently with another session. We have heard previously in this debate that this has been happening for a while and that this is validating that but again we have not heard how long this has been happening for. Was this happening because the commissioners interpreted the legislation to think that that was appropriate or was this happening just because they were not looking at the legislation and they were getting on with business and trying to expedite the process? That actually creates two very different situations and we have not had the information to tell us what the problem was to find out whether this is the appropriate legislative response to the problem.That is not good lawmaking and our responsibility in this House is to have appropriate oversight and to do our best to make sure that the laws on the books serve the purpose that we want. There are of course more broadly than this principles of good delivery of principle and democracy. Whether the concurrent hearings are actually something that we want to be supporting—it seems from what we have picked up in the media and what people have said that maybe they are. But there has been no opportunity for somebody who may have had involvement in this process and may have had concerns to be able to come to this House and express those concerns. I think that really is doing a discredit to the communities of Auckland—to lock them out of this process—when I really do believe the first principle of decision making in this place—RON MARK (NZ First): Well here we go again. Sometimes it seems a little bit like Groundhog Day in here does it not when we find ourselves addressing legislation for the umpteenth time because it was incorrectly passed in the first instance or it was fundamentally flawed because it was rushed through rammed through because the Government of the day had a view had a majority and simply ignored or did not allow a full and proper process to take its path which might have seen some of these wrinkles ironed out along the way.Part 2 again reinforces the value of having the select committee process no less than Part 1 did. I am still a little disappointed—I will remain a little disappointed—that I still have not had satisfactory answers from the Government to the questions that I put regarding Part 1. Hopefully here in Part 2 we might get some engagement from the Government particularly bearing in mind that we are wanting to support this legislation because although we may argue that it has been done poorly the process has been flawed and it is not democratic we are here and this will help Auckland in its current bind and the Auckland Council which at the very least is made up of duly elected people supports the legislation.So again if I was to look at Part 2 I would recognise a couple of things. We have a new Part 2 to the primary legislation—there was no Part 2. Part 2 of the bill consists of new sections 170 and 171 which seek to validate certain things that were done before the enactment of this bill that we are processing now. It validates the closing dates of submissions. It validates any hearing session of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel that was held concurrently with another session by providing that the provisions of the principal Act as amended here must be treated as having applied in relation to the hearing session. And the chairperson of the hearings panel must be treated as having made the necessary directions under these provisions—except that the chairperson did not and the hearings were not in compliance with the legislation of the day. New section 170 deals with the closing dates of submissions to councils on the proposed plan. It talks about how “Despite section 123(7) and (9) 28 February 2014 must be treated as if it is and always was the closing date for submissions …” as opposed to 14 January 2014—except that it was not.Once again we have fundamentally flawed legislation. Despite 16 attempts by the Government to patch up its dodgy primary legislation we still have flaws here we still have problems here and here we are in urgency seeking to validate actions that were illegal. We are seeking to say things that happened were legal when they were not. Fundamentally bad lawmaking—fundamentally bad process.Go to new section 171 “Concurrent hearing sessions held before 2015 amendments”—and what am I looking at? My note says “Ron go and have a look at the bill”—chiding myself. Here we go: “Concurrent hearing sessions held before 2015 amendments (1) This section applies to any hearing session that was held concurrently with another hearing session before the commencement of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Act 2015 (the 2015 Act). (2) The hearing session must be treated as if—(a) this Act as amended by the 2015 Act applied in relation to the hearing session; and (b) the hearing session was—(i) held in accordance with a direction given under section 165(aa) … and (ii) chaired by a chairperson appointed under section 165(b) (as amended by the 2015 Act) if the hearing session was chaired by a member other …”—it goes on and on except that what this new section raises is a series of questions as to the situation that arose the issues behind those situations and the reasons for adding Part 2 and these two new sections sections 170 and 171.That again reinforces the value of having select committees. If this bill had gone to a select committee we would have had the opportunity to look at these two sections and ask the Auckland Council what happened. We have had no such opportunity. The questions we might have asked—CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am going to make only a brief contribution in this Part 2 debate. The reason that I rise to take a call on this is that it does deal with some retrospective legislation which is something that I am never particularly comfortable with when we do that in the House. We have done a couple of other bills that have retrospective effect during this urgency session and I want to remind members of the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee’s advice