Ross Jami-Lee: Local Government (Salary Moderation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ross Jami-Lee: Local Government (Salary Moderation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4457. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) 
: 
 Ratepayers across the country are receiving rates bills at the moment and ratepayers across the country are telling elected members of Parliament how the rates in their city are hurting them. We have got together a package of reforms that will have some real impacts on driving down costs for ratepayers in New Zealand. 
The guys on the other side are absolutely opposed to everything that we are doing but their great reform their great change in local government is to change the way in which the chief executive’s salary is set. That is their only solution to the issues with local government. I have to tell you that this is not the solution to any of the problems that ratepayers across the country are telling us as parliamentarians that they have to face on a daily basis. 
The way in which the chief executive’s salary and employment conditions are set at the moment is spot on. I have to say as someone who has actually been through the process of setting a salary for a chief executive on a local authority—and I have done that several times sitting on a chief executive review committee—that councils go through a very detailed process. Councils get expert advice from independent human resources people. We spent a huge amount of time going through the process of setting the chief executive’s salary at an appropriate level. Sure you might not agree with absolutely every decision made by a council but those are the decisions that should be left to councils to make. 
Council officers are all accountable to the chief executive and under the system of local government in New Zealand the chief executive is the only officer whom the elected councillors have influence over and have control over. Now we have members of this Parliament wanting to take away the control over the salary and the employment conditions of the only officer whom a council is able to have control over. I have to say that it certainly blurs the accountability lines as well. Accountability is very important in legislation. We have to get that right. 
Accountability is important because in this case if this bill was to go through we would have an unusual situation where a chief executive would not only be accountable to the council but also would have a link to the State Services Commissioner. The State Services Commissioner is accountable to the Minister of State Services and that would lead to a position where the State Services Commissioner would have to be answerable to the Minister of State Services who would be answerable to Parliament on how a chief executive’s salary is set. That is absolutely wrong. 
What we know is that we have people on the other side of the House who say it is OK for councils in the last 10 years to have raised their rates by 6.8 percent when over the previous 10 years it was at 3.9 percent. That is OK! They are saying it is OK for in the last 10 years council debt to have quadrupled from $2 billion to $8 billion. They do not care about that but a small portion of council costs that of a chief executive’s salary they are now expressing concern about. If this bill was to go through it would be parliamentary overreach. It would be interference by Parliament in the roles of councils and chief executives. 
Members opposite do not like what we are proposing which is to limit the scope of councils which would have a huge impact on the costs of councils and would help to get the costs of councils down considerably. No they want to tinker around the edges. They want to interfere in the role of a chief executive within a council. That is their only solution and it would do very little for ratepayers. It would do absolutely nothing. If they really wanted to get on board and support ratepayers in getting the costs of their councils under control they would be supporting our legislation. They would be supporting some real changes some real reform in local government and some real reform that would help to keep costs down. If a council is spending roughly $300 million let us just say as an example on expenditure but its chief executive’s salary is say $300000 that is one one-thousandth of the costs to the council. That is the only tinkering we are getting from the other side. 
The process in place for setting chief executive salaries and employment conditions is sound. It is rightfully the councils’ decision and the councils’ decision only. This Parliament should not be interfering in council decisions on chief executive employment conditions. We should change the purpose of local government. We should change the scope. We should put in place fiscal responsibility to get their costs under control. But councils should be the ones setting the chief executive salaries. That is their core responsibility; they should be sticking with that.