Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill

I would like to talk a little bit about clause 3, “Principal Act”, of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill, because I think this is an opportunity to reflect a little bit about the Local Government Act 2002, which in its time was quite an ambitious experiment. It was an initiative to modernise our legislative framework for local government. There is no doubt that it introduced a much more expansive role for local government, and at the same time it imposed some pretty rigorous and pretty heavy accountabilities on local government.

I think that if we look back over the last decade, you would have to agree that local government has changed the way it works in our country. Local government has become much more engaged with the community and much more consultative, and I think most people would agree that that is a good thing. The introduction of the four well-beings into local government really gave councils up and down this country the mandate to seriously try to ascertain the aspirations and the needs of their communities and to address them. On this side of the Chamber we would argue that that was a good and a progressive thing.

We do not hold to the view, even though it was a Labour piece of legislation, that the Local Government Act was perfect. In fact, it is our policy that it is time for a review of that Act, and that, in fact, some of the requirements for planning and consultation are actually pretty heavy and bureaucratic. It is our policy that it would be a good time now to do a review of the legislation to see how it could be streamlined—some of those bureaucratic demands on councils reduced and councils freed up to do what they should do in the interests of their communities. But what this bill does is nothing of the sort. It is an attack on communities, it is an attack on their democratic rights, and it fundamentally undermines a very important part of our system of government, and that is the local authorities.

I think this is the time, really, to reflect on what is good and useful about the Local Government Act 2002. You know, I think back to when Rodney Hide was the Minister of Local Government in the previous term. He set out with great ambitions. In fact, he used much of the political rhetoric that the Hon Nick Smith has used over the last year or so, but Rodney Hide was at least honest enough, having spent a year in the portfolio, travelled around the country, and spent time with mayors, councillors, and chief executives, to acknowledge that he had not understood local government properly. He acknowledged a lot of the worth of local government and what it does. His ill-conceived Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill really got wound right back, until finally the main thing in it was that it made it easier for councils to privatise their water supply for up to 35 years. But, in fact, all the great ambitions that he had to take a knife to local government and go down the agenda of rates capping in core services came to nothing, partly because many of the Tory mayors all around New Zealand actually beat a path to the National Cabinet and said “This is ridiculous. What are you trying to do?”.

💬 Andrew Little: Those were the days when they listened.

That is right. This second-term National Government has none of Rodney Hide’s intellectual honesty. All that it is left with is Nick Smith’s craven populism, and, unfortunately, the bill that we have got in front of us today reflects that.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Raven or craven?

Craven. Last week I was with a large group of mayors and chief executives from councils around New Zealand—provincial and rural mayors and chief executives. They told me that they had been following the debate on this bill in the House, and they were disgusted by the speeches and by the interventions of the National Party members. They thought that not only had National not bothered to have the Minister in the House to front the bill—it put up the C-team—but the speeches were all slogans, all superficial populism, and really were just mounting ill-founded attacks on local government and failing to justify this bill.

This debate is also about the title clause. There are a number of options that I think we should consider for this bill. One of them, I think, is a title that came from one of the submitters who came along to the Local Government and Environment Committee, who said “This is a fantastic example of policy-based evidence-making.” I think that really sums up Nick Smith’s approach to governance and leadership. There is a lot of talk in this whole process about the evidence base, but, in fact, this reform process and this bill is a classic example—it is a howler—of policy-based evidence-making. That former Minister makes it up as he goes along. He is the “Minister of Shonky Numbers”, and this bill should be called the “Local Government (Policy-based Evidence-making) Bill”.

It also could be the “Stripping Democratic Rights From Local Communities Bill”. We said it in the first reading, and we will say it again now. This bill takes away not only the democratic rights of local communities to have their say—to be consulted or to have their views ascertained by unelected public servants—but also the right that they enjoy as New Zealand citizens right now to have a say in a binding referendum about whether their elected council should be amalgamated with a neighbour or taken out of existence. That is a fundamental democratic right that this bill takes away, and no matter how many times Jacqui Dean and the other members on the National benches say that this bill enhances grassroots democracy, it is clear that it does nothing of the sort.

It could also be called the “Rats, Roads, and Rubbish Bill”, because that old cliché about local government basically sums up the National Party’s philosophy on local government. The National Party is 40 years behind all of the international thinking about what makes successful cities and successful communities. Where an elected Government should have an expansive role and a joined-up approach to economic development, to social cohesion—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Expansive sounds expensive.

—and to social well-being, it wants to strip back local government to its bare essentials. Nick Smith sits there and he continues to witter away about rates and local council debt. He obviously has not been listening to all the commentators and all the submitters who came along and demolished his claim that somehow local government is out of control.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: What about Business New Zealand? What about Federated Farmers?

