Hide Rodney: Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hide Rodney: Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5713] 
Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government) 
: 
 I am sticking with what I am saying. I am very disappointed in Mr Twyford because actually I had very high hopes for him. But I look across the House and see Mr Twyford and I still do. I know his party has questions about him so I will tell members why I do. Here is a young man who is clearly ambitious which is a good thing. Here is a young man in Parliament who is clearly enthusiastic and who goes about his work with a great deal of enthusiasm. I think that is a very very good thing. But I am disappointed because it is quite important also— 
Phil Twyford 
: Have I let you down Rodney? 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: No the member has let himself down because I think that member has more talent than he is letting us see. I think that he is probably overcompensating and that although it is good to be— 
Hon members 
: Talk about the bill! 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: I am getting to that. I think you are overcompensating. You have the enthusiasm you have the patience but what you need is a bit more consideration as I am going to explain in regard to this bill. You need to be a bit more considerate about what you are doing and what you are proposing and how you are approaching things in Parliament— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member knows that he cannot bring the Speaker into the debate. He should just concentrate on the substance of the debate. Some rebuttal is fine but he should not bring the Speaker into it. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: I do apologise Mr Deputy Speaker. Just for clarification I tell the House that I was talking about Mr Twyford. It is true that Mr Twyford has not brought the consideration and therefore the knowledge to this that one would expect. The ambition is there the passion is there but we have not seen the knowledge or the intelligence— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This member has been speaking for 2 minutes and has not addressed the bill yet. He has continued to address the member promoting the bill. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: This is a first reading. The member as I said when I rose to my feet earlier is rebutting some of the points made by the previous speaker. I ask the member to come back to the substance of the debate which I am sure he will do from now on. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: Let me show Mr Twyford the difficulties he has. The first point I will make to the House and particularly to my colleagues on this side of the House who are not required to support this bill is that there are already significant existing protections of the manner that Mr Twyford is talking about within the legislation. That is so around local authority assets and it is especially so around water services parks and property granted to the council by endowments. Unfortunately Mr Twyford appears to be completely unaware or deliberately so of that fact and I wish that he had— 
Hon Member 
: He talked about it if you’d been listening. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: No I do apologise for not listening to the member’s speech well but it was very hard to do so because it did lack a certain passion. It did lack a certain logic so I found it a very hard speech to follow and quite frankly to understand. So it is true that I did switch off. I ended up just reading the bill. I know that if Mr Twyford had discussed this with Mr Hawkins who has some considerable experience in this area he would have been able to explain that there are those protections. He would have also been able to explain to Mr Twyford that there are also detailed consultation provisions and principles guiding the decisions that councils make. 
Melissa Lee 
: They don’t talk to each other. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: Well I just do not know how it gets there. But council decisions of course are also subject to judicial review in the High Court which gives an amazing degree of protection. These provisions I tell my colleagues who might be wondering whether Mr Twyford has hit the nail on the head are in the Local Government Act 2002. The interesting thing about this Act which I have had many many complaints about is that it was actually drafted introduced and passed under a Labour Government. Mr Hawkins knows all this because he was there when that was done. But Labour had 9 years in general to fix any failings it saw in local government legislation including in particular the 6 years after the Act was passed. 
Phil Twyford 
: And then you came along Rodney. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: But I was always coming along. I was always coming along because I am different from Mr Twyford in this regard: yes I have his passion; yes I have his ambition; but I listened to people in Parliament. And when they told me to take a bit of time gain the knowledge and take consideration I actually listened. I learnt and I progressed. That is what I am suggesting—I am giving Opposition members the benefit of that I tell Mr Twyford. That member could do so much better. 
The 2002 Act focused on empowering communities and ensuring they were properly represented by their local authorities. The Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill which has sparked Mr Twyford’s fury actually contains no provisions relating to the sale or purchase of community-owned assets. I suspect he has not read that bill which is my point. Those are rightly decisions for local communities and for those whom they have elected to represent them. All the existing controls on local authorities in the Local Government Act passed by Labour will apply to Auckland. It is the same everywhere in the country. 
I know Mr Twyford lies awake at night worrying about me. But there is nothing to worry about. [ 
Interruption 
] No; they are all very happy. There is no actual change in arrangements from what there was under the previous Government. But the difference might be that on this side of the House we believe in local government and we trust it and we trust communities. The unwritten message in Mr Twyford’s bill is that Labour does not trust anyone. Labour does not trust the community. Labour does not trust local authorities. It is still in the old “Helen Clark nanny knows best” mentality. Labour members have not learnt to respect people and other institutions because they believe— 
Hon Member 
: She’s still texting them. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: I know; I understand that Helen Clark texted Phil Twyford to put this bill in the House. They got their instructions from New York. If we think about it we see that Mr Twyford and by implication the entire Labour Party including George Hawkins who knows better are actually insulting the councillors who are working hard up and down the country to make their communities safer with good standards of living and decent services. This is also a vote of no confidence in the very bill that Labour passed in 2002—it is absolutely. If they were serious about this on the other side of the House they would have passed it when they had an opportunity. They did not do anything. They did nothing for Auckland and nothing for local government. Why? They did not respect the people of New Zealand. Suddenly Mr Twyford sweating away in the night worried about nothing— 
Phil Twyford 
: About you! 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: I know Mr Twyford is worried about me. I can understand that because he must look at the ACT leader who has such charm intelligence and power and think: “What’s he got that I haven’t?”. That is what he lies awake at night and puzzles about. I am trying to give him some help. So what we have here is a manufactured little crisis because Mr Twyford cannot sleep at night and is worried about how to show his Labour Party colleagues that although he might make a fool of himself in the House every time he gets a question—and they roll their eyes behind his back and groan—he will show them that he can lift the standard and he will scare the people of Auckland into a great huff and a puff. He has written a bill and what do we have here? Actually all we have is a bill that is a stunt. It is a simple scaremongering stunt and that is why I say to Mr Twyford that I am very disappointed in him and I am very disappointed in this bill. I believe that if he had decided to work constructively on the issue of Auckland’s governance we could have shown Parliament at its best. Thank you very much.