Twyford Phil: Rodney District Council Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Rodney District Council Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12552. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 Sometimes this Parliament is a court of last resort and today is one such occasion. For the people of the district of Rodney this is their final opportunity to have a say to have their day in court. 
The people of Rodney submitted to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance they submitted to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee on the second super-city bill and they lobbied their elected MPs in good faith. Still frustrated the people of northern Rodney gathered a petition. I will correct the gentleman from Taupaki—David Garrett the member for ACT—who said that they gathered only 6000 signatures. Well those 6000 signatures in northern Rodney were collected from a community of 22000 people. That is an impressive result in anybody’s book I think. 
The Government invited the people of northern Rodney to submit a reorganisation proposal to take Rodney out of the super-city but in the next breath under this Minister of Local Government it banned any reorganisation proposals in the Auckland region for the next 3 years. This local bill the Rodney District Council Bill was brought to the House by my colleague Darien Fenton. It is the last chance for the disillusioned and disenchanted of Rodney District. 
Why do the people of Rodney deserve to have a say on this issue? There are three reasons. The first is that this ACT-National Government has utterly mishandled and mismanaged the entire Auckland reorganisation process over the last 18 months particularly in relation to the inclusion of Rodney and the people of Rodney in the Auckland super-city. It has been a fiasco. 
The second reason is that the people of Rodney District do not want to be part of the Auckland super-city. A Colmar Brunton poll of a sample of 1200 people stated that 52 percent of the people of Rodney District opposed Rodney’s inclusion in the super-city. A bare 21 percent said that they supported their community’s inclusion in the super-city. Those results are absolutely clear. 
But it is not just the people of Rodney who are unhappy about being press-ganged into Rodney Hide’s super-city by this Government. Those poll results can be found throughout the entire Auckland region. No matter which way we ask people the question—whether they feel like they have been listened to by the Government whether they think their lives will be better under the super-city or whether they think things will be run more efficiently—almost always about 50 percent of the respondents say no. They do not think life under the super-city will be better; they do not want to be part of it. All the polling that we have seen published in the last 6 months indicates that this Government is lucky if it can muster 20 to 30 percent of people who support the super-city. 
The third reason Labour is supporting this bill is that the National Government would not give the people of Rodney their day in court. It would not allow them to have a say at the select committee on whether they should be incorporated against their will against their wishes into the super-city. 
The member for Rodney declined to sponsor this bill. The member for Northland—even though he is the Associate Minister of Local Government and was quite happy to chair the select committee—would not sponsor this bill. The member for Helensville would not sponsor this bill. The member for Waitakere would not sponsor this bill. Four Government Cabinet Ministers whose electorates overlap with the district of Rodney refused to sponsor this bill but my colleague Darien Fenton did the right thing and brought it to this House. 
Those three reasons are why we are supporting this bill. It is a bizarre fact of this situation that Labour supports and has supported throughout the super-city process the royal commission boundaries. We believe based on the planning and the environmental arguments that Rodney should be in the super-city. There are very persuasive reasons to protect the metropolitan urban limits and to prevent rampant urban development leapfrogging over urban limits into the hinterland. There are very good reasons in terms of managing Auckland’s long-term growth that Rodney should be part of the super-city. But in spite of that we think democracy means that the people of Rodney deserve to have their day in court.