Well, how about the Minster’s own regulatory impact statement by Department of Internal Affairs officials? How about the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report saying that the councils are fiscally responsible? There are so many commentators and so many thinktanks that actually laid the data on the table at the select committee that made a nonsense of Nick Smith’s claims. I am amazed that the member has the gall to come to the House and show his face when this bill is being debated.

It should also be called, I think—if there is one last candidate for the name of this bill—the “Cheap Populism Bill”, because this is not good governance. This is not quality legislation. This is a sham by the Hon Nick Smith, who is trying to project the idea to ratepayers around New Zealand that he is their knight in shining armour.

Not only is this bill based on a lie, which has been conclusively proved at the select committee and in the public debate, but also there is nothing in this bill that will make a blind bit of difference to rates. It is based on a completely false promise. Not only is it based on a lie in the suggestion that councils are out of control and doing all these non-core activities, and that is the cause of the increased spending and increased council debt, but, actually, even if you accept that there is increased council debt for whatever reason, this bill will do nothing about it. There is nothing in here—changing the purpose statement, introducing graduated ministerial intervention, or taking away the democratic rights of local communities in a situation where councils are being reorganised or amalgamated—that will make a difference to the rates burden. I believe that this Government will live to regret an ill-advised local government reform agenda that will do damage—serious damage—to the ability of councils to serve their communities and meet their aspirations.

To the imaginative and fanciful utterances of the member who just resumed his seat, Phil Twyford, where do we start? Cheap populism? We were sort of laughing at the idea that this Labour group believes in expansive local government. What does that translate to you—expansive or expensive? There is nothing about what the last member said that will influence anyone. He witters on endlessly, using much the same sorts of phrases no matter what bill he is talking about.

Let us go back to Annette King. She took one of the first calls in this debate on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. Conspiracy theories abounded, of course, and crises upon crises. But what crises does she refer to, apart from the ones in her own party around leadership, of course? She is a person who dismissed the submitters, and I take exception to that. I take exception to the idea that all of the submitters thought like she did, that they were listening to the evidence-based stuff. The Opposition members have apparently ignored any evidence that does not actually agree with their prejudices.

I will cite just one, for example—the New Zealand Chambers of Commerce and Industry submission. Michael Barnett, the chairman of the management committee, represents the interests of 29 chambers of commerce nationwide, which, in turn, represent about 20,000 small and medium enterprises and some of the biggest businesses in the country. This is something the opposing forces do not listen to, because it is not relevant—it does not fit the mould of their particular prejudices. But for those of them who did not listen at the time, let us refresh our memories about what Michael Barnett said in general terms about this Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. He, of course. thought it was very important for local government to recognise the very critical role that it plays and that it is able to make in a competitive, productive economy through the delivery of efficient and responsive services. These are the kinds of things that the Chambers of Commerce and Industry wants to encourage local government to do, and that is why it commended this piece of legislation. It strongly agreed with the bill’s intentions and measures that require local government to focus on activities that cannot be provided currently by individuals, firms, and voluntary groups, and that are not performed by central government.

The whole idea of the four well-beings is nonsense, and the Chambers of Commerce and Industry agreed with us that they have to go. The submission of course made the point that we have made many times over the past 5 or so hours around rates increases. They have increased by an average of around 7 percent per annum since 2003—more than double the rate of inflation. Of course, the submission talked about local government debt, which had quadrupled over the past decade from $2 billion to $8 billion. This has been touched on by many members on this side of the Chamber in debating this motion today.

There are 78 councils in New Zealand. The local government league table has identified 25 percent of them—around 30 of these territorial authorities—that are classed as financially unsustainable. That is according to a league table that was published last year. The report noted: “Over the last 10 years or more, councils’ financial positions have deteriorated markedly. … Their communities will soon be pressured with increases of Council rates and charges that if left unchecked will reach unacceptably high and unaffordable levels. Now is the time to turn these circumstances around.” We agree with that.

So not only do we have 20,000 people involved in business who support this legislation but also we are told in a recent survey by the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development that around 80 percent of New Zealanders—that is, people who live in this country; they do not dwell on “Planet Labour”, “Planet Greens”, or “Planet New Zealand First”—actually believe that the councils have lost focus, and a majority support refocusing council roles, which is exactly what this legislation does. It will give councils more tools to keep debt down and rates affordable—

💬 Andrew Williams: Tell Fulton Hogan that. Ask Fulton Hogan what they think.

—something that is, of course, going to be lost for ever and a day by the failed former Mayor of North Shore, who pipes up unhelpfully from time to time. We see, as well, that on the select committee there was an inability of Opposition members to work constructively together on the bill. That has meant that this bill has come back to the House largely unchanged, and is why we have this Supplementary Order Paper 153, which I commend to the Committee.

