Kedgley Sue: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3232] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 Well we have heard all sorts of soothing reassuring words from the National Government and the Act Party. They have been so soothing. For example Mr John Carter said that this Government is all about consultation but he also said that by the way there will no consultation on the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill—none whatsoever. It is the critical bill. It sets up the Auckland Transition Agency which will set the whole new governance arrangement in place and basically wipe out local government in Auckland but there will be no consultation on it. The Government will ram the bill through the House in 24 hours. It is using the Rogernomics shock tactic of ramming things through. There will be no consultation on the bill but the Government says it is very keen to consult. 
The other thing is that once this legislation has been rammed through the House what will be left to consult about? The only thing I have heard that the people of Auckland will be consulted about is the powers of the local boards. That is all that the members of the Government have come up with. They say that there will be a lot of consultation and that there will be a special select committee. But what will people be consulted about? They will be consulted about the details of the powers of the local boards. Everything else will have already been set in stone. Mr Hide’s hand-picked cabal on the Auckland Transition Agency will be in place as of the end of this week or perhaps early next week and it will have the powers. It will start setting up the whole super-city and it will get ready to demolish the eight democratically elected councils which represent 1.4 million Aucklanders. The super-city will be effectively set up over the next few months. By the time we have this wonderful consultation taking place in the select committee there will really in truth be nothing left to consult about apart from what the powers of the local boards will be. 
Let us face it: the local boards would have to get a lot more power to be anything other than a complete joke. These local boards will not even be enshrined in law. At least community boards have a statutory basis; they are enshrined in law. These local boards will have no statutory basis. They will exist completely at the whim of the Auckland mega-city. They will comprise only four to nine members. We have been told that the members will be paid the princely sum that community board members are paid which is about $10000 a year. So the lucky members on these local boards will receive $10000 a year. Under this bill the local board members will have absolutely no resources and no power. They will not be able to hire staff own anything levy rates borrow money make by-laws or develop plans. So what can they do? These local boards are the only counterpoint to this huge Auckland super-city which will have approximately 20 elected members and will have control—complete total control—over everything that takes place in Auckland. 
The other thing I would like to point out is that the Minister of Local Government has been going all around New Zealand talking about his concerns about local government. One of the things that he has said is that he wants to bring openness and transparency to local government. But when we look at clause 13(1)(e) of this Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill we notice that far from being open and transparent the Auckland Transition Agency that Mr Hide is setting up his band of merry men—five of them who will basically have complete control draconian powers and who will review everything that takes place in the next 18 months—will be required only “to provide information to the public of Auckland or any section of that public as it thinks fit in relation to the organisation”. So if the Auckland Transition Agency does not see fit to divulge information about what it is up to it will not have to. I ask Mr Hide whether that is openness and transparency which is what he has been going around the country saying he wants to bring in. The first thing we find is that Mr Hide is setting up an agency that will not have to be open or transparent and will provide information to Aucklanders only as it sees fit. 
The second thing we note is that Mr Hide will be able to appoint his five cronies without even going through the normal processes of the Cabinet appointments and honours committee. This committee has been in the news recently because it approved the nomination of Christine Rankin as a Families Commissioner. At least her appointment had to go through the Cabinet appointments and honours committee. But it turns out that the appointments to the Auckland Transition Agency—which will have draconian powers to neuter the eight councils of Auckland to obliterate them in November of next year and to oversee every single thing that happens in Auckland in the next few years—will not even have to go through the Cabinet appointments and honours committee. The Greens will put forward an amendment to require that the appointments go through that process because we think it is absurd that one man—namely Rodney Hide—without any oversight can appoint five others who will rule Auckland making decisions that affect 1.4 million Aucklanders. 
Mr Hide has been very keen on saying that central government should not impose costs on local government. He has been going right around New Zealand saying that. But it turns out that this issue is hidden in the bill. When we read the fine print we find out that central government—Rodney Hide’s Government—is imposing all the costs of the transition on the ratepayers of Auckland. They will have to pay to have their local democracy wiped out which 45 percent of Aucklanders already oppose. I suspect that once they start to understand the implications of what is happening in this bill even more Aucklanders will oppose it. Nevertheless those ratepayers will have to pay for it. It will be a Crown debt and it will be handed over to the Auckland ratepayers when the Auckland Transition Agency winds up. 
It is also extraordinary that Mr Hide said we must not do anything in terms of government unless we know that the benefits will outweigh the costs. But he will not tell us the cost of this restructuring. We learn from reading this bill that there has not even been a regulatory impact analysis. Mr Hide has been floating around a regulatory impact bill which says we must have regulatory impact analyses of everything done by our Government. But his bill—this draconian bill—states that the regulatory impact analysis team has not assessed the regulatory impact statement because it was prepared after Cabinet’s decisions were made not before. There should have been a regulatory impact statement before Cabinet considered this bill but there was not one. The regulatory impact analysis team has not even done a cost-benefit analysis. This is shocking. It undermines everything that Rodney Hide has been running around the country and saying about his priorities for local government. 
In respect of mega-cities overseas I would point out that virtually every study that has ever been done has shown that the costs of amalgamation have been far more significant than the costs that would have been incurred if amalgamation had not taken place. Also when we have what is effectively forced amalgamation—and that is what we are talking about here—it results in deep unhappiness particularly among the communities that will be disenfranchised by this legislation. No study has ever shown that people think they are better off with a mega-city because when they end up with a huge bloated inaccessible super-city they quickly discover that they cannot access or influence it. They are disenfranchised and disempowered. That of course is the agenda of Rogernomics.