Local Government Law Reform Bill (No 3)

When the Government passed the Local Government Act of 2002, it created a bureaucratic nightmare for our home communities in terms of defining what a council organisation and a council-controlled organisation are, and introduced a whole set of performance criteria and special consultative procedures, which those organisations are required to do. What members are being asked to do now with these 20 clauses is patch up the mess for those organisations and make some additional amendments. Members on this side of the Chamber would simply say that the amendments do not resolve the problem, because the problem is the very core of the legislation that was passed by that Minister in December 2002.

What is particularly ironic in this part is that members will effectively make a special exemption for Northport. We do not have any bugbear with Northport, nor with the fact that it will not be tied up in the bureaucratic provisions in those 20 clauses, but we would ask the Minister how many other examples will come out of the woodwork where his Act will be unworkable, and where the Act that was put through Parliament under urgency—as it is in urgency now—in December 2002 gets itself in trouble.

The costs associated with all those extra bureaucratic requirements fall on ratepayers. Over the last 3 years, there have been rate increases well above the rate of inflation. This Government is passing bureaucratic requirements down from central to local government without the funding, and ratepayers get that bill in their rate demands. There is very little in those 20 clauses that will make any difference to the increasing costs that Labour and Chris Carter are imposing on ratepayers out there in our 84 district and regional councils.

I also want to put to the Minister the increasing concern of local authorities about the costs of Audit New Zealand associated with those long-term council community plans. Now, only a Minister such as Chris Carter could come up with a phrase as wonky as “long-term community plans”.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: No, council community plans. You must get it right.

Oh, I must get it right—long-term community council plans.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: Council community plans. You still haven’t got it right.

Well, it says something about the bureaucracy this Minister is imposing on the councils of New Zealand that the planning industry is booming out there as it develops those long-term council community plans, and their district plans, and their regional plans. There is an excessive amount of planning requirements on councils that is adding hugely to the rates bills that citizens out there have to pay.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: Not true!

The Minister says: “Not true.” Well, looking at the information that is provided by Statistics New Zealand, since this Minister has been in the chair, rate increases have been three times the rate of inflation. Why is that?

💬 Hon Chris Carter: The member’s made it up.

Well, actually, Statistics New Zealand, for which this Government is responsible, has been the provider of those rates figures, which are well above the rate of inflation for every year that he has been Minister, and he does not give a hoot. At none of the meetings that he participated in has he ever expressed any concern for those average citizens on fixed incomes facing another round of record rate increases. The responsibility for those rate increases falls right back on this Minister, who continues to pass legislation that puts an extra bureaucratic burden on the councils of New Zealand, which is then passed on to ratepayers. The special consultative procedures, long-term council community plans, etc., are just part of that bureaucracy.

In speaking to Part 4, I am very pleased to see that provision was made for Northport, the company that the Hon Dover Samuels had a substantial part in creating and developing in his early years before he came to this Parliament. It is a progressive and inter-regional company, as it now has a joint working arrangement with the Port of Tauranga. By the way, this was something that the Local Government and Environment Committee ought not have had to amend, as that very issue was brought to the mind of the select committee at the time of the first bill. Nevertheless, time passes and the improvement is there.

The other issue that I want to speak about is that because of some of its parts, New Zealand First did not support the 2002 bill. The issue I particularly want to mention right now is the one just covered by the Hon Dr Nick Smith—the number of plans and processes that that bill required. One does not need to go to Statistics New Zealand; if one did a search of local papers now, as councils are setting rates, one would see the thousands and thousands of dollars—hundreds of thousands of dollars in the case of some councils—that ratepayers are paying for an imposed Wellington process, layer by layer. That is only the beginning, because there is provision in that 2002 Act for the process to be redeveloped at least twice before 2007. I do not think those issues were fully understood by all when, bravely, they set out this whole process.

New Zealand First is a party that believes in the democratic process, but this planning issue, which had been gone through council by council, will be the most costly impost that any Government has imposed upon local government in our time. I do not think that is reasonable. Even recent Acts, such as the activities that now have to be covered under the Prostitution Reform Act, would not have covered even a tenth of the cost of ratepayers’ involvement in this process. At the end of it all, that process has only marginally, I believe, improved ratepayers’ knowledge of what happens in their councils day-to-day. So with those words, the select committee’s change allowing Northport an understanding that was not there before is finally recognised.

The cost of the long-term planning and other plans that were a part of the work of the 2002 Act needs to be analysed and measured. Certainly, I know that as some councillors set the rates for 2005-06 and go back to the costs further incurred in this next financial year, they will be surprised at how much this imposed solution to democracy locally has had upon them. To that degree though, we support this part.

I just have a couple of comments with regard to the long-term council community plan, and the comments made by the member speaking before me. I just hope that when that analysis of costs is done, it takes a bit of a long view, because I think there will be some initial costs for councils. However, I believe that the real savings of having done a long-term council community plan will be realised as we go through that 10-year period.

