Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6367] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I acknowledge the gracious apology—the mea culpa—from the Minister in the chair John Carter over the Rodney boundary shambles. I think that is the best description for it. John Carter makes it difficult for a member of the Opposition because he is so reasonable and nice. On this side of the Chamber we fantasise that there might be a Government with more people with the kinds of principles and integrity that are exhibited by John Carter. But I do not think we will let that member off the hook so easily. I do not mean to be ungracious but I want to explore the issue a little more. 
The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance spent a long time considering the issue of boundaries. If members have taken the trouble to read the commission’s report they will know that the royal commission presented some very thoughtful and persuasive arguments about the environmental and planning reasons for the Auckland boundaries being left where they are to include all of Rodney and Franklin. The commission made the case that a city the size of Auckland growing as fast as it will over the next 50 years faces a huge challenge in managing and containing its growth so that it does not continue to sprawl endlessly into the countryside. The simple rationale for having those extended boundaries is that in order to stop that endless growth we must have a peri-urban or rural fringe area of sufficient size beyond the urban limits but within the boundary of the authority. If we do not have that we inevitably get the building up of huge development pressures on the other side of the urban boundary and the leap-frogging of development into the rural area beyond the city boundaries where typically we have rural councils not unlike the current Rodney District Council and certainly not unlike Kaipara District Council which simply do not have the resources and wherewithal to manage and control that growth. 
That is precisely the situation we would have seen if Rodney had been partitioned as was proposed. The northern beaches that have been protected and safeguarded by the Auckland Regional Council in the face of huge development pressures would have been subject to a carve-up and I would confidently predict some inappropriate development in the years to come. 
The reasons the royal commission put forward were compelling yet the methodology this Government used to decide the boundaries of Rodney seemed to be pretty much a case of: “Oh a whole lot of National voters are getting cross with us about this boundary so I think we’ll just cut the problem in half and make half of it go away.” To be quite frank that is mediocre thinking and decision-making and it does not do much credit for this Government. 
I will quote David Shand one of the royal commissioners who said last night about the consultative process that this Government has run: “The consultative process has been a bit of a shemozzle.” For members who are not familiar with the term “shemozzle” it is Yiddish meaning a confused situation. Mr Shand said “I think people are pretty dissatisfied with the way the consultative process has been run.” I would say that that is an understatement. In June just a few weeks back the Business Council for Sustainable Development commissioned a poll by ShapeNZ that quizzed more than 2000 people and 31 percent were opposed to the super-city while 27 percent were in favour. More people opposed the super-city in every council area of Greater Auckland than supported it except for Auckland City which was the only area where there was a slim majority in favour of the Government’s proposals. 
Hon Phil Heatley 
: Was that 27 percent? 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Yes 27 percent were in favour. 
Hon Phil Heatley 
: That’s the Labour Party polling. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: This is the Business Council for Sustainable Development. Of the people polled 63 percent said they believed that the consultation process run by this Government was inadequate. Only 13 percent said they believed that the Government’s consultative process was adequate. Here is the clincher: 70 percent of people polled in a sample of more than 2000 people said they believed that the Government should hold a referendum. That is a very interesting question. I think we should come back a number of times during this debate to the question of why this Government chose to confiscate the right of Aucklanders to a referendum on this forced amalgamation under the Local Government Act. 
Nikki Kaye 
: The royal commission didn’t recommend a referendum. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: As it stands every other citizen of New Zealand who is affected by a forced amalgamation is entitled to a vote on whether their council should be subject to a forced amalgamation. We have to ask ourselves why the Government would choose to take that right away from Aucklanders. 
Nikki Kaye 
: Because we listened to the royal commission. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: The member for Auckland Central wants to know why we disagree with the royal commission. No one says the royal commission got everything right. I have not said that and no one on this side of the Chamber has said it. The fact is that 70 percent of people polled in June in the ShapeNZ poll said they should have a referendum. Some members of the Committee including the Minister of Local Government have claimed that the issue of the super-city is so complex that we could not possibly put it to a referendum. I ask members of this Committee to think about the referendum on MMP because that was the last major constitutional change to our system of government. What did we have? We had a royal commission and two referenda. I put it to the Committee that the change of Auckland governance—the creation of a new system of regional government—is in fact the most significant constitutional change to our system of government that we have seen since the introduction of MMP. 
There is no good reason why it should not have gone to a referendum. There is no reason why Aucklanders should not have had a say about whether they wanted the Auckland super-city. This Government had every opportunity to develop and advance the proposals for the Auckland super-city to consult to give people a say to refine the proposals to put them through a select committee process and to then put the final fully finished and completed proposal in front of the people. I have yet to hear any convincing explanation in this Chamber from this Government about why that was not done. This whole process was a shemozzle according to David Shand and it has had the effect of— 
Simon Bridges 
: Spell it! 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: S-h-e-m-o-z-z-l-e. The way this Government has mishandled the whole governance reform process over the last 5 months has made Aucklanders suspicious mistrustful and anxious that this Government is corporatising their democracy that it wants to run Auckland as if it is a business and that the final goal is privatising our assets. Not only that but that suspicion and that mistrust has spread south down through the map to all other parts of New Zealand. People fear quite rightly that the Auckland super-city is a guinea pig for local government reforms that will be rolled out around the rest of the country. The Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide said that the reforms were being modelled in a way that would enable them to be “replicated around the country” and that “if the super-city worked well it could be a model for the rest of the country”. So is it surprising that people are scared that this whole corporatisation of democracy in Auckland is going to be rolled out around the rest of the country? 
Hon Member 
: Corporatisation! 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Well I guess National was doing some polling because it did not take very long for John Key to back away from that idea. He distanced himself very quickly and said as he always does “Oh that’s just Rodney talking.”