Williams Andrew: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18509. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): There is a principle in democracy that says you do not have taxation without representation. That phrase comes to mind in this situationwhere a part of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) suggests that the Local Government Commission will have the right to impose council-controlled organisations on any re-amalgamated local body once that has been put in place. That is not really I believe what New Zealanders would expect. There is a requirement to streamline some areas of local government and there is a requirement to look at better ways of delivering services but it should not be for some Wellington commission to determine for a particular area how that local area should itself fully operate. It should provide the tools and it should provide the mechanisms for the local people to determine how they will operate in their particular regional area but it should not impose that on them.In such a situation—and I look at a situation like Hawke’s Bay—it should not be the right of people distant from the Hawke’s Bay to say to Hawke’s Bay: “We’re going to put you all into one new council.” covering an area that will be over 150 kilometres in length.” It takes up to 4 hours to drive from theMāhia peninsula down to Takapau which is an extensive area of the country. And it should not be the right of that commission to then say: “Not only are we taking your democratic rights away and imposing a new council on you but we’re also going to impose council-controlled organisations to control half of your assets.” That is not right. I do not think the people of Hawke’s Bay would put up with that one little bit. Locals should have a right to determine what they are going to do in terms of their own democracy.If the people of Napier which is a very proud and longstanding community in this country feel that they are big enough ugly enough and sufficiently robust enough to operate in their own right they should have the right to continue to do so. If the majority of the people of Napier say: “We’re happy as we are thank you very much. We have no debt.”—and Napier City Council has no debt—“We operate an efficient council. Our people are happy. They are all content. They have good services. They have good community infrastructure. They have good service infrastructure.” and that sort of thing then the people of Napier should have the right to say that they wish to continue in that manner. It should not be that the rest of the people around the Hawke’s Bay Hastings Central Hawke’s Bay and further north have a vote and outnumber them and then they roll into town and say they are taking over the city. That is not right at all.This country went to war—and we are coming up to the 100th year since the start of the First World War. We went to the other side of the world to stand up for democracy. We went to stop perpetrators coming from other countries into other lands and taking them over against the people’s will. We went to defend that right of democracy. Yet here within New Zealand this National Government is basically setting up a mechanism and changing the Local Government Act 2002 to allow exactly that. Basically outsiders and people with bigger strength and bigger muscles sworn to the Government and all that sort of thing can just basically come in and take over local interests. That is not on and that should not be allowed in a good democratic country.We have seen huge failings in Auckland with the structure that Rodney Hide John Key and the National Government put in place there. There is huge resentment towards what has happened there and towards the loss of local democracy there. There are instances where those council-controlled organisations simply have no interest in working with communities at all. Auckland Transport which is constantly being criticised is a classic one. It moves into areas and just simply puts in things without any consultation with locals and the locals have to suffer it and businesses have to suffer it. I can recall cycle lanes being put in on Rosedale Road on the North Shore. They just appeared overnight—they just appeared. There was no consultation and lots and lots of parking spaces for all the local businesses were taken out. The local businesses couldnot believe that it had happened right under their noses and yet that is how these council-controlled organisations work. That does not happen with good city councils that are working on behalf of and with their people.In this respect we do wonder what the long-term agenda of this Government is when Local Government New Zealand and local authorities throughout New Zealand have been working very very hard to look at all areas of improvements and services at local government level. We have seen huge strides in terms of shared services. Our Local Government and Environment Committee heard submissions over the last year or two on a number of the amendments to the Local Government Act 2002. We heard from councils how there are so many more shared services occurring in the likes of the Waikato and in the likes of the Bay of Plenty. We were hearing about it happening in the councils in the Wairarapa in Hawke’s Bay and indeed across Canterbury where there is so much more work going on between the councils and down into Southland and Otago. All these councils are working so much more collaboratively to share services and get the best that they can. They are sharing management sharing expertise across councils and bringing in experts to assist across a range of councils—regional councils and territorial authorities.We do just wonder why this Government does not want to work in partnership with local government. We have only two tiers of government in New Zealand central and local government whereas Australia has three with the addition of the State Government. Many other jurisdictions and sovereignties around the world have two or three tiers of government; we have just the two. It is a shame that this Government everywhere it turns seems to want to remove the ability of local government to perform. It wants to remove very very skilled people from local government—people who have dedicated a lot of time over many many years and who are leaders in our community. The Government wants to just basically take them away.It is quite surprising that so many of them support the National Party. The mayors and so many of those councillors are what you would describe in many cases as National Party supporters and yet they come to me and say: “Goodness knows why we continue to support the National Party because all it does is intend to basically kneecap us.” I would say to a lot of the mayors and a lot of the councillors out there around New Zealand that if as National supporters they to continue to support and vote for the party again this year on the basis that they think that it is doing a good job for local government then they are sadly wrong. It is time that more and more people in local government woke up to the fact that the National Government is out to basically centralise the power back to Wellington. It is out to control the local authorities around New Zealand. It wants to divide and conquer. It wants to make sure that it pulls all of these authorities into bigger entities and then turns half of them into council-controlled organisations with people whom it can appoint to the boards it can control and it can influence. Probably half of them are members of the Cabinet club who get on to some of these boards so that National can basically control them with the big strings from the bureaucracy in Wellington.Well that is not what is good about local democracy. That is not what New Zealand stands for. We go overseas to fight in wars to stand up for democracy in countries where they do not have that level of democracy. We stand up for local people having the right to determine their own destiny and in this case New Zealand First will not be supporting these changes. Again we will say that after 20 September we will ensure that many of these things are turned round and put back how they should be on behalf of the good democratic country of New Zealand.Part 2 agreed to.