I think that this is a bill that definitely does provide clarity, efficiency, and much more responsible financial management. It is long overdue. When this legislation first went through in 2002 National vowed to overturn it. We heard today from Moana Mackey that in the unlikely event she ever becomes powerful again in Government and Labour takes the Treasury benches, which is highly unlikely—I am not sure where she fell on the leadership struggle; she might find she is a bit further down the pecking order than she might like to be—Labour will actually bring back the four well-beings. If that is not the nail in Labour’s coffin I would be surprised, because there are people in this country who do pay close attention to what goes on in this Chamber and to what goes on in select committees. They clearly identify that Labour is a party that has lost touch and does not listen.

When we sat there on the Local Government and Environment Committee we heard the submissions and heard the quality of the utterances, taking away some of the more emotional stuff that some of the members have tried to do, the emotional rubbish around the four well-beings, and the scaremongering from the theatre luvvies and the others, who really have nothing to fear, because local authorities will be able to do what they feel they can do if it is economically sustainable. I commend this Supplementary Order Paper 153 to the Committee in its entirety. Thank you.

I am pleased that Maggie Barry has woken up and given us her speech on Part 1 of the bill, the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. It is a little bit late, because we are actually up to clauses 1 and 2 of the legislation, but I welcome her Part 1 speech none the less. I thank the Chair for his indulgence in allowing her—a few hours late, granted—to finally give her speech on Part 1 of the bill. It actually had nothing to do with the title and commencement of this particular piece of legislation.

Again, you see this extraordinary rewriting of history, because, yes, there were submitters who came along and said that they supported the general thrust of the bill. But under questioning, they could not actually say that they had any confidence that what the bill was actually putting in place was going to deliver the promised outcomes. When we put the facts and evidence to them—Maggie Barry calls them emotional nonsense, but the rest of us call them facts and evidence—and said “Do you realise that this is not going to reduce the rates burden? It is going to do nothing except put unreasonable pressure on local government to continue to under-invest in infrastructure.” and after, as Andrew Williams pointed out, the Prime Minister told them that he wanted them to invest more, the submitters had to begrudgingly accept that, yes, that could possibly be the case. I do not think I have actually ever seen groups like Federated Farmers, Business New Zealand, and the Employers and Manufacturers Association less enthused about a piece of legislation that they support than they were about this particular bill. They were hardly effusive in their praise for this legislation. They admitted that there were big problems with it, and that it may not actually result in any of the promised outcomes that the Hon Dr Nick Smith had put forward.

This bill is called the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. Well, that really does not sum up what is in it. That is a very innocuous-sounding title for a very, very damaging piece of legislation. Maybe instead it should be called the “Local Government Act (It Ain’t Broke, So I’m Going to Break It) Amendment Bill”, because that is essentially what this bill does. There is no mischief here that needs resolving. There is no problem in local government that cannot be fixed under the current legislation. It ain’t broke, so Nick Smith is going to break it with this particular piece of legislation. That is exactly what it is going to do, because it undermines local democracy.

💬 Andrew Little: He did it to ACC.

That is right; he did it to ACC as well. It undermines local democracy. It is built on a tissue of lies and of figures that were so shoddy that the ministry had to take them down off their website. It was a manufactured crisis that local government was so indebted and so out of control and carrying out all these bizarre and superfluous activities that Nick Smith had to ride in and clamp down and seize central control in Wellington, and say “From now on, you are only going to do what I tell you that you can do.” That is what we were told by the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

But the reality is that council debt is prudent. There are a few councils that are having issues, like the Kaipara District Council, which is the one that is constantly referred to. Why we are destroying local government right across New Zealand because the current Kaipara District Council is in financial difficulty is a question that no member opposite has bothered to try to answer. So I wonder whether, when Nick Smith was putting this legislation together as the former Minister of Local Government, he considered just being honest and naming it the “Local Government (I Hate Local Government) Amendment Bill”, because, essentially, that is the message that local government authorities have taken out of this. It is that Nick Smith does not trust them. They cannot make decisions on their own, because he does not trust that they will make the same decisions that he might have wanted them to make.

When we look at what is happening to local democracy in this legislation, it is particularly concerning because this bill introduces powers for a Minister to defer local government elections under regulation—to just defer them. We know that this is happening because he wants to push through changes in Wellington that he has been planning for a long time. He has got a particular view in his head about how a reorganised Wellington local government region would look, and so he wants the power to just say to the voters in Wellington “Sorry, you don’t get to have a local government election in 2013, when every other council around the country apart from Environment Canterbury gets to have an election, because I want to rush this through so quickly. Your democratic election is just kind of annoying and is interfering with my time frames, so I’m just going to defer it.” Well, that is simply not good enough. Local government is not some kind of underling that the Minister can just control at his whim. When Labour was in Government, we saw local government as a partner—as a very important strategic partner. That has died under this current National Government, and that is a tragedy.

