Kedgley Sue: Business of Select Committees — Appointments 
Kedgley Sue: Business of Select Committees — Appointments 
[Volume:654;Page:3180] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 Well there has been a lot of jocular laughing in this House as we consider Government motion No. 2 but in fact it is no laughing matter. Aucklanders need to be aware that what is happening in Parliament this afternoon and what will happen over the next 24 hours with the establishment of the special select committee on Auckland governance and the ramming through of the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill is nothing less than “Rogernomics Part 2: The Unfinished Business of Rogernomics”. It is no wonder that Roger is sitting here in the House with his newspaper happily watching what is about to unfold. 
The establishment of this committee and the passing of the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill will strip eight democratically elected and well-functioning Auckland councils which represent over 1.4 million Aucklanders of all meaningful power within the next 24 hours. It will hand that power over to a few hand-picked mates of Rodney Hide. Those mates will be appointed to the Auckland Transition Agency and will be accountable only to Rodney Hide not to the people of Auckland. When the bill is passed within the next 24 hours all the important decisions made by the eight councils in Auckland or by any of their subsidiaries will have to be approved by the transition agency. It will have the power to exert almost total control over the eight councils with their combined assets of $27 billion their annual revenue of $2.3 billion and their 6300 staff. 
What a coup Rodney Hide is pulling off in the next 24 hours! It is no wonder he wanted to be the Minister of Local Government. He sensed that in the next few years there would not be an opportunity to flog off State-owned enterprises and assets so he said let us focus all our energies on local government instead come up with a radical new structure and prepare it for privatisation and contracting out. When we read the policy of Rodney Hide’s ACT Party on local government we see that at least that party is honest that its policy is to remove all commercial activities from local government and put them in private hands. 
Once the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill is passed Auckland’s councillors and mayors who have been democratically elected by the people of Auckland will have their hands tied behind their backs. They will be effectively impotent. Instead of being answerable and accountable to their electors they will be answerable and accountable to the hand-picked transition agency which will have Draconian powers and will be filled with Rodney’s cronies. The transition agency will even have the power—if we can believe this—to control what councillors can discuss at meetings. It will be able to review council agendas and restrict what councils and all their subsidiary bodies can talk about when their members come together. This particularly offensive provision is a restriction on freedom of assembly. We can see the hand of Roger Douglas and Rodney Hide in this coup d’état and in the whole way that Auckland’s restructuring has unfolded to date. We can see it in the shock tactics that have been used to ram this legislation through before people have the ability and the time to understand its implications. 
Let us look at some of the tactics that have been used to pull off this remarkable coup. The first classic Rogernomics tactic was to not tell New Zealanders in your manifesto before the election that you were planning to radically restructure Auckland. Instead you implied that you supported the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance and promised Aucklanders solemnly that once the royal commission’s report came out you would consult with them—that is what you promised— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You cannot use the word “you”. The matter has been canvassed by other speakers. Please do not use the word “you”. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: The Government assured Aucklanders that all it was planning to do was to implement the royal commission’s report but once the report had come out the Government threw it in the bin after 1 week of consideration refused to allow consultation on the new and radical restructuring proposals and ignored the formal consultation requirements of the Local Government Act. Then the Government refused to allow anyone to see the bill and even this Government motion on the issue until a few hours before they were introduced into this House. 
It is a fundamental right of democratic governance that any change to a system of governance should be agreed to by the majority of the governed. That is why we had a referendum on MMP before we changed our system of governance. Aucklanders are being denied the fundamental right to agree or disagree by a majority with these radical restructuring proposals even though this right is enshrined in the Local Government Act. The Act says that before any significant local body reorganisation can take place a formal consultation process must occur including formally consulting stakeholders giving formal notification of the proposal calling for public submissions on the proposal and conducting a poll of electors which in this case would be those in the Auckland region to determine by a simple majority whether the proposal should proceed. That is all spelt out solemnly in the Local Government Act. This Government has thrown out all of the formal consultation rights that Aucklanders have under the Local Government Act. They are being denied the rights that every other New Zealander has when there is a local government reorganisation. 
Instead Aucklanders are being offered the crumb that we are considering here tonight. They are being offered the opportunity to make a submission before the special select committee that we are setting up which is conveniently stacked with Government members. It will be a very very busy committee because yesterday the Prime Minister gave an assurance in this House that every single Aucklander who wanted to be heard by the committee would be heard by it. We want a commitment from the Government—I see that Mr Hide is about to speak and perhaps he would like to make this commitment—that every Aucklander who wants to will be able to make an oral submission not just a written submission and to get a proper hearing not the couple of minutes that have been given to submitters to the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill. 
The Greens cannot understand why this matter has not been referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Is it because the Government does not have confidence in the chair of that committee and does not have confidence that it can control and manipulate the committee? Why are we leaving the Local Government and Environment Committee with nothing to do and setting up this special committee? Nobody has explained that. Everyone knows that select committees are a complete waste of time if the Government of the day has made up its mind and will not listen to submissions. I fear that with the Government’s record to date on the issue of the super-city the establishment of the special select committee will be a pointless exercise. The Government has made up its mind and Aucklanders should be aware that they may be about to embark on a completely pointless and fruitless exercise. 
That is particularly so when we consider that once this supposedly technical bill on Auckland reorganisation has gone through Parliament within the next 24 hours the transition agency will have all the powers it needs to ram through the super-city plans long before Aucklanders have written any of their submissions and long before the special select committee has even met. Once this bill has gone through in the next 24 hours it will be a fait accompli. If the majority of Aucklanders appearing before the select committee reject the proposals it will simply be too late to do anything because it will be a done deal. It will have all gone through. The transition agency will be exercising its Draconian powers and controlling every decision that all the eight councils in Auckland make. Basically it will be neutering the Auckland councils and probably paralysing them at the same time. 
A month ago when the Prime Minister came back from Beijing he said that he would consult with all the mayors of Auckland. So did Rodney Hide. He met with them all. They spent a lot of time outlining their concerns and what has happened as a result of all that consultation? Absolutely nothing has changed. Some of the mayors I have spoken to have said that it was a complete and utter waste of time. They fear that the consultation through the special select committee that we are setting up will also be a complete waste of time because it is a done deal. The Government has made up its mind. Thanks to Rodney Hide and Roger Douglas we are seeing “Rogernomics Part 2”.