Sio William: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10302. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I am happy to stand with my colleagues and also support this bill. This bill amends the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009. Members of this House will recall what happened in 2009: this was when this Government imposed on Auckland a super-city structure a structure that most Aucklanders call a corporate takeover because at that particular time there were promises that there would be savings—a whole range of promises that have not come to pass. At that time there were eight councils in Auckland. Every one of the suburbs in those cities also had its community board and every one of those eight councils had a chairman a mayor and a number of councillors. Once this structure came into place the governance structure was shrunk into only 20 members now and a mayor.What happened in Manukau is that we lost our beloved city of Manukau. In Māngere we used to have our community board but now we have a local board that includes Māngere Ōtāhuhu and parts of Papatoetoe. The point I am making is that once upon a time a person could have stood on one or more community boards but not with the current structure that this Government has put in place since 2009 because essentially local boards have replaced what used to be our councils. I say this constantly to our Māngere-ŌtāhuhuLocal Board that they are essentially representing our part of Manukau City to Auckland Council. So I absolutely agree that the role of local board members now—and we have got Lemauga Lydia Sosene who chairs the Māngere-ŌtāhuhuLocal Board. That is a full-time role. She is a fantastic advocate for the community and all the officials speak very highly of her but it is a full-time job. Every other member on that local board has portfolios that they look after. I have to say that the chair seems to operate her local board as if that was a Cabinet. In my mind it is virtually impossible under the Government-imposed structure for a person to fully implement her or his duties if they are serving on one or more local boards. There is no doubt in my mind that this is what ought to be.It was not just Maggie Barry; Phil Twyford raised this and I am grateful that Alfred Ngaro has now taken the opportunity to advance this particular bill. In the select committee hearings and I do not know whether Mr Ngaro would want to respond to this we did suggest at that early stage that this is just Auckland: the bill amends the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 but we have not yet considered other parts of New Zealand and whether the situation still occurs where you have got a person sitting on one or more local boards representing those communities. As I said I think that under the old structure where there was various representation going on and it was much closer to the community you could afford to have somebody sitting on one or more boards but not in this situation. Because this Government took away our beloved Manukau City the replacement has been the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board. I do not know whether that was considered.I remember Ron Mark one time in this House before I was a member of Parliament raising an issue about policemen being able to stand on council. I do not know whether the member whose bill this is had an opportunity to consider that or not. We have situations where councillors are able to stand for council as well as for the district health board. I do not know whether the member whose bill this is had an opportunity to consider that sort of situation. So he may want to stand up and answer questions on that.I will just bring it to a close now. Yes this bill ought to be supported and I stand with my colleagues to do so but there were some other questions that were raised that the bill could not answer because this bill fixes a huge mistake that this Government made in 2009 when it imposed the super-city structure on Auckland. Despite the tens of thousands of people who protested against that imposed structure which they called a “hostile takeover” of the assets of Auckland it continued. So again we are having to fix the mistakes of this Government.