Clendon David: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — Second Reading 
Clendon David: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11400] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora koutou. It is interesting that today as we debate the future of Auckland we learn from a global survey of quality of life in cities that Auckland ranks fourth equal with Vancouver out of a total of some 221 cities surveyed around the world. This is some distance ahead of Wellington at No. 12 I might add. Auckland clearly is seen by objective international observers as a good place to live a good place to do business and better than 216 other cities that were surveyed. That is very refreshing news. It is reassuring news to those of us who are Aucklanders. We are quite weary of being told how broken our city is or indeed how broken our cities are and have been and how it is necessary for central government to intervene in Wellington in order to fix our cities. There is no doubt we could have done better. Opportunities have been missed. Auckland is not yet No. 1 in that survey of 221 cities but it is quite clear that the degree of brokenness has been seriously overstated and one has to wonder at the agenda that is driving the exaggeration of the situation in Auckland. 
This notion that Auckland is a cot-case overlooks the fact that very positive progress has been made over recent years. Those of us who have worked closely with various city councils in various guises over a number of years know that the mayoral forum was starting to get some good positive outcomes. We know that the regional land transport strategy was starting to get traction. There was an emerging awareness of the value of cooperation within and between councils and that the individual goals and common objectives of those cities and districts were served best by a degree of working together in common. 
The individual councils were making their mark in some very positive ways. Waitakere City Council with its eco-city vision had built a unique character identity for the west which was having some very good positive and ongoing outcomes. Manukau City Council succeeded in the face of some really serious social and economic challenges to meld together the very diverse communities within Manukau and to improve the quality of life of those communities. North Shore District Council has done some really good and useful stuff in terms of managing the extraordinary growth pressures that the North Shore has experienced over recent years—partly through immigration and natural growth and partly through people simply wanting to live in a very pleasant part of Auckland. Within and across all of the cities and districts there was an emerging sense of place and a commitment to improving the parts—and indeed the sum of the parts—that were the Auckland region. 
It has always been apparent to the Greens at least that with much less radical intervention we could have resolved the admitted problems that did and do exist in Auckland such as the assignment of some more powers to the regional councils to break the deadlock where councils could not agree in order to enable networks combined infrastructure projects and so on to go ahead. Simply assigning some more authority to the regional councils could have achieved those same ends. But regrettably the rhetoric of crisis of catastrophe and of failure has won the day and the wholesale tearing of the social and political fabric of the region has been the consequence. 
Since the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee’s report back to the House on the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill the select committee has some won praise and has been credited with smoothing some of the roughest edges off the original bill. But the credit should go to the thousands of Aucklanders who made submissions who lobbied their MPs who wrote letters who organised protests and who went on a hikoi to make their point. Ultimately they were disappointed that so many of their very legitimate concerns complaints and objections to the loss of democracy the loss of accountability and the loss of autonomy were essentially ignored in the final product that has come out of the select committee process. 
The  
New Zealand Herald 
 in a rather generous turn of phrase suggested that there had been a U-turn between the original bill and the bill that came out of the select committee. But the sad fact is that far from being a 180-degree turn we have achieved at best a change of direction of a few degrees in the overall structure and direction of this proposed monolith the super-council. A genuine U-turn would have seen genuine Maori representation allowed for. It would have honoured te Tiriti and honoured the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance which said that we ought to have established Maori seats on the council. Thousands of Maori and non-Maori marched together in the rain in support of that principle and were ignored. 
At that point the Minister of Local Government threatened to resign if we got dedicated Maori seats. Just for a moment one could have heard a pin drop while people held their breath in hope and expectation but unfortunately the bluff was not called. A U-turn would have seen the Minister abandon the idea of establishing council uncontrolled—or indeed council controlling—organisations and left the incoming council to make its own assessment and its own perception of needs and develop its own mechanisms for meeting those needs. A genuine U-turn would have seen Aucklanders left with the rights that every other New Zealander enjoys: the right to propose reorganisation of local government and the right to propose a change to a more democratic electoral system. These rights are denied Aucklanders until at least the end of 2013. 
Associate Professor of Law Andrew Geddis when analysing and critiquing the debacle in Environment Canterbury in which Cantabrians lost their rights to democratically elected regional councillors until 2013 asks readers of his analysis to “imagine a situation in which Aucklanders have the right to appeal their regional government’s decisions but Cantabrians do not.” For Aucklanders this would come as no surprise because we have become very accustomed to the idea that this Government will and does remove rights from some sections of society. As I have said Aucklanders have lost until 2013 their right to appeal the reorganisation of boundaries. They have lost the right to propose changes to the electoral system. Both of those rights are available to all other New Zealanders but with the passing of this bill Aucklanders will lose those rights. It is hard to find anybody beyond Mr Hide and his inner circle who believes that is right or fair. 
The citizens outside of Auckland—and indeed of Canterbury—might do well to consider where this anti-democratic axe might next fall. What inconvenient legal provision or right of citizens might it suit this Government’s self-interest to overturn by misusing its majority in this House? The denial of democracy in Canterbury and in Auckland sets a very dangerous precedent and one that other areas other regions and other cities would do well to observe and keep an eye on. 
Perhaps the meanest cut of all for Aucklanders is the fact that we can predict with absolute certainty—perhaps the only thing we can confidently predict—that the outcome of this reshaping of Auckland in the Minister’s sometimes rather less than lovely image will cost us dearly. It will cost us hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Even the Minister I believe has stopped pretending that there will be a rates reduction as a result of the reorganisation recalling that this was one of the great hopes of people when they conceded to the notion of a reorganisation. Even in the unlikely event that in the future there are some operational savings it will be many years before the benefits would outweigh the massive costs of this reorganisation. Would any public or indeed private company embark on a major restructure without having done a rigorous cost-benefit analysis measuring all the costs and all the benefits and putting them on some time line? Of course not but the reality is that that is exactly what has happened in this change in Auckland. 
For at least a generation Aucklanders will be picking up the tab for this hopelessly muddled attempt at solving a problem that was never as severe as we were told or as central government would have us believe. We have seen the first instalment of this very costly process as the Auckland Transport Agency has already gone way past its guesstimated budget. It has asked for another $73 million which central government is generously loaning to Auckland and will expect to be paid back. It is beyond the pale that Aucklanders are paying for this massive upheaval that we do not want and did not need and that has been imposed on us by this Minister and this Government. Kia ora koutou.