Jones Shane: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6589] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena tatou katoa. Given that I will give a more reflective contribution I look forward to the time when simultaneous translation will be available in the House so we can give our mihi to the Speaker in te reo and it will be suitably translated. Mr Deputy Speaker I have enjoyed your stewardship of us in the Committee stage of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill along with that of your colleagues. It is a certain understated style but it gives us an opportunity to vent and then come back when necessary to improve what has actually been a sorry bit of legislation. But despite the wide array of amendments and Supplementary Order Papers that were put forward by this side of the House we realise that we occupy a space that is dominated by realpolitik. 
I want to focus on three or four things in the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. The first is the theme of accountability. We have described “super-city” in Maori as “he taone koromatua” because we could not quite find a sexy way of describing it. “Koromatua” gives one the notion that it is something extremely large. The super-city will have such a powerful level of influence on the economy of the lives of garden-variety Kiwis whether they are in the leafy suburbs or in “Strugglers’ Gully” so Labour members put a lot of effort during their contributions into considering how those people will be elected and how many there will be. I do not propose to say much more in relation to the issue of Maori seats other than to record our disappointment that we did not ensnare the necessary level of support— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: What about the sell-out? 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: Well we had Tau Henare; I accept that Tau Henare’s style of oratory is to give speeches in anger which is why his greatest speeches are those he goes on to regret. We have had contributions from some of the Auckland MPs but I was disappointed when it got to accountability that we did not hear more from the councillor of Auckland City Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. He came to the House with such a huge amount of promise for the people he purportedly represents not only in that particular area but also the people he comes from. It was very disappointing. Of course we have heard from Nikki Kaye and that is fine. She was a very industrious member of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. However her level of influence over her colleagues shows that she is from the lilliputian part of the National Party: lots of contributions but a tiny level of influence. But that is the nature of the cycle for her. Sam Lotu-Iiga is about to learn that there is a difference between vacant and vacuous. “Vacant” is the seat he currently occupies and is about to lose and “vacuous” was the nature of the contributions he made during the debates. 
Let us come back to the aspect of accountabilities. Maori people actually wanted their own seats. They are not antagonistic towards Pakeha representatives or anyone else but they wanted their issues and their agenda to be represented at the place of power by one of their own. Rodney Hide’s contribution was to say that Maori are the hoi polloi and people are capable of representing them whether or not they choose those representatives. So we saw that classic conflict. 
The second issue is cost efficiency. The reality is that one of the most powerful forces in the new super-city will without doubt be the bureaucracy. The debate ebbed and flowed about whether Auckland will be better off by having this super-empowered mayoralty office but I tell members that the characters who will have inordinate power will be the chief executive officer then the managers and then the divisions. That is why unless we have the right governance structure they will run the show. If we do not put enough mechanisms and safeguards into the structure—and we have not unfortunately—they will be the ones who drive up the rates. People up and down the super-city boundary are fearful that after the National Government’s model all that will happen is that costs will go up which will feed an appetite within the bureaucracy to set a higher rate. So I do not think that we heard enough in the Committee stage from the Ministers responsible for the bill or from the National members as to how they believe that the super-city will manage its cost structure. It is perverse that the Minister who is sponsoring this legislation who has cultivated a reputation as being not only a perk-buster but anti-regulation has actually ended up presiding over the creation of a structure that will be very costly and more than likely not particularly accountable. 
There was some discussion that the “satellite committees” which is what I am calling the community boards—they will revolve around the large planet with its gravitational pull and will have to go back to the table of the super-city to get authority money and mandate—will be poorly staffed and the quality of people they will attract will lead to a weaker type of governance because people will not be attracted to understaffed under-resourced committees. They will go and do other things with their lives because at the end of the day politics which is what we are asking them to do—to get involved in political governance—is a voluntary activity. 
The other thing that Labour expressed considerable concern about—and I think future Ministers will have to deal with this issue—is the existence of monopolies. There is the Auckland water infrastructure. I do not want to focus in any negative way on how the provision of water-related services will happen in Auckland other than to say that once we have a monopoly we must have an agency that can effect regulatory oversight. If we do not have a mechanism that monitors and challenges the behaviour of any monopoly then it is the consumers who pay. That is why it was very very disappointing that Mr Hide did not choose to take up the suggestion of the royal commission and have a performance auditor. That is not to deprecate any of the people working for the monopoly but monopolies have a life-force of their own. If there is an opportunity to gouge or to take more than perhaps a market or competitive system would allow that tends to be what happens. 
I also reflect on the fact that during the time that the select committee and the Maori subcommittee sat people came with a genuine desire to improve the system of governance. They have been left with not so much a hotchpotch outcome but a system over which at the end of the day they will have very little influence. To influence this system they will have to get into the power room and the power room has some obstacles along the way. Those obstacles have to do with the cost of running a campaign and with the difficulty caused by an inbuilt bias that is now in the electoral system. People will also have to deal with the difficult question of how given the limited number of super-city councillors the voices of the average citizens of Auckland will be accurately translated into action in the council if there are not a suitably large number of representatives. We know that the Maori representatives have been written out of the script. There is only one way that Maori representatives will end up there and that is if they join a team that treasures the Maori contribution to the life of the super-city or in our case the life of the nation State. 
In wrapping up I congratulate the officials on the work undertaken and congratulate all the people who made an effort to make their contributions. I also acknowledge the role that John Carter played in demonstrating that a Northlander was able to come from the kumara gardens of Kaipara and be a punching bag for his own party. He could take the blame— 
Shane Ardern 
: You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that Shane. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: Well I have to say that because there is a great Maori proverb “a kumara never boasts about his own sweetness”. It falls to me as a fellow Northlander to describe how when the kumara goes into the hangi a certain odour wafts and unfortunately that was the nature of John’s contribution on the key aspects of this bill. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The next call from the Green Party is a split call. Each member will have a 5-minute call and there will be a warning bell at 4 minutes.