Sio William: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13656. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’aWILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): We find ourselves again at this juncture where the Opposition is having to clean up the Government’s mess a mess that it created when it rushed into the reform of the Auckland region without giving due consideration. The Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) also highlights that the Government got it wrong. The Government got it wrong and I want to follow the theme that my colleague Phil Twyford began. He talked about a littlegeneral and you will recall this House debating that particular bill the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill and how the people of Auckland were retaliating against the bullying tactics of this particular Government and how Mr Hide who was the Minister of Local Government who ushered that bill through the House in those early stages rushed as it was did not care about the impact that it would have on the people. In fact I recall that some of the submitters on that particular part of that bill in those early stages referred to Mr Hide as this “Dark Knight” who was turning up to—and these are their own words—rape and pillage the Auckland region by destroying local democracy.So I am pleased that we are able to help the Government fix up the mess that it created by continuing the powers that local boards ought to have in carrying out their particular work. The local board that services my community theMāngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board is a champion of a local board except for one member on there and that member is a former National Party chair of that particular electorate but she will not be standing and therefore I am pleased to note that she is gone. But she is also one of the members who as I understand it when the local board was talking about supporting the living wage did not support the decision of theMāngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board.It might be funny when we say that this is the Government’s mess and it would be funny if it did not cost money. I recall in those earlier debates that this was the Government that kept harping on about the rates increases and that the structure it had would deal with the rates increases. In fact I recall Mr Hide saying you know that Aucklanders would not have to pay for rates increases and he kept on complaining about too many workers servicing the Auckland region. And there were people in the Auckland region who believed that rhetoric but I think more and more people now recognise that they were duped by that Minister and they were duped by this particular Government. It was difficult for people to believe then because there was a bit of emotion around the whole reform that the Government introduced. But now they see that Mr Hide was saying that there would be no rates increases and that somehow this structure which would service 1.5 million Aucklanders would not impact on the ratepayers generally. But look what we did not understand at that time was that Mr Hide and his National Government lumped upon all the local boards throughout Auckland a huge bill of $200 million - plus even though Mr Hide went out and about and said that the merger would cost only $90 million. We now know that it was in the vicinity of $200 million or more.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Come back to the bill.Su’aWILLIAM SIO: Well yes Mr Chairperson I am. The point I am making here is that there were many promises made to the people of the Auckland region—promises that today local board members of the 21 local boards as well as the councillors have to try to fix. That is the purpose that we are here for. We are trying to fix the mess that this Government has made. So absolutely we want to extend the powers to the local board to be able to get on with the work that it has been elected to carry out.I want to talk more about the local board inMāngere andŌtāhuhu. We have got seven members in there. It is the local board that represents both the region ofMāngere as well asŌtāhuhu. I suspect that another mess that we are going to have to clean up at some stage is the fact that theMāngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board is a bit lopsided. It has six representatives fromMāngere and one representative fromŌtāhuhu. I suspect also that when you look at theŌtara-Papatoetoe Local Board again you would see a bit of lopsidedness there. Papatoetoe has four members on it whereasŌtara has three. These are all significant communities—all significant communities. Again that is another mess that we are probably going to have to pick up.I note that the other night theMāngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board complained about the fact that there is insufficient quality staff supporting them. That reminded me again that when this Government was ushering this particular bill through the House Mr Hide I recollect complained that there were too many staff members servicing the Auckland region in the vicinity of about 10000 people and his plan was: “Let’s get rid of some of those staff.” And they got rid of about 2000 staff members. Members of the Committee may recall thatThe Aucklander newspaper conducted an investigation at the time of what this would mean. What the newspaper found out was that Auckland ratepayers were going to be billed $2 million a month to outsource planning work to private consultants. Not only that but the newspaper also found out that the value of contracts let in the planning department was in the vicinity of $8.75 million. A lot of the ratepayers from Auckland do not know about that and I think it is our duty to help them understand that despite the rhetoric of this Government that this structure was going to save ratepayers money what it actually did was it lumped millions and millions of dollars on the shoulders of ratepayers in Auckland. That is the mess that the Auckland Council people like Len Brown and people like PennyHulse the deputy mayor are trying to fix at the moment.Here is the thing with the local boards. When this Government brought in this particular structure it did away with existing councils—Manukau for one. It was envisioned at that time that we would not lose our culture and we would not lose significant asset holdings of the council. We were told that that was not going to happen. Well what has happened now is exactly what we envisioned would happen. We have lost the culture of people and community that Manukau built up over the years. We have lost our shareholdings in the airport that we once prided ourselves on. In fact we have lost the ability to provide free swimming pools to elders as a result of the structure that this Government imposed on Auckland ratepayers.So absolutely we are trying to clean up the mess that this Government created. We are starting off with agreeing to this technical bill in that we are saying that yes we will support this bill to ensure that local board members are able to carry out their functions and service the community that has elected them on there.I note that the voting papers came out on Friday. I have not received mine yet. Hopefully I will get them soon. But I am looking forward to electing all seven members of a particular ticket that is running in our electorate. I will not say who the Labour Party members are. They know who they are. There are other tickets running along there. I am hopeful that when people read the brochure that is sent out with their voting papers they will be able to identify the seven members there. The point when it all comes down to it is that the theme that Phil Twyford started our response with is absolutely correct: that is how the people of Auckland felt. When they said that Rodney Hide was the “Dark Knight” and a dark horse what they did not envision was that the next general to roll up would be John Banks. But he rolled up and flew inin a helicopter. Then he could not decide whose helicopter it was.