to the House and to lawmakers with regard to retrospective laws. It states: “Legislation should not affect existing rights and should not criminalise or punish conduct that was not punishable at the time it was committed. The presumption against retrospectivity: The general rule is that legislation should have prospective not retrospective effect …”.When you consider what is happening with this particular validation—this retrospective legislation here—in fact I do not think that is in any way in conflict with what the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee is arguing. If anything one could argue that not passing this legislation would be the violation because people have in good faith participated in the process made their submissions and had their hearings and potentially if this validation does not take place they could find that that whole process was invalid and will have to start again. I would almost go so far as to say that to be consistent with the overall principle that underpins what the Legislation Design and Legislation Advisory Committee is arguing here we probably do need to pass this bill to avoid any confusion and to ensure that all those who have already had their say and had their submissions heard are still considered and that they did not waste their time.Although generally speaking I am relatively uncomfortable with retrospective validating laws and retrospective provisions in laws in this case I suspect there is probably good justification. I think however it is incumbent upon the Government to answer the questions that have been put particularly the question by the Hon David Parker which was around the particular date of 28 February and whether in fact validating that date results in any exclusion of people’s submissions where otherwise they might have been able to argue the case that they should have been included. I have not had a response from the Government on that which is somewhat disappointing. So overall like I said I have looked quite carefully at these retrospective provisions and although generally I would not support them I think in this case there is probably a reasonable justification for doing so.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I have been dying to take a call all morning so I appreciate this opportunity to contribute to Part 2 and I also want to focus on the validation provision in new section 170. I do thank the Minister for the clarification because essentially there was some requirement under section 123(7) of the principal Act that referred to a period of 60 working days for submissions to have been received after public notification.The question that I have actually is about the period between 14 January and 28 February 2014 and how many of the 9400 submissions that period actually applies to. It is actually relevant. I have not had clarification about access to this process of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel. Essentially Auckland Council went out and as I said before it got over 9400 submissions on the development of the Auckland Unitary Plan. It also had an extended period when it got another 3800 submissions. It then wrote the draft Auckland Unitary Plan and that plan was given to the hearings panel to then consult and—this is my question for the Minister—presumably only with people who had made a previous submission. That is where this validation clause actually becomes relevant.My colleague the Hon Phil Goff said that there were 5000 submissions to be heard by this hearings panel and they are a subset of the total 13200 submissions. So in fact this validation clause is incredibly important if that is the relevance of this validation process. I need to know from the Minister whether or not the qualification to contribute to the hearings panel process is actually based only on your making an original submission to the Auckland Council unitary plan process. The qualification of what is a submission becomes incredibly important to the integrity of this whole piece of legislation.If the Minister could confirm that that would be good because I guess in looking at this particular clause you want to make sure that the clause actually has a purpose. So does this validation clause actually matter? I think that the Minister should let the public know the purpose the rationale and the relevance of this particular clause because if it does then determine qualification for those submitters through participation in the process from the beginning to be heard then actually that is really really important. If it does not and if it does not matter—and actually then I think the integrity of Part 1 comes into question. In fact in new section 144(5) in clause 5 the hearings panel ultimately will make recommendations that actually may be outside the scope of the submissions that it receives so there is not actually going to be a relationship between the submissions that it received when the cut-off date was 28 February 2014 and the ability of those submitters to make a contribution to the hearings panel process.That is actually the crux of the argument. It is a serious point to be discussed because what we know through other parts of this particular legislation in Part 1—and I seek your indulgence Mr Chair just to reference back—is that under new section 144(8)(a) in clause 5 the panel can “identify any recommendations that are beyond the scope of the submissions made in respect of that topic or … topics;”. Also section 144(9)(b) says that: “any other matter that the Hearings Panel considers relevant to the proposed plan that arises from submissions … ” but then it has got these two words: “or otherwise.” So “or otherwise” actually means that they stand apart or outside the process and in fact that is what we are concerned about in terms of the integrity of this process. What that essentially says based on what I have just read is that this Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel can actually introduce a whole lot of material and make recommendations to the council that have got no rational basis in terms of the process