Sio William: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8293. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Normally at this stage of the debate members would come to the Chamber armed with the select committee report we would come armed with public submissions from the members of the public who took the time to make submissions we would come armed with the advice from the ministry we would come armed with the legal advice from the Parliamentary Counsel or we would come armed with the regulatory impact statement. Alas none of that is available to us and I want to state that at the outset because I think it is important. Even though the members of the Government are hanging their heads in shame because this is not the kind of practice that this House normally accepts I would hope that they would give the time to members of the Opposition to analyse each and every one of these single clauses in this bill because we have been denied the expert advice that we would normally receive if this bill had gone through the select committee process.I wanted to ask the previous Minister in the chair Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga given that he is a member from the Auckland region whether he would stand up for Aucklanders and help the Opposition by answering some of the questions that my colleague Phil Twyford and others have asked. I want to continue along that line and hopefully the Minister who is now in the chair Louise Upston is able to answer those questions given that we have had neither the benefit of the expert legal advice we would normally receive nor the regulatory impact statement—which is just bad practice. This is not the way that legislation ought to be made.I would like to ask some general questions first because the fact that we are debating this bill highlights that mistakes have been made and we are validating some of those mistakes. My first question is this: when did the Government first find out that the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel was undertaking a process that legally it should not have? When did it find that out? I understand that the Minister drafted the bill some time ago but yet at the last minute—and the House does not have very long to go—we are now being forced into the position that we are currently in. So I would be really interested in when the Government first found out about the mistakes that needed to be validated with this particular bill.The other question is a general question that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. How much is this exercise going to cost altogether and how much will be borne by Auckland Council? I say that because all of the independent hearings panel’s expenses and all of the secretariat support that it receives is paid for by Auckland Council. Therefore it is paid by ratepayers. Members in this House may note that there has been this huge debate in the Auckland region where many of us have blamed the mayor and the council for the significant hikes in rates that the ratepayers are having to carry but many people do not know that it is the result of the burden that has been imposed by the legislation that this Government forced on Aucklanders back in the early days in 2009.So the question is: how much is this exercise going to cost and what additional costs will it add to the work of the independent hearings panel which will be carried necessarily by Auckland Council? And just a general question on that: will central government provide any incentives to Auckland City to meet some of these expenses? That is an important point that I would like the Government to answer because there will be many Aucklanders seething with anger over the fact that the Auckland Council continues to hike up its rates. But they need to put the pieces together—it is largely a result of what the Government has imposed on Aucklanders.I now want to turn to the substantive amendments in Part 1 and in particular to clause 4 where we are asked to replace the quorum—