Kedgley Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Kedgley Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8990] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I will focus on the paragraphs of the Prime Minister’s speech in which he spoke soothingly and reassuringly about how Auckland governance reforms will simplify and streamline the governance structures within the Auckland region. This is a classic example of Orwell’s double-speak which is a language that seeks to make the bad seem good and the inappropriate seem appropriate. In fact the Auckland governance structuring will not so much streamline and simplify the governance structures in the region as decimate them and will wipe out seven perfectly well-functioning local democracies replacing them with what will really be a corporatised structure masquerading as democracy. 
I noticed that the editor of the normally conservative  
Local Government 
 magazine recently said in an editorial: “A cynical observer might think that the Auckland supercity juggernaut is all part of a cunning plan by politicians in Wellington to remove local government entirely.” I think the editor has hit the nail on the head because the reality is that the Government’s so-called super-city plan is a master plan by Rodney Hide—aided and abetted of course by every member of the National caucus including every National member here today—to corporatise most of the Auckland councils’ functions and of course their $28 billion worth of assets and ready them for privatisation. The plan is also to remove layers and layers of local democracy and to reduce the ability of ordinary Aucklanders to participate in local government. 
Under Rodney Hide’s master plan which I have deemed to be Rogernomics II seven perfectly well-functioning city councils will simply cease to exist. Councils like Waitakere City Council and Manukau City Council—which are amongst the most innovative the best supported and the most successful councils in this land—will disappear in October for no good reason. They will be replaced instead by a form of State government—a huge bloated bureaucracy of 6000 staff led by a mayor with sweeping new executive powers. It is called the “strong mayor” model. There will be 20 councillors who between them will represent 1.2 million people or one-third of New Zealand’s population. The 20 elected councillors will represent constituencies that are larger than constituencies probably anywhere else in the world. Of course they will be far larger than MPs’ constituencies. Some councillors will represent constituencies with 88000 people which is far more than the 55000 people the average constituency MP represents—almost twice as much. One can hardly call that sort of representation local government; it is a form of State government pure and simple. 
It turns out however that under Rodney Hide’s master plan the 20 councillors will not have a lot to do except perhaps thump on the council table in frustration and impotence. Virtually every important Auckland Council function—water transport sewerage economic development tourism property development all the regional facilities stadiums the zoo and of course the council investments in the airport and the port—will be siphoned off from the council into corporate businesses run by corporate boards where decisions will be made in secret by unelected and unaccountable directors appointed by none other than Rodney Hide. They will not even have to publish their agendas or their minutes. I have direct personal experience of how those council-controlled companies operate. I was on one in the Wellington City Council for 8 years and I saw that they are basically nothing more than a corporate company masquerading as somehow being within a democratic structure. They are not; they are a way of sabotaging it. 
It is worth reminding ourselves that the main purpose of local government in the Local Government Act 2002 is “to enable democratic local decision-making and action by and on behalf of communities.” That is stated in the Act. These changes will completely undermine the central purpose of local government by removing most of the Auckland councils’ functions and virtually all of their $28 billion worth of assets from the control of democratic decision makers. Really it is nothing short of a coup d’état. The wonder is that the Government is getting away with it although I note that the polls suggest Aucklanders are waking up and are increasingly opposed to what is happening. 
I took the trouble to look up the definition of “coup d’état” and it perfectly describes what is happening in Auckland. A coup d’état occurs when a small group of the existing Government establishment infiltrates a Government and succeeds in getting rid of one form of government and replacing it with another. Well that is exactly what is happening in Auckland. Rodney Hide and his hand-picked members of the Auckland Transition Agency have wrested control out of the hands of the democratically elected councillors whom Aucklanders elected in 2007. Instead the unelected and unaccountable members of the Auckland Transition Agency appointed by Rodney Hide are pulling all the strings and deciding what the councils may or may not do in their last few months of existence. The National Government has imposed radically new power structures on Auckland in which unelected officials will make virtually all of the key decisions. 
It is good to see that some Aucklanders and even some of the business community are waking up and speaking out against it. Even Michael Barnett head of the Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that there was a growing perception that the super-city reforms were being imposed by Wellington and a select group of bureaucrats. He is right about that. Even he is opposed to the idea that Rodney Hide and the Auckland Transition Agency will appoint all of the directors and the senior managers of the company boards and so he should be. It is an unprecedented level of interference for central government to decide what companies will be set up in Auckland what their functions will be and when they can be disappeared and to appoint virtually all of the members to those boards. For every single other board in New Zealand the council decides what they will do and who will be appointed to them. 
I noticed today just before I came to the Chamber that it seems the only people who support the council-controlled entities that are being set up are the members of the Council for Infrastructure Development which has put out a press release rushing to support those entities. Of course they would: their members are rubbing their hands as they wait to get them on the $28 billion worth of infrastructure at the Auckland Council. 
Finally a word about the local boards which the Government is holding up as a sort of fig leaf to argue that that is the way ordinary New Zealanders will be able to have some say in the decisions that are being made. Local boards are not even units of local government; they are unincorporated bodies. They have absolutely no power in their own right—no resources no staff and no ability to set rates—and any powers that may be delegated to them by the Auckland Council will be able to be removed at any time on virtually any pretext. 
I am sad to say that Wellington is turning its mind to the issue of amalgamation and that Mr Dunne is trying to fast track Wellington into a super-city. Wellingtonians are far too clever to be fooled by Rodney Hide and his merry men—far too clever. They will not fall for this master plan by Rodney Hide but I am concerned that the proposed terms of reference for the Wellington region as put out only have the public being consulted about the plans at the end of the entire consultation process—that is in a few years’ time. That is not good enough and I will be seeking with my Labour colleagues to make the people of Wellington— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but her time has expired.