Sage Eugenie: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13584. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): The Green Party continues to support this uncontroversial Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) and I am pleased to speak tonight on behalf of my colleague Denise Roche. As others have said it needs to be passed before the local elections happen and the new councils and the local boards are sworn in because otherwise the powers of delegation that now exist will not be passed to the local boards. It is appropriate that we are considering it on Suffrage Day when we are celebrating 120 years since women gained the vote in parliamentary elections. It is worth noting that women were able to participate vote and stand for election in local body elections well before 1893. The Green Party would like to acknowledge and remember the first female mayor in the British Empire. That was Elizabeth Yates who was elected Mayor of Onehunga in 1893. In the last week Green MPs have been out and about around the country talking about suffrage and talking about our power to exercise our democratic right and how ordinary citizens ordinary women campaigned lobbied and put pressure on male MPs to achieve that major change in 1893. I would also like to acknowledge the Hon Lianne Dalziel who gave her valedictory speech last night. I congratulate her and recognise her role in this House and in Cabinet and wish her every success in her campaign to be Mayor of Christchurch because I think that if elected she will bring a new direction to the rebuild in Christchurch one that will be much more engaging with the community and empowering of the citizens of Christchurch.This bill is about making permanent these powers of delegation that the local boards have—the 21 local boards in Auckland. As others have done it is worth looking at a bit of the history there. When they were established the Government both National and ACT promised that the Auckland Council the board structure and the council-controlled organisations would be about efficient and effective local government. There were lots of promises about trimming the fat of local government in Auckland about it being a lean machine and about retaining democracy. We do not think that it has worked as well as that in the sense that where you have got major promises of being a lean machine we now have the same number of people employed in local government in Auckland as were employed before several hundred staff were made redundant in 2010. So you had a huge amount of churn that was unnecessary and Auckland Council has recognised that you cannot reduce the number of people working for the council without reducing services so we need the people to do that work. We have also seen with the council-controlled organisations—and I certainly agree with Phil Twyford about how inaptly titled they are—a loss of democracy and a very secretive decision-making process which we get in organisations like Auckland Transport; Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development; and Auckland Council Investments Ltd.This bill is about a very narrow issue around Auckland. The bigger issue is about these council-controlled organisations their limited accountability and the lack of democracy in terms of the way they work and the fact that they are responsible for more than $25 billion worth of assets but they do not have enough accountability. So there should be legislation to change that. When Nicky Wagner spoke she talked about the Auckland model being rolled out elsewhere. Certainly the Local Government and Environment Committee was in agreement about this bill but the Government’s proposals to take yet another axe to local democracy will be strongly opposed by the Green Party because the proposals reduce democracy. Local boards have nothing like the powers of the Auckland councils that they replaced. Local boards have no ability to levy rates. They have no ability to make by-laws. They can prepare them but they cannot actually sign off on them. Those further changes to local government will be an attack on localism they will be an attack on democracy and they will be an attack on the ability of councils to represent their communities so we will be opposing those.But going back to Auckland and the boards last month Auckland University of Technology’s school of social sciences and public policy released its first research from its super-city project. That was a report calledSuper City? State of Auckland.One of the authors was Professor Judy McGregor. She highlighted some of the problems we have got around the structures at Auckland Council. She said: “While the Super City is functioning well in many areas we are still seeing a lack of clarity about the roles of the Council as governing body and the Local Boards. There is also a perceived lack of accountability of Council Controlled Organisations…It is critical that these relationships are sorted out otherwise we may see more local communities wanting to break away and seek to regain control of local governance and rates revenue.” If the local boards are to represent their communities well they need to reflect the diversity of those communities. TheSuper City? State of Auckland report again said that the diversity of elected representation in Auckland was disappointing; that there were fewMāori and Pacific Island members on either the Auckland Council or the local boards a small number of ethnic councillors and a very small number of ethnic board members nor are there many female directors of the council-controlled organisations.At 31 March this year in terms of those seven council-controlled organisations only 15 out of 51 board members were women. That is only 29 percent. None of the board chairs were women. Not only are they unrepresentative in terms of lacking accountability and not being democratic they do not represent the diversity of people in Auckland. There is obviously a strong glass ceiling still in place at the council-controlled organisation level. Similarly there is an issue with women’s representation around the council table in Auckland. Eight out of our 20 Auckland councillors are women. That is 40 percent. It is a bit better than the 34 percent of women representatives that we have in this House but it is still a minority. On the local boards we had 39 percent women representatives there. So we need better representation of women of ethnic minorities on the boards. We need a better arrangement around the council-controlled organisation structure—much more democratic decision-making is needed there removing that veil of secrecy. We need the Government not to proceed with its major attack on local government that it is planning in rolling out the unitary model elsewhere because in a lot of the regions of New Zealand it is not appropriate. So we support this bill but we will be opposing the changes to local government that the Government is planning to introduce.