Carter John: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Carter John: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:3818] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 Part 4 is a substantial part of this bill and the National Party wants to record its opposition to it. I want to say again as we go through this bill given the changes that have been made to Part 1 that it is very likely—although the final decision has not yet been made—the National Party will support this bill in its third reading. But that is yet to be considered and confirmed. In doing so however we want to make it very clear—when members’  
Hansards 
 are pulled out in future debates and we are told that we voted for this bill in the third reading—that there are parts of this bill we are adamantly against. We want to register our view just as we did for instance in Part 3. 
My other colleagues will talk about other parts in relation to changes to legislation affecting parks and to contribution development levies. I want to talk about long-term community plans and about the way in which this Government has gone about imposing this huge cost on local government and as a consequence on ratepayers. The genesis of the idea of a long-term community plan actually started in 1995 with the National Party. It was the National Party that said that both central government and local government needed to have a good look at infrastructure right across the country to see what its infrastructural needs were to see what we had and to see what the likely costs would be in the future—and the concept is good because we used to ignore what was underground until it busted out on us. 
So we started the process a number of years ago. But then this Government came along and put all sorts of fancy requirements and compliance costs on to local government and as a consequence huge costs on to ratepayers. The system we have now is silly. Local government has to sit there and work out a draft long-term community plan. It is required to take a note of inflation over the next 10 years it has to look at all sorts of other costs over a 10-year period then to consult with the people in the way it does. Councils have huge numbers of meetings around the community and they are lucky to get two or three people turn up to them. There are huge costs great staff costs and a lot of council time for little benefit and little involvement of the community—and that is just the draft. Then there is the auditing by the Audit Office—by people from overseas because they do not have enough auditors. It is silly. The process is silly; the concept is fine. The Greens actually saw that thing through. Jeanette Fitzsimons to her credit as chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee passed the thing last term and again to her credit the concept was fine. It was the bits this Government put around it that made it a silly idea and imposed huge costs on local government. 
Quite honestly I say that this Government is starting to be recognised by the ratepayers and councils of this country as putting in too much compliance and too many costs. Rates are going up with little return and it is because this Government this Minister in the chair the Hon Mark Burton and this Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark are imposing unnecessary requirements on local government and communities so that they are not delivering services. Why could we not have gone straight to a long-term community plan got the figures and facts out there in front of the people then started working on it? When we think about the audit the Government has required to be done on draft schemes the problem is that the Government does not trust local government. That is really the issue when we think about it. Is that not the logic of it? Why otherwise would the Government have something audited if it were not that it did not trust local government to do its job? I do. Out of all the things that have been audited only three have qualifications and the councils took those decisions deliberately. They disagreed with the Minister for example when he said that councils were required to put in an estimate and judge what inflation will be in 10 years’ time. 
It is that sort of stupidity and those sorts of idiot decisions that have meant this Government has put extra costs on local government. Quite honestly I think that it is unnecessary. As I say to the best of my knowledge only three councils out of all those audited have got qualifications and the three were for minor details. There was no need for audit; local government authorities and their officers were doing a good job.