When you see every single council unanimously voting against this legislation, saying they do not support it, what Minister of Local Government does not take that seriously? What Minister of Local Government says that it is OK to make massive reforms and changes in local government that every single council—78 of them; every single one of them—opposes? Does that not raise a red flag that maybe, just maybe, the reforms are wrong and that maybe they are going to do more damage than good? When you look across the spectrum of local government in New Zealand, these are not people who are aligned politically one way or another consistently. They are not all Labour supporters or National supporters; they are a mix. They represent communities that have very different issues, very different values, and very different politics, and yet on this issue they all came together with one voice and unanimously said “We do not want this legislation.”

The Hon Dr Nick Smith referred to them as being self-serving and said that Local Government New Zealand was nothing more than a union. That is what he said about Local Government New Zealand. As I said at the time, that is not such an insult for us, but I know for him that is about the highest insult he could possibly hand out. To call the very practitioners who every single day do this at the coalface, who know their local communities, who want to be able to prioritise for themselves what their council’s priorities are going to be—they do not want Wellington to tell them what the priorities are going to be. For the Minister of Local Government to ignore that is unbelievably arrogant—unbelievably arrogant.

And why is the Government doing this? Well, another title for this bill could be the “Local Government Act 2002 (Look Over There) Amendment Bill”, because this is a diversion. This is a diversion. It is saying “Look over there, so that you don’t see what we’re doing over here.” If you look at provincial New Zealand, this Government has been sucking money out of the provinces from the day that it entered Government. Look at the issue of local roads. The Government has cut funding for local roads in provincial New Zealand so that it could fund its uneconomic roads of national significance in Auckland. That money has to come from somewhere, so provincial councils around New Zealand have had to turn to taxpayers to foot that bill and to bridge that funding gap, because the National Government has withdrawn support from provincial councils. And then it turned round and criticised them for increasing rates in order to fund that, because it is the core infrastructure that has driven rates increases in New Zealand. It has been a historical underfunding of infrastructure; it has been a historical lack of planning for infrastructure needs—having a large number of people who stand on tickets of no rates increases, and then get locked into not actually building the infrastructure that is required.

John Key, when he was Leader of the Opposition, said that local government needed to come to the party and start funding infrastructure properly. Business New Zealand accused local government of having lazy balance sheets and said it needed to invest more in infrastructure because its debt levels were low enough that it was prudent to do so, and then suddenly, overnight, we have a 180-degree flip where suddenly its debt levels are out of control. Suddenly it is being criticised for doing exactly what the National Government asked it to do, which is to properly fund infrastructure, because without it we are not going to have the regional economic development that is going to lead to the economic development nationwide that we need in this country. Then, at the same time, the Government pulls out what financial support there was from central government to help local government achieve that. That has driven a rates increase, which this Government then turns round and blames local government for. The blame should not be with local government. The blame should very firmly be with this Government, which has taken away from councils with one hand and then blamed them for having to find that money elsewhere. That is the reality of the situation.

So the Hon Dr Nick Smith and whoever the current local government Minister is—we are not really sure, but it is not going to be for long, because the Hon Dr Nick Smith is going to be back in the helm before too long. The Hon Dr Nick Smith needs to think very carefully about what he is doing to communities right around the country, because this is a solution looking for a problem, but it is a solution that is going to absolutely gut local government in this country. It will absolutely gut local government. It is going to remove local democracy. It is going to mean that when Nick Smith is back in charge as Minister of Local Government, he is going to have extraordinary powers. See, the National Government had to pass legislation in this House to stop Environment Canterbury having an election. It does not want to have to do that for every other council that it is going to stop elections for. So by giving himself a nice, tidy little power in this legislation, Dr Nick Smith does not have to come to the House and speak to the voters of New Zealand, and the voters whose rights to a democratically elected council he will be removing—

Kia ora, Mr Chair. I rise to take a call on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill in the Committee stage. Before I launch into my address about the title of the bill and the other areas that this stage addresses, I will just pick up on a comment that Maggie Barry made—thankfully, finally—in her speech in the Committee. It is nice to actually finally get Ms Barry doing her work for her money. That is great. We really appreciate that. It is around the comments around Michael Barnett and the chamber of commerce. Again, I mentioned in my first address on this bill that the Government needs to be careful what it wishes for, and, probably, so does Mr Barnett.

Mr Barnett is working very hard and continues to lobby the Auckland Council for continued support for bids for commerce in the area of Auckland and Greater Auckland. He spends a lot of time lobbying Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) for finance and for support for commerce inside Auckland. What will happen to ATEED if economic development is one of the four well-beings that is actually going to be removed? Let us not forget that the reason why Auckland picked up economic development as one of those four well-beings is that central government has failed small and medium sized businesses. For businesses in rural communities, it has failed to assist them. The businesses in my communities that want to grow into the export businesses that this Government says that it wants, to lift New Zealand out of the doldrums of unemployment and grow the pie, cannot get any traction with central government, so they go to local government and seek that support.

