Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:11555] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Talofa lava. Malo le soifua. It is great to rise to speak on two issues. The first is the local boards but I also will follow on from the comments of my colleague Ross Robertson on the relationship between the boards and our local business associations. 
I note that I am in the Chamber with a significant number of my Auckland colleagues. Up to a quarter of our Labour caucus have been here at any given point in this debate. I would also like to acknowledge Mr Bakshi who is sitting across the Chamber. I hope he too as an Auckland MP will be rising to speak. 
I would like to use the powers of the local boards and how they relate to other organisations as an illustration of a missed opportunity. That was something I was commenting on last night. There was an opportunity with this whole process to identify a way forward for Auckland—because we all agreed that change was needed—that people could buy into and to have consensus or as much consensus as we could get on the structure of the new Auckland. In Maungakiekie where I live and work we have highly functioning community boards which is not how some people perceive their community boards. We have highly functioning business associations. We have the Tamaki Community Board the Maungakiekie Community Board the Glen Innes Business Association the Panmure Business Association the Ellerslie Business Association and the Onehunga Business Association. We have many engaged community organisations that want to do the best for our local area. 
I say that by way of background because the local boards do not have the power they need to actually do the job that people want them to do and that as other colleagues have said the overwhelming majority of submitters want them to do. I think some of the comment is mistaken. I notice that the majority report on the bill states: “We consider that specifying their”—that is the local boards—“role in legislation in detail would compromise the ability of local boards to respond to the unique and varied needs of their local communities.” That assumes that the list would be exhaustive but that is not what Labour members are saying. We are saying that minimum provisions should be there but of course other things will happen in addition—the permissive if you like that Mr Carter and others have talked about. I also think there has been flawed logic from those who say that the powers are more than what the community boards currently have and that therefore they are sufficient. We could look at that from the other way around and say that the powers are less than what the existing councils have. So I think that with the local boards we are talking about a new kind of organisation. A lot has been said throughout the whole process over the last year about the Government listening. Big promises were made about the local boards; I am sure that the stakes for the Government are high and a lot of people as others have noted are listening. The local boards are one of the areas where there has not been delivery on the promise to listen. People wanted clear powers for the local boards. 
I would like to follow on from my colleague Ross Robertson and talk about the way that the relationship between the business associations and the local boards will work. He has correctly read into the record the concerns that Mr Cameron Brewer has raised. There are others raising concerns. The Onehunga Business Association has raised some issues about how the relationship will work in comparison with how its current relationship works—very successfully as I have said—and how the list of things that our local boards possibly will do will work. It is illustrative of the missed opportunity I talked about at the start and a rushed time frame. The non-regulatory functions listed and the relationship of the local boards with the business associations have caused significant reaction from those business associations and it reflects the problem of the need to have some clarity about roles and the relationship between the business associations and the local boards. I wonder whether it is because of the rush to add things to that list the rush to be seen to be giving a list of powers to the local boards in response to concern that they would not have any power. I wonder too whether it is reflective of a broader failure.