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I am quite sure that the Citizens and Ratepayers are absolutely excited about this super-city proposal because they know that if they get their man John Banks into power as mayor he will be effectively the “Tsar of Auckland”. Under the proposed new model in this bill he will have almost total control of the council. He will be able to choose all his chairs and his deputy chair and he will then have complete control of the council and its agenda. He will set the budget he will set the long-term plan and he will then be able to unleash his agenda for Auckland. This is the hidden agenda here which is why those people are rubbing their hands together with glee. They know that under this new model of local governance with this incredible concentration of power in the executive and the mayor they will be able to unleash their agenda for Auckland without opposition. 
I was a Wellington city councillor for 8 years and I know that once the mayor gets control of the council and control of all the chairs he or she can just ram things through in exactly the same way we are ramming through this legislation today. The mayor will be able to control the new council and unleash his or her agenda on Auckland but I am worried that Aucklanders will realise this only when it is too late. They will wake up in 3 years’ time—if this legislation is rammed through using Rodney Hide’s shock tactics—and realise they now have a “Tsar of Auckland” and a bloated huge super-city a mega-city that is inaccessible to ordinary Aucklanders. They will not be able to access it or influence it. Whole communities will be disenfranchised and powerless. The people on the local boards—whatever few powers might be tossed their way—will be utterly frustrated and they will ask how this happened: “How did it happen that our very effective eight Auckland city councils were wiped out overnight?”. What is the problem with the Waitakere City Council the North Shore City Council and the Manukau City Council? What is the great evil that they have done? Their satisfaction surveys show an 80 or 90 percent satisfaction rate. 
We want to make it absolutely clear that the Green Party is utterly opposed to the proposed super-city model. Apparently there is some uncertainty about where Labour stands so I want to make it absolutely clear that the Green Party is implacably opposed to the proposed super-city model. 
The ACT members were yelling out that the councils were wasting money. I tell those members to wait until ratepayers work out how much this radical restructuring is going to cost how much will be foisted on them and how much their rates bill will go up just so those members can wipe out local democracy in Auckland. I also point out it is a complete myth that the Government is adopting the royal commission’s plan. What nonsense! A public policy director of the Auckland University of Technology launched a broadside today against the Government’s plans. He said that what the Government is proposing is a shadow of the royal commission’s report. He said further that the Government has taken just a few headlines out of the royal commission’s report and removed most of its other mechanisms. Let us remember that the royal commission said that its report should be taken as an integrated whole. But all the Government has taken is a few headlines that suit it and scrapped the rest of the report. Then it has tried to pretend that because people were consulted on the royal commission somehow they do not need to be consulted on this bill or on anything else.