Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): The Green Party too is proud to oppose this appalling piece of legislation. Just to give a context to some of the feeling we have heard we have heard some of the Government members talking to this saying that they listened you know and that they were very carefully listening to submitters and they have made all these changes. I would just like to give the House a sense of the tone of some of the submitters many of whom will have been National Party members. I do remember one particular submitter who was an ex - National Party member of Parliament I think actually telling the Government it would not be re-elected if this piece of legislation went through in the form it is in. Some of the comments were This legislation is ill-informed and ill-conceived." and that was from the Palmerston North City Council; "This represents a loss of local self-determination." from the Hutt City Council; "This bill strikes at the very heart of local democracy … There is real anger across local government that this has been dumped on us without consultation." from the Greater Wellington Regional Council; and "It is not just undemocratic this is anti-democratic." from the Mayor of Napier. A fundamental question was also posed by a local community organisation that works with the council in Upper Hutt. It asked "Why would you disempower people from participating to create better communities? We need to consider how to raise civic engagement not take away people's options for engaging." which is what this bill did and what this bill still continues—in the trend of actions from this Government—to do. So I do want to acknowledge Local Government New Zealand and the leaders in local government for forcing the Government to listen and for working so hard with the officials to significantly improve this piece of legislation and I do acknowledge that it has been significantly improved. However in the Green Party we still have very significant outstanding concerns and from the tone of the submissions we do not think that those concerns have been addressed. Like previous speakers we heard continually from submitters that they did not see what the problem was. They were finding that in their local areas—and we were hearing this from Canterbury we were hearing this from Wellington; we were hearing this from all over—councils were collaborating and working effectively together without needing these changes. People did not see where the problem was and we have to understand that this law change comes within the context of the Government's suspension of democracy in Canterbury the removal of the four well-beings from the Local Government Act 2002 and the restrictions on notifications and opportunities for public participation under the Resource Management Act. We are seeing a trend of just encroaching influence from this National Government into local government affairs. We heard directly from Matt Doocey the last speaker about how councils need to be open to Government plans to drive service improvements and reduce costs. That is more of the same thinking—about those members knowing best. The thing is that actually our country and our constitutional arrangements such as we have them rely on this concept of subsidiarity and local democracy. Our councils have been tasked with doing specific jobs for their communities and that the relationship in terms of determining whether they are doing a good job or a bad job is accountable back to their local communities not this Government. That seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding and a thread in the legislation that we have been seeing through this House under this Government. One of our concerns about this legislation is that it is has an increased role for the Local Government Commission and this is an unelected group of people who are appointed by a Minister of this Government. Within the context of knowing this was happening and that this was probably going to go through in some form there were discussions about trying to get more people on the commission with guaranteed local government experience and even in that concept in negotiations with the Government all that it would give was to allow one person on that commission to be required to have local government experience. It really does send a message that actually this Government does not value the knowledge and the expertise of our local government leaders and that to the Green Party is a problem. Also in this legislation are greater powers for the Minister to set expectations and effectively direct the commission's work. New section 31A in clause 16 of the bill gives the Minister the authority to specify expectations in relation to areas that may be subject to an investigation and also to areas that may not be subject to an investigation. That is actually quite significant if there has been an amalgamation like the one that was put in place in Auckland as an example. If some of those communities there decided to go to the Local Government Commission and say that they did not want to be part of the super-city—which we know was set up as a National Government policy—then actually the Minister would have the power to direct the Local Government Commission not to investigate a reorganisation even though that community might want it. It is such a reinforcement of this power imbalance. Also there is the requirement on councils to seek the approval of the commission before consulting a transfer of responsibilities or an establishment of a multiple-owned water or transport council-controlled organisation (CCO). So this idea that this is just about supporting councils to be able to deliver and work together goes completely against that because they are being forced to consult and their wisdom their knowledge and their accountability to the communities is being undermined through these provisions. We also have remaining unease about the additional role of the Minister in directing the replacement or revoking of performance measures for councils. Initially the Minister was going to be able to set them up—that was in the initial review which was quite extraordinary—and that has been pulled back to the Minister now being able to direct the replacement or revoke performance measures post a review. But it still kind of just puts that idea in place that a Minister from this place would have any responsibility for performance measures to decide the accountabilities of a council to its community. Surely as we were often told by submitters what matters in terms of accountability with regard to performance measures is whether you are delivering for your community not whether you are delivering on the central government's agenda of what it thinks you should be delivering on. We also heard from the Minister that this legislation is about increased transparency. Well the Government has put in some ability for Official Information Act requests through the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act but the limitations are that you would be able to access the information going into investigations and reorganisation investigations but that will apply and you will get access only after the consideration investigation resolution or determination has been completed. So that is kind of a little bit too late folks. It is transparency after the fact and I am not sure how much that actually counts as transparency. We also heard from the Minister that this is not privileging CCOs as a model and yet I think she needs to have communicated more clearly to her MPs who were on the committee whether that was her intent because we have certainly heard from several of the National Party members about how the CCOs are actually the way to drive service improvements and reduction in costs. Yet those same members heard from submitters talking to us about an increasing problem around the CCOs that have already been created of contracting to larger organisations. Therefore our chain of businesses in New Zealand is now being compromised because small family-owned business that used to develop intellectual property and innovation from getting these contracts are being forced into the role of being subcontractors to these bigger businesses because the CCOs want to deal with only one and we are losing a huge amount of capacity in our country as a result."