Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill(No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13578. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): Labour is supporting this bill the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) at its second reading. It is a pretty uncontroversial technical bill. I mean it is here in the House today only because of incompetence in the drafting by the Government of the transitional legislation for the establishment of the Auckland super-city. It is only because of the Government’s incompetence that we are here spending taxpayers’ money debating this bill which should never ever have been brought before this House. It is fundamental that these local boards have to have the powers to delegate their tasks and responsibilities to the staff of the council. That is fundamental to their operation and yet the Government was so incompetent that it put those provisions into transitional legislation that had a sunset clause. So we should not be wasting time on it in the House today but it is an interesting postscript to the story of the establishment of the Auckland Council.An amalgamation of eight local territorial authorities the biggest local government amalgamation this country has ever seen created the new Auckland Council with more assets than Fonterra and Telecom combined. It was a new model of local government in this country and I think that this is a good opportunity to just reflect on the story of that amalgamation. It started with the far-sighted and visionary work of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance set up by Helen Clark’s Government. It was almost destroyed by the brutish and crude anti-democratic implementation—Carol Beaumont: By Rodney Hide.PHIL TWYFORD: —of the royal commission reforms by Rodney Hide on behalf of the National Government. They did everything they could to subvert the intent of the royal commission. They replaced the royal commission’s recommendations with anextreme centralised model of governance which took power away from communities and away from the regions and put it into the governing body. They corporatised 75 percent of Auckland Council’s assets and operations into these so-called council-controlled organisations which do most of their business behind closed doors.Unsurprisingly the people of Auckland were alarmed. They were alarmed at the threat to their assets because it was very clear to everybody in Auckland over those years when the super-city was being set up that the way Rodney Hide and the National Government went about it was simply with the purpose of setting up the assets in these corporatised entities so they could be flogged off once John Banks won the mayoralty. That was clearly the plan and understandably the people of Auckland were alarmed. So what did they do? They acted in the most rational way that they could in our democratic system and they elected Len Brown a mayor committed to holding on to Auckland’s assets and committed to embracing the community. He is a man whose political style is all about uniting people not dividing them and someone who embraces Auckland’s diverse peoples and who embraces the youthful population of Auckland. It is Len Brown’s inclusive and dynamic leadership as the first mayor of the Auckland super-city that has really snatched victory from the jaws of the National Government’s best efforts to steal Auckland’s democracy and sell off its assets. That is the story so far of the Auckland super-city.I want to remember the debates that we had in this House about for example the establishment of the local boards whose ability to delegate their powers is the issue that this bill seeks to rectify. As I said the National Government opted for a much more heavily centralised model than the royal commission had recommended and it set up a proliferation of local boards—21 of them—with very few real powers. They had no power to own property and no power to make by-laws or regulations. They are there simply as a kind of public engagement mechanism to advocate on behalf of their communities. In spite of the best efforts of the National Government actually I have to say that the local boards have been quite successful. The jury I think is probably out still as to whether it is a successful model for the Auckland Council but by and large they have been successful for two reasons. One is the tireless efforts of good committed community leaders on those local boards working on behalf of their communities and there is the inclusive leadership of Mayor Len Brown and his council which for example involved the chairs of all those local boards in the Auckland Unitary Plan committee which has been working so hard in recent months.The second thing that was such a point of controversy during the establishment of the Auckland super-city was the council-controlled organisations which in a breathtaking move by Rodney Hide and his National Government cronies corporatised 75 percent of the operations of local government in Auckland—extraordinary when compared with any other local authority anywhere else in the country. The predictions that were made in the editorial columns of theNew Zealand Heraldand by many other commentators have been borne out. Those council-controlled organisations have been largely unaccountable to Auckland Council. They have done much of their business in secret and the hand-picked business appointees who are responsible for the governance of those entities—for managing the publicly owned assets of the people of Auckland—have acted largely behind a veil of secrecy. It does not surprise me that Mayor Len Brown has promised a review of those very badly named council-controlled organisations. Len Brown and his council have promised after the local government elections to do a review of those council-controlled organisations to determine whether or not that is the best structure for them and to look I think at bringing some of them back in-house so they are subject to much more democratic control.We argued in this House against Steven Joyce’s insistence that Auckland Transport which spends on transport more than half of the rates that Aucklanders contribute every year—Steven Joyce insisted against the recommendations of his officials in Treasury and in the Ministry of Transport—be set up as a council-controlled organisation and he legislated for it. The only local government transport organisation in the whole country that Parliament has mandated by legislation had to be set up as a corporate entity. That is wrong.It is still our policy to change the law—to legislate to give back that democratic right to the mayor and the councillors of Auckland as the democratically elected representatives to decide what the structure should be. Should it be a council-controlled organisation or should it be run in-house? What do the people of Auckland prefer? We will carry out that promise when we are back in Government.The third thing that I want to mention is debt. Financial prudence was one of the big motivations for the amalgamation. Rodney Hide trumpeted all the savings that he hoped to make. It was going to eliminate duplication and waste. He was much more reticent in this House about admitting that the IT system that his establishment authority imposed on Auckland Council would cost over the decade that followed close to a billion dollars—just for the IT system. It was like pulling hen’s teeth getting the Minister of Local Government in the National-ACT Government to admit the true cost of that IT system. Again this is another example of Len Brown snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. His financial stewardship has allowed the debt to stay within a very reasonable level while this Government has borrowed $50 billion. This National Government has borrowed more money than any other Government in New Zealand’s history. If the mayor that the National Government had wanted to be elected John Banks had won instead of Len Brown we probably would have seen a continuation of what he did when he tripled the debt of the old Auckland City when he was the Mayor of Auckland City prior to the amalgamation. He tripled the debt. Thankfully under Len Brown’s careful financial stewardship we have seen a much better level of financial management.Finally I want to say that the leadership that we have seen from Len Brown and the Auckland Council over the last 3 years has been something that Auckland our biggest city and this country have been crying out for. For the first time since Robbie Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson in the 1960s we have a mayor who has championed the need for a public transport system in Auckland. Len Brown to his credit rolled Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee who for 3 years blocked Aucklanders’ aspirations for a decent modern public transport system and a City Rail Link that will double the capacity of the existing rail network. That is a victory for Len Brown. That is why Len Brown has no credible opponent from the right wing in the mayoral contest this year. That is why he will be elected. That is the story of how Len Brown clutched victory—