Twyford Phil: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Twyford Phil: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15520] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I preface my comments by congratulating the Minister of Local Government the Hon Rodney Hide on announcing to New Zealand today his impending nuptials and impending addition to his family. I warmly express best wishes to the Minister and all happiness for his family. 
What is the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill? It is the bedraggled and washed-up remains of Rodney Hide’s nutty Business Roundtable - inspired agenda to remake local government. He set off around the country last year with his TAFM paper otherwise known as the paper on the transparency accountability and financial management of local government. That paper contained a number of elements that alarmed New Zealanders. It contained his proposal for a list of core services that councils would be required to limit their activities to. It contained his rate-capping agenda. It contained proposals for mandatory referenda. If councils wanted to stray from his arbitrarily prescribed list of core services or if they were going to deviate from previously established limits on rates they would have to put that proposal to a referendum. It also contained an agenda for the deregulation of municipal water which the Minister followed up by recommending to Cabinet the total liberalisation of the ownership of municipal water. That would have led to a sweeping away of every single control that exists currently in legislation for the public ownership of municipal water. It is a recipe for small government and an extreme right-wing prescription that really lives only in the imaginations of the members of the ACT Party. 
The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill bears little resemblance to the mad agenda that Rodney Hide trotted around the country last year. One word explains the difference between these two things: Auckland. Auckland became for Rodney Hide and this Government a political disaster zone. His stewardship of the Auckland super-city reforms seriously dented the Government’s political standing with voters in Auckland which holds one-third of the population of New Zealand. His principles and policies to corporatise local government and open up assets for privatisation alarmed Aucklanders so much that a solid 50 percent of them registered serious concerns about his Auckland policies for the last year. Those concerns contributed I believe to the election of a mayor and a council who utterly rejected Rodney Hide’s policy prescription for local government. There was a massive public backlash against his policies: the over-centralisation of power the corporatisation of three-quarters of local government in Auckland and the total lack of consultation and democratic process with which he proceeded to implement the Auckland super-city. 
So I ask what remains in this bill of Rodney Hide’s agenda. Well there are the provisions for water privatisation which will allow a council to contract the private sector to deliver water supply services for periods of up to 35 years—35 years. That is 11 electoral cycles; that is a contract one or perhaps two generations long. This bill legislates for private sector contractors to be able to own water infrastructure for the duration of those contracts. What is worse than the fact that a council will be able to contract out water services for 35 years is the fact that—and this alarms New Zealanders even more— it can do it in the dead of night without consulting anybody. It can contract those services without saying a damn thing to ratepayers who have paid for those assets and whose parents have paid for them with their rates over generations. We will be talking more about the provisions that allow private ownership of treatment plants dams pipelines—private ownership of water infrastructure—during 35-year contracts. 
What else is in here? There is a raft of cuts to the current statutory requirements for councils to consult their citizens. For example if a council wants to contract out public services to the private sector it can do so without saying a thing to its ratepayers and citizens. If a council wants to transfer services to a council-controlled organisation a council-owned company it can do that under this bill without saying a thing to its citizens—without consulting the public. 
The bill contains the provision for core services albeit in a watered-down form. Clause 5 introduces a narrow arbitrary list of core services that councils must pay particular regard to. We believe—and many many submitters to the Local Government and Environment Committee believe—that the list will tilt the playing field in favour of the listed core services and make it more difficult for councils to do many of the things that New Zealanders consider to be very important functions. Mr Hide’s list of core services does not mention environmental protection economic development or social development like for instance pensioner housing. We see in here a watered-down remnant of Mr Hide’s desire to have a rate-capping mechanism to stop councils increasing their rates and we see also that the financial strategy binds councils to limit rates increases and budget expenditure. We will discuss that some more in the Committee stage. 
A number of other issues which are probably the least offensive provisions in this bill relate to financial transparency: the requirement of a financial strategy a pre-election report and a funding impact statement. We are in general support of these provisions with some exceptions but I note that the preponderance of submitters to the select committee was lukewarm at best about them and the overwhelming verdict of the local government sector was that the provisions would have very little consequence if any. A number of the councils said that the main result of the provisions would be a whole lot of extra compliance requirements and significant extra cost to the ratepayer. That will be one of the significant legacies that Rodney Hide—the “Minister of Ratepayers” as he likes to call himself—delivers to New Zealand ratepayers through this bill. 
What did the select committee make of all this and what did the people think? Overwhelmingly people submitted against the bill. By my count there were 414 submissions in total; 360 of those 414 submissions were expressly against the water privatisation provisions—360 out of 414. I think that is a damning indictment of Rodney Hide’s policies. 
Louise Upston 
: How many of them were form submissions Phil? 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Almost none of them—almost none of them were form submissions. The member might like to go back and check the pile of submissions and she will find that very very few—probably only a handful of them—were form submissions. There was overwhelming public opposition to the water privatisation provisions in this bill. No one except the Local Government Forum which is the Business Roundtable with its local government hat on thought that the core services idea was sensible. Hardly anyone had a good thing to say about it. I am amazed that the Government has seen fit to leave the core services provision in the bill because no one had a good word to say about it. I do not understand that. 
The great majority of individuals who submitted on the bill thought that the cuts to consultation were appalling. As I said the main verdict on the transparency provisions and financial reporting was that it was going to lead to a significant increase in cost to the ratepayer. 
The most galling thing about this process is that this bill is the latest bill that Rodney Hide has brought to this House that takes away the democratic rights of New Zealanders in local government. What do we see? Yet again he is pushing through a bill under urgency that weakens our democratic process and our public institutions.