Mackey Moana: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 29 November 2012. Volume:686;Page:6968. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 It has been an extraordinary year for legislation in the House. Just when you think it cannot get any worse just when you think you have hit a real legislative low along comes Dr Nick Smith with his spade and digs even deeper because this bill the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill is just about one of the worst pieces of legislation I think we have had before the House. I say to Jami-Lee Ross that clearly he was not on the Local Government and Environment Committee because if he was he would know that in fact the submissions we received in favour of the bill were about as apathetic and lukewarm as you could possibly get. Yes submitters liked what Dr Smith said the bill was going to do but when they were actually pressed by members of the committee to show how it would achieve the claimed outcomes they all had to admit that in fact they had no guarantees of that. I do not think I have ever seen some of these groups as underwhelmed about a piece of legislation that they support as they were about the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. This will do nothing about rates increases—absolutely nothing. The great claim that it is somehow going to reduce rates and make it more affordable is a load of codswallop and Dr Smith knows that. There is no mechanism in this bill to reduce rates and there is nothing in this bill that is going to result in a reduction of costs to councils. 
Let us be clear. Where have the increased costs on councils come from that have been passed on to ratepayers? From infrastructure. They have come from infrastructure and from requirements put on councils by central government to meet new standards without the attached funding—without the attached funding. So when you look at the infrastructure as Mr Williams pointed out John Key has been telling local government for years that it needs to spend more on infrastructure that its debt levels are so prudent that it is in the position that it can do that in a responsible manner that our economic development as a country cannot go forward if local government does not come to the party and increase its spending on infrastructure and that he wanted to partner with it to ensure that both central and local government were investing in this infrastructure. Local government went ahead it did what the Prime Minister asked it to do it did it in good faith and then what happened? Nick Smith turns round and kicks it in the guts for doing exactly what the Prime Minister asked it to do and uses it as a reason to pass a piece of legislation that will completely gut local government in New Zealand. 
Was John Key setting up local government? Was this all part of some big plan to set local government up so that it increased its debt because the Government asked it to spend more on infrastructure and Nick Smith could then swoop in and blame it for increasing its debt to pay for the infrastructure that John Key asked for? Or is this just complete ineptitude where one hand of Government does not know what the other hand is doing? Well I always favour cock-up over conspiracy so I suspect that Nick Smith and John Key just did not even talk about this. While John Key was travelling around the country asking councils to be more responsible and to invest in infrastructure Nick Smith was slowly crawling along behind him wringing his hands in pleasure thinking “This is going to give me the reason I need to do what I have always wanted to do which is to centralise power and control over local government in New Zealand.” 
And it is a tragedy because this bill removes the four well-beings. We heard from Jacqui Dean who said: “Oh it does not matter because they can still do everything they already wanted to do under the new purpose clause.” Then why remove the four well-beings? If the intent was not to limit what local government can do then why did we have to remove the four well-beings? The fact is that Jacqui Dean knows very well and Nick Smith knows very well that this is all about telling councils what they can and cannot do. This is all about restricting their activities. Dr Smith is nodding. He might want to tell his colleague Jacqui Dean who said the exact opposite of that. 
Dr Smith as well as being the former “Minister for Manufactured Crises” is also the former “Minister for Manufactured Outrage”. He stood up today and he gave a great speech on just how dreadful it is that local government has gone into all these areas that it should not be going into that it is out of control and that it is just crazy what it is doing. What a load of nonsense. As Nick Smith well knows the figures that he used to justify this legislation were so shonky that the Department of Internal Affairs had to take them down off the website but not before we managed to print off a copy of them to show just how shonky those figures are. He constantly refers to the one council that is having financial difficulties at the moment—and very serious financial difficulties—which is the Kaipara District Council. One out of 78 councils. One out of 78 councils and apparently we have to gut the entire system because one council at the moment is in trouble. It is no wonder that 100 percent of local authorities voted against this legislation—all oppose it all say it will not work and all say it will do more damage than good. 
