Roche Denise: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18508. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I am quite keen to talk on Part 2 of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) because of its association with the provisions in the Local Electoral Act and also the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act of 2009 which I was very familiar with at the time. I am one of the survivors of the super-city in Auckland. In 2009 when I was in my role as an Auckland City councillor representing the ward of the Hauraki Gulf we waged a very very ferocious campaign against the Government’s desire to collapse our local democracy and introduce local boards. We did this because we did not believe that local boards would give us the sort of local democracy that we wanted and in fact what we wanted was more decision making not less. Originally the smaller communities of the gulf—Great Barrier and Waiheke—were not going to have any representation of their own at all. They would have been collapsed into a local board based in central Auckland.After 4 years of this amalgamation of this model that this Government wants to roll out to the rest of the country I have to say that the local board model has not developed more powers for communities. Without a doubt those who are elected to local board positions do so with the best of intentions to represent their communities and to have the ability to advocate on behalf of their communities at the governing body level but they do not have access to the funds. I agree with the previous speaker on the powers that were stripped from councils through the legislation which are still in this legislation which was when the National Government introduced council-controlled organisations. How that has played out in Auckland is that local boards struggle—they absolutely struggle—to be heard by these unaccountable and corporate organisations which control more than half of the entire council’s assets.Auckland Transport for example is very difficult to deal with. A resident of Waiheke quite recently wrote to Auckland Transport to complain about the fact that when it had done maintenance on Seaview Road on Waiheke Island which has no footpath it had made the road less safe for walkers less safe for cyclists and less safe for horse riders. This person—his name is Michael Tavares—asked Auckland Transport what he should do if he is faced with a car that has sped up as a result of Auckland Transport’s maintenance which was actually a redesign of the entire road. The letter hegot back said that basically he should jump in the ditch because that would be his only alternative.Our local board has been trying and trying and trying really hard to work with Auckland Transport on some design specifications that would fit with our particular community because that is what a local board does. It advocates. Our local board representatives have had very little and no response from Auckland Transport because it is not accountable. It is not run by elected representatives. So we are faced with ridiculous comments from our Auckland Transport people saying to go and jump in a ditch. That kind of sums it up. That is how local government will play out once you remove the decision-making powers of local boards and local councillors from local democracy.It is very very disturbing to see that this Government wants to roll out more amalgamations across the country because it does diminish democracy. When we are paying rates then surely we should have a say in what kind of representation we should have. I believe and I am sure most of the people in this Chamber believe that we should not have taxation with no representation. But this is what can certainly happen when you roll out the local board model and you force amalgamations. What happens is that there are fewer locally elected and accountable representatives. There is less control of the assets and there is a weakening of the powers that local representatives have in their communities.We have to question why the Government’s agenda is to roll out amalgamations across the country. Could it be that it wants to force not only the corporatisation but also the privatisation of council property and council assets? In Auckland one of the council-controlled organisations we have that came about as a result of the forced amalgamation is Auckland Council Investments Ltd. That organisation controls most of the major properties around Auckland that the council owns including the Ports of Auckland. We have seen time after time elected representatives attempting to get information from the Ports of Auckland from Auckland Council Investments Ltd about what sort of costs it has had to bear in a fairly nasty and unpleasant industrial relations dispute that has been carrying on for the last couple of years. The ability of local representatives to get that information about how much it is costing the ratepayers of Auckland for a very unpleasant industrial dispute—that information has not been forthcoming.The elected representatives have very little power to take on any kind of scrutiny of the accounts because they are just simply not presented. The only way councillors in Auckland can administer any kind of scrutiny of the Ports of Auckland is through the Auckland Council InvestmentsLtd’s statement of intent where they get to ask questions of its chief executive there every 3 to 6 months. That is outrageous. These are assets that are owned by the people of Auckland and yet they have no say and no control over them. Certainly there is very little accountability.Local boards are not a panacea. They are not a way of increasing democracy; they are a way of decreasing powers for communities. We have some very good competent councils throughout New Zealand and to collapse them into local boards and governing bodies is to continue the mistake that was made with Auckland. We could be so much better in Auckland. We could have so much more democracy there. We could have far more engaged people taking an interest in what our council does if we could have more transparency and accountability. But to force amalgamations on other centres is unacceptable. It is anti-democratic and it is not something that I think this Government should be rolling out throughout New Zealand.