Cunliffe David: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6485] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 As an Auckland member I have been very interested in this debate about the difference between Rodney and Franklin. Ostensibly both are in the same sorts of circumstances. Rodney was all-in then it was half out and now it is back in. Franklin was in then half out. Government members say that the formation of local boards is about the watershed not the community of interest but the main principles of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill are around community of interest. That is the way the Government has argued the formation of local boards. I will get to that issue. 
Apart from the boundary issue looking like a complete muddle a complete shambles the mystery for me was unanswered until the penny dropped. A Minister responsible for the bill John Carter is also the chairman of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee and is also the member of Parliament for the district that got its way. A Minister responsible for the bill is the chairman of that committee. That is a complete conflict of interest of which I know no precedent in my time in Parliament. That Minister is also the local member for one of the highly disputed territories. I bet that the honest hard-working member Paul Hutchison wishes he were the Minister. He would have fixed it for his people. Why was he left out in the cold? 
Have we ever heard anything as ridiculous as defining an electoral boundary on a watershed that runs contrary to a community of interest? The bill is devoid of logic and principle at that level. It is devoid of logic and principle and shows all the signs of a Government that is unravelling—as if we needed another example after the emissions trading scheme. The Government has a deal with the Maori Party one day and a deal with Labour the next. If the Maori Party deal only goes as far as the select committee the Government thinks it had better get back into bed with Labour if we will still have it. What a shambles! Here is a Government that is embracing “Muldoonism” with a smile that is looking raggeder and raggeder by the day. But I will move on to the next issue. 
Hone Harawira 
: Raggeder? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: “Raggeder” seems to roll off the tongue like “Hon-ourable Hon-e”. It evokes what it true of the Government: that it is fraying around the edges on important issues like Auckland. But that is a shame because the Auckland issues are hugely important to New Zealand. We accept the argument—in fact we proposed it—that if Auckland succeeds New Zealand has a better chance of succeeding. Auckland needed to pull together better we needed clearer definition of regional services and we needed stronger regional organisation. That is why we set up the royal commission. Not everything in the royal commission report was what we wanted but it is one thing to disagree with the royal commission’s report and another to replace the 800-page document with a 20-page political manifesto that was absolutely designed to gerrymander the politics of Auckland. That is why we called National’s response “Making Auckland Bluer”. That was what it was about. 
That process has continued right through the legislation. It is very pertinent in the multi-member wards and it is very pertinent to the structure of the local boards. I suspect that before the Government took a position on how many boards there should be it crunched a lot of numbers. I suspect that the Government studied all the permutations of where the boundaries could be drawn and worked out on the balance of probabilities the number of wards there would have to be for the best chance of there being a right-leaning council. You can bet your bottom dollar that that is what this issue is about because there is no other demonstrable logic to it. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: The Minister smiles. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The Minister in the chair John Carter smiles because he knows he has done a hatchet job on the councils of Auckland. He knows it is a hatchet job. He is smirking in the chair because he knows there is not a damn thing Auckland can do about it now. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Done to a dog’s— 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: It is done like a dog’s dinner. Auckland was done when the first Auckland bill was rammed through under urgency and we are back here again in urgency to ram through this bill in the dead of the afternoon. That is what it is doing: ramming it through in the dead of the afternoon. 
All National can muster is the member for Tauranga. He is here to try to defend Government interests. Do we know why that member is here? He does not want to see John Carter carving up his city council. He is saying that the fight starts at the Bombay Hills and that John Carter cannot come over them.