Sage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18317. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to speak to the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3)—not that it is a bill that the Green Party is supporting. My colleague Denise Roche described why the Green Party is opposing this bill. It is because of the changes it is making around development contributions and the much narrower definition of community infrastructure in the bill. I would like to talk a bit more about that because that very narrow definition will prevent development contributions being used to fund quite basic and quite essential community facilities like swimming pools museums reserves and other recreational facilities.This bill will hit Christchurch hard because of course in Christchurch with the residential red zones and people there having lost their homes there is a lot of new greenfield development. When the bill comes into effect it will prevent Christchurch City Council from recovering from developers development contributions to help fund facilities like new swimming pools. It is this very narrow-minded approach in the bill that risks encouraging subdivisions that are like ghettos. You need these community facilities as places where people meet places where children can play and places where the community can have a heart. So if development contributions are not going to be allowed as a way of funding these facilities then the burden is pushed on to ratepayers or the facilities do not get built. In the case of Christchurch where the city council asked for an exemption and asked for a delay in the provisions in the bill coming into effect there is a very real risk with the major financial challenges that face the city council that a lot of these essential community facilities will not get built in our new greenfield subdivisions.It is also really narrow-minded because reserves funded by development contributions are often a way of buffering industrial and commercial areas from residential areas yet the bill means that councils will not be able to charge the developers of industrial land to help create these reserves. So the bill is leading to urban areas that are the very opposite of what the Green Party sees us needing in our cities and towns. We want urban development where workers can go to lunch in a local park where they can go swimming at lunch time not just large warehouses or row after row of suburban houses without these facilities.One of the other reasons we are objecting to the bill is that it undermines local democracy by encouraging the replacement of competent councils with local boards with much weaker powers. That is because this bill allows the Local Government Commission in any current or proposed reorganisation to axe district and city councils and replace them with weaker local boards. Local boards have no ability to hold property. They have no ability to employ or remove staff. They cannot make by-laws and they cannot levy rates.This bill is the Government’s answer to rolling out the Auckland super-city model elsewhere in the country by replacing our district city and regional councils with big unitary councils by centralising power with fewer councillors on those unitary councils and by then having local boards which can only recommend by-laws and have much more limited powers. At the moment the law is that you can have these local boards only in metropolitan centres with over 400000 people but this bill will allow them to be rolled out everywhere and that is why the Green Party is objecting to the bill—because it is undermining local democracy.It was very interesting at the select committee when we had Margaret Murray-Benge who was a long-time councillor for theWaimairi County Council in Christchurch. She said she is a long-time National Party supporter but she totally opposed the bill because it was ripping the heart out of local government and as she said there is nothing that says that bigger units of local government will be more efficient or that they will represent people effectively. So when you have strong National supporters querying the bill because of what it does to undermine local government the Green Party knows that we are on the right ground too because there is widespread opposition to these provisions which undermine local democracy and local government.The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.