Cosgrove Clayton: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3265] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 It is because I am a Cantabrian Mr Chair. They are jealous. I just say that this is very interesting legislation; from a Cantabrian’s point of view it is interesting because if this gets through without any consultation and if the people of Auckland are not allowed to have their say in a democratic way then the question I have and the question I will put to my constituents is: who is next? I say to Mr Brownlee a fellow Cantabrian will Christchurch and Canterbury be next to have legislation like this rammed through so that we have Selwyn and Waimakariri combined without any consultation? If that is the case then I wait with interest to hear Mr Brownlee whom Dave Henderson in a brilliant article about him described as a nice guy but “absolutely useless” in the Christchurch  
Press. 
 I look forward to his speech if Canterbury is to be next or perhaps it is Wellington or perhaps Dunedin. 
I make a point that when we look at the regulatory impact statement—my colleague Ms Ardern made this point—this legislation has been so well scrutinised by the Government that the regulatory impact analysis team “has not assessed the regulatory impact statement because it was prepared after Cabinet’s decisions were made.” Mr Hide is the person who told us that he would cut through red tape and have everything scrutinised so that it was absolutely correct. His definition of cutting through red tape is not doing the appropriate checking of legislation. That is now what his view and version of what cutting down red tape is. Here is legislation that is being rammed through on the people of Auckland without the people of Auckland having their say without the proper regulatory checks and balances and I am sure that Mr Hide or Mr Garrett—his sort of prototype or whatever it is—will take a call and tell us why that was not done. 
This is one of the most important pieces of legislation with the greatest impact on the largest provincial area in the country—commercial impacts social impacts business impacts and democratic impacts. The Minister in charge of the bill has not managed to get out from under the tanning machine long enough to actually do his job as he said on  
Close Up 
 he would do when he first became a Minister. He said that he would scrutinise every piece of legislation that every regulatory impact statement would go under his microscope that he challenged the people of New Zealand to send their problems to him and that he Rodney Hide and presumably Mr Garrett would go through them line by line and have them fixed. And here we stand today with mega-legislation that will have a mega-impact on Auckland and on other parts of New Zealand. They have not even gone through the appropriate process to have the regulatory impact statement done looked at and checked. That is a disgrace. That is either laziness either incompetence or it is either arrogance or a combination of all three. 
David Garrett 
: You cannot use “either” when you have— 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Well I do not know whether the member is lazy arrogant or incompetent but I would say that the member is a living example of all three over there all of the above. The member might want to just pipe down or at least take a call and on behalf of his leader tell us why his leader does not do his job; tell us why his leader earns his pay has the warrant has the car but will not do what he promised New Zealanders he would do and actually do his job and sort out regulations. The only thing I think Mr Hide has worked out is that the little bit of red tape that he can do is that he takes himself out of it does not do his job and does not check legislation. 
This is a hash job. I speak as a Cantabrian and I will wait for Mr Brownlee to rise like a piece of leavened bread from the other side and tell us what happens if Canterbury is next—or maybe it is unleavened bread going by his Catholic roots—because if this gets through on Auckland then which province is next? Will it be Christchurch? Will it be Canterbury? Will the member answer? Hello no empty vessel! The bellows that normally blow on the front row have run out of air so he will not say whether Canterbury will be next or Dunedin or Wellington. But I ask some member to get up and explain to us why the Minister in charge of the bill did not even have the decency or the intellect to make sure the regulatory impact statement went through and was appropriate. Maybe it was because they were afraid of the content of that statement.