Prasad Rajen: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
Prasad Rajen: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:11473] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 Talofa lava. I am grateful for the opportunity to take a call on this bill. I am a proud Aucklander and have been so for about 47 years. Auckland is a great city and its people are wonderful. Anybody who has lived in Auckland for that length of time and who has a sense of what Auckland is about should have seen today as a proud day and as the day on which Auckland began to develop itself as a great city in going forward together. But we know as Aucklanders and we know as Labour members the problems of Auckland. We have known them for some time. So the last Government started the process to change that by appointing a royal commission. It was a great royal commission and it produced a great report. One would have thought that we would spend some time going carefully through that report and developing many opportunities for Aucklanders to participate in change so that today we could see the kinds of results Aucklanders want. 
Today nobody is particularly happy with this bill. One cannot say that Aucklanders are happy with this bill. One cannot say that Maori are happy with this bill. One cannot say that the Pacific community is happy with this bill. Certainly I can say that the ethnic community alongside many others is not happy with this bill. I ask myself what went wrong. What went wrong in the process? It was well designed to take the issues of Auckland through a good process and arrive at a point where today we should have been celebrating and agreeing with members opposite. 
The process was hijacked; a new Government was elected and the new Government must take responsibility for that. A Minister of Local Government was appointed but the only model this Minister has had in mind is a corporate model that he will drive through the heart of Auckland. In everything that has happened one can see the footprint of that particular ideology and that perspective. That is why the groups I referred to are not happy and why the changes that have been proposed in the bill are not the kinds of changes that will give Auckland the opportunity to move forward as a great society and together. 
In Auckland we are worried. We are worried about water we are worried about sewerage and we are worried about rates; we are worried about many things. We are also worried about those communities in Auckland that are advantaged and those communities that are disadvantaged. One would have thought that this process would give all of those communities a chance to participate in designing where we need to go. We struggled with the process in the first bill which was rammed through this House. At least there was some consultation in the select committee on the second bill. But here we have a bill that puts before us a system a process that really is less transparent than the one we currently have. 
I ask the member for Auckland Central how this process could be more transparent but she will say that it is much more transparent. However today the citizens of Auckland can listen to whatever their councils discuss apart from the few occasions when their meetings are held in private. Citizens can ask questions; they can participate in the meetings. But where will they be when the council-controlled organisations meet? Where will those citizens be when 75 percent of their interests if you like in dollar terms are being discussed by non-elected members and when they have very little if any recourse to that process? 
That is what this Minister has driven through; that is what this ideology has done to Auckland. In a sense it has the opportunity to take away from Auckland the very thing we are all trying to do which is to create for Auckland a great environment and create for itself a process that will take its people and its interests further. This system that has been designed is less accountable to the people of Auckland. Indeed when a council-controlled organisation presents a PowerPoint presentation and glossy brochures to a small group of people to say “We are now consulting you.” that is not the consultation the people of Auckland deserve. They deserve to be intimately involved with their particular interests so that at least they can own the solutions that are being designed. This particular system will not do that for us. 
The same can be said of the powers of the boards. Speaker after speaker from this side will get up and criticise the very holes that are in the provisions this bill has come up with.