Sage Eugenie: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8301. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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.