But I also wonder whether perhaps another title for this bill that might be suitable is: “We’re Going to Change it Because Len Brown Became the Mayor of Auckland”. When Len Brown became the Mayor of Auckland he picked up on those well-beings. He moved into South Auckland and west Auckland, made a focus of the lower socio-economic groups in that area and said: “We’re going to make a commitment to advocate to central government to do something about this.” If one looks at the Auckland Plan, the comments around the well-beings with regard to South Auckland and west Auckland are the comments that say “We will work with central government to bring in the resources that should have been there. We should not have to fight central government for it to recognise that we have communities of need here.” Although I personally would like to see an extension of this into areas like Helensville and Wellsford that also have social deprivation scores of 8 and can get no traction from this Government—no traction from this Government, which continues to hire and give contracts to people based in the city who know nothing about those communities—we will have to do it through the lobbying through local government.

So perhaps this is actually about Len Brown. Perhaps this is because John Banks did not get the mayoralty and did not take Auckland in the direction that this Government would want, so this is really about trying to curtail the Mayor of Auckland because it did not go the way the Government wanted it to.

I would suggest that one of the other things that the Government has done, and is continuing to do—and it should set off alarm bells for other areas for which it is suggesting amalgamations through this bill—is that the central government came in. If you have a look at the economic development plan for Auckland, it has central government written all over it. It has two main legs. The first one is to import 1 million more people into Auckland. The second one is to leverage off them to sell back to their communities of origin. That is the single plan that this Government has, I believe, to save New Zealand, and it comes out of Auckland. To do that it requires the control of Auckland. To do that it is going to duplicate it up and down the country, so that it can have more control. I would also suggest that rural communities should be contacting their National Party MPs before this bill comes to its third reading.

One of the other side effects of amalgamations like this is that local employment drops like a rock. These contracts, which have lowered nobody’s rates, have taken all the local contract work out of Rodney under the guise of economies of scale. We have people driving from the south of Auckland right all the way up to Wellsford to do a job, because a single company—

Could I just remind members that we are actually on clauses, so I ask you to come back.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am not sure whether you were listening to the debate before, but, especially with the discussion of Maggie Barry, who went on for, I think, about 7 minutes using, we think, Part 1 notes, my submission to you is that, by the Committee accepting that, the debate was broadened, and having people reply—

I thank the member. It has been pretty wide. I was chairing before dinner, and I certainly allowed a very wide debate. I did not pull anyone up. I am just reminding members that we are actually talking about clauses, and I would like them to come back and actually mention clauses 1, 2, and 3.

In that spirit, my contribution will be very extensive and very wide. What is fascinating about the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill is that whoever introduced or purported to introduce this bill to the House, it turned out, would not be able to stay in that position for long. We first had the Hon Rodney Hide, only for him to be superseded by the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who has been succeeded by the Hon David Carter. So what will happen to Mr Carter? We will see.

The other aspect that makes this bill very interesting is the level of opposition that is reflected in the submissions. There were 412 submissions on clause 7, for example. Clause 7 amends section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002, “Purpose of local government”. Of the 284 submissions that opposed the clause, 222 specifically opposed the removal of the four well-beings, or mentioned the importance of the concept of well-being.

The reason I will read from this departmental report is that if the Minister of Local Government or members who vote for this bill have found our argument less convincing, we should have a look at the departmental report. The Minister’s own departmental report stated very clearly that those submitters considered that the removal of the four well-beings would prevent the local authorities from responding to the needs of their communities, including supporting programmes that address public health issues, providing social services for vulnerable residents, supporting cultural events, and taking a sustainable development approach. If the Minister finds his own departmental report less than convincing, let me state very clearly that there are two further reasons to support the view expressed in those submissions. Firstly, the proposed changes in this bill are, essentially, a nonsense. The regulatory impact statement states that “The change is likely to have a symbolic effect and should not affect council business as usual.” Secondly, councils must have the tools and sources of finance to deliver on their responsibilities, such as providing a share of infrastructure and transport.

A majority of submitters opposed the removal of the four well-beings. At the Local Government New Zealand annual general meeting in July 2012, members voted unanimously to retain the four well-beings.

Let us have a look at the headlines of two of the four major newspapers, which are found to be largely in favour of a National-ACT Government, particularly during the last election campaign. In the Dominion Post published on 25 August 2012, the headline is “Local government revamp ‘draconian, unacceptable’ ”. What the New Zealand Herald said in August 2012 was: “New bill could damage our well-being”. Again, what is fascinating according to Radio New Zealand Newswire is that the Prime Minister says the cycleway is a core council service. So, in the light of the contribution made earlier by my colleague Mr Phil Twyford, I think this bill is Draconian, is a bill for scaremongering, and is a nonsense. Thank you.

