Parker David: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Parker David: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3705] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 The Minister has pointed to a very important issue. He is quite right that except for Part 2 which comes into force on 1 November 2010 this legislation comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. Of course therein lies the problem because by the date that this bill receives its Royal assent there will have been no proper consultation with the people of Auckland as to its effect. 
One of the amendments that will be put forward by members on this side of the Chamber is to delay the date of that Royal assent to a date that is substantially later so that the normal processes that precede legislation coming into force can in some other process outside this Parliament take place in order to protect the citizens of Auckland and to give the fourth estate the time to properly identify the effects of the provisions contained in this bill. 
Let us consider that issue. The provisions of this bill were not available to the media or to the Opposition until shortly before this debate began. We have not had much time to properly get into the implications of this bill. It is true that Parliament has been sitting very long hours. We have been embroiled in the detail of each provision as it has come before us but we have had to do that under the pressure of urgency sequentially one issue after another and we have not had the time to consider other issues that may be there but which we have not thought of in the limited time we have had to deal with this bill. 
But that does not apply just to Parliament. It applies to everyone in Auckland. They have been prevented from having the time they would normally have to look at these things. These are very technical matters. They involve the interrelationship of the Local Government Act 2002 the various Acts of Parliament that cover Watercare Services and the like and the various Acts of Parliament that control local assets and the environment such as the volcanic cones and the lovely marine environment around Auckland. In order to get our heads around the complexities of all of those interrelationships it is very important that we give ourselves the time to reflect on these issues and the time to take the appropriate advice. 
Some of these issues are so technical that a lot of laypeople are not able to get their heads around them in a short period of time. They need time to be able to talk to non-governmental organisations that have expertise in these areas to their lawyers and to their local body politicians. Those local body politicians themselves have not had the time to get their heads around these issues so they are not yet in a position to inform their ratepayers and citizens as to where the hooks in this lie. Some of those hooks have been well identified by the Opposition including Labour and the Greens but a lot of them still lie untested because the process has been rushed. So one of the important and necessary changes to the bill would reverse the provision that currently states that the bill comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent—which could be next week—and puts it out to some later date. 
Labour members are open as to the range of dates. The date has to be substantially later than now but I do not have an unreasonable view as to what that date might be. If we could have a date that was similar to the date that would have been achieved after a full select committee process followed by a second and a third reading debate in this House then that would be an appropriate period of time to consider the date by which this bill ought to come into effect. Although the process by which we could have some decent scrutiny would not have the advantage of the officials’ advice would not have the advice of parliamentary services to the select committee and would not have the input of many politicians at least we would have something. Members of the fourth estate non-governmental organisations councils their lawyers and all the people who have a very strong interest in this issue would have the time to consider the implications of this and they would then have the time to take the other political steps that one can take when one does not like legislation. 
A case in point of recent occurrence is the foreshore and seabed legislation which was highly controversial and incendiary. There are people who say that we did not get that right. What we did not do was rush it through in such a short process as is being done to the 1.4 million people in Auckland and stop people from having their say. Indeed we allowed sufficient time for people to—