Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3712] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I rise to support the amendment of my colleague Sue Kedgley that states this bill should more appropriately be called the “Gutting of Local Democracy Bill”. We have heard from Rodney Hide that the bill will take effect for the most part on the day after it receives the Royal assent. I think many Aucklanders will be very concerned that that will be the beginning of the stripping away of their local democracy and their ability to participate properly in civic affairs. I think they will be looking to another commencement date—the commencement date of the hikoi in Auckland. The hikoi has been initiated by Maori and will be led by them but no doubt it will bring in a lot of Aucklanders who want to protest. People will be coming from the south the north and the west and from the Orakei Marae into the centre of town for a big march up Queen Street to Aotea Square. I think that will be a very important commencement date. 
One thing that worries me is that when this bill takes effect and the Minister appoints the members of the transitional agency— 
Sue Kedgley 
: The gang of four. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: It is called the gang of four by my colleague. It is the gang of four if we include Rodney Hide. The agency needs to have only three members—a chair and two others. If we look at the schedules which unfortunately we did not get time to debate in some detail we see they state that the quorum can be two members. If there are three members—the chair and two others—and the chair is empowered under the provision in the schedules to call meetings at times and in places that its chairman appoints he can call a meeting of just himself and one of the other members who turns up. They can have a vote but if it is divided then the chair has the casting vote so we have one person who can effectively direct everything in Auckland for that whole transitional period. When we think that there are all those other provisions that any agenda items can be interfered with and anything can be changed basically that puts huge power particularly in the hands of the chair of the board. 
We can contrast that with the powers under the associated bill where the local community boards—20 or 30 of them—do not have any powers at all other than what is delegated by the larger Auckland Council. The larger Auckland Council might say “We’re not going to delegate anything. Get stuffed.” and that would be it under this legislation. 
So members can see how the name “Gutting of Local Democracy Bill” is very appropriate. Why could it not have gone to a select committee? I was on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee for the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill. We had less than a month to consider that bill. Perhaps we should have had longer but it shows that we can have short periods medium periods or long periods of select committee consideration. 
What was the Government scared about when it said that this transition bill could not go through a select committee process? It is outrageous but it sort of fits in with what the Government did not long after it came to power which was to rush a whole lot of important bills through Parliament under urgency so that there was no proper consideration. It is becoming a pattern—a very bad pattern. 
As Chris Hipkins said this process could be a blueprint for what will happen across the country including to the Wellington region. It is something that every New Zealander should shake in their boots about and not just think it is something that concerns only Auckland. It concerns the very democracy of this country. We do not want democracy to be cut out at the local level and have democracy—even limited democracy as we have seen over this urgency period—only in this Parliament. The limitations on the Government in our unicameral parliamentary system are bad enough—things can be rushed through very fast despite the resistance in particular of the Maori Party the Greens and Labour—without stripping away the powers of the people in terms of their local democracy. So the Greens are very supportive of Sue Kedgley’s amendment and very much against this bill as a whole.