Another title for this bill, the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill, would be the “Local Government Act (Bash Local Government and Ignore the Facts) Amendment Bill”, because this bill is not focused on the evidence. There is very little evidence to suggest that the local government sector is not focused on core services. Three different reports have concluded that the sector has not significantly expanded the scope of its activities since 2002. When you look at the 2006 and 2009 long-term plans, how much of the funding and expenditure was on infrastructure? Seventy to 75 percent of the capital programme was on roading, the three waters, and flood protection—core services. Then, when you look at the regulatory impact statement, again there is no evidence that local authority costs have increased as substantially as the Government is claiming. In particular, when you have the Government claiming increases in costs, it is using the CPI. Yet, as a lot of submitters and councils have pointed out, the local councils are engaged in buying things like bitumen, not Weet-Bix and the basket of groceries that the CPI uses.

When you look at the figures on debt, those came from the 2009 long-term plans. They are 3 years out of date, and they have been superseded. What the 2012 long-term plans are showing is that the sector, as a whole, is planning to borrow much less than in the 2009 long-term plans. And, as other members have explained, the borrowing is to fund infrastructure on that basic principle that the cost of infrastructure that benefits future generations should be spread across the generations, and not paid for just by today’s ratepayers. One of the things that this bill is likely to do with its benchmarks, and with its ministerial intervention powers that are tied to those benchmarks, is that local government will focus much more on the short term and on keeping costs down, so we will get a neglect of infrastructure spending, and will not be looking at how you get the most value over the longer term.

Another name for the bill could be the “Local Government (Undermine Democracy) Amendment Bill”, because that is another thrust of the bill. It does not recognise what local councils are doing or the full scope of their activities, and by putting in place central control from Wellington it seeks to further narrow the work that local government is doing. Recently I received a copy from the Society of Local Government Managers of the 30 different projects that had been submitted for its excellence awards. Those award applications, and the scope of the submissions that came before the Local Government and Environment Committee, gave an excellent snapshot of the breadth of activities that local government is engaged in and the value of those activities, and, contrary to a lot of the rhetoric we are getting from the Government, it shows that councils are looking to do more with less.

One of the winners of those Society of Local Government Managers awards was the Hastings District Council with its iWay “Walk it, Bike it, Love it” project, where it has put in place 108 kilometres of on-road and off-road pathways, because it is investing in planned walking and cycling infrastructure to reduce its roading maintenance costs. By moving people off the roads and onto cycles, or walking, there is less wear and tear on the roads. It is a pity that the Government does not have a similar vision to that of the Hastings District Council in terms of its roading expenditure and promoting new motorways. So that project won one of those excellence awards. Another project that won an award was one that promoted cooperation and collaboration between councils to introduce a new online dog registration service for, I think, Hamilton and Rotorua. That is what we heard at the select committee: a lot of councils working together to collaborate and cooperate and reduce costs that way.

But going just briefly to the whole democracy argument and the thrust of the bill in terms of undermining democracy, we have that both in the ministerial intervention powers and in the reorganisation procedures and the end to the mandatory poll on reorganisation. There was a very good submission from the Buller District Council, which looked at the claims that Government members had made that amalgamations had not happened. The Buller District Council pointed out that since 1999 there had been seven amalgamation decisions by the Local Government Commission, and in two cases the commission decided that amalgamation would not produce better local government and that the status quo should remain. Five of those decisions did proceed to democratic polls, and I would just like to quote what the Buller District Council said: “In each case”—where the decision of the Local Government Commission went to a poll—“a significant majority of the people democratically voted to reject the amalgamation proposal. When the people are given a chance to vote they continue to reject amalgamation. The reality is that communities seem to like the idea of local decision making and continued local democracy.”

That is why this bill would be better titled the “Local Government (Undermine Democracy) Amendment Bill, because it reverses the presumption that the status quo should remain until the people democratically decide by way of a poll that there should be a change. The way in which the bill is constructed—the very short time of 60 days to get 10 percent of electors to sign a petition—is clearly intended to ensure that the polls of residents will be avoided. There are not any examples of a petition getting so many signatures in such a compressed and short time frame. That is why this bill would be better titled the “Local Government (Undermine Democracy) Amendment Bill’’, because it is all about control central—central government—putting pressure on local government and not letting electors decide how they should be governed.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to address the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill, which I think could be better named the “Local Government Act 2002 (Let’s Ignore What is Going On in Christchurch) Bill”. I think that what this bill really does show is that we have learnt nothing about the experience we are going through in Christchurch. I want to remind this Committee—and I know he has been mentioned in this debate more than once—that Professor Sir Peter Gluckman prepared a report for the Government last year about the psychosocial consequences of the Canterbury earthquakes. I just want to share with the Committee why I think the name of this bill ought to be addressed in terms of what is going on in Christchurch at the moment. He stated: “In every disaster there is an inevitable tension between the desire for an immediate response and the need for planning”—by multiple layers of authority—“and risk reduction. This tension aggravates the situation and creates opportunities for externally driven exacerbation of symptoms. Anger and frustration are inevitable and endogenous. It is wrong to respond to this anger in a defensive way.” I believe that this bill is a defensive response to what is going on there. It may not have been driven by what has happened in Christchurch, but if we do not learn the lessons of what has happened there and do not take them into account, then we will be committing a grave injustice, really, and imposing it on the rest of the country.

