Dean Jacqui: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Dean Jacqui: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:3821] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 I place on record National’s opposition to Part 4. It is good to hear the Minister in the chair Mark Burton acknowledge that there will be in his words a little bit of cost associated with the audit process of long-term council community plans. Not only have I engaged with local government but I have also been part of local government and I have sat through a number of consultation rounds to do with long-term council community plans. I made a quick call to one of my former colleagues and I asked him how much so far the 2006 audit of the long-term council community plan of the Waitaki District Council has cost. His answer was that the council had received an account for about $30000 and another account for around $60000 or a wee bit more than that perhaps—he was not quite sure what else was still to come—so I think it hurts. A bill of $100000 for a small local authority of 22000 people hurts. 
That bill of $100000 for the audit of a long-term council community plan is just for the audit. It represents just the very beginning of the cost associated with long-term council community plans. Months and months of officer time is taken up with writing reports. A number of meetings are held and multiple subcommittees are formed because we all know that local government committees must discuss the various aspects of long-term council community plans. I say to the Minister that consultation and transparency are laudable objectives within local government but they also come at a cost. 
To the ratepayers of the Waitaki District Council that 10-year long-term council community plan is just a document. In the words of one local businessman who spoke to me I ask: who reads it? That is probably a fairly good question. Who does read a long-term council community plan apart from those people who are connected with its writing or auditing? In my time as an elected representative on the Waitaki District Council I spent an awful lot of lost hours involved in consultation and in working up a long-term council community plan—and for what? It was for no gain for the district I venture to add. All that those plans do in my experience is tie up local authorities ever more in red tape. Those plans are a recipe for achieving nothing. 
I will tell members why I hold that view. As soon as a local authority wants to get on with some kind of major project that then triggers that magical significance clause. That special significance clause then triggers the special consultative process. That special consultative process might be transparent but it is also costly lengthy and a recipe for very very slow progress in a local authority. I tell the Minister that a community does not stand still. It does not want to stand still but in terms of infrastructure and any major projects if it is not moving forward spending money and planning for the future then it is surely moving backwards. 
I refer to another provision in Part 4 which is the requirement to review bylaws every 10 years. The Waitaki district until recently still had bylaws in force about hitching horses to hitching rails along the historic part of town. Actually there was nothing terribly wrong with those bylaws—they did not do anybody any harm. There is also nothing wrong with a review of bylaws except that we keep coming back to the cost. Do members know what the major gripe is with local government that ratepayers have? It is the level of their rates. I suggest that a lot of the anxiety and pain felt by ratepayers in New Zealand is caused because of the level of rates imposed by the costs brought down by this Labour Government.