Curran Clare: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Curran Clare: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:15555] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 My colleague Moana Mackey has got right to the nub of one of the most important things I see in the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill and that is the issue of community consultation which I want to talk about today. The bill is truly sorry and scary legislation. 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
CLARE CURRAN 
: It is I say to members opposite. Last night I said that the Government was screwing our workforce by trading away a precious week’s holiday. I said it was like being in a horror film and today the horror continues. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: Ha ha! 
CLARE CURRAN 
: Members opposite might laugh and think it is funny but the horror is really for the people of New Zealand in the watering down of their ability to have a say in how their ratepayers’ money is spent and that gets to the heart of what our democracy is all about. 
Today the horror is continuing under urgency and we are rushing through the final stages of this bill. At least the public did get to have a say on this bill even though the Government is taking no notice of the vast majority of the submissions. Instead we are seeing further attacks on our democracy through this bill under the guise of more code words used by this Government to mask its real intentions such as “transparency” and “accountability”. Sue Kedgley from the Greens got it completely right when she talked about Orwellian language and I will talk about that too. The use of the words “transparency” and “accountability” is rubbish. The Hon John Carter said that this bill is not about privatisation of water when it clearly is. It is about the privatisation of local government services allowing them to be run on a commercial basis and removing—and this is what I want to talk about—the requirement for local authorities to consult with the community if it wishes to contract out services to the private sector or corporatise them by transferring them to a council-controlled organisation. All those things run counter to transparency and accountability. 
This Government is all about saying one thing and doing another. As Sue Kedgley pointed out that describes Orwellian language and she gave a definition but I want to give the definition from Wikipedia which describes it as “an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda … misinformation denial of truth and manipulation of the past”. Orwellian language can also be defined as saying one thing and doing the opposite or rhetoric versus reality. 
There were 414 submissions on this bill: 360 were expressly against water privatisation 17 were in favour 36 submissions were made by councils against the bill and countless submissions were made by community boards and other organisations. The Government is essentially ignoring the mood of the people which has been shown recently across this country in the local government elections particularly with the election of Len Brown in Auckland—an outcome that was not in the plan of Rodney Hide or John Key—and the outcomes of the elections in Wellington and Dunedin. 
I will talk about clauses 11 and 8. Currently under section 88 of the Local Government Act any proposal to contract out or corporatise council activities requires consultation. Clause 11 repeals that section so that local authorities can transfer core activities to council-controlled organisations or the private sector as I have said without having to consult the community. I tell members that this Government will rue the day it introduces that clause. Right across New Zealand except perhaps in Christchurch people voted in local government elections with an express desire to have more consultation and to be more of a part of the process. In Dunedin we have a new mayor Dave Cull who is a very good bloke and I am really looking forward to working with him. The last mayor Peter Chin was also a good bloke.