Sage Eugenie; Tisch LindsayEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a call on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2). Local government has got a critical role in ensuring a democratic society. It provides a check and a balance on the power of central government and the Green Party supports effective democratic processes at that local level and governance arrangements. But we do not think that this Government trusts local government and we see that in this bill. It continues the centralisation of executive power at the expense of local democracy and at the expense of the public having a say in decisions that affect them. Although I would like to be as confident as a previous Labour speaker that we have seen an end to forced amalgamations the powers that this bill gives the Minister to direct the Local Government Commission are quite significant and that is one of the reasons that the Green Party is opposing it. We have got the Local Government Commission as my colleague Jan Logie noted being appointed by Ministers and in clause 16 we have got the commission getting a notice from the Minister that sets out the Minister's expectations as to how the commission will perform its functions and exercise its powers. The commission then has to take account of the Minister's expectations in developing its statement of intent and its work programme. It has got to report to the Minister on the extent to which it has met his or her expectations and the Minister can write to the Local Government Commission and direct that it have regard to any relevant Government policy. It can review the commission—how it is operating and how it is performing—when in our view it would be better if Parliament did that and the commission has got to report annually to the Minister. So what we are getting with this power now for the Local Government Commission to initiate reorganisation proposals and for the commission to be under the thumb of the Minister is effectively central government promoting its amalgamation agenda and using the Local Government Commission to do that. I think we saw that in Scott Simpson's speech when he talked about essentially New Zealand having too much local government. National obviously wants big centralised councils where there are fewer people making the decisions. So it is not an end to amalgamation; it is giving the commission significantly more powers to do that through initiating proposals. One of our other major concerns is the reduction in public participation. The public is not going to have the certainty of there being a poll on reorganisation proposals because if those proposals are initiated by councils and the councils agree there is no need for a poll and the previous provision for 10 percent of electors in a district to be able to request a poll is being removed. So certainly polls have to occur if the Local Government Commission is doing the amalgamation or reorganisation but not if councils are doing it. We agree with the Mayor of Wellington that encouraging councils to do this while circumventing a poll is wrong and is not in the public interest. The Minister of Local Government is also wrong in claiming that there are checks and balances on the powers of the Local Government Commission. The bill through removing much of the work of the commission from the Official Information Act is actually making its work much more opaque. It prevents the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act from applying to any documents that have been created or received by the commission in the course of an investigation a resolution of a dispute the termination of an appeal or an amalgamation proposal. So that is actually reducing transparency and reducing a significant check. The other major area where we have got a lot of concern is around council-controlled organisations (CCOs) and the corporatisation agenda that is potentially behind this bill. The Local Government and Environment Committee recently considered a petition raising significant concerns about the accountability or lack of accountability of CCOs in Auckland and that is despite the fact that there are more requirements on those CCOs in terms of being accountable and the Auckland Council being able to set additional accountability requirements to those that apply elsewhere in the country. We have major concerns about this bill and we oppose it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Su'a William Sio—5 minutes.