Upston Louise: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Upston Louise: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 It is a delight to be able to speak in the final reading of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. Despite the discussions that have taken place in the House today our Local Government and Environment Committee has worked together very well on this bill. Obviously we do not agree on everything but I do want to correct some of the misleading statements that have been made in the course of this debate. Chris Auchinvole always chairs this select committee in a fine sound way and this is yet another example of a Government bill that we are pleased and proud to bring to a conclusion. 
I want to come back to a couple of points and remind the House that this bill is about increasing transparency and allowing local government to be more accountable. However I stress that this is about keeping local decisions in local government because that is what builds strong communities. I wanted to touch on a couple of key areas as a way of summarising. The first is around core services. I was fairly staggered to hear a previous Labour speaker talk about the fact that 97 percent of council spending is on core services. That is not the message I have had from the three district councils in the Taupo electorate at all. Local councils like the ability that they will have to respond to their constituents to the people who live in their communities and to make decisions based on priorities that suit them. That is obviously once they have taken into account core services—obviously sewerage and roading as a couple of examples. Councils are not restricted just to these core activities but they will create a sense of priority in relation to the activities defined in the bill as core. 
I will now move to financial management. There was general agreement from submitters in relation to the fact that it makes sense that a local council should be able to be more transparent in terms of how the council is funded and to have some more consistency around financial management. We have heard about the defined fiscal envelope. That allows a council to make a decision about what its own constraints are. From some of the speeches we have heard people listening might think that this is a central government imposition of constraint but it is not at all. It is a set of boundaries that each council puts around its own spending. This is really important to the constituents of the Taupo electorate. I am sure there are councils up and down the country that are concerned about further increases in their rates when their incomes are not growing accordingly. 
I think that the pre-election report is a really important and valuable addition to local government. We were fortunate to have some examples of some of the reporting that local government provides. One example was from the South Waikato District Council in the Taupo electorate. It presents plain English information about how the council is doing and in a format that the majority of voters are able to understand. I think that is a really important part of it. Yes there are annual plans; yes there is the long-term council plan; yes there is the annual report. Some of the information currently in those is pretty highbrow. I do not think one should have to have an accounting degree to understand the books of the community in which one lives and pays rates. 
One of the important changes that we made in the select committee process recognised that councils come in different sizes and shapes and therefore have different abilities. We removed some of the requirements for councils with populations of fewer than 20000 people to do it. Performance measures are one area in particular that I am very proud of having worked in a city council when performance measures were put in place. This basically allows for councils up and down the country to have the same measures so that ratepayers can compare how their council is doing. There was a bit of a hue and cry and one would have thought that the sky was falling in based on the Opposition’s comments in terms of how hard this will be. But if we look at some of the Department of Internal Affairs existing reports we see that some of this information is available and the focus really will be on indicators that are relevant to the public and that they can see are of value in assessing how their own council is doing. They pay rates so I think it is fair enough that they have the ability to see how their council is performing and how that money is being spent. 
The final point that I bring to the House’s attention is the issue around water assets. This issue comes back to the point I made about the fact that we on this side of the House recognise that local authorities come in different shapes and sizes—so do their demographics and so do their geographics. Therefore the decisions around infrastructure for things like water are very very different from one district council to the next. We recognise that and in this bill we have allowed the flexibility so that if a council chooses—and I say the word “chooses” again—to contract out water services it now has the ability to do that for 35 years. The focus again is on a council managing its infrastructure planning managing its asset plans managing the debt that might go on to ratepayers and having the flexibility to deal with its infrastructure commitments in a way that suits it. 
This is not privatisation—it is not privatisation. On this side of the House we do not think that the private sector is a big bad ugly monster. We actually think it does some things well and through this legislation we are allowing it to do a bit more if the council chooses—if the council chooses. Local government is a democracy; it is only if the council chooses. It is not privatisation. Contracting out provides better and more flexible ways for councils to manage assets if they want to. Councils being able to choose 35 years will allow them to better plan over the longer term for capital projects and is in line with the Land Transport Act. So there is some consistency in what we are doing with this bill. 
I am very proud to support the final reading of this fantastic legislation by our very able Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide. I am very excited about supporting this bill. Thank you.