Clendon David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Clendon David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8834] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora koutou. A few days ago the Prime Minister in his opening statement proposed that this year will be a busy and interesting one for local government. The local government scene is most certainly already busy and interesting in the Greater Auckland area where the resistance is well under way to Minister of Local Government Mr Hide’s demolition job on local democracy and his attempt to wrest control of some $28 billion worth of assets out of the hands of the public who paid for them and into entities that will be ripe for selling to private interests from July 2012. We in Auckland are becoming very busy and interested in resisting this “Rogernomics Round 2” that is being imposed upon us. The battle to protect local democracy and representation is being fought out currently in Auckland but we may be sure that if this Government succeeds in imposing that model on Auckland other constituencies and other regions will very soon be made subject to the same regime. 
Mr Key indicated that the reforms of Auckland governance commenced by the former Labour-led Government and picked up by this administration will continue with a new Auckland Council to be in place from 1 November this year. Clearly the Auckland region is significantly—in fact uniquely—important to the nation’s economy and any steps to improve its economic environmental and indeed social performance are to be applauded. Sadly however the process that is in train to reform Auckland’s governance and the all too predictable outcomes of that process are likely to be very destructive of the Auckland region’s economy and to do real harm to its environmental social and cultural well-being. 
The Prime Minister correctly notes in his statement that Auckland will elect representatives for the new council and local boards this October. But the reality is that Aucklanders have already been largely disenfranchised at the local level to the extent that most of the power has been taken out of the hands of the people whom we elected in 2007 to represent us and put in the hands of the Auckland Transition Agency—a group containing no elected person but rather people appointed by Mr Hide in his role as local government Minister. There is a real transfer of power happening under the guise of Auckland governance reform. This genuinely does constitute a step change notably the removal of direct control of public assets away from our elected councillors and the transfer of control into the dubious care of unelected directors of so-called council-controlled organisations. Those worthies are to be appointed by the Minister of Local Government if he manages to push through his latest reform bill. We have already heard those council-controlled organisations be referred to as “council-controlling organisations” and as “cash-cow organisations”. 
Polling tells us that a majority of Aucklanders do not want to have the super-city model that is being imposed on them. Over the last 2 weeks I have spoken to and listened to hundreds of people in communities all around the Auckland region alongside a number of parliamentary colleagues from the Labour Party. Of the hundreds of people who have turned out to local halls in the communities all around Auckland I can report that two individuals expressed some hope that the new model would deliver long-overdue infrastructure development particularly to the rural areas. I did not have to attempt to disabuse those two people of their belief as their own neighbours quickly dispelled their false hopes. It may be and perhaps ought to be of concern to some National members especially to those in marginal Auckland seats that the opposition to Mr Hide’s plan is both wide and deep. Even in the heart of Mr Key’s own Helensville electorate a few nights ago a very crowded hall of irate ratepayers expressed their distaste for being brought under this regime which is not of their making and of which they want to have no part. 
The Prime Minister suggest that: “The reforms will simplify and streamline governance structures within the Auckland region. This will result” he says “in better more cost effective public services for Aucklanders delivered through integrated planning and service delivery across the region.” This is presumably some sort of code for what is really happening which is the removal of most of the functions and virtually all of the significant assets currently managed by local authorities—some $28 billion worth of assets—which will be passed over to a number of council-controlled organisations. These organisations will be effectively beyond the control of the councillors whom we will elect. Mr Hide has reserved for himself the right to appoint the boards of directors who will run these organisations of which only one the transport organisation may have up to two elected members on a board of perhaps six or eight members. No other of the six or eight council-controlled organisations may have any elected people on their boards. 
We can readily anticipate that the veil of commercial secrecy will very quickly be drawn down which will deny Aucklanders the right to know how and in whose interests their public assets are being managed. This fact alone makes a mockery of Mr Key’s claim in his speech that the Government is committed to changes that will give all ratepayers better information about their local council and ultimately more influence over their council’s activities and spending. In fact residents and ratepayers will have very little information about what is happening to their hard-earned assets and they will have even less influence over the council’s activities and spending than they currently do. The legislation puts in place a moratorium on the sale of strategic assets but only until July 2012 which means that the council elected in a few months’ time would have ample opportunity to propose and implement privatisation plans before the next election in 2013. 
Returning to the claim that we will enjoy more integrated and better services I ask how seven eight or more corporate entities nominally publicly owned but in reality one large step away from public control or overview can possibly deliver cost-effective public services or the integrated planning and services that the Prime Minister talked about. 
The one tool in the third Auckland bill that ought to and might provide a coherent long-term strategic plan based on an extensive consultation process with residents is very obviously flawed. A spatial plan is proposed in order to facilitate growth and development in the new enlarged city. There are no qualifiers on those words like “sustainable” growth or “systems-based” development; there is just growth and development. To me and to many others of the hundreds of concerned citizens we have spoken to and listened to in the last couple of weeks this signals a return to the worst excesses of “Rogernomics Round 1” which saw the massive tearing apart of the physical social environmental and heritage fabric of Auckland and indeed of much of the country during the 1980s and the 1990s. Mr Key’s stated goal of lifting our country’s economic performance delivering jobs increasing incomes and creating better living standards will not be achieved by a return to those failed policies and Wild West development practices. 
Aucklanders will be denied the right to propose any reorganisation until at least 2013 a right that residents of every other constituency have. Aucklanders will be obliged to stay with the first-past-the-post election process unlike every other constituency in New Zealand which may propose a change to its electoral system. 
One thing that this legislation has achieved is that it has raised interest in local Government. It has certainly stimulated people’s interest in their local government but perhaps not in the way that the Government intended or would hope for. Thank you.