Twyford Phil: Local Government (Council-Controlled Organisations) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Local Government (Council-Controlled Organisations) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5436. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I want to dedicate this speech to the memory of Kate Sheppard a great New Zealander who was instrumental in bringing the vote to New Zealand women 119 years ago today. I feel sure that if Kate Sheppard were in this House tonight as a member of this House of Representatives she would be voting for Darien Fenton’s Local Government (Council-Controlled Organisations) Amendment Bill. She would stand up for principles of accountability good governance transparency and public control of public institutions. 
So let us see. This bill that Darien Fenton has brought to the House is based on the principles of good governance openness transparency and democratic control of public institutions. It is no wonder that the National Party is not supporting it. Why are we surprised? Why are we surprised? Because that would go against every bone in the National Party’s body to actually open up public institutions to scrutiny transparency and openness. After all transparency and accountability are the key principles of functioning markets. If this National Party was true to its liberal tradition the members in the House tonight from the National Party would be voting for Darien Fenton’s bill. These are not left-wing ideas—openness and transparency. They are not the sole preserve of the left of politics. A National Party that actually cared a jot about its own liberal tradition would surely support this bill. 
The point has been made already that this bill is not just about the Ports of Auckland dispute that has racked the Auckland waterfront for most of the last 12 months. It is a bill that would extend openness and transparency principles of environmental and social responsibility and accountability to the community. It would extend those obligations to publicly owned ports all around this country. But there is no denying that the Ports of Auckland dispute has shone a light on the issue that Darien Fenton is seeking to solve with this bill. What did we see in the Ports of Auckland? We saw a company that is owned by the ratepayers by the citizens of Auckland developing a strategy to sack the wharfies on that port and contract out their jobs. It was a strategy that was found by the Employment Court to be illegal. The employer was told in an embarrassing back-down to go back to the negotiating table and actually treat its workers with respect and to negotiate an agreement. We saw the most despicable behaviour that we have seen in a while from employers in an industrial dispute. We saw the Ports of Auckland leaking personal information on its own employees to the right-wing blogger Cameron Slater. Well what an outrage. That dispute which should be laid fairly and squarely at the door of the board and the management of the Ports of Auckland has not only cost the Auckland ratepayer millions of dollars but also cost the Auckland business community millions of dollars because the ports were shut down for so long. It damaged the asset that is the Ports of Auckland which is owned by the people of Auckland. Yet in spite of all those things the management and the board of the Ports of Auckland were not required to come clean and tell Auckland Council and the democratically elected representatives of Aucklanders how much that dispute cost them. 
As if we need any more evidence that this National Party is a party of crony capitalism of dirty deals done behind closed doors and that transparency is the last thing that this National Party wants. This is the party that corporatised 75 percent of local government in Auckland when it set up the Auckland super-city shifting billions of dollars in assets and thousands of staff into commercial entities governed by hand-picked corporate boards picked by Rodney Hide and Mark Ford. 
Even though there are special rules that govern council-controlled organisations like the one that owns the Ports of Auckland all of these so-called council-controlled organisations do a great deal of their business behind closed doors and that is the way this National Party likes it. We saw it in the corporatisation of Auckland. We saw it in the sacking of Environment Canterbury. We saw it in the refusal to vote for Annette King’s bill the Local Government (Salary Moderation) Amendment Bill which would have instilled some transparency and independence in the setting of executive salaries and now these people are voting against this very good bill of Darien Fenton.