If Christchurch has to suffer the consequences of what we have been through, we plead of this Parliament to listen to our concerns and to see what is actually going on here. Let me carry on: “It would appear that key to minimising this phase is the promotion of local empowerment and engagement by working closely in a collaborative way with the affected population in co-ordinating and co-leading the response effort.” Having this legislation focused on community outcomes, such as good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions, and pretending that that has got nothing to do with community well-being is a complete mistake and a complete disaster that I believe we should protect against. “If the population do not sense this is happening, then the phase may well be longer and the symptoms of anger and frustration more intense. A feeling of self-efficacy and community efficacy assists the population in reactivating their coping mechanisms. Local governance, empowerment and ownership have been shown to facilitate recovery.” If we have learnt nothing from what has gone on in Christchurch, we must learn that lesson. By empowering communities to take ownership of their own recovery, and in this respect local government, we must learn those lessons.

This legislation is a direct contradiction of all of the experience we have in Christchurch so far. The report carries on to say: “Then inevitable tensions and conflicts in achieving this are obvious (long-term versus short-term, public versus private, local versus national interests) and cannot be avoided—rather, they have to be openly handled with sensitivity.” This legislation is the complete contrast to handling things openly with sensitivity. It says: “It follows that, from the psychosocial perspective, those involved in directing the recovery should create governance structures that understand and actively include community participation and enhance individual and community resilience. Such approaches will be most likely to be effective in re-establishing coping and functioning communities.” And I want to say that when we actually look at a conceptual model for infrastructure recovery and enhancement, as has been prepared down in Christchurch, we actually find, if we look at the hierarchy of needs, when we look at that baseline, breathing, water, food, warmth, sleep, and excretion as an example of the physiology that is required for a functioning individual within a functioning community. Above that are personal, family, employment, health, and property matters. Above that are friendships, family, and belongings. And esteem is the confidence, achievement, and respect above that. It actually ties directly to the basic infrastructure—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Lianne Dalziel.

It actually ties directly across—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Can I just make the point to the member to tie in what you are saying, because we are on clauses 1, 2, and 3. It would actually be helpful to mention those in the course of this.

Clauses 1, 2, and 3 obviously talk about the title of the legislation, and as I said at the outset this bill could be better entitled the “Local Government Act 2002 (Let’s Ignore What is Happening in Christchurch) Bill”. I do not believe that the Committee has really seriously thought about how this legislation is going to impact on Christchurch.

And then, of course, we have the commencement date. That has been changed, obviously, since the time the legislation was introduced. It was due to come into effect on 12 October 2013. I presume that that has been updated since the Supplementary Order Paper. I cannot understand why, when one looks at the evidence that has been presented by somebody of the calibre of Sir Peter Gluckman about this need to balance these tensions around the public versus the private, the local versus the national interests, and, particularly, the long term versus the short term. I really fear that this Parliament is going to have a far greater impact not only on Christchurch but on the rest of New Zealand without learning the essential lessons that could have been learnt.

The point that I was making and the reason that I was emphasising the title and, indeed, the commencement date of this legislation, was that it would be better to wait until we have all of the reviews of the impact of both the response and the recovery efforts that have been undertaken in Christchurch. Would it not be better to have all of those reports on the table and, indeed, to obtain a synthesis of those reports in order to better inform the implementation of this legislation? So why implement this legislation? Why have a commencement date that is earlier than all of the reports that are going to be reporting on how we have responded to the disaster that has befallen Christchurch? I believe that there are a number of pieces of legislation that this Government should actually consider holding back until we have had all of that detailed analysis, and until there has been the synthesis that is required in order to get a full appreciation of what has occurred in Christchurch and what those learnings might be.

The international community is looking at what is happening in Christchurch with great interest, because they have been given a narrative by this Government about how things have occurred there. But I think that when they actually look at what has, in fact, happened, then people are going to be actually surprised that this Government has not looked at international best practice, that it has not adopted the approach that other countries have adopted. When they look at the layer of this legislation coming in over the top of what we have experienced, with a commencement date that applies prior to learning all of the lessons that we will have to learn from Christchurch, then they are going to ask why we let this happen—why we let this happen in our country when we have had the experience of this disaster, when we have seen how important local communities are in terms of empowerment, how important local authorities are, and we have seen our own Christchurch City Council completely left out of the frame as far as the consideration of the rebuild of Christchurch central city goes. It has been left out of the picture completely. We have got our Mayor of Christchurch constantly complaining about how he is no longer engaged in any process with central government.

