Kedgley Sue: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3204] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 This is one of the most Draconian pieces of legislation I have seen come before this House in my 10 years in this Parliament. It is going to be rammed through all its stages in 24 hours and Aucklanders—New Zealanders—will not have any opportunity to have their say or to make submissions on this Draconian legislation. It is the sort of legislation that was rammed through Parliament during the dark days of Rogernomics and mark my words this is Rogernomics Part 2. As others have said this bill is going to strip eight democratically elected councils representing 1.4 million Aucklanders of all meaningful power and hand this power to a hand-picked inner cabal of Rodney’s cronies on the Auckland Transition Agency. The legislation will neuter the eight democratically— 
Hon John Carter 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Members are to be referred to by their full names. We have had that ruling and also quite honestly any other statement— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: We have been very consistent on that and the member must desist. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: Rodney Hide—thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
The legislation will neuter the eight Auckland councils and it will paralyse Auckland local governance over the next few years. Instead of being accountable to electors from tomorrow onwards the councillors and mayors will be accountable to the hand-picked cabal in the Auckland Transition Agency which will have powers to review almost any decision that any of these councils make over the next 18 months. The agency will even be able to silence any dissent that it deems may prejudice the reorganisation because it will have the power to review what councillors and board members are able to discuss at their meetings. Some listeners may not believe me but this is what it says in the bill: “The Transition Agency may review—(b) any item on the agenda for any meeting of an existing local government organisation or any committee of an existing local government organisation to be held during the transition period.” And it will be able to do most of this in secret because the legislation says it will have to provide information to the public or any section of the public only as it thinks fit in relation to the organisation—as it thinks fit! 
There is a laundry list of items in clause 31(3) that can be reviewed by the Auckland Transition Agency and if members read that long list they will see that it is very clear that councils from tomorrow onwards will have to go cap in hand to Rodney Hide’s cronies in the agency every time they want to sign a contract for a rubbish pick-up. Councils will not even be able to adopt their long-term plans that they are presently finalising—all strategic and long-term planning will have to be put on hold as of tomorrow. 
This amounts to a radical restructuring and we do not even know what it will cost! Rodney Hide has made a crusade out of the fact that the Government should not take any action—as he has said in his Regulatory Responsibility Bill—until there is gold-plated proof that the savings will outweigh the costs. But in this case we have no idea what the alleged cost savings will be; the Government is refusing to tell the people of New Zealand. How outrageous is that? But we know that all of the costs of transition will be borne by Auckland ratepayers. Sure as the Minister of Finance said in the House today initially the costs will be part of the Crown debt but the Crown debt will be handed over to the Auckland ratepayers once the Auckland Transition Agency winds up. So Aucklanders will have to pay to have their local democracy gutted by this Government. And the legislation has also been set up in such a way that we may never know the true cost because not only does the agency not have to share any information that it does not want to share but also it can second staff from any local government and the local authorities will have to pay for them. 
One thing we do know is that this will not save any money. All over the world the alleged savings that were going to come from forced amalgamation such as this have never materialised. The South Australian Government promised savings of 74 percent; it achieved 2.3 percent and those savings did not take into account the huge indirect cost of forced amalgamation. The same thing will happen here. 
In this bill the Government is setting up what academics refer to as “the strong mayor” model. This is a new model of local governance that concentrates power on the executive and gives the mayor excessive unprecedented executive powers unlike the powers that any other mayor in New Zealand has. There will be no checks and balances on that executive power of the mayor other than from these toothless impotent local boards which are not even set up in statute in this legislation. At least community boards are set up in statute and have a legal basis. These new local boards will exist only at the whim of the super-city. They will be able to be abolished or have all of their already feeble powers clipped by the Auckland super-council. The local boards will have no power and no resources; they will not be able to hire staff and they will not be able to own anything. They will not be able to levy rates make by-laws borrow money or develop annual plans. They will be little more than grandiose residents associations that will be able to lobby in their area. 
Aucklanders need to be aware as do all New Zealanders of the hidden agenda in all this restructuring. That agenda is to set Auckland up so that when the eight councils are amalgamated into one as much of the $28 billion of assets as possible will be able to be put into arm’s-length boards then privatised. The board meetings will not be open to the public so there will not be any scrutiny of the activities—of the commercial and trading activities such as the airport and the ports. All of them will be put into these corporate boards and readied for privatisation. 
If people think that maybe I am scaremongering then I will let listeners decide for themselves by reading from ACT’s policy on local government. The first one is “Local government will be required to shed its commercial activity”. Did members get that one? “Roads and … water will be supplied on a fully commercial basis”. Local government will have its powers of general competency abolished. ACT will promote the contracting out of council services. If anyone would like to read these I am sure that they are still up on the website under ACT’s policy on local government. It is no wonder that Rodney Hide chose to be the Minister of Local Government and that his focus this term is on restructuring Auckland and getting as many of those assets as possible ready for privatisation. I am sure that ACT’s campaign donations will be rolling in if he manages to ram this legislation through and set up the bloated inaccessible huge remote bureaucracy that will be the Auckland Council. 
Rodney Hide is pretending with his soothing words that this legislation is all “fine and dandy”. It sounds like Orwellian double-speak but I urge Aucklanders to read the fine print of this legislation. I urge them to read about the draconian powers of this transition agency and to understand that over the next 18 months the Auckland Council and Auckland governance will be paralysed. This will all happen so that we can set up this huge centralised executive Auckland City super-council which will be counterbalanced only by the toothless impotent and rather pitiful local boards. Thank you.