Sage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2847. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Local government has an enormous influence on nature on our quality of life on our neighbourhoods and on the way our communities function. It has a crucial role in creating the places and communities that are safe and pleasant to live play work and retire in.  
The Local Government Act was significantly overhauled and changed in 2002. The intention then was to empower local communities. Local authorities were intended to be the instruments of local democracy through which communities achieved the outcomes they aspired to. This bill winds back that philosophy. It winds back the philosophy of councils being the instruments of their communities. By changing the purpose of local government and dropping the requirement to promote the four well-beings it will restrict councils to nuts and bolts activities. This potentially prevents them from being the arm around their communities from undertaking activities such as the very successful Christchurch City Council’s KidsFest school holiday programme or from providing affordable rental accommodation. As the regulatory impact statement on the Better Local Government discussion paper notes there may well be unintended consequences around changing the purpose of local government because that whole concept of well-being is woven throughout the principal Act and throughout the whole framework of local government. 
 In relation to changing the councils’ purpose this Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill is a solution—and a very poorly conceived one—looking for a problem. That is because section 11A of the principal Act already requires councils to “have particular regard to … core services … (a) network infrastructure: (b) public transport services: (c) solid waste collection and disposal: (d) the avoidance or mitigation of natural hazards: (e) libraries museums reserves recreational facilities …”. It was not just the regulatory impact statement that said there was no evidence of a proliferation of council activities since 2003; it was also the report of the Local Government Rates Inquiry in 2007.  
So the Green Party is opposing this bill. One of the other reasons is that it takes the “local” out of “local government”. It will mean that councils are potentially much more under the thumb and direction of Wellington and that is because the bill gives the Minister huge powers to intervene and effectively direct what councils do. So instead of local councils and central government operating in their own spheres with councils accountable to local electors we will get a very strange hybrid. We will have local councils that will always have their eye on Wellington and that will be quite nervous of the Minister intervening through the appointment of Crown observers Crown managers or a Crown review team or through the ultimate sanction of sacking elected councillors and replacing them with appointed commissioners.  
These ministerial intervention powers concentrate much more power in the executive. They undermine local autonomy and they give the Minister very wide discretion to intervene because of the very generous way in which the trigger for intervention is defined. It is defined as a “significant problem” and how is “problem” defined? It is “a matter or circumstance relating to the management or governance of the local authority that detracts from or is likely to detract from its ability to give effect to the purpose of local government within its district or region;”. That allows a huge amount of subjectivity in the Minister’s decision. If it is easier for the Minister to get involved he or she is more likely to as the Minister did in Canterbury and that will cut across democratic decision-making and it will cut across the fundamental principle of having no taxation without representation. What is most galling under this bill is that if the Minister appoints commissioners it is not central government that pays for them; it is local electors and local ratepayers who are expected to.  
Certainly there have been some well-publicised examples of poorly managed council expenditure such as the V8 race in Hamilton and Kaipara’s costly sewerage system but most councils are getting on with their job efficiently and effectively. Most councils are doing it in a financially prudent way. They have a financial strategy they have a revenue and finance policy and they are audited by the Auditor-General. In a recessionary climate we are already seeing in this year’s round of annual plans councils cutting and adjusting their spending.  
If expenditure is capped and limited to no more than the ratio of the population growth multiplied by the rate of increase in the Consumers Price Index this is potentially going to encourage councils to neglect investing in upgrading and maintaining their infrastructure potentially burdening future generations with an increased cost. As the law firm Simpson Grierson has noted benchmarking expenditure to the Consumers Price Index is troubling because local authorities’ costs especially land and infrastructure costs are increasing more rapidly than other costs like food costs that the Consumers Price Index measures. The Local Government Cost Index would be a much more relevant measure. We all know too that household sizes impact on the services that councils have to provide so it is household numbers rather than population growth that would be a much better measure.  
This bill is bad because it takes the “local” out of “local government” by the way in which it advances National’s agenda of creating supertanker councils—large unitary councils that are difficult for the public to access and to influence. It will see local councils that represent their local communities overwhelmed by the push to create the Auckland model and roll that out throughout New Zealand. As the Napier City Council has said in a letter to many MPs: “It is not reasonable to conclude yet that the Auckland model of local government will serve all in New Zealand well if it is used as a blueprint for every other region.” Outside Auckland that three-tier structure with the regional council the city and district council and community boards works well. If we are going to clean up our waterways we need to look at what is happening in urban waterways—the impact of stormwater and sewage discharges—as well as rural waterways. Where you have that separation of power between the regional council as an environmental regulator and the district or city council providing the services of stormwater management the sewerage system and the like you get more accountability and more transparency. In Christchurch we would still have had treated sewage being discharged into the Avon-Heathcote Estuary if it had not been for the regional council having the decision-making role there because it was the regional council commissioners who said no to that. The city council wanted to continue to discharge it into the estuary.  
Government spokespeople have suggested that the current legislation around amalgamations is not working and that is presumably because small communities with existing councils are voting to retain the status quo and not amalgamate. To me that is evidence that the legislation is working well. Votes against amalgamation show—and I quote the Napier City Council—“that communities have confidence in the localness of their existing council. They value their ability to communicate directly with local representatives and hold them accountable for the decisions they make.” That is the unanimous view of the mayor and all 12 councillors of the Napier City Council. This bill by changing those amalgamation procedures and giving the Local Government Commission a central role is anti-democratic because of the procedures that Mr Grant Robertson mentioned where you have a poll over all electors in the area affected by the amalgamation and not just in each single council area and the requirement that 10 percent of electors must demand that referendum. That is heavily weighted against small communities that want to retain their local voice and their independence through having their own council. Their voice risks being overwhelmed by all of the electors in the affected area and that is anti-democratic.  
In the Green Party we care about the places we live: our neighbourhoods and our towns. We want to make them better living places where people are better connected where communities are stronger and more resilient and where prosperity is shared. We want councils that are the voice for their communities that manage their finances prudently and that invest in sound infrastructure so that our stormwater and sewage discharges are well treated and do not pollute our rivers. We oppose the major thrust of this bill because it reduces the voice of local communities it is anti-democratic and it allows too much scope for Ministers to interfere with local government. It will muddle the accountability of local councils to their electors and make them more responsive to the Minister in Wellington.