Blue Jackie: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
Blue Jackie: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6382] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 Well what a bitter bitter rant that was. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: It wasn’t bitter! 
Dr JACKIE BLUE 
: It was. I say to David Cunliffe that he should see his elected MP Nikki Kaye and have a chat with her. There was a lot of talk about the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee being a sham but in actual fact I was a member of that committee and I want to reassure the member that the process was not a sham. It was a genuine process. The chair the Hon John Carter made sure that every person who wanted to be heard was heard. People were heard and they were listened to. As a result there have been significant changes to the original bill. They were heard and that is the democratic process. I want to reassure members that that was the case. That member was not there and he is not aware of it I am sure but a very genuine democratic process was at work. 
The process basically started under the Labour Government. There was a problem with the governance of Auckland. It was not working it was dysfunctional there was turf fighting and we needed to move forward. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance started the process and we will finish it. We will finish it so that the new set-up will be ready for the local body elections next year. We are on track and we will get there. We are doing well. 
I want to talk about the local boards because the changes in respect of the local boards are among the most significant changes that have occurred in this bill. They have a lot of powers. The committee went to all areas of Auckland—we went to see the people; they did not come to us—and the submitters we heard were very worried about losing their voice their identity and their representation. Well the local boards will have real powers. I hope that when the people we saw read about the bill and read the commentary their fears will be allayed. The local boards are being made to listen to the community. They need to consult the community. They need to make a plan. They need to write up a plan. There are no ifs or buts about it; they have to listen to the community because that is part of their job. The local boards are new entities. They are not the community boards that we have now. They are not the local councils that we have now. They are new entities altogether. This legislation gives them powers to go forward so that they can consult their communities and represent them. The people in those communities should feel no fear. They were very fearful I must admit and I was quite surprised how fearful and passionate they were. It made a deep impression upon me. But I am very confident that the local boards will do the right thing by them. 
There was talk about having community councils instead of local boards. I am not sure of the detail and the arguments behind it but I imagine that there would have been a lot of confusion between community councillors and city councillors. At the end of the day the whole point of changing the term to “community council” was to give the job more status. Well this legislation does give the job status. The new local board members when they are elected will have real status and real powers. They are legitimate and the legislation will back them. The local boards will have dedicated budgets to provide local services. They will have the money to front up and provide the services that the community needs. It is not lip service. The Auckland Council will need to have a funding policy so that it can fund the different local boards and devolve money to them in an appropriate way. 
I want to go down a bit of a sidetrack here and talk about the remuneration of the local board members. A paragraph in the commentary on the bill talks about it. A few submitters talked about the fact that the current community board members are paid a very modest amount of money to do what they do. It is almost voluntary work—altruistic work. That means that the individuals who step up to do the job are people who have the time or the money to do it. It is a luxury. That prevents people who could do it and want to do it but who do not have the time or the money from stepping up. The committee had a discussion about it and we heard from the submitters. I will read out the paragraph in the commentary. Although the committee does not have any power to say what will happen we have stated that “While we recognise that we cannot set the remuneration levels of local board members we urge the Remuneration Authority to give serious consideration to this issue. We consider that the remuneration provided to local board members must be sufficient to attract good-quality candidates and reflect adequately what the job involves.”