One of the things that costs councils a lot of money is the change of direction that occurs every 3 years, when newly elected members come in with their new ideas and projects and old projects are ditched after a lot of work has been done on them. I think the concept of a long-term council community plan is to try to smooth that process out and allow the community to have some certainty about where it is going.

I will make a few comments about the restoration of the casting vote, which I touched on in my second reading speech. It is welcome news that the Minister and the Government have agreed to restore the status quo for councils. After the end of the committee’s deliberations, United Future was really not prepared to accept the limited restoration of the casting vote, and we were working to develop a Supplementary Order Paper to at least expand it to include new bylaws. It is important that after going through the process of a draft bylaw and consultation with the community, councils do not end up in a situation whereby a tied vote means that nothing happens and there is no status quo to fall back on. All that effort would be wasted if there were no opportunity for the mayor or chair to put in a casting vote.

One of the reasons for the opposition to councils having a casting vote is, of course, that here in the Chamber we do not have a casting vote. It is often said that there should be equity between the two forms of government, but there are clearly differences between local government and central government. I remember that when I was first elected to local government in 2001, I had a concept that the real evil down here in Parliament was party politics, and that we really ought to have 120 independent elected MPs who would make up their minds not on the basis of party policy but on the merits of each case. Given a local council with 14 independently minded councillors, it did not take me very long to realise that such a system would be a nightmare down here. We would go round and round in circles, as some councils tend to do when there is no willingness to get together and form a consensus on various council directions. So some things are different.

The Government never introduces legislation into this Chamber unless it is fairly sure it has a majority, so it is never left in a situation where it would need to rely on a casting vote—except when we have conscience votes, and then a casting vote exercised by the Speaker would be unfair because every member has an equal right to vote. That is the only time we get anywhere near to what councils go through every time councillors have to vote on issues. It is important that councils can make decisions and move forward the plans they have made for the community. If a vote is tied at council level, it is defeated and then the council has to go through a process before the vote can be brought back. One cannot just nip out to the back room, have a little discussion, and bring it straight back on to the agenda.

We are very wise to restore the status quo on that issue, and I commend the Minister and the Government for listening to the heavy lobbying from Local Government New Zealand. I do not think there is anything wrong with the fact that that organisation has lobbied hard, because it passionately believes in what it is trying to achieve on behalf of councils. I will be pleased to vote for the amendments the Minister is putting forward in his Supplementary Order Paper.

I thank Mr Baldock from United Future for his comments, which are very helpful and informative. It is astonishing how the whole story of the casting vote and the issues around it have been recast in the Chamber, not least of all by the member for Nelson, Dr Nick Smith. Members may recall that when the Local Government Bill was passed in this House—under urgency, as bills often are—the issue of the casting vote was contained within it. I had been very interested in the issue, because that was legislation I had inherited after being appointed not long before that to the position of Minister of Local Government. There were two issues in the bill that had been quite contentious with Local Government New Zealand: the casting vote, and non-resident franchise. In my travelling around and meeting with mayors and councils I said that I was quite relaxed on both issues, but that the bill was before the Local Government and Environment Committee and I would go with the decision of the select committee. The select committee in its wisdom restored non-resident franchise, and that was fine, but unanimously—from the ACT party to the Green Party—every party in this House voted not to have a casting vote for local government. I accepted that as the decision—not by a majority but unanimously—of every party in this House.

Now, when local government looked at the issue after the passage of the bill, its representatives felt, for some of the very good reasons Mr Baldock and others have explained, that it would make their job harder to do. We listened. I said to them that they would have an opportunity to raise that in the tidy-up legislation, because in any legislation that is the size of the Local Government Act there is some fixing up to do. It is a massive Act, and no one ever gets it 100 percent right, down to the last comma. So I said we would fix up those little bits. Some of them were a bit bigger than others, but there were some bits to fix up. I said that local government had the chance to relitigate the position of the casting vote, that I was prepared to listen again, and that it should make its case. Local government representatives made their case, we have listened to them, we have fixed the legislation up, and I hope they will be happy.

Unfortunately, I did not sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee. I suppose that might be something of a blessing; I am not too sure about that. As I listen to the debate, I am somewhat stunned at some of the phraseology in Part 4, such as clause 44B, “Use of special consultative procedure in relation to annual plan” and clause 45, “Long-term council community plan”. It is almost as though the Government believes that if one has a plan, that automatically means one will be successful. There is nothing in here that I can see about benchmarking the success of the plans. Plans last for 10 years or thereabouts. Where in the bill does it state that councils will stop at some stage and assess whether the plans are working?

I am absolutely stunned at the level of bureaucracy that this Government is imposing on communities. Whether they be in Auckland or Coal Creek, it does not really matter. The level of control is literally out of control. I had occasion to speak with a Russian doctor recently at my home. He came, enjoyed a wonderful meal, and said he was stunned, on coming back to New Zealand after being educated in Australia, at the level of control that has been applied and the difficulties that people—and, indeed, including himself in the medical profession—were now facing following that gap of 5 or so years. It is all because Governments tend to believe that if they plan people’s lives for them, things will be great. Let me ask the Minister in the chair, Chris Carter, whether anyone planned the city of Paris, or the city of London. Was there a planning department that wrote down how people were going to develop Prague? Some of the great cities in the world did not have planners, I say to the Minister.