that we have been through. So Auckland—RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I really do appreciate the opportunity to take a second call on this small part so that I might finish off the point that I was trying to make earlier on. The point I had got to in my earlier call was around the questions that still hang in our heads as we deliberate on the bill before us right now which we would have put at a select committee hearing and would have been able to have obtained answers to summarised and incorporated into our report and which might then have become the reference material for this debate. But we do not have that. And I am really pleased with the last call that was just taken because it touches very much into the area of what I have just been deliberating on for myself here in the Committee.So some of those questions that would have arisen at the select committee are: did the hearings start in September last year? Exactly how many submissions were received? When did the chairperson start acting outside the Act? What was the Office of the Auditor-General’s view of this? Was the Audit Office aware of it?I know having been a mayor that when the Audit Office comes into a council it does not just go through the books and trace every dollar that the council has spent for the appropriateness of that dollar spent; it traces the processes and the adherence to the statutory obligations and to the legislation of the Local Government Act. So then clearly the Auckland Council has been operating outside the Act and that was known hence the reason we are here today retrospectively making legal its illegal actions.So the questions we would have asked are: what was the Audit Office’s view of this? Could we have a copy of its report? Could we hear its views? What flexibility will be shown to other councils that fail to meet their statutory obligations in such a way or is Auckland to be considered to be a different case and therefore to be treated differently as we are seeing here today? I mean if Carterton was not to meet its obligations and to not take its submissions within the time line or to have confused dates and be telling people “Sorry the closing date was 14 January. Oops sorry we’re wrong. It was actually 28 February.” would that be acceptable?There is a fundamental question that arises around the two closing dates and it is this: how many people who thought the closure date was 14 January 2014 and not 28 February 2014 did not put in a submission when they could have but did not know they could have because they had no knowledge on 14 January 2014 that Parliament would be sitting in urgency on 19 November 2015 to amend the legislation to make their late submission legal and therefore that they could have and should have put it in last January and had it legally accepted?The next question is: what recourse is there for those people who followed the rule realised and said “Hello it’s 14 January. I can’t put a submission in.” and did not put it in? What recourse is there in this part to allow them to appeal and to have their submission accepted now?I have just had a quick glance at the right of appeals under section 155 of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act. It refers me further to sections 156 and 157 and nowhere in there is there any opportunity for those people who acted in compliance with the law and realised on 14 January they could not put a submission in and did not put one in. Nowhere in this legislation is there an ability for them to get an appeal and in fact the appeals part of the legislation specifically rules them out because you cannot have an appeal on a submission that was never lodged. It is a catch-22 nasty situation that was brought about by fundamentally flawed legislation which is being amended retrospectively now. I think that is unfair and I think at the very least those people deserve the right to have a select committee analyse and scrutinise this bill so there could have been even a minority view putting a different view back to the House.I wait for the debate on the third reading. I think we have canvassed enough through Part 2 to make it very clear that we think this is sloppy we think it is shoddy and we think Auckland has been treated a little bit differently. We would hope the same leniency would be shown by the Office of the Auditor-General and by Parliament to any other territorial authority that is found to be operating its submissions processes outside the law.Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): I move That the question be now put.Motion agreed to.Part 2 agreed to.Schedule agreed to.Clauses 1 to 3Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I would like to take a brief call on this. This is traditionally where we do a summing up of what has happened in the Committee stage of the bill but I do want to address the title specifically. The title of this legislation of course is the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill and it is about transition. It is about the transition of eight different councils into a single super-city and it is about the transition from 13 district and regional plans into a single unitary plan to cover resource management issues in Auckland.Consistently through this bill the Labour Party has supported this legislation. It has supported the legislation because we are very keen to get a single unitary plan. We also supported bringing that plan into existence in earlier legislation. What would normally have taken 10 years under the Resource Management Act will take 3 years under the principal Act that we are now amending. The way that that was achieved was by having the plan notified and then having an independent hearings panel hear submissions on it. Thousands of submissions have been heard—I think 9000—and there are still 5000 to go. The 5000 to go are on site-specific issues. That is going to put real pressure on the independent hearings panel to get through by the statutorily required date of 22 July. So we have been here to support this legislation with measures in this bill such as reducing the