Carter John: Local Government Law Reform Bill — Second Reading 
Carter John: Local Government Law Reform Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3642] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 The Local Government Law Reform Bill is typical of a lazy hopeless tired out-of-touch Government that has lost its way. The bill absolutely reflects a Minister who has no sense of what is happening in local government in New Zealand. The tragedy with this bill is that it touches on little minor details when local government is crying out for the need to have a Government that gives leadership and lets local government do things that the people want. And this Minister comes up with a few dribs and drabs! It is an absolute disgrace. 
Local government authorities around this country are finally waking up to what this Government is doing to it. When the Government started out it promised local government so much. It promised to allow local authorities to make decisions on behalf of their communities. It gave local government a thing called “the power of general competence”. Ever since then local government has become more and more bogged down in compliance rules regulations and costs that have been imposed on them by this Government this Minister and previous Ministers of this Helen Clark - led socialist Labour Government. 
 I have to say that local authorities are at last waking up across the country. We are beginning to see local authorities starting to tell their ratepayers why the rates local authorities impose on them are going up so much and it is absolutely sheeted home to this Government that it is continuing to pass responsibilities costs and laws that local government has to enforce. This Government is being found out. It knows that at last—and it has taken a while—local government is starting to expose this Government for what it is. 
I now turn to two or three things in this bill that are seriously alarming. The matter of microchipping dogs I will leave to my colleagues Eric Roy and David Carter who will talk about that matter but I make this one point on microchipping. One thing the Minister has said is absolutely right: microchipping a dog will not stop one dog biting one person. It will not stop one dog attack. 
Hon Member 
: Is that what the Minister said? 
JOHN CARTER 
: The Minister said that just now. We could just about have supported microchipping if this Minister had said that after a period of time every dog that was found not to be microchipped would be put down. Then maybe there would be some sense in the measure. But quite honestly that Minister will never do that and we will have a microchipping regime that does nothing except cost people money and encourage less enforcement. 
I will talk about other important things such as the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the fact that in that Act territorial authorities and regional authorities were given the authority to establish Maori wards or Maori constituency. There is no place for discrimination in our society but in local authorities that is exactly what is happening—and it works against all races. In the communities of some authorities where the majority of people are Maori it actually works against them and precludes them from having the say they should rightly have on a democratic basis. In other communities where the majority of people are non-Maori it works against them. It works against the whole of society. The National Party has consistently spoken out against this issue and when given the opportunity it will certainly change that Act. The Minister referred to that Act. 
This bill will allow local government to make decisions to spend ratepayers’ money in order to give cash donations to other authorities and to other countries. The National Party is adamantly opposed to ratepayers’ money being spent in that way. If the good citizens of every local authority or any local authority in New Zealand wanted to make a cash donation then good on them—so they should and so they do. But we do not need to have good hard-earned ratepayers’ money being spent by the council on behalf of their community when members of the community can do it for themselves. 
New sections 139 and 139A to be inserted in the Local Government Act 2002 by clause 34 of the bill are about minor boundary changes within regional parks. The hoops the local authorities will have to go through to make some minor change as a consequence of this law are just another example of this Government imposing silly senseless costs on local government— 
Anne Tolley 
: On ratepayers. 
JOHN CARTER 
: —on ratepayers—when just a modicum of common sense could have and should have applied. We would have to go through a huge cost to achieve a minor boundary change or a realignment involving an area of 10 20 or 5 square metres. It is just a nonsense and should not be in the bill. 
Then we come to the matter of the long-term council community plans. 
Hon David Carter 
: That sounds expensive. 
JOHN CARTER 
: The member had better believe it. I will use the example of just one local authority up north. For that council to produce the long-term council community plan—people should remember that this is a draft mind not the final thing; it has to go through all the final stuff— 
Mark Blumsky 
: Then it has to be audited. 
JOHN CARTER 
: —finally it has to be audited as well—cost its ratepayers in excess of $500000. That was for just one draft. Mark Blumsky Sandra Goudie other members and I have gone around local government authorities throughout New Zealand and some local authorities have told us it has cost in excess of $1 million to produce this book. The local authority had to go out and consult. It had to advertise that it was going out with this million-dollar document—and three people turned up. It would have been better if the Government had given the council a few bob and told it to go and address three people. 
Well the fact is—here we go again. The principle of the long-term council community plans is actually fine. It makes local government have a look underground and up top and to see what is going on which is a good thing so that we do not have any shocks or surprises in the future and can plan ahead. There is nothing wrong with that concept. The National Party actually introduced it in 1995. It is a good concept and it has been working fine. 
But the way in which this Government has since insisted it be implemented is so compliance-costly that it is causing huge costs. So far it is estimated to have cost ratepayers across this country—and this is not the audits but the actual production of the long-term council community plans—in excess of $50 million. It would probably be as much as $100 million to produce a draft booklet. All but three of those booklets have had to be signed off by the Audit Office and the auditors have said that their costs will now be up around $8 million. Quite honestly those sorts of things will be addressed by the next National Government when it is in power after the next election. 
Finally I will make one point with regard to the Land Transport Act—and my colleagues might talk about the Rates Rebate Act because I have run out of time to talk about the costs of implementing that Act. The fact is that this Government is now going to allow the staff of Transit New Zealand to become policemen. That is dopey. The police cannot actually do their job at all properly anyway and now the Government is giving them the authority to issue tickets for all sorts of silly things. It is nonsense. That was never intended in the Land Transport Act. 
There are lots of issues and we will be discussing those when we come to the Committee stage—probably next week. I conclude by saying that the National Opposition has lots of issues of concern and we are representing the ratepayers of this nation. But we have been immensely pleased with and helped by the staff of the Local Government and Environment Committee. We thank Beth Watson and the people who worked with us for all they did to help because without them we would not have made the progress that we have. We are very pleased they have assisted us in the way they have done and I say that especially from an Opposition point of view. But I say to that Minister and to the Government that local government is finally finding them out. As we go around the country we are getting more and more negative comments about Helen Clark Mark Burton and the Labour Government.