Sage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18506. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): In terms of Part 2 and its references to schedule 8 which amend the Local Electoral Act and the way in which boards are to be elected the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) is quite Orwellian in some of the language it uses. In Part 1 of the bill it sets out the purpose of local boards which is to enable democratic decision-making by and on behalf of communities within the local board area. Part 1 sets out the functions duties and powers of boards and their decision-making responsibilities and their funding policies. In Part 2 in the relationship to the schedule it sets out how they are to be elected.But there was quite a lot of concern among some submitters that it would be all very well and good and it may well strengthen democratic decision-making if the local boards were an adjunct to the existing governance structures particularly as community boards have got very little recognition in the Local Government Act 2002 but this bill does not do that. It does not add them to the existing council structure. It is actually proposing that local boards are able to be used by the Local Government Commission in any reorganisation proposal to replace existing independent and—as Su’a William Sio said—competent councils. There were quite a few submitters who expressed concern about this. One Dr RobinGwynn a former city councillor of the Napier City Council said in relation to Napier—and he thought in relation to a large majority of other places in New Zealand—that the purpose of enabling democratic decision-making would be better achieved if the Government did not proceed with this part of the legislation.We have seen in Part 1 where it sets out the powers of local boards that those powers are quite limited. A local board does not have separate legal standing from the unitary authority it cannot hold or dispose of property it cannot enter into contracts it cannot appoint suspend or remove staff and it cannot be involved in legal action. The schedules also make that clear. Nor can a local board levy rates or make by-laws or other regulations; it has got only recommendatory powers. The experience with these boards in Auckland is that collectively they control only 3 to 5 percent of the budget of the Auckland Council but they have a lot of responsibilities imposed upon them by the council for the delivery of services and functions.What we are seeing is the Government’s very ad hoc approach to local government—ad hoc reorganisation proposals in the Hawke’s Bay Northland and Wellington—without any clear vision for what the relationship should be between central government and local government except that this Government wants more power in the Beehive and more power centralised and local boards are a way of quite significantly reducing the strength and democratic powers of local government.Where you get a unitary authority you get boards replacing the district and city councils. In Northland where you may have had around 35 elected councillors they would be replaced on the unitary authority with 10 councillors and a chair and you would have local boards as well. Those councillors would be representing many more people so you are centralising power in that unitary authority. When you combine that with the changes elsewhere in this bill—overriding the special consultative procedures which reduces the abilities of councils and removing the requirement for councils to use the special consultative procedure on significant decisions such as the establishment of council-controlled organisations—then you are reducing the consultative requirements you are centralising power in the unitary authorities and you are providing boards with very limited powers. That is a major undermining of democracy.We are surprised that Labour is actually voting for this bill because of course it was Labour that in 2002 established those special consultative procedures and sought to strengthen democracy. These parts of the bill—Part 2 and schedule 8 in relation to the local boards—substantially reduce democracy by replacing good and competent councils with local boards with much reduced powers.