Sage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15155. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe. I am pleased to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3). For anyone listening to Minister Williamson’s speech—David Bennett: Why don’t you stand up for democracy in your party?EUGENIE SAGE: I will start again. Anyone listening to the Minister for Building and Construction’s speech would assume that the bill was about making local government more productive more consultative and more efficient and certainly there are in this bill some changes to the principal Act that could do that by broadening the scope of the triennial agreement. That could encourage more collaboration between councils and more shared services. Things like infrastructure strategies are also a sensible idea.But there are four major reasons why the Green Party is opposing this bill. Firstly the bill represents another attack by National on local democracy and competent councils. Secondly by changing the consultation requirements around significance and around long-term plans the bill potentially reduces the community’s ability to participate in important council decisions. By making consultation more flexible potentially there is less consultation. Thirdly just as the Government is privatising our energy companies and Air New Zealand—public assets that have been built up over generations—this bill encourages councils to consider privatising council services and community infrastructure. Finally the changes to development contributions will benefit property developers and subdividers at the expense of ratepayers.I will deal with each of these issues in turn. The National Government is promoting major ad hoc change to the structure and organisation of local government throughout New Zealand without any clear purpose except its mistaken view that somehow bigger local government is better. This bill together with the changes last year to the Local Government Act will allow the Auckland unitary council model with its big super-council and weak local boards to be rolled out elsewhere in New Zealand. That is another example of this Government centralising power. More power is being concentrated in the executive and more power is being given to Ministers to intervene and interfere.This bill potentially extinguishes many of our competent city and district councils centralises power at the regional level in unitary councils and replaces those competent councils with local boards. That is because the bill allows the Local Government Commission in any proposed reorganisation to axe city and district councils which represent their communities and replace them with local boards. That is part of the brave new world of super-councils and big new unitary councils.At the moment the principal Act allows these local boards to be established only when unitary councils are established in metropolitan areas with a population of over 400000. The bill removes that provision. In Hawke’s Bay where the Local Government Commission has come out with its proposal for major reorganisation we would see a major loss of democracy with I think 53 elected councillors and four mayors replaced by just nine councillors one mayor and a clutch of boards. Of course we have seen the mayors of Central Hawke’s Bay Wairoa and Napier opposing this proposal because of the attack on democracy it represents by substituting competent councils with local boards.There is a very fundamental difference between the role of boards and that of councils. A board’s role is to identify and communicate the interests and preferences of people in the board’s area to the unitary authority. Boards have no power to set rates and no power to make by-laws. They have the power to recommend but they lack the decision-making power that councils have to make decisions on behalf of their communities. So that is why we see this bill—in combination with the changes to the Local Government Act which requires 10 percent of the community to sign a petition in order to get a poll on a reorganisation proposal—as an attack on democracy.National wants fewer democratic council structures. It wants to make it more difficult for the community to take part in decisions by their councils and in these reorganisation proposals. This provision around boards is about encouraging two tiers of local government in New Zealand axing regional councils and axing the district and city councils. The axing of regional councils which have a specific responsibility for natural resource management the management of coast air and water will mean that there is less attention given to environmental management in local government.We are concerned by the attack on public participation by the simplification of consultation requirements for a lot of local government activities. Yes that may make consultation more flexible but making it more flexible may mean that councils have to be less thorough in ensuring that their communities get a say on their major decisions. For example there is a proposal in the bill to change the purpose of long-term plans. It will no longer be to provide an opportunity for participation by the public in decision-making processes on activities to be undertaken by the local authority. Certainly those long-term plans can be complex but actually putting them out for public submissions is a key part of the community saying what the council should be doing over the next 10 years.Thirdly there is our concern about the privatisation thrust in the bill. In clause 11 it becomes mandatory for local authorities after each election to review the cost-effectiveness of the council continuing to provide infrastructure services and regulatory functions and the clause requires the council to consider having a council-controlled organisation or some other person or agency such as a private company providing these services. This whole push towards having more council-controlled organisations will make the management of our three waters—stormwater waste water and drinking water—much less transparent and much less accountable. This requirement to review will potentially force councils to consider privatising those services.The other issue we have a problem with is development contributions. That is where we see this bill as being a charter for property developers because of the way in which it restricts councils’ use of development contributions by limiting the purposes for which they may be levied. Under the current Act councils can levy development contributions to help fund reserves network infrastructure or community infrastructure. Community infrastructure is defined very broadly yet the bill replaces that definition with a much more restrictive one so that councils can levy development contributions to fund only community centres community halls play equipment and toilets. So National’s definition of community infrastructure does not include libraries cultural centres swimming pools or skateboard parks—any of those things that help provide community amenity.These changes are quite consistent with this mean-spirited Government. It is not interested in fairness and it has economic policies that are increasing the divide between rich and poor creating a much more unequal society with all the social harm that goes with that—educational underachievement crime and social alienation. With changes such as this one to community infrastructure it fails to recognise that localgovernment has a critical role in building social cohesion and building resilient communities.The only thing we are pleased about is that we understand the Minister of Local Government is prepared to look at this definition of community infrastructure. It needs to go back to what it is in the principal Act. We see developers as having a responsibility to help fund community infrastructure because it is their development that helps create the need for it.Nicky Wagner: You want housing and you want them to pay for everything else.EUGENIE SAGE: Not that that makes it too expensive as the member for Christchurch Central is claiming. Last year National showed that it did not care about community well-being by stripping out the promotion of well-being from the Local Government Act. These changes around development contributions are done with the same intention. We also have a concern about this whole notion of an objection process for development contributions. Again it is the Minister who will appoint the commissioner or the panel that hears the objection not the council. That will be a way of developers tying up councils and objecting to development contributions and to paying their share of the costs of service provision.Finally the other issue we have with the bill is the promotion of more use of council-controlled organisations. The 2002 Act was very clear about safeguarding the provision of water supply and the three waters in council ownership in public ownership and setting in place a number of checks and balances that this bill will seek to undermine.