Robertson Grant: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2845. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 Listening to that member Nicky Wagner I wonder why the Government does not just fold all of local government up and get Paula Rebstock to run it because that is basically the Government’s approach to everything at the moment: “Let’s just corporatise the whole thing have a board and have Paula Rebstock run the whole thing.”  
It is important to see this bill the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill in the context of what this Government has done with local government since it got into office in 2008. It inherited the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. Everybody in the Auckland region wanted something to happen wanted a more efficient process and wanted better decision-making. The royal commission came through and this Government came along and ripped out sections of the report. It just said “No we don’t like that bit of it we don’t like that layer of governance so we’re going to take that out. We don’t like the idea that social issues might be dealt with so we’re going to take that out as well.” That was the first step when it came to local government from this Government opposite.  
Then it moved on to Environment Canterbury. The then Minister responsible for these things said the Government was not going to have an election on that issue. It would just cancel that because the Minister was worried about the outcome. That was the quote. It was in the  
Timaru Herald 
. I remember it well. The former Minister is nodding. He was worried about the outcome. Well I tell you what I was quite worried about the outcome of the 2008 general election but we did not cancel it. We did not say no we were not going to have it because we were worried about the outcome. But that is what this Government did when it came to Environment Canterbury. It said to good people like Eugenie Sage: “I’m sorry that’s it. You’re out. We’re not going to do this because we’re worried about the outcome.”  
Well there is the small matter of democracy. It is a tiny matter that this Government does not seem at all interested in protecting—certainly not at a local level. Because now the Government having tried to disembowel the royal commission report and having taken out Environment Canterbury is going to do it to everybody. Satisfied as it is with what it has done in Auckland and Canterbury the Government has come along and said it is time to get rid of democracy at a local level right across New Zealand.  
I want to focus in on the most insidious part of this bill and that is the fact that the rights of local residents to have a say on the organisation of the governance in their area is taken away. The automatic right to a referendum is gone under this bill. Gone! That is an attack on democracy. That is saying to local residents that they do not automatically have a right to have a say about how they are governed at a local level. That is wrong. Local people deserve a say in local decisions. What we now have is a process by which yes a poll a referendum can be requested; it has to be requested by 10 percent of the voters in an area. And to get those 10 percent the people who are trying to organise a petition have 40 working days. They have 40 working days from when a proposal is approved by the Local Government Commission.  
In the Wellington region here should a proposal come forward for a so-called super-city for the Wellington region that will be around 48000 signatures to collect in those 40 days. They cannot start any earlier than when the proposal comes up and that is as good as it gets. It is democracy if you can pull off that 10 percent. It is not democracy for everybody in the region. It is wrong and that is an attack on our democracy. This bill today takes away democratic rights. What kind of Government comes to this House to take away people’s democratic rights? This kind of Government does—a National Government that is determined to see all of local government in the sense of corporatised board-like relationships rather than it being part of democracy rather than it being something that local people have a say in.  
What we have today in front of us is a bill that effectively says that amalgamations will be coming. “You will get them no matter what.” Now some amalgamations may be a very good idea indeed. But local people deserve the right to a say not to have to go out and work to have a say—they actually deserve a right to have a say about what the structure of governance will look like in their area. This bill strips that right away.  
The word “flexibility” keeps being used but the question I have got to ask is how we balance flexibility streamlining against people’s right to have a say in how they are governed. This bill gets that balance all wrong and it should not be allowed to pass.  
The other part of this bill that I do want to put some time into is the question of the change from the removing the four well-beings from the 2002 Act because there has been a lot said about the fact that councils are somehow out of control—that they are completely out of control with what they are doing as a result of the 2002 Act. To repeat what Mr Twyford has said the Department of Internal Affairs says there is no clear quantitative evidence to suggest that the Local Government Act 2002 has resulted in a proliferation of new activities or that local government is undertaking a wider group of functions. That is the Department of Internal Affairs. That is the Minister’s own advisers saying that actually the whole premise of that change does not even stack up. As Mr Twyford said before frankly the Government does not even know why it is changing this particular clause. It wants to look like it is somehow or other going to streamline and narrow what it is that local government can do. But the reality is that the Government does not know. Is it the V8s or is it the flower show?  
Now some people might argue that that is evidence of Maggie Barry’s influence over this Government—flower shows are in. David Bennett has no influence—V8s are out. That could be one argument for what is driving—[ 
Interruption 
]—Tim Macindoe. Sorry I forgot. Maggie Barry is in the ascendency; Tim Macindoe and David Bennett are out. Flower shows versus V8s. But actually I think it is simpler than that. The Government wants to look like it is making a change in this area when in reality it is actually not. But what worries me more is that this is happening in the context of a time when the Government at a central government level is bailing out of important public services. It is saying that it is not going to be providing the kind of support in housing health and all the areas that we think of as central government’s role. Yet at the same time the Government is trying to tell local government that it should not be in those areas either. But it is confused. It does not add up it does not actually make any sense in terms of what councils will be directed to do.  
And here we have the Auckland Council with its magnificent new plan founded on the four well-beings—sorry not quite sure we fit into those any more! I have a prediction: I think they probably will be able to fit everything into the new structure because this Government simply does not know what it means by its new purpose statement for core public services.  
The other premise on which this bill flounders is the fact that the questions around debt and around the state of councils have not been accurately portrayed by this Government. Once again Local Government New Zealand’s figures show that the average of all councils’ expenditure on interest repayments as a percentage of operating income in 2010 was 4.53 percent. Now it has gone up. It has gone up from 4.19 percent which is not that big an increase. It is a small increase on average. [ 
Interruption 
] The former Minister can pick out examples if he likes but the truth is that the figures have been beaten up. The figures have been beaten up to try to make the case and it does not make the case.  
The Auditor-General said that debt levels were well within prudent financial standards. That is what the Auditor-General said about local government. Of course ratepayers want to see good efficient public services provided by their councils. Of course they want to make sure and there will be things we can do but premising widespread amalgamations forced on local people premising this whole bill on statistics that do not add up is not good enough. The Government needs to be able to come through with proper proposals—consulted with the sector—that actually will improve the way that local government works. There are bits and pieces of it in this bill but the reality is that the fundamental changes that have been proposed here are anti-democratic and are based on things that actually do not add up.  
But in the end I want to finish with saying where is all this ending up. Where all this is ending up is what the Government would like to force local government into doing and that is asset sales. It is quite clear that is the agenda. In fact I do not need to say it. John Key and David Carter have said it in the context of Christchurch. They want local government to shed assets. They want to take the harebrained scheme that this Government is trying to put in place—in the absence of any kind of real plan for economic growth—to sell assets and they want to transfer that on to local government. That is wrong. It is wrong in principle but it is also wrong in practice taking away the rights from local government to make decisions taking away the rights from local people.  
We are opposing this bill because although there may be some good streamlining of local government that could take place and there may well be good amalgamations out there that could happen they should not be brought about by taking away democratic rights from people by taking away the rights of individual citizens to decide how they are governed. This bill is wrong and the Labour Party opposes it.