Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): The first thing to correct from that contribution is the mistake that the member Nuk Korako made that this bill has the backing of Local Government New Zealand. It does not. It has not had it from the start; it still has not got it now. This bill has been so problematic for the Government that it delayed a year between the hearing of submissions and reporting back to the House—or close to a year.The member said that this bill allows the efficient cooperation of councils in respect of jointly delivered services. They can already do that. They do already do that. What they do not want to have is that forced upon them by central government by this grouping that is full of appointees by the Government a grouping that the Government controls and therefore can inflict upon local government even if local government does not want it to occur. What are some real examples of this? All that time ago I used to be on this Local Government and Environment Committee and I heard the submissions. Councils came to us and they said: We don't think this is fair particularly if we're a smaller council. If a core part of our revenue comes from for example managing roads or water if we the council are forced to cooperate with a CCO that takes that revenue away from us the council we cannot afford to employ a decent manager."Effectively if councils are stripped of some of these functions and the spending that is associated with those core functions they are left with such a small ambit that they cannot recruit the quality of chief executive and the quality of senior staff that they need for other parts of their organisation. So they might as a consequence lose capability in their planning department or in their roading department because they have had their water department hived off against their recommendation to a council-controlled organisation (CCO).The next thing is that it is a loss of political accountability and you would have thought that this Government after it had been beaten back by citizens up and down the land about forced amalgamations would have learnt its lesson. But no the National Government—it knows best. National lost in the Hastings-Napier area it lost in the Greater Wellington area it lost in the Wairarapa and so what does it want to do? It wants to get to a similar outcome through this legislation. Did you know that a CCO contract might last 30 years? You could have a CCO contract for your water—that is your drinking water—for your stormwater for your sewerage and for your transport. What is left for the elected officials?How long will the contract be? It could be a 30-year contract. They will come along and they will say: "We need certainty of contract so that we can invest in the expensive equipment needed for this new grand CCO." It will be a 30-year contract and the local authority will not be able to get out of it for 30 years. That is not local democracy. That is wrong and indeed I think there is a need for controls on the length of these cross-council contracts with independent private providers of CCO services. If you are going to have a 30-year contract in favour of Fulton Hogan or Downer or any other contractor how does a future council effectively exercise democracy if it thinks that that decision of a prior council was wrong? You should not be able to bind a future council for ever and you certainly should not through the Local Government Commission be able to force that on councils.There were lots of other complaints made about this by councils but essentially that lies at the essence. Why does this Government not trust locally and democratically elected councils to do as they have done for the last 100 years and make sensible decisions for the people who elect them and the people who pay their rates?"