And it is all apparently to arrest rates increases which this bill will not do. It will not do that at all unless the message that the Government is now sending to local government is “Stop investing in infrastructure because we don’t want you to do it.” Let us just remember that this is at a time when the Government is pulling back support for local government. It used to help out provincial councils with their local roads. Well that funding has been cut. That funding has been cut right back. Where does Nick Smith think that those councils are going to get that money from? In order to bridge that gap where central government did partner with local government it will have to turn to ratepayers. Then Nick Smith will blame local government for having to turn to ratepayers to bridge the gap in funding that his Government has cut. Well there is a word for that. 
Local government knows very well the dangers of this piece of legislation. Nowhere is the impact of this going to be more serious than in provincial and rural New Zealand where the councils rely on the flexibility of the four well-beings so that they can determine for themselves what their priorities should be as a council in consultation with their communities. It is not Nick Smith sitting in Wellington telling them what their priorities will be; it is those councils deciding for themselves. So you look at the example of the Ashburton District Council which is providing health services in Rakaia because the Government is not doing that. Those communities would not have access to those services without their council. Look at the running of festivals around the country for communities of interest; look at the work Mayor Meng Foon in Gisborne has been doing trying to support the Gisborne to Napier rail line; and look at Mayor John Forbes in Opotiki who has been running an economic development strategy to get more aquaculture to provide hundreds and hundreds of jobs to employ the people of Opotiki. Todd McClay should know. The Mayor of Kawerau is an absolute advocate for that community and the work he has done leading a response to youth suicide in that community has been incredibly valuable in that community. If you look at the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs— 
Todd McClay 
: What’s his name? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —Malcolm Campbell—that is a scheme that has had far more success in addressing rising youth unemployment than anything this Government has done in its 4 years. Look at the work that Dale Williams has been doing the Mayor of Otorohanga in running that. All these things I have mentioned are now no longer going to be the mandate of local government. Well actually it should be up to local government. It is democratically elected. It is democratically elected just like members of this House. It should be up to them to decide what is right for their communities not for the National Government and its support parties to dictate down from on high. 
One of the most worrying parts of this legislation—and Canterbury members know this all too well—is that when we have a reorganisation of local government at the moment where a council is being removed or amalgamated currently all the communities involved have the right to a referendum. So if you are amalgamating four councils they will have a referendum in each of those councils. If one of those councils votes against it it does not go ahead. What this means is that all that groundwork has to be done beforehand to address all the issues all the concerns of the communities involved before it gets put to a referendum. They know that if there is one district that feels as though its views and priorities and needs are going to be overlooked in a much larger council then the whole thing could fall apart. That is what happened in Dr Nick Smith’s own area of Nelson-Tasman. Now that is going. Now there is no longer an automatic right to a referendum. So we will see—or we could see and I think we will see—the subsuming of the interests of smaller councils by much larger councils without that protection that was in law to ensure that no community no matter how isolated it is and no matter how small it is will have its needs overridden by the views of a much larger voting bloc somewhere else in the district. 
You only have to look at Canterbury where the Canterbury Regional Council is not democratically elected. My colleague Megan Woods who represents the electorate of Wigram tells me that her constituents would love to be allowed to have an election for their regional council next year. 
Dr Megan Woods 
: Please. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Please sir Dr Nick Smith can we have an election like everyone else in the country is going to have? But what we are actually seeing in this legislation if you look at the Wellington region is that it is clear that Dr Nick Smith is setting this up so that he can defer the Wellington election next year. So you will not be alone Canterbury in not having an election because I suspect Wellington will also not have elections. The voters out there in Wellington at the moment could have under this legislation a power handed to the Hon Dr Nick Smith when he takes back his role as Minister of Local Government whereby he could just say: “You know what? Be damned with democracy. You don’t get to have your election because I am on a tight time frame and you’re actually interfering with it with all your needs for elections and elected members and such annoying things. So I’m going to defer your elections.” And who knows when they will get their election back? Who knows when they will get their election back? 
This is not how local government needs to operate in New Zealand and the worst aspect of all of this is that there is no mischief that needs addressing here. Local government ain’t broke. Dr Nick Smith has broken it now. It was not broken. It was working well. It was meeting the needs of all communities around New Zealand not the ideological desires of one man the Hon Dr Nick Smith.