💬 Hon Member: Yes, they did!

Not to the same extent as we do now. They probably had someone who said where to site developments, but they did not control and restrict matters to the same degree as we do today. What do we have in Auckland? We have planners, but we do not have anything that actually works. We have gridlocking. We have a thing about getting a plan, and putting it in place, at a cost to the taxpayer and the ratepayer of millions of dollars. Then, when a plan is in place, we get the Department of Conservation in to appeal the plan. It does that on a constant basis, and that has cost this country about half a billion dollars. And then all of a sudden, once we write the plan off, we say everything is going to be sweet.

That is just not the case. It is a nonsense, and people around the country are waking up to the fact that we cannot have the layers of government in this country planning people’s lives. It is a nonsense, and sooner or later it will have to stop. We just cannot afford the level of “planning” that goes on in this country. It is, to me, something of an abomination to see, in Part 4, that we are seeking to impose the will of a handful of people on the constituents who pay their wages. It seems to me that the Government should never forget who actually pays the piper.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I have to respond to the attempt of the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Carter, to rewrite history around the issue of the casting vote. In my 14 years in this Parliament, I have seen few occasions when a Minister has so much wanted to distance himself from his own legislation. How often is it that we hear a Minister saying: “Oh, it wasn’t my fault—it was the select committee. My name is on the front of the bill, but it is the select committee’s fault that the casting vote was removed in that legislation back in 2002.” I say to the Minister that it does not wash. He must take responsibility. He has flip-flopped so many times on this issue that his credibility is really starting to be in question. Is it not interesting how a Government starts to listen when it gets trouble in the polls?

💬 Hon Chris Carter: Ha, ha!

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It is true! For 5 years the Government has said there is no problem with the Resource Management Act, that it is beautifully written and beautifully crafted, and the Government is not going to make any change. The first poll that came out showing Labour was behind and—oops—we are in for a Resource Management Act review. When it came to school closures, the Minister of Education was absolutely stuck on track and was closing schools all around the country, but after one bad poll he did a U-turn. So it is with this Minister, the Hon Chris Carter. The Minister has steadfastly defended the issue relating to the casting vote, as we note from the original bill. If the Minister was so open-minded, such a “listening, caring, loving” Minister, if he was—

💬 Hon Chris Carter: Ask Local Government New Zealand.

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I do, and I have to say they are somewhat critical of the Minister’s capacity to be able to weasel and worm his way out of anything. If the Minister truly believed that a casting vote was fair and proper, why did he not introduce it in the original bill?

💬 Hon Chris Carter: I said, let the select committee decide on the evidence.

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Minister is so lacking in leadership. Most Ministers would give their initial thoughts to a select committee when introducing a bill. Not this Minister. The Minister’s initial thought was that there should be no casting vote—or I assume it was.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: Why is he getting a Minister’s salary?

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That is a very good question. Here is a man who collects his ministerial salary, gets a ministerial car, and gets all the ministerial perks for his partner—spending a fortune—but when it comes to House matters he says: “Oh, it is not my responsibility. It is nothing to do with me. The bill might be in my name, but it is just not me.” I say to the Minister that it does not wash. He has done a flip-flop. He has made a U-turn. We are actually pretty comfortable, in relation to what National has consistently said on this issue—

💬 Hon Chris Carter: No, you voted for—

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member says “You”. I did not think that was within the Standing Orders. I was not on the select committee and, what is more, if the Minister goes back and checks the record, and looks at the bill, it is actually unclear whether there is a casting vote. That is what the commentary to the Minister’s bill states. Is the commentary incorrect? The Minister does not want to talk about the commentary’s statement that there is a mess in the Local Government Act 2002, which was in his name, that does not make it plain whether a casting vote is possible. National’s view has been quite consistent, which is that—

💬 Hon Chris Carter: Ha, ha!

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member might want to explain his own position—

💬 Hon Mark Burton: That is an oxymoron, please!

💬 Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The incompetent member for Taupo interjects. The Government passed legislation getting rid of the casting vote in 2002. Mark Burton voted to get rid of the casting vote in 2002. When this bill was introduced last year he voted to reinforce getting rid of the casting vote. The Government has now done a flip-flop and decided that the casting vote is quite appropriate. Well, National’s view is quite straightforward. We say that councils should decide. For all the rhetoric that we get from Government members about trusting local authorities—they want to prescribe them to death—we simply say: “Let the council decide what is best, working within its own standing orders, just as this Parliament determines its own Standing Orders.” We are continuously amazed at the degree to which this Government will do backward flips when the heat comes on.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 232 in the name of the Hon Chris Carter to Part 4 be agreed to.