Twyford Phil: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Twyford Phil: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:15537] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I say good morning to the Committee and good morning to New Zealanders who may be a little nonplussed that we are considering some fairly fundamental changes to our system of local government here at 9 o’clock on a Thursday morning under urgency. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Again. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Again the Minister of Local Government has brought a bill to the House that takes away the democratic rights of New Zealanders in local government and again it is being pushed through the House under urgency. 
There is plenty to talk about in this bill and I am looking forward to some detailed debate at the Committee stage on the provisions of the bill. I will start by explaining one of the reasons why Labour is voting against this bill in its entirety. This bill through a number of its provisions seeks to open up local government services assets resources and systems to the private sector and it does that in a number of ways. Principally it removes the democratic safeguards that exist in the law currently that give citizens and communities all over New Zealand the chance to be informed and notified of changes in the way that assets are owned or managed and in the way that services are delivered. Citizens have the opportunity to consider that and to give input—to be consulted as part of the democratic process. This bill takes away those rights. 
I will go through some of the clauses in more detail. Clause 11 repeals section 88 of the Local Government Act 2002. The effect of that repeal is to take away the right that citizens in this country currently have to be consulted thoroughly when a public service currently delivered by the council is corporatised transferred over to a council-owned company or contracted out to the private sector. There is a reason why section 88 is currently there which is that whether a service is delivered by the private sector or whether it is delivered in an open transparent way managed in the interests of the public good by our local authorities it is a matter of legitimate public interest. 
I would have thought that after the last year and a half in Auckland the Hon Rodney Hide would discern that the public actually care about this stuff. The public backlash that he faced in Auckland because of his corporatisation agenda for the new Auckland Council where he has essentially consigned three-quarters of local government services into council-controlled organisations caused a storm of public concern from the  
New Zealand Herald 
 and right across the city including all the elected mayors. There was massive public opposition and the corporatisation agenda that he rammed through in Auckland is one of the reasons why not only his own personal stakes but also the Government’s standing took a real hit in Auckland over the super-city. 
Hon Member 
: And their mayoral candidate. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: That is right. Surely that is demonstration enough that people care about this issue. The reason people were concerned was that the council-controlled organisation model is deliberately designed to keep the business of local government away from the sunlight of transparency and democracy. It is designed to keep the public out. 
The storm of public opposition to the Minister’s agenda in Auckland forced some real concessions that made the Auckland council-controlled organisations far more responsive and transparent than otherwise but those concessions will not apply to the rest of the country. They do not. So under this bill councils around the country can transfer services to a council-controlled organisation without consulting their ratepayers without telling them what is going on. Once those services and assets are in council-controlled organisations a whole lot of other democratic safeguards do not apply. They can dispose of assets more easily without having to consult the community and their meetings are no longer open to the public. They do not have to publish agendas or minutes. All of the normal conventions of accountable government that we take for granted in local government do not apply under the council-controlled organisation model. That is why the current law says that communities should have the right to be consulted before the services assets and resources of local government are transferred across. 
If we look at the transport council-controlled organisation in Auckland we see that Mr Hide against the advice of four Government departments advised that the transport agency should be corporatised. Nowhere else in New Zealand is transport run as a council-controlled organisation—as a corporate entity. But there was a huge public outcry about that because people do not necessarily want their local government services to be run by a corporate entity. People like to have access to the meetings and to hold their politicians to account. 
This bill undermines those rights. Nothing in this bill would prevent a council from transferring its libraries to a council-controlled organisation its parks to a council-controlled organisation or its transport operation to a council-controlled organisation. A council could do those things—[ 
Interruption 
] Members opposite ask why they would do that. Well I ask them why the Minister in the chair the Minister of Local Government transferred three-quarters of Auckland local government services to a council-controlled organisation against the wishes of Auckland—against the wishes of Auckland’s elected politicians and against the wishes of the public. That is a perfect example of a politician choosing to do that. He never gave the people of Auckland a say and this bill reflects that exact same political style. The citizens of Auckland would not be given a say as to why their services would be corporatised. Why members opposite cannot get that into their heads I just do not understand. 
The Government claims that this bill will make local government more transparent and more accountable. Well we will look at a whole series of examples as we go through the clauses of this bill but clause 11 in particular which repeals section 88 of the Local Government Act 2002 is a classic example of how this legislation will make local government less transparent less responsive and less accountable. It is all because of the ideological blinkers of this Government and this Minister of Local Government who brazenly want to encourage the privatisation and corporatisation of our local government system. They are taking away the democratic safeguards that New Zealanders expect and rely on. 
There is an important philosophical difference between National and ACT on one hand and Labour and the Greens on the other. Members on this side of the Chamber believe in the importance of public ownership and public control as part of our democratic system of government. It is so that our communities and their resources and assets are managed for the public good in the public interest and in a transparent and accountable way. But what does this Minister of Local Government believe in? What do members opposite believe in? They are quite happy to shovel our resources and our assets which generations of ratepayers have paid for through their rates into corporate entities where business can be done behind closed doors with no transparency and no accountability. Those members do not care because they are totally happy for our cities and our communities to be run by an oligarchy of private interests. That is the system they are setting up. It is the system that Rodney Hide has been setting up in Auckland. 
This bill severely undermines the democratic processes of local government. Labour does not believe in it we will not stand for it and we will denounce it and call it what it is. This Government with the help of this Minister who is currently polling at about 2 percent in the polls is undermining our public institutions and our system of government by taking away the right of people to be informed about their resources. 
I would have thought that with the experience of the last couple of years this Government would realise that people actually notice and care about issues of public ownership and public control. The fiasco that this Minister presided over in Auckland is a classic example of that. We could look back to when the forces of the right tried to privatise the Ports of Auckland and provoked massive opposition.