We have the Waimakariri District Council, on the other hand, which performed magnificently. It actually operated on a basis of real engagement with its community. There is no way the people of Waimakariri want to be subsumed into some super-city that involves the Christchurch City Council. It is the Christchurch City Council that has been found wanting in this case. It is the largest council in the region that has been found wanting. That is why I believe this legislation would be better framed as Local Government Act amendment legislation that takes no notice of any of the lessons that have been learnt in Christchurch, any of the lessons that have been learnt in the Canterbury region. If we were to look seriously at what has happened down there, we would not be proceeding with this legislation, and we would be naming it for what it is, which is a complete disaster.

I move, That the question be now put.

This afternoon and this evening have reminded me of an experience I had in the mid-1980s, when I visited East Germany. When you went through Checkpoint Charlie and you went to East Berlin, you saw, in those days, that there was a total absence of democracy. It was a sterile, dull, grey, faceless society, where the people had no say and people had no rights. It was all done by a handful of people back in some sort of a bunker in East Berlin. They lived their lives in misery. When I look at this bill, the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill, and I look at Parts 1 to 3 and what is proposed here, it is almost like this country is moving into the realm of where some of those Eastern bloc countries were 20-odd years ago.

You wonder how they have come about this, when they themselves admit that they know nothing. Rodney Hide, when he was the Minister of Local Government, came to an Auckland Mayoral Forum meeting. He sat with the mayors of Auckland, and he said “I don’t know anything about local government. You’re going to have to help me through here. You’re going to have to work with me, because I really don’t know what I’m doing. So, to the mayors, please work with me and help us through this.” That was after having released a 34-page report that overruled an 800-page report from the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, which had something like 30 international advisers and spent nearly $5 million preparing an extensive report on how Auckland would be restructured. Within 9 days of that Royal Commission report being released, having taken a year and a half to prepare, the Minister of Local Government at the time, Rodney Hide, threw it out and replaced it with a 34-page photocopied handout to say that this was how local government in New Zealand was going to work. Right up the back of Rodney Hide, pulling the strings like a puppet, were John Key, with his hand up one side, and Nick Smith, with his hand up the other side. They were both manipulating him. Rodney was the puppet, and he was doing their bidding.

It was very interesting, because prior to that, when they announced what they were going to do, I was called to the Prime Minister’s electorate office in Helensville to be given a pre-briefing. He called each of the mayors. Bob Harvey turned up first, I was asked second, and—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We are on a bill, and the member must tie it back to clauses 1, 2, and 3.

OK, well, clause 3 talks about the powers and roles of the mayors and how they are going to change local government so that the mayors will have far more executive powers in this country, and can basically take on their councils and do what they want to do. John Key said to me, sitting in his electorate office, that this is what they were going to do. I said “Oh, so, John, is this along the lines of your member’s bill of 2005-06? You always planned to do this anyway.” He looked at me. He looked shocked, because I had outed him. He looked at Jonathan Coleman sitting beside him. Jonathan Coleman was sitting right there, and John said “What is he talking about?”. Jonathan said “Oh, you remember your member’s bill? It never got picked from the ballot, but we don’t need to worry about that.” But, basically, I outed—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. You asked the member to bring his comments back within the context of clauses 1, 2, and 3. The member asserted that clause 3 deals with the mayoral powers. Clauses 1, 2, and 3 only cover—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: This is a debating point.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, it is not. It is a matter of what the content is that we are debating. We are debating the title—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: That’s a debating point. Sit down.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is not necessary. [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. To Andrew Williams, I mentioned before that you must tie in the piece of legislation we are dealing with now, clauses 1, 2, and 3. You have got 1 minute remaining.

It boils back down, talking about clauses 1, 2, and 3, to the fact that basically this Government knows very little about local government. Is it not interesting that tonight Paul Goldsmith, Nikki Kaye, Michael Woodhouse, and Maggie Barry—twice—have all tried to close down the debate and have it stopped? What does that say to you about democracy in this country? What does it say to you that half of the National Party members who have spoken tonight have either said nothing or tried to close down the debate? I say to New Zealanders out there listening to this debate tonight, is this the democracy you want to live in, where all they want to do is close down the debate? Those members do not want to hear about what is happening. They do not want to hear about local government’s concerns. They do not want to hear the likes of Lawrence Yule, a good National Party mayor from Hastings, who is saying that this is wrong, this is not good for New Zealand, and this is not good for this country. Unfortunately, what we are faced with here is a situation of local government being undermined in this country—undermined by former Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide, undermined by the current Minister, David Carter, and undermined by the next Minister of Local Government, Nick Smith.

I move, That the question be now put.