Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It will be no surprise to people watching at home or listening to Parliament that ACT will not support this bill. But I just want to lay out some of our concerns. Firstly this bill was introduced by a Minister who is no longer in the portfolio and in fact became so unpopular for her co-governance agenda that she appears to have been exiled to a small country in northern Europe. It's still winter there—it's still winter there.As the Minister the Hon Kieran McAnulty stated Like any tool this bill needs much more than a tune-up." The Minister has stated he will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to delay the time for commencement of this bill and you'd have to ask why it was so urgent and so imperative that the allowance for councils to introduce Māori wards without consulting their communities prior to the last general election was so urgent—according to the former Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta—that it must happen straight away. And yet this legislation is going to be delayed out for a year or more—which is quite convenient because it will take the issue off the agenda as far as this Government believes during an election year. But the reason that the Minister Kieran McAnulty gave for delay is that he couldn't possibly impose such a bill—all of the administration all of the regulatory shenanigans and paperwork—on local government affected by the severe weather in the first few months of this year. It's the most remarkable admission. Because imagine that the Minister didn't want to impose electoral regulatory red tape on councils but he's more than happy to continue with the three waters reform that is incredibly disruptive to local government particularly those who are trying to repair their assets damaged by cyclones and floods.Now the Minister mentioned that this bill is highly technical. Well I've got to tell the Minister this is a teeny-weeny baby little bill compared to some of the other bills this Government's dropped on this House such as the 800-plus Resource Management Act or the 700-odd page three waters legislation currently before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. This is a teeny teeny-weeny bill. It doesn't make it any better. Rather than highly technical I think the ACT Party would categorise this bill as slightly sneaky and I want to describe why.What are the problems with this bill? Well instead of addressing the problems that local government has brought to the attention of select committees of this House that three waters reform are going to cause them—having their assets stripped of them and centralised in four new entities having all of the staff who they rely on planning engineering all of those community engagement staff taken off them taken off them patched over put into a water service entity—what they've asked for is to be allowed to continue managing their water assets and also managing the effects of land use in stormwater in a coherent and integrated way. That is at odds with what this Government's local government agenda is seeking.Local councils have also come to select committee—the Environment Committee—more recently and asked that the resource management reforms be amended or dropped because they're going to take local decision-making by elected members on planning and land use away from councils and hand it over to an unelected centralised body called a regional planning committee that local people and their elected representatives will have no control over. And of course the future of local government review: that interim report suggests that councils focusing on wellbeing and co-governance should be the objective of local government in the future. That is certainly not what the select committees hearing about the three waters resource management reforms have heard. And when we look at the submissions on this piece of legislation it's quite clear that there were very very few submitters. I'm assuming if I was to ask the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee Mr Ian McKelvie why that was I would assume that's because of the extremely limited time submitters were given to make submissions on the bill.In fact my parliamentary colleague Ian McKelvie was so disappointed at the time with the process that he was offered he stated on the first reading—and I just want to acknowledge this. I mean if he can honestly say he was looking forward to this bill coming to select committee because they could make some constructive changes he would but he can't because he's never seen the select committees change anything that a Minister has sent us yet. And apparently the member's been here a little while. Well look I just want to offer this perspective. I've had the benefit of working alongside Ian McKelvie in the Governance and Administration Committee on another bill dealing with severe weather recently and I know he tried hard—I know he tried hard. But what we have here today this bill presented here at second reading does little to assuage the fears of submitters. As one of them put it and I'm going to read it out because it's a very short submission from a Karen Manson: "I oppose this bill." According to Karen the purpose of the bill appeared to "continue with Labour's hidden agenda of co-governance a divisive agenda allocating different rights to different groups in New Zealand by virtue of their ethnicity"—Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It's sad. What a sad excuse for an argument.SIMON COURT: —"with vague reference to Treaty principles … that are not written down anywhere in this Bill." Dr Duncan Webb that's from a submitter who can see clearly through the agenda of Labour and the former Minister who brought this bill to the House. Labour clearly are going to press on with their co-governance agenda; it's right here in this bill. Submitters aren't silly New Zealanders aren't silly; they saw right through this attempt Dr Duncan Webb. Then there's the submission actually from a community group the Newmarket and Parnell Business Associations which submitted that what they'd like to do is to be able to get more alignment between their local boards and the areas that they operate in. And that seems perfectly reasonable.So I just want to come to some comments that another parliamentary colleague—Naisi Chen—made about representation. Well look Auckland has around 1.65 million people 20 councillors on the full council. According to Naisi Chen's calculation that means we've only got one councillor for every 82000 people in Auckland. But what that member omitted to point out was we also have 21 local boards with 149 local board members. That adds up to 169 representatives which means for Auckland's population that gives us a representation of just under one elected member per 10000 people. That sounds pretty reasonable. For that reason there's no need to increase the level of representation. What it would be helpful to do for councils for local government instead of messing around with co-governance and trying to sneak in more of that Government's divisive agenda through the back door and under urgency and all the different ways this Government's found to do it what ACT would propose is in fact you give local government more power more control over how they use their assets how their communities develop.Imagine instead of central government taking all of the revenue that it collects from residential building the GST on residential building all of those invoices which add up to over $2 billion a year—instead of taking it all for itself imagine if central government shared half the revenue from all of that GST with local government. Auckland Council for example would get $400 million a year to build infrastructure develop community services and community assets and community facilities. That's what ACT would do. If the Government really cared about increasing representation and getting more people enthusiastic about their local government why not give them more power and control? Why not devolve to local elected members the ability to set their social and their economic direction for their community and to choose their own representation arrangements not have them forced down their throat by this Labour Government. ACT will oppose this bill."