Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It is a pleasure to speak on this bill and to support the comments by my colleagues Meka Whaitiri and David Parker and Su'a William Sio. Local government is always an issue that we like to talk about in this House because it is very interesting to think about what a troubled—troubled—relationship this National Government has had with local government in the last 8 years. I think it is important to consider the backdrop to this bill which is the very vexed history of policy that this Government has had in regard to local government starting with the forced amalgamation of Auckland. It took a good idea and made a hash of it legislating away the right of Aucklanders to have a say and to exercise their democratic rights that are enshrined in the law for all citizens in regard to local government amalgamations. It was not very long that it had been in office before it basically closed down democracy for Environment Canterbury for the Canterbury Regional Council so that its corporate dairy farmer mates could basically pillage the water resources in Canterbury. National was quite happy to shut down democracy in Canterbury and it still has not restored it properly. The next thing the Government did was it stripped the four well-beings out of the Local Government Act 2002 basically and narrowed the focus of local government considerably against the wishes I think of most communities around New Zealand. It made it easier for councils to privatise municipal water utilities and then really over the last 2 or 3 years we saw this kind of comedy of errors as successive local government Ministers pursued this policy of forced amalgamations. Well what a resounding success that was! It was given short shrift in Northland in Wellington and in Hawke's Bay. It was a total disaster. So to hear Scott Simpson the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee stand up and say that this Government's policy is not to have forced amalgamations he seems completely oblivious to the fact that that has been its policy for the last 3 years. This bill that comes to the House today aims to facilitate the development of shared council-controlled organisations (CCOs) and shared arrangements between councils and it makes a few relatively subtle tweaks to the processes and the rules around amalgamations and the powers of the Local Government Commission. This bill and the so-called Better Local Services policy package is a direct response to the abject failure of the National Government's local government policy which was all about forced amalgamations and was comprehensively rejected. So it has been a very troubled relationship that National has had with local government. The other thing that characterises the National Government's policy has been the persistent scapegoating of local government for every imagined ill. The one that we have heard most about in recent times is the Auckland housing crisis. If you listen to what the National members say about the housing crisis the main thing that they like to do is blame the Resource Management Act and blame Auckland Council for the failure of their own policy. The rather pathetic whimper that we were greeted with a couple of weeks ago when they released their national policy statement which they promised 8 years ago in a campaign manifesto—it has taken them 8 years to deliver on that promise. They came up with a national policy statement that I know Paul Goldsmith who fancies himself as some kind of libertarian must be cringingly embarrassed to be associated with. It is a national policy statement that does nothing to improve or fix the restrictive land use rules that are a significant factor in driving up land prices and house prices in Auckland. So that is the rather desperate and parlous state of the National Government's local government policy. What it has done with this bill that we are debating tonight in the first reading is bring together a package of measures that are designed to encourage councils—if we are not going to go down the forced amalgamation route perhaps we can encourage councils to set up some shared assets. So what this bill wants to do is to facilitate and make it easier for the establishment of multiple-owned council-controlled organisations—for example for setting up a jointly owned transport organisation or a jointly owned water authority. We have direct experience of this already and as David Parker pointed out the National Government imposed on Auckland a legislated transport CCO—it is in the legislation; if Auckland Council wants to bring the transport agency in house it cannot because it is legislated in the Auckland super-city founding legislation—and it also set up Watercare Services. I think on the face of it you would have to say that there is some logic to the idea of regionally or multiple-owned CCOs for these purposes. There is a proposal circulating that is being discussed in the Waikato. The Council for Infrastructure Development released a report recently that projected that if the Waipā Waikato and Hamilton councils created a joint water utility they could save half a billion dollars over the next 30 years and $107 million over the next decade. Well if that is true those are pretty impressive savings. You would have to look at the experience of Watercare Services in Auckland and although many Aucklanders will complain that their water rates have not gone down and in some cases have gone up the establishment of a publicly owned non-profit water utility has probably delivered some significant efficiencies in Auckland and allowed the creation of an organisation that has the balance sheet the professional skills and specialisation to properly manage the asset management of billions of dollars' worth of waste water and drinking water infrastructure for one-third of the country's population. There is no doubt that many of the smaller and dispersed local authorities around the country have really struggled to meet the clean water standards and to invest in the plant and the technology that is necessary to deliver the environmental protection and the water quality standards that everybody in this country deserves. Probably the textbook case of a small rural council that failed in this duty was the Kaipara District Council which got into a terrible mess in borrowing a whole lot of money for a water treatment plant at Mangawhai. I think we all do not want to see that sort of stuff continue. Previous speakers have pointed out that in many areas around the country local councils are already doing a very good job of cooperating. I want to pay tribute to the councils in the Bay of Plenty. The Bay of Plenty Local Government Futures project which has a track record both through that initiative and also Smart Growth which has been going on for the best part of a decade including Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty councils and others are doing some really fantastic work in that area managing land supply infrastructure and land for both business and residential. It is a very very impressive example of regional cooperation by local territorial authorities. So this bill has not invented the idea of shared services and shared assets but it is something that is worth considering. I want to spend the rest of my time talking about the proposed proposals to reorganisation procedures and to register our concern that what this bill does is it removes the ability of local ratepayers to petition their local authority for a poll on any amalgamation or reorganisation changes. We do not support that and we will be arguing very strongly at the select committee and scrutinising those proposals. We do not support the removal of a poll of electors for any so-called council-led proposals on reorganisation even where all of the affected local authorities agree because local people and local ratepayers deserve and demand a say in the structures of representation and decision making in their communities. That is fundamental. We have real concerns that this bill should not be used as a back-door attempt to pursue the same old National agenda of forced amalgamation. We support this bill going to a select committee but we will be very closely scrutinising it.