Dalziel Lianne: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDalziel Lianne: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10670. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I listened very carefully to the Budget speech from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery where he said that anyone standing for the Christchurch City Council should look at the finances. He said—and I want to quote him—“do not be deceived by what you are being told by the people who are presenting those figures.” That is an extraordinary statement coming from a senior Minister in the lead-up to a council election. I placed the Minister’s speech on my Facebook page and the response was immediate: what does the Minister know that we do not know? There was a considerable amount of fear expressed that the Minister knows things about the council’s finances but is not telling the people of Christchurch exactly what those concerns are even though the council is at the moment going through its 3-year plan process. Christchurch City Council is not going through the 10-year plan process that other councils are going through. It has had its planning process reduced to 3 years but more significant the Government has decided not to make the council subject to the usual Auditor-General oversight.So on one hand the Minister says that we should be concerned about Christchurch City Council’s finances and look at them very carefully and not be deceived by those presenting the figures—he is referring to the mayor and the chief executive who have signed the 3-year plan; he cannot be referring to anyone else because it is their signatures that actually appear on that document—and yet the Government has decided in its wisdom not to make it subject to usual Auditor-General oversight. The Labour Opposition members asked that that Auditor-General oversight be included in the Order in Council when we were asked to comment on it but we were not listened to. Why did the Government allow this process to proceed with no proper scrutiny clearly knowing things that the people of Christchurch do not know and with an election looming?Add on top of that the extraordinary pressure that the Government is placing on the council to pay for the Government’s blueprint even though the people of Christchurch had absolutely no say whatsoever with regard to the major anchor projects that it announced. I do not think that the people of Christchurch need a Cabinet Minister—the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery—to stand here in this debating chamber firing shots at the council down in Christchurch but also in the same breath can I say that we do not need a council that shows that it is incapable of being the kind of partner that a Government needs in a recovery situation.The Minister warned us about these people who are presenting these figures and I think that deception is a pretty strong allegation. But how does the Government have confidence in the council when the front page of the paper has been dominated by a chief executive who is blatantly double-dipping both as the chief executive receivinghis extraordinarily high salary—which received huge feedback in a negative sense from the public—and also as a director receiving director’s fees for sitting on the Civic Assurance company? He is now having to appear in front of the council to explain why Civic Assurance is taking so long to pay the council’s insurance bill. He is double-dipping. In any situation like that a chief executive of an organisation would pay their director’s fees directly to the organisation that they were representing on that body. Only three or four councillors have actually consistently stood up for transparency in Christchurch but they are accused by the mayor and the chief executive of being the problem.I have to say that this has got to stop. It absolutely has got to stop. The people of Christchurch need their leaders to really step up at this time. We are going into our third winter—our third winter—and people are still living in unacceptable situations that we would not ordinarily tolerate in a First World country. The pressure that is being brought to bear on ordinary Christchurch residents living in areas where the land is the most challenging is unbelievable. They do not need to read in the paper about what can only be described as sheer greed and then at the same time hear that the Minister is making these allegations in Parliament without giving the substance to the people of Christchurch. I think it is absolutely vital that the people of Christchurch are told the truth about what is going on at Christchurch City Council.The Government’s blueprint is part of the problem. It is a big part of the problem. The people think that they have been forgotten—put to one side while we talk about what buildings are going to be built in the centre of the city. We see a campaign bid for City First or Christchurch First but really it should be the people first. If the people are dealt with first then surely the rest will follow.In the last couple of weeks the Prime Minister has said that “big-ticket Christchurch recovery projects could be scaled back to help bridge the funding gap between local and central government.” But whose funding gap is that? Who created the funding gap? The Government manufactured the funding gap when it decided that it would completely rewrite the city’s draftChristchurch Central Recovery Plan and would then hand the bill to the people of Christchurch. That is what has happened in Christchurch. John Key says that major projects like the new convention centre and the roofed sports stadium could be downsized to save money. But whose money would that save? They were not our decisions. Christchurch City has never had the opportunity to have a say about these major anchor projects that the Government has foisted upon us.John Key said the council had only three ways of paying its share of recovery projects: borrowing the money significantly raising rates and “it changes its asset mix”. Well what does “it changes its asset mix” mean? It means selling Christchurch’s strategic assets that we have held on to because those assets have actually been a part of ensuring that we had revenue-generating opportunities but also the strategic ability to govern our ports both the airport which is the gateway to the South Island and our seaport similarly in terms of goods coming in and out of the country and also obviously Orion which was the standout performer after the series of earthquakes that we had. I have never seen an organisation operating the way it did but the work that it did in advance the resilience that it built into its network ahead of the disaster occurring was what saved Christchurch and indeed saved New Zealand a considerable amount of additional cost that would have otherwise applied.So when the Prime Minister says “it changes its asset mix” the Prime Minister is saying: “People of Christchurch you must sell your revenue-generating strategic assets and fund loss-making facilities where the council cannot even tell the people of Christchurch how much they are budgeted to lose because the Government has not even prepared a business case for any of these so-called anchor projects.” This is aNational Government and there is no business case prepared for any of these assets. How can the council pay its share when we do not know as a city what our share is? And why should we pay for any share that was not part of what we as a city determined was in our best interests?John Key then said it was up to the council to ask whether residents wanted the “nice-to-haves” in the city’s rebuild. What are these “nice-to-haves”? No one in Christchurch has been told that any of the anchor projects are negotiable. Many people feel that John Key has relegated the repair and rebuild of homes on the most challenging land in Christchurch to being a “nice-to-have”. We in Christchurch say it is not a “nice-to-have”; it is a “need-to-have”. That need is very very real. We need the Government to be working alongside the council in partnership with the community. Take the community with us as we rebuild our city. I am extremely optimistic about what we can achieve in Christchurch but we need central government local government and community all working together on the rebuild and repair of our city.