Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13892. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson I want to add my congratulations on the success that you had on the weekend in being electedas a member of the Papatoetoe Subdivision of theŌtara-Papatoetoe Local Board. Congratulations.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.PHIL TWYFORD: It is very timely actually to be debating this rather non-controversial legislation about the Auckland Council local boards because I think that the local government election results on the weekend suggest well if not a maturing then I think a useful development of the local boards. It is worth noting that what we saw across the city in parts of the region—not all but in parts of the region—was quite a swing to the left politically and the growing success of tickets whether they were community coalition tickets or in fact political party tickets. I am very pleased to see that in west Auckland where I am based two very successful Labour tickets on the Henderson-Massey Local Board were elected three members for the first time and that the Labour ticket on theWhau Local Board actually won a majority. So that was extremely successful. In the Waitakere Ranges Local Board Future West which is a Labour-Green community independent’s ticket cleaned up and won all of the six seats. In thePuketāpapa seat the Roskill Community Voice won a majority there. City Vision held on to majorities in theWaitematā Local Board and the Albert-Eden Local Board areas. The Labour team inMāngere-Ōtāhuhu held on to its majority there.So it is interesting to see more successful campaigning by tickets which I think is good when you think about a lot of the commentary that we have seen publicly over the last couple of weeks about the low turnout in local government. The argument some people have made is that in the larger centres where people do not know each other so personally voters do not know who they are voting for. Therefore a ticket with an identifiable brand and a set of values and policies makes it easier for people to know who they are voting for and what they are voting for. So from my point of view and from the point of view of the left in Auckland to see that kind of strength in the election results in the local boards across Auckland Council was very gratifying.The Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) as has been said by the Minister of Local Government Chris Tremain one of the real nice guys of this House—we are going to be sorry to see him go at the end of this term but I think Stuart Nash will make an excellent replacement and we look forward to Stuart resuming his place in the House. This is a technical bill. We are supporting it. It is before the House only because of the incompetence of the National Government in the way that it has drafted the super-city legislation. It made these powers of delegation that the local boards rely on to delegate the work of the board to council staff—the day-to-day tasks need to be delegated in many cases. This enabling legislation allows that to happen but it should never have been put in a bill with a sunset clause as was done by the National Government. But nevertheless we are supporting it.I think now is a moment when we can reflect on the local boards. They were the subject of so much controversy and debate during the time that Rodney Hide was implementing the super-city reforms in 2009 and 2010 and we argued whether there should be fewer or more whether they should be bigger or smaller. The Government opted for this two-tier structure with 21 local boards with most of the significant decision-making powers concentrated in the governing body or what most people would describe as the council but these local boards are given the role of being essentially a kind of community engagement mechanism for the super-city. They have—and I am sorry to say this given that you have just won election Mr Assistant Speaker to one of these local boards—very few decision-making powers. They have no regulatory or rule-making powers. They have oversight of budgets but in fact most of those budgets have been allocated so really what they are doing is kind of twiddlingaround the edges. They have the management and control of some libraries some parks and some community facilities. But it is pretty small stuff.In fact these local boards are a kind of advocacy platform for communities to be able to come and lobby convince the local boards of certain issues and the idea is that those boards will then advocate upwards to the governing body.Denise Roche: It’s not upwards.PHIL TWYFORD: Well it is a kind of governance model.Hon Members: It’s not even upwards.PHIL TWYFORD: I know that the Green and New Zealand First members think it is not upwards but frankly I would submit that they are in la-la land if they think that the local boards and the governing body of Auckland Council have some kind of horizontal arrangement with power shared equally between them because they are not.In fact I think that is why the jury is still out on this governance model which was chosen by Rodney Hide and the National Government because it gives a second tier of governance at the local level that has very little in the way of real decision-making power. Now there are other councils around New Zealand like the Greater Wellington Regional Council that are considering the same two-tier model and trying to weigh up whether in fact the two-tier model with these so-called local boards is a good way to go. Frankly I actually think that a larger assembly model with a greater number of councillors acting more like a Parliament with electorates could actually offer a far higher level of democratic accountability and a real decision-making power much closer to the communities. But that was not the way that Rodney Hide saw it.We saw actually a really interesting insight in theHerald on Sunday this weekend when Rodney Hide in his column in theHerald on Sunday said that if it were his choice he would replace the elected representatives of local government with appointed officials. That explains a lot about Rodney Hide’s time as the Minister of Local Government and the decisions that he made on behalf of National in setting up the Auckland super-city. He and the members opposite were the ones who voted for a highly corporatised structure in Auckland which took 75 percent of the services and the assets in Auckland and handed them over to corporate entities governed by hand-picked business appointees—the boards of these so-called council-controlled organisations. That was just one of a whole pipeline of decisions and policies that National has made that showed contempt for local democracy and contempt for the right of communities to control their cities and their communities. We saw it with the way in which National handled the super-city. We have seen it with the suspension of democracy in Canterbury in terms of Environment Canterbury. We have seen it in the way that the purpose statement of local government was stripped out of the local government legislation. We saw it most recently actually in the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill which shifted transport priority-setting away from local communities to the executive arm of Government which is Cabinet.So how have the local boards gone? I think the jury is out. Some of them have done very well. Some of the elected representatives on the local boards in Auckland have done a fantastic job of responding to the needs of their communities raising issues and taking initiatives. Others I would say not so much. My hope is that in this second term of the Auckland Council the new crop of elected representatives and local board members right across the region will take the bull by the horns and really use these local boards as a platform to campaign to raise issues and to speak out on behalf of their communities as some of them have done very effectively—not to be constrained by the very limited decision-making powers and resources that they have at their disposal but to speak up for their communities to build alliances with each other to build alliances with members of the governing body and to really use the local boards as a platform toraise issues and progress their own agendas. If they do that they will at least I think have made the most of the opportunity that these local boards offer. Thank you.