Shearer David: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Shearer David: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill is really a piece of ACT ideology that the National Government has decided to go along with. I do not even know whether the National Government really understands or has contemplated what is in this bill and how it will play out in the years to come. We have known that for many many years Rodney Hide has talked about the need to reform local government so that corporate and private interests have a much bigger say. That is what this legislation does and the National Government is going along with it probably because of some agreement for supply whereby the National Government needs the ACT Party’s support in order to progress its other agendas. 
This bill has gone through under urgency. Almost every piece of legislation that Rodney Hide has brought to the House has gone through under urgency. Members sat in the House until midnight last night for the second reading of this bill and we have been debating it all day today. Two of the three bills amending Auckland’s local government structure also went through urgency. The first famously had Opposition members sitting almost right through the weekend in order to oppose it. 
Many of my colleagues on the other side of the House have said that this is really about listening to the people out there and giving ratepayers a better say and that in fact that is one of the intentions of the bill. But when one looks at the public response one finds that there were 414 submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee. In Auckland on one occasion that I attended many of the Auckland councils came and presented their evidence to the select committee. There 360 submissions against the legislation and of those 36 were from councils. This is not simply a case of mums and dads sitting down and talking to the select committee—although those people are also welcome—it was councils that have been elected by ratepayers saying that this legislation is a backward step. On the water privatisation part of this legislation we had 414 submissions. There were 360 submissions against it—360 submissions—and 17 submissions in favour. Members can do the maths. About 5 percent spoke in favour and an overwhelming number spoke out against it. 
This measure is not wanted by New Zealand. It is not wanted by the councils that represent the local people around New Zealand. In the local body elections people spoke out and said that they do not want this. In Auckland people voted overwhelmingly for a mayor and councillors who would be in opposition to this sort of legislation. We are lucky that we have them. We are lucky that those people are there to stand up to what amounts to ideological claptrap that this Government is bringing into the House. Not only is this legislation ideological but also a lot of it is actually unnecessary. 
Cam Calder talked about the pre-election report that this legislation wants to have. We had varying degrees of submissions on this but overwhelmingly submitters were against it. Some of them said that they could go along with it. But what do they really say? Well most of the big councils said that they could do this as they are already reporting back in a number of other ways to people. They make themselves accountable in a number of other ways but they say they can also do this. The smaller councils said that they can do this pre-election report but it will cost them because they will have to employ more people to write it. In fact this requirement will increase the administrative burden on many of the small councils. A number of the larger councils came along and showed us the reports that they already give. The local authority in the Waikato area puts out a report that is very easy to read. It is already doing what this legislation is asking for. 
This legislation is unnecessary. It is taking the “local” out of local government and it is making sure that the Government is standardising pushing from the top down and making local government authorities which are already representative of their local populations more subject to central control. That goes for core services. This bill stipulates the core services. In fact many of the local bodies that came before us said that this is not appropriate for them because they do a lot of other different things. They want to be a lot more flexible towards their ratepayers. This bill makes them more straitjacketed than they will have been before. This bill also says that it wants to increase transparency. It says that it wants to simplify many of the consultative procedures. That is code for removing some of the safeguards that are already in place in the Local Government Act 2002 as it stands at the moment. There is a need to do some streamlining and a number of the people who came to us said that. This bill removes the obligation to consult on key projects. These include the possible privatisation of water. Some of the core services—for example transport—could be moved into an agency which would change their whole accountability back to the council. That can happen. 
The part that I think is most odious in this legislation is the privatisation of water—or the “privatisation” of water because the bill basically pushes out the contracts from 15 years to 35 years which could be half the lifetime of anybody in New Zealand—on the basis of no evidence that it will make water quality better increase water availability or make water pricing any cheaper. There is no evidence for that at all. We have heard copious amounts of evidence today in this House from my colleague Brendon Burns and from Sue Kedgley to show that water privatisation which is in this part of the legislation has been shambolic around the world—shambolic. It has cost more the water is of poorer quality it has led to disease and public health risks and water is less available for the people who need it. 
What does that add up to? If we take away the requirement for consultation on key projects such as water and water quality and if we up the ability for the contracts to be put in place from 15 years to 35 years then we have a recipe for the non-transparent non-consultative non-accountable privatisation of the core assets that the people out there demand and need. 
One of the key aspects of this legislation as reported by the Government—or certainly by the ACT Party; it is by Rodney Hide the Minister of Local Government—is that somehow this measure will save on costs. But the really interesting thing about costs is that if we look at the costs and at the way that rates have in theory been going up over time we see that rates have actually been staying pretty much level with the level of GDP. As GDP has gone up the expenditure in local government has kept track at about 3 percent of GDP. It is not actually true that these prices have been going up. But the Minister is making the case wrongly that somehow these cost rises are a function of all the non-core services—as he calls them—in this bill. Well the fact is that the biggest amount of money spent by any council or local body is spent on the core services. Of all the money spent by local government 97 percent of it is spent on the core services that are in this bill yet this legislation aims to remove cost increases on non-core services. 
There is a lack of analysis and a lack of a plan. It is unnecessary legislation. It is ideological legislation which has been brought into this House to further the ideological pathway of the ACT Party inside the National Government. It is a complete travesty of a bill.