Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3263] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 One of the concerns that the Green Party has is that these measures take away the rights of Maori people in this country particularly the rights of the tangata whenua. This is a denial of the rights of people under the Treaty of Waitangi to exercise their tino rangatiratanga. In fact a case was lodged in the court just this morning by one of the Auckland tribes—Te Waiohua—to seek an urgent discussion by the Waitangi Tribunal of the claim by local Auckland Maori under the Treaty of Waitangi. It is a very detailed claim. It refers to the fact that the royal commission gave three seats to the tangata whenua. This proposal completely scrubs the consideration of the royal commission of the rights of Maori under the Treaty of Waitangi. 
The claim states not only that but also that the other thing that is not part of the arrangement is any proportional system. At least in this House we have a form of a proportional MMP system that allows significant Maori representation. Unfortunately no such proportional or single transferable vote system is proposed in the bill before us that would allow greater Maori representation. So it may be that this whole process is tripped up and rightly so by the hearings that will take place on this matter in the Waitangi Tribunal—at least I hope they are. 
I received an email from Mayor Andrew Williams of North Shore City and it relates to the question Phil Twyford raised before. He said that people in the second tier that has been abolished feel disenfranchised. People consider themselves to be westies or to be from the North Shore or South Auckland. That identity is being stripped from them. Mayor Andrew Williams is very harsh about the transitional authority. He said that these bills effectively shut down elected local government in Greater Auckland and hand the region’s governance over to a small bunch of hand-picked unelected super-bureaucrats to run for the next 18 months until the deeply flawed super-city takes over and worse still all the costs for this unnecessary upheaval will land directly on the ratepayers even though the Government does not have the faintest clue about what it all will cost it. 
The mayor says that the replacement of the second tier by these 20 to 30 local boards is no answer because they will have no powers no resources will not be able to borrow money and cannot develop annual plans etc. All that they will be is bodies that can make recommendations. It is a hopeless situation. He said that the Government seems hell-bent on bulldozing ahead with its super-city plan regardless of the legitimate fears of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens that the super-city plan spells the end of meaningful local democracy and local decision-making. 
That is the concern of the Green Party and even more we were worried to read on the ACT website the ACT policy which is to get local government to shed its commercial activity—roads and piped water are to be supplied on a fully commercial basis the local government power of general competency is to be abolished etc etc. That is the agenda. It is a privatisation agenda that not only takes away the powers of Aucklanders in terms of the real involvement and decision making of local boards but also it passes over many of the current functions of local boards and councils to the private sector to make them commercial and to turn local bodies into local commercial enterprises. The Green Party is very much against that. We frequently stand in this House discussing Treaty settlements.