Roche Denise: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8298. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take my first call in the Committee of the whole House stage for the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I do note that we are on Part 1—the substantive amendments—and I will restrict my comments to this part of the bill.Clause 4 talks about reducing the quorum of the hearings sessions from three to two and if we look through Part 1 the amendments are around appointing more hearings commissioners. The reason for that essentially—and we should go back to the reason for that—is basically so that they can get through the hearings process more quickly than they would with the current panel total of just seven members. Clause 4 talks about reducing the quorum from three to two which means that you can get through a lot more of the hearings quicker. I share the concerns that I think have been raised by other members of this Committee about what happens when you have those two hearings commissioners deliberating and they cannot make a decision because they are equally split. I guess I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair Louise Upston what the Government has in mind that would be the answer to that quandary. What we know is that the deliberation process is where a lot of the decisions get made and they are based on the weighted numbers. But if it is equally weighted then I guess we have got a problem.I would also like to talk about why we actually need to have this done in such a quick time frame when really this is the biggest unitary plan and the biggest use of the Resource Management Act’s planning processes ever to be had in New Zealand. One would have thought that there would be a lot more care taken with consulting around who will be on the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel deciding who would be on the hearings panel and then actually taking the time to prepare the submissions. We know that there are about 5000 more submissions that are yet to be heard but the Government has set up an arbitrary date by which the report and recommendations are to be back to the council—I think it was July next year.Part 1 we note does actually specify that that report can be made in bits so that as one section of the plan is covered off with the hearings the hearings panel can actually make its recommendations on that part alone and basically just sort of drip-feed the decisions and the recommendations as they come through. We do not necessarily have a problem with that. Where we do have a problem is the retrospective fixing up of mistakes that were made with the original legislation and the need for this bill being pushed through under urgency to fix up those mistakes.I want to talk about Phil Twyford’s amendments. I note that there is a new one on the Table which I will probably ask one of my colleagues to comment on—one of my colleagues who is more focused on the original legislation around the Resource Management Act. They would probably like to comment on the newest amendment that has just come through. I want to talk about Phil Twyford’s amendment around ensuring that the mayor in conjunction with the Minister for the Environment makes decisions about the appointment of the extra three hearings commissioners. The basis of our opposition to this bill is basically that the appointment process has been driven by the Government rather than by the council. We note that it does say that the Government—the Minister—will consult with both the Māori Statutory Board and the council. However consultation is way different from decision making—and I guess we see that a lot in this House where basically submissions are ignored quite frequently by the decision makers. I worry that that may be the result of the plan that we end up with given the huge process that preceded the whole draft plan.