Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6483] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I will make some comments on the issue of boundaries but first I observe how good it is to see a spark of life on the Government benches. We on this side of the Chamber were getting quite downhearted noting that there have been only two speeches by National members since 10.30 this morning. We have sent George Hawkins over there to try to even up the numbers. One would think the debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill was a game of soccer in the park on a Saturday morning the way it is going. 
One of the most extraordinary and bizarre episodes of this Government’s mishandling of the Auckland governance reforms is its attempt to lop off the northern and southern ends of Auckland. It proposed to consign 25 percent of the land area to outside the super-city. The proposal had heads shaking all over the city of Auckland. In an exercise that was really designed to integrate and build a more cohesive Auckland here was the Government lopping off 25 percent of the land area including some of our most important beloved and spectacular natural assets. If we look at Rodney District we see that the Government proposed to put the very precious northern beaches—those north of Waiwera—and a number of our regional parks outside the Auckland boundaries. 
Darien Fenton 
: Crazy! 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: It is absolutely crazy as my colleague Darien Fenton just commented. It is very hard to know how the Associate Minister of Local Government John Carter ever came to the conclusion that it was a good idea. I was on the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee and I heard the submissions that people in Rodney gave when the committee sat in Rodney. There was diversity of opinion but for the Associate Minister to just lick his finger and stick it in the wind as a way of making an important decision like this and to blindly ignore the advice of the royal commission on where the boundaries should go seems utterly bizarre. It was really only the campaigning by the Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee and his pointing out the situation to Aucklanders and alerting them to the fact that some of our most precious parks and northern beaches were going to be given away that aroused public opinion. 
We saw an admirable example of listening but that listening process exposed some seriously deficient decision-making. We saw at the eleventh hour 24 hours before the bill came back to the House a panicked move by the Government to bring north Rodney back into the fold. The citizens of Warkworth Matakana Omaha Pakiri and Leigh breathed a big sigh of relief. But that leaves the problem of Franklin the fact that the current boundary goes through Pukekohe and Waiuku and the fact that Hunua’s Mangatawhiri Dam and Mangatangi Dam which hold 54 percent of Auckland’s bulk water supply and three regional parks outside Auckland’s boundaries were just given away. If Mr John Carter listened to the people of Auckland he would realise that that is the last thing they want to see happening in the new super-city.  
One has to wonder what the difference is. There is a direct analogy in looking at the cases of Rodney and Franklin. The arguments the royal commission made about providing sufficient rural land to act as a buffer against the pressures of urban development have just been ignored. The member for Rodney attended a meeting with 200 angry people in Warkworth last Saturday. That was enough it seems to turn the Government round on this important decision. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: It wasn’t enough on trees or the hikoi. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: That is true and it was not enough that several hundred people attended meetings over the last few months in Franklin. That has not enabled the MP for Hunua Paul Hutchison to get his way—poor old Paul Hutchison. 
I will make some comments that I did not get to during my last speech. We were talking about single transferable vote earlier in the afternoon and the fact that the Government has decided that first past the post is to be the voting system for the first elections in spite of the fact that single transferable vote is fairer and more representative.