quorum increasing the pool of panel members from seven to 10 and allowing the panel to hear the issues concurrently.So we have no problem with the purpose of the bill. What we have had during the Committee stage is a real problem with the process. Everybody knows that this bill was drafted back before 16 September. Minister Nick Smith had it. If this House had been properly managed it could have been introduced it could have been read a first time and it could have gone to a select committee so we could go through the normal democratic procedure of giving the public their say cross-examining the officials on how the bill was put together and asking the Parliamentary Counsel Office about whether the drafting of the bill was appropriate and accurate and we would have got it right—we would have got it right.The great irony of the last 7 or 8 hours—we started this at half past 10 last night and we went through to midnight—is that again we have been rushing this legislation through and more errors will be made. We have not learnt the lesson of what half this legislation is about—the half that does not appear in the title was “Validation”. Validation as you know is correcting errors that were made in previous legislation and retrospectively legislating for what was done illegally to be now considered legal. We have had a whole lot of questions genuine questions for the Minister in the chair. The Ministers in the chair—none of them has been the Minister in charge of the bill—have taken two brief calls. We did not have an opportunity for the select committee to check out why things were being done in a particular way and we have not had that opportunity in the Committee either. I deplore the fact that legislation we support has nevertheless been rushed through in the way it has been unnecessarily. This legislation could have been introduced a couple of months ago. We could have done it properly. We could have had a better chance of making sure we got it right. We could have avoided what inevitably will be future validation legislation which comes out of rushed legislation.So yes we do support this bill. We do support the transition that is occurring in Auckland. We want a single consistent unitary plan that will bring good resource management practices that will provide for sustainable development in the housing area and the industrial area but we want to make sure that it is sustainable and will ensure that instead of the complexity and the fragmented nature of the current district and regional plans we have one plan. What the Government has not explained at any point in the Committee is why it has rushed it through in this inappropriate manner and has not taken the time to answer the genuine questions that members of the Opposition had.RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Likewise I just want to take the opportunity on behalf of New Zealand First just to sum up and again affirm that we are supporting this bill. But I have to say that at this very point given the way in which proceedings have played out given the seriousness with which we have tried to address this bill and to raise genuine concerns genuine questions about what we see as gaps in the legislation that could have been easily tidied up to remove any degree of uncertainty—I guess given the way that it has been dealt with here today and the fact that we know that this bill was introduced in September it could have actually been referred to a select committee.We have a wonderful select committee the Local Government and Environment Committee very well chaired by Scott Simpson—a most collegial committee. I know for certain that if the bill had been put there we would have got it through the process allowed submissions enabled a report to be produced and offered up some suggested amendments to the Government well in time to actually have this legislation enacted so that the Auckland Unitary Plan could progress in a more expeditious manner. We are always trying to be helpful where we can on matters where we actually agree. But you know this process could actually have put me in this position where I could recommend to my caucus that like the Greens we vote against it purely on the principle of the process that has been followed here over the last how many hours which has been seriously disappointing.I want to say that there is one area where we will move into the third reading with New Zealand First still seriously concerned about the question of the quorum. I predict this: just as this legislation has been back to the House 13 or 16 times for amendment since it was enacted in 2009—just as it has been amended 13 times we predict that this will come back for the toilet stop clause. The toilet stop clause will be when people realise that having a quorum of two does not allow one to let a member of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel leave the room without adjourning proceedings. We raised a number of serious issues around having a quorum of two and we are saying that if we had kept the quorum at three then we would have overcome those points that we have raised in the debate today.So whether we come back to amend the quorum and put it back to three or not will remain to be seen. But we are predicting that it will create some questions in the hearings when you have submitters sitting there and you only have a quorum of two—only two members sitting there—and one has to leave the room. Does that mean that we are now accepting here when this legislation goes through that in Auckland City when those hearings panels are working they will call a halt to proceedings at that moment at that time to allow that member to go off and do whatever they may want to do?Just a cautionary—we could have resolved that more easily. It would have been nice to do that but here we go moving to the third reading and I guess will we not do it until the same legislation comes back for the 17th time for its next amendment. It is quite sad really.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Clause 3 agreed to.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.