Martin Tracey: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8294. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): I am going to concentrate my contribution on clause 6 in the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. But before I do I just want to reiterate that New Zealand First is going to support this bill not because we like it but because we find ourselves in a positon where once again an error has been made by this Government and we are required to do this for the benefit of the over a million people sitting in Auckland so that their future can be defined.I want to point out that I am one of only two members of this House who was one of the foundation elected members of the Auckland Council at a local board level.Sue Moroney: Oh your fault!TRACEY MARTIN: No Ms Moroney it certainly was not my fault. I want to point out that the reason why this is important is that in the original legislation that set up Auckland City a trade-off was made around the right of appeal which is what clause 6 relates to. So a trade-off was made around the right of appeal which restricted the ability of people to appeal once the unitary plan was in place but that was traded off by having a draft unitary plan at the beginning of the process.I was part of the process that in 17 months put together the Auckland Plan which informed the draft unitary plan. The reason why this is a concern is that that draft unitary plan was supposedly one of the most open and transparent processes that every ratepayer in the greater Auckland area could actually submit on.There are two things—and this why this ability to appeal that is now being amended again from the original piece of legislation is so important. Two things: when the draft unitary plan went out for consultation it was only available online with huge maps that actually took a lot of broadband download speed and so rural Rodney for example could not access it. So the majority of the ratepayers in rural Rodney could not access the unitary plan maps for the draft unitary plan through the process that was put into place. That led to an urgent printing of one per library and then those people could then go to the library and look at the unitary plan maps and the heritage overlays which this bill also talks to and that is why it is so important that we address those issues.The other thing that happened too which concerns me again about this manipulation around the right of appeal is that when we finished the draft unitary plan consultation—and it went on and it went back to the councillors and went back to become the unitary plan which is what we are talking about here and what people are resubmitting on—certain things happened out of blue when the unitary plan now being consulted on came back. For example let us talk about the rural urban boundaries. There have been 79 percent of the submissions heard by these hearings.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Mr Nash could you sit down please. I cannot see the speaker. Thank you.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you. Seventy-nine percent of the submissions on the unitary plan that have been submitted have been heard. There are approximately 5000 submissions left on these specific sections and this goes to the changing of the recommendations’ ability so that it can be done section by section.One of the sections that is to be done next is all the submissions on the rural urban boundary. For one example—one example out of only the Rodney area—in the draft unitary plan let us take the northern end of Warkworth. It was agreed under those submissions that the rural urban boundary would go as far as Matakana Rd. It would not jump the road and it was agreed by the community and the Rodney Local Board and it was put forward to the councillors.By the time it became the unitary plan that is being submitted on which this bill is dealing with that urban boundary had jumped the road and gone through four private properties. That change came after major consultation and at council level hence my concern that what we are talking about now is pushing through quickly to meet a deadline set in original legislation—actually set in the Local Government (Auckland Transitions Provisions) Amendment Act 2013. We are talking about pushing through quickly—with split hearings and with only two hearings people on each panel—around rural urban boundaries.The other special area that is going to be consulted on in this last section is the special character overlays. An example of why that is important—