Williamson Maurice: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:11530] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I am absolutely delighted to take a call on this bill. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: We’ve heard far too much from this Minister today—more than in the whole year I think. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well that is because the Miss Universe contestants have been here and I am really excited. But I am really really happy to take a call on this bill because this bill—and in fact everything that that Minister in the chair Rodney Hide has been doing with regard to the Auckland governance issue—actually actions the one sentence that I have believed in I think ever since I have been a member of Parliament representing Auckland and it is even the royal commission’s view: the big things need to go up and the little things need to go down. What do I mean by that? I mean that all the big decisions on roading water and waste water—all those big infrastructure things—need to go up and all the small issues need to go down. 
I will now refer to something in Mr Hide’s Supplementary Order Paper 138 that particularly affects Pakuranga the area I come from and my neighbouring electorate of Botany for which Pansy Wong is the excellent member. When the Local Government Commission came out with names for the new wards it named the new ward that applies to those two electorates Te Irirangi. I make it very clear from the outset that my concern is not anything to do with a racist view. I represent the electorate of Pakuranga. I am very proud of that name and I have fought several times to stop anybody from changing it because many times it has been moved that Pakuranga should be called something else. I am really proud of that name. I can demonstrate to members the objections that came from the public when I show them the box I have here. A couple of weeks ago the editor of the  
Howick and Pakuranga Times  
brought me boxes and boxes of petitions records of online petitions and so on; the residents of Howick Botany and Pakuranga had pleaded with the paper to have a name for their ward by which people would know its location. I did a bit of trialling on that. I asked a number of people I know who live outside Auckland whether they knew where Te Irirangi was but I never found a single person who knew where it was; never. But I asked a number of people from as far away as the South Island whether they knew where Howick was and they said that it was a suburb in the eastern suburbs of Auckland. 
The  
Howick and Pakuranga Times 
 did what I think was a superb job of canvassing the opinion of the people of that area. The result was overwhelming; the result went to 90 percent of the people surveyed petitioned and polled who said they thought the area should be called Howick. I was interested because I thought the people of the Pakuranga ward one of the wards in my electorate would say that they thought it should be called “Pakuranga-Howick-Botany” which is the longer name. But no even the majority of people in the Pakuranga electorate said they thought that calling it Howick was an elegant solution. The two central government electorates are called Pakuranga and Botany but the one place that sits in the middle and extends its tentacles as a community right across both areas is the township of Howick and its districts. Do members not agree that this is the best example of the Minister’s bill at work—an example of local people having more say on local affairs? 
I do not think that the member for Northland really cares what the people of that area call their ward. On the other hand I am sure he does not think that the people of Howick should determine what the people of Takapuna think their ward should be called. Those are local decisions and this Supplementary Order Paper by the Minister of Local Government is exactly the right answer. It is not very important in the scheme of things. Most people will not go hungry at night or GDP will not take a big hit because of whether the name is right. But why can we not let the people of an area decide? Believe me this was not a fifty-fifty call; it was not even a sixty-forty call or an eighty-twenty call. This was a more than 90-“single digit the other way” call. To have a local paper like the  
Howick and Pakuranga Times 
 run such a petition get such overwhelming support and have its editor come to Wellington to present its petition—boxes and boxes of it—is a real tribute to local democracy. I cannot give enough praise to a Minister who allows this change to occur and for the people of Howick to get what they really want.