Douglas Roger: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
Douglas Roger: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6498] 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 I thought I would take a call because I want to touch on the whole issue of community boards. As I listen to this debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill the real worry I have is that the debate is all about structure and not about function. Actual structure follows function and not the other way round. That point has been missed particularly by the members of the Labour Party. It was really a problem for the royal commission which tended to focus only on structure and I think that is why in the end we got a rather poor report. That is why the mayor and the councillors spent the whole duration of the royal commission process seeking to protect their own territory while continuing to spend more money and to increase our rates. 
It seems to me that any determination of the appropriate structure of local government must as I said flow from functions rather than from structure. The first thing we need to determine is what issues or functions will be delegated by central government to local government and having decided that it will tend to determine the nature or the structure of local government. The principle that should underline the structure of local government is that those most affected by councils’ decisions must have the capacity to voice their opinion. That is why I favour closer to 30 local boards as opposed to 20 local boards. They should have the capacity to voice their opinion. The principle is commonly known as subsidiarity: the idea that matters ought to be dealt with by the least centralised but most competent authority we have. For decisions over things like food we do it ourselves but when it comes to a local library and a local swimming pool it should be done by local people. The number of community boards set at 20 to 30 in this bill is a move in the right direction. I personally favour 30 over 20. 
Community boards should be small enough—and this is the point not argued particularly well by Labour—to represent genuine communities and not just be more bureaucratic structures. Labour has this afternoon suggested more and more bureaucratic structures whereas if we get back to the community we will have genuine communities of interest rather than those advocated by the royal commission. In Manukau where I come from there are at least six and probably seven genuine communities of interest: Botany; Pakuranga; Howick; Manurewa whose community board is probably bigger than almost 90 percent of local governments in New Zealand; Otara and Papatoetoe which are probably two communities but possibly one; Mangere; and the rural area surrounding Clevedon. These are genuine communities of interest and they would all be able to make better decisions than the old Manukau City Council did. That is why I push for 30 boards rather than 20 boards—in Manukau there are at least six communities and probably seven. 
The big thing that we must do and the thing that we have not done is ensure that structure follows function. We have not been doing that. If we think about local government we see that a lot of things will be done at the regional level and are best able to be done at the regional level but a huge number of functions of local government can be best carried out by local people in their own communities. Therefore I congratulate the Government and the Minister of Local Government on moving from 20 to 30 community boards as opposed to the seven or eight that the royal commission suggested.