Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6398] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chair. I will start this speech by doing a couple of things. It is pretty important that we address the rewriting of history that appears to be going on tonight. I also want to address the rather delusional process that appears to be going on across the other side of the Chamber whereby National members think that if they say often enough that they have listened the people of Auckland will believe them. Believe me: that is deluded. People know that National members have not listened. 
I will go through the history of the process of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill because it is important to get it on the record. I start by saying that Labour has consistently sought reform of Auckland’s governance structures. Labour set up the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance because we believed that Auckland needed to have some change and because we want Auckland to be a successful international city that serves the interests of all the people who live there. Let us get that on the record first. The royal commission worked for 18 months and produced a comprehensive blueprint for strong regional governance in Auckland. That is very important. We are talking about a third of our population. We all probably agree that the success of Auckland is critical for the success of our whole country. Of course the other reason this bill is so important is that local government plays a huge public-good role. Local government provides key services that people need and provides a way for people to have a say about local matters in their local communities. The bill is very important. 
I take time tonight to acknowledge and recognise all of the Aucklanders who have tried so hard to have a say in this process: the Aucklanders who took to the streets to make their voices heard the Aucklanders who filled the community halls to have their voices heard and the Aucklanders who despite the short time frame managed to make submissions to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee and went along to that committee. I was at a number of the sessions of the select committee and was really impressed by the quality of the submissions that people were making. It is because they care because it is an important bill and because they do not agree with what the Government is trying to do here. 
The protests that people made about the bill were really interesting. It interests me that probably the one part of Auckland that did not have people out in the streets saying: “Save our city!” was Auckland City. I think that is because we can see the level of dissatisfaction of citizens and ratepayers in Auckland City with the National lookalikes and the arrogance of that city council. But that is another story and I will leave it for another time. 
The process here was both a sham and a shame as my colleague David Cunliffe was saying earlier. The Government went on to reject the royal commission’s work in less than 2 weeks. It rejected a great deal of the work and a lot of thoughtful contributions. Some of the work seems to have sunk without any sign of coming back to the surface. Again I remind people of the manifesto commitments the National Party made. National said that when the royal commission reported it would then consult on the royal commission recommendations. As we all know National did not do that. In fact instead it rushed the first bill through the House under urgency and then allowed 1 month for people to get submissions together on this critically important matter. 
Still we are seeing—and we are seeing it here tonight—that the Government will rush through legislation where there has been a lack of genuine consultation and a lack of detail about many important matters. Government members might say that all that detail will be in the third bill and perhaps some of it will but I remain very concerned that many factors have not yet been thought through. How will the different levels relate to each other? 
Let me assure Nikki Kaye who seems to be concerned that we will not be talking about all of matters that are in this bill that she can rest assured. We will go through each and every matter and we will make sure we consider Aucklanders’ point of view in terms of each and every matter. 
I thought it might be interesting for members to hear some comments from the editor-in-chief of Suburban Newspapers because he has followed this process very carefully. David Kemeys said: “We are listening this is about consultation they said. But they did exactly what they wanted.” When he says “they” he means the members across the Chamber. “A Royal Commission 18-month multi-million dollar inquiry—ignored. Select committee more millions but thousands of opinions canvassed—ignored … This newspaper complained the plan stripped democracy from residents. That is still the case because the Auckland Council has all the power. It will decide plans own everything and employ staff.” David Kemeys went on to say: “Watching Mr Hide pontificate on all this is irritating because his ACT Party clearly has more influence than it should given its pitiful support level.” I think that point of view is shared by many Aucklanders. 
I will also talk about missed opportunity. Having talked about the problems with the process let us look at what we are missing here; let us look at the lack of vision and the lack of ambition of the Government. We all know that local government is not well understood. We all know because it is a fact that there are low levels of participation in local government elections and local government processes. That is deeply worrying. This is an important part of our democracy. And this bill will do nothing to improve that situation. It could have been a real opportunity for us to engage with Aucklanders in a proper manner to commit to some key principles to commit to an appropriate time frame and to try to build a high level of consensus about the sort of Auckland that we wanted and the sort of processes that we wanted. Ramming this legislation through in the way the Government is doing clearly undermines that very important opportunity. It is a real shame. It is a shame not only for the people of Auckland but also for the people of New Zealand because—as the previous speaker John Hayes alluded to—this process provides a blueprint for what will happen elsewhere in New Zealand. Instead of people having some confidence that their views will be taken into account that some key principles will be articulated and that some real work will be done on making that happen so that perhaps people gain some real understanding of local government and its processes—hopefully with the very positive spin-off that they will participate in its processes and elections—we have once again really missed that opportunity. 
If we look at some of the content of this bill we see that there are fundamental flaws. There is still a centralisation of power in this arrangement. There are too few councillors to represent Aucklanders properly. The mayor’s powers have been increased despite the fact that Aucklanders said too much power was in the bill. So much for Government members saying they have listened and made changes! In this case the Government has gone completely in the reverse direction to what Aucklanders wanted. Then there is the issue of representation for Maori which again the Government has not listened on at all. The majority of submitters were quite clear: they wanted to see Auckland have real representation for Maori. I was extremely heartened by that. I was so pleased to see that so many New Zealanders held that point of view. 
I think a number of the members across the Chamber need to be fairly aware that people will see through the Government’s claim that it is listening which it repeats endlessly and hopes that Aucklanders will believe. Well they will not. The member from Maungakiekie Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga needs to know that the people there will not fall for that just because he says it. I have to say the Hon John Carter is a very good salesman; he should get a job selling something because he is pretty good at it. He went to the meetings and he did the business on behalf of the local MP. He went out there did a couple of meetings and said that the Government was listening. The reality is that the decisions were made in many cases outside of the select committee process. Let us not fool ourselves: this was Cabinet and it was Rodney Hide. During the course of this debate we will have more time to think about what Rodney Hide’s real agenda is. 
I leave members with the thought that Aucklanders will not be sucked in by this. We will hold the Government to account and so will they.