Delahunty Catherine: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
Delahunty Catherine: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:11495] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora and talofa lava Mr Chair. Talofa lava everyone. He mihi nui ki te whanau of Ngati Pikiao o Ngai Te Rangi for the loss of Merata Mita a great person who was associated with the city of Tamaki-makau-rau and who died yesterday outside Maori Television in Auckland. She is a great loss to this country particularly for Ngati Whatua ki o Orakei and others who were involved in the struggle for Takaparawhau Bastion Point which is one of the most powerful symbols of the struggle in Auckland for the voice of the marginalised and the indigenous marginalised against the powers that be. That in essence is what some of this is about—it is about the powers that be—so I wanted to acknowledge the passing of a very important woman and the loss to her whanau which will be felt all over the motu. 
I was at the first select committee hearing on the first bill. It was a bit like reading the first chapter of a novel when a person thinks “Oh this is not looking very good; this novel is not my kind of book. But maybe if I persevere it will all come right.” Well I missed the middle bit of the hearings but I thought that maybe the issues that had come up from the hundreds of submitters I had heard speak in the days that I had heard them speak would change things and that at the end of the book there would be an amazing pulling together of the threads. A miracle would take place. But sadly now that I am here with the last chapter having not read the book but just heard it reported by my colleague David Clendon and having listened to the speeches made today in this House I am disappointed in the book; it is not finishing on a hopeful note. 
This is about the loss of people’s ability to participate in decision making. I think there is a great sense of sadness for those of us who were there at the beginning when we heard submitter after submitter talking about the issues involving the bill and what they wanted. Many of them were not individuals but community groups. From listening to members today I gather that there were more than 786 submitters half of whom were heard orally on this final bill. So clearly there was a sustained opposition and a sustained raising of the issues. But listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as acting. 
I am very sorry that we now have a so-called super-city. It is not particularly super this law; if it is super then who will it be super for? For me it sounds as if it is party central for the elite. That is great; that is what the elite really need—they really need party central. But for people living in the streets of Manukau Waitakere or North Shore who were pretty happy with their relationship with their district council it is not super. I notice what happens when humans identify a problem and there definitely were regional problems with decision making in Tamaki-makau-rau and no one denied it. We needed to make changes. But if we go back to the ancient Greeks we can learn that we are always consolidating power and then we find out that consolidating power does not work and we collapse again. This has happened throughout history. I do not know how many years it will be before we go through the same process again. After we have consolidated power in Auckland we will have to go back over the same ground and end up in the same place. 
One of the central issues that concerns me about this bill is to do with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the failure to address the fundamental issue of tangata whenua representation. This issue has been completely ignored through the long-term process from the beginning of the bill to the end. It started with a march in Auckland in the rain. We marched and we called for justice. It does concern me this morning that because the Government did not listen we have instead the ghastly spectre of John Banks claiming he wants to embrace a non-voting Maori adviser. That is the kiss of death—to be embraced by John Banks. I decided it was an incredibly patronising statement. We do not need to have a vote we do not need a seat at the table and we do not even know or recognise te Tiriti; we will have a token adviser who will be embraced by the mayor. 
An advisory body is always problematic because the word advisory means “can be ignored”; that is what it means. I have been on advisory bodies and we always got ignored. It is very interesting to go around local governments throughout Aotearoa and to see who gets ignored on advisory bodies. Many people who have had the invidious role of being the iwi liaison person have ended up physically and spiritually unwell.