Hipkins Chris: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8284. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It is quite possible that they will end up—[Interruption] It is an excellent excellent judgment on the part of the Chair. It is quite possible that they will end up being heard by more people if they end up having a full panel of 10 excluding the chairperson. I would quite like to know however why the chairperson is excluded from that calculation. If the maximum number is currently seven plus the chairperson why move to 10 plus the chairperson? What is the justification for having the chairperson counted separately from the overall number of people involved in the hearings? I would quite like to hear the rationale for that from the Government.The bill enables the hearings panel to make recommendations on the proposed plan in stages rather than in one final report after hearings are completed on a particular topic if it chooses to do so. My reading of this—and again I would seek some clarification from the Minister on that—is that the panel can give progress reports which it can carve off particular sections of the plan to give focus to at a given time and that that may in fact speed up the process or at least give more certainty and clarity to the people who are affected by certain parts of the plan if that makes sense. I just want to check that my understanding of that is correct and that actually what this means is that the plan itself can be progressed not as one plan but as strands of the one plan and that that might actually speed up the process. That seems to me to be quite a sensible thing to do.I would like to get some context from some of the other members who may be speaking in this debate who have a little bit more knowledge of the Auckland planning process and of some of the contemporary issues that are being dealt with in that planning process. What some of those issues in Auckland might be that would be carved off and dealt with in smaller chunks rather than in the overall planning process and final report-back I do not have a sense of so I would be interested in hearing from either the Minister in the chair Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga preferably or from the other members who are involved in this particular process.As I said I am not too familiar with the specifics of Auckland but I am certainly familiar with the processes of local government around my own area around the Wellington region. I do not agree with Chris Finlayson who said that that debate is completely irrelevant because nothing ever happens in Wellington. I think that probably says more about his contribution to the wider Wellington debate. But I do think that these processes can be difficult for members of the public to navigate. If people want to have a say in the overall direction of their city then simply saying “Well here’s the process. Here’s the whole plan. What do you think about it?” could be quite a daunting prospect.However if the third amendment—which I am speaking to which allows the panel to make its recommendations in stages—also allows the panel to hear particular parts at a time and pick off particular issues at a time that potentially will make this process more accessible to members of the public. They will be able to focus their attention in on submitting on the issues that they know about and that they care about and they will not end up being overwhelmed and distracted by a whole lot of things that are not of concern to them and that are peripheral to their areas of expertise and knowledge.Having participated in other local government processes of a similar nature I can say that I think that could potentially be quite welcome. As I have said certainly I have seen people participating in the planning processes of local councils. They go along with a particular issue that they care about and then someone will ask them questions about a whole lot of other issues that they did not submit on and do not really care about and they find the process quite baffling and overwhelming. If there is a way to ensure that that does not happen and that their contribution can actually be adequately heard and can be appropriately targeted it can make a difference and that is ultimately what this process is all about. Local government is local.Grant Robertson: Ah!CHRIS HIPKINS: Well—Phil Twyford: Well it used to be.CHRIS HIPKINS: It used to be local—it used to be local. But local government should be local—perhaps I should put it that way. Therefore the more participation from the grassroots from the ratepayers and from the citizens the better and the better that the final decisions and the ultimate plan that come out of the end of this process will be.Grant Robertson: He doesn’t believe in central control.CHRIS HIPKINS: I do believe in a certain amount of central control—Grant Robertson: Only when he’s the whip.CHRIS HIPKINS:—particularly when it comes to parliamentary processes but—