Goff Phil: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8299. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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—