Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2)

Thank you for the opportunity to address this bill, and before I do, can I just congratulate those members of the House who have had changes to their roles. All the best for the future. Mr Galloway, it is good to have a chance—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Lees-Galloway.

—Mr Lees-Galloway, I am sorry—to be in the whip’s chair, which is always a challenge, but all the best.

I just wanted to make a few comments about the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2), firstly to thank the Local Government and Environment Committee for the work that it has done on the bill, and particularly Nicky Wagner as the chair. Obviously, the bill has been non-controversial and has made great progress through the select committee stage. Can I thank those members throughout the Chamber. When one looks at the select committee’s report-back paper, it is a fairly brief one. The comments at the end saying that the committee has no matters to bring to the attention of the House is an interesting point. Actually, members of the public often will not appreciate that within the House some 60 to 65 percent of the legislation that passes through the House is legislation that the two main parties support. We do not want people to know that too much. I mean, there is no news in that, but this is an example of that occurring today.

It is a good bill—it is a good bill. It provides for local boards to delegate their powers. It moves on from some regulations that were put in place back in 2010, when the amalgamated Auckland Council came together. There were provisional regulations put in place then that expire on 31 October this year. So this simple bill just, quite simply, puts the ability to delegate powers from local boards into legislation, and is carrying that on in perpetuity.

So it is a good bill. It is short and concise. I think it goes to the heart of how well local boards are working in Auckland. There was some concern when the Auckland Council came together about how it would work, how it would land, but I think that at this point in time there are not many in this House who would actually go back to the old council model. I think there is good—

💬 Phil Twyford: Andrew Williams.

Andrew Williams, perhaps. I see that even New Zealand First members are shaking their heads down there now.

💬 Tracey Martin: Exceptional—local boards are exceptional.

Oh, local boards are exceptional. We look forward to hearing about that.

💬 Phil Twyford: Eugenie Sage might.

Eugenie Sage might? Well, we will let Eugenie have her own words on this particular bill.

I want to commend the bill. It is good progress. I think this is a good advance. Local boards are a key part of the Auckland community now, and having the ability for them to delegate powers is an essential law, which we deliver tonight. Thank you.

This Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2), which the Minister of Local Government has accurately described as a sort of non-controversial bill, is about the delegation of powers by local boards to council staff to get things done. It is, as we have said in earlier debates, basically the result of incompetence by the Government putting in provisions. The delegation of powers should never have been in legislation that had a sunset clause.

We are debating this now only because the Government messed up the drafting of that transitional legislation for the Auckland super-city, but it is a very timely opportunity to reflect on the National Party’s roll call of shame when it comes to Auckland—the roll call of shame. There is a long list—a long list—of Roman generals sent by the National Party to quell the natives north of the Bombay Hills, and that is what I want to make some comment on because it relates very closely to the democracy that is at the heart of this bill. It started with the “little general” from Epsom, Rodney Hide, who was delegated by the John Key Government to set up the Auckland super-city and to destroy everything that had stood there before in Tāmaki-makau-rau, to destroy the eight existing territorial authorities and replace them with this great shining shrine of the Auckland super-city. That was Rodney Hide’s mission, and he set about constructing a super-city in Auckland with a heavily corporatised structure so that it could be sold off in the future.

That was Rodney Hide’s great legacy. He rode roughshod, in spite of the important democratic provisions that ended up in the legislation, encapsulated in the local boards that we are debating tonight. He rode roughshod over Auckland—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Look, the history lesson is fine, but it has got to be pertinent to the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2).

Thank you, Mr Chairperson, for reminding me of that. The next person who played an important role in the establishment of these local boards was John Banks, a current member of this House, who ran for the mayoralty and was thrashed by Len Brown—absolutely thrashed—because Len Brown stood up for local boards. He believes in democracy, unlike the National Party and unlike John Banks. Len Brown stood up for the power of local boards, and John Banks was thrashed.

The next Roman general who was sent to subdue the natives in Auckland was Murray McCully, who tried to humiliate Len Brown over the Rugby World Cup. He went to Auckland and he tried to sheet home to Len Brown all of the blame for the transport fiasco—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I am trying to get in the theme and the spirit of the member—[Interruption]—the vibe. But, as I said, history is fine. Can we talk about the bill? Can you relate what you are saying to the bill? We have had enough of the history lesson.

I am going to bring it all the way back to Nick Smith, who is an important character—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Oh no, no, the bill.

Well, this bill is about democracy in Auckland. It is about the right of local grassroots communities to have a say in the running of the affairs of their cities. That is what this bill is about. If there is one Minister in this Government who shows no sympathy and no understanding for the aspirations that Aucklanders have for a say in the running of their city, it is Nick Smith. He turned up in Auckland, went rampaging around Auckland earlier this year, accusing the mayor, Len Brown, of killing the dreams of Aucklanders because their planning regulations were somehow at fault for the housing affordability—

Order! I am going to terminate this speech because I have asked the member—[Interruption]—I am on my feet—to relate what he was doing to the bill. He has had three warnings, so I am just terminating it. He can seek another call later, but right now that is the end of that call.

Kia ora, Mr Chairperson. I rise to speak on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2), which actually reinforces local democracy inside of Auckland.

💬 Maggie Barry: Says the double-dipper!

Oh, how very interesting the comment shouted across the floor is—the fact that I work twice as hard as that member is probably a poor sign. But let us come back to the bill in question and what it does. It reinforces the non-hierarchical co-governance model that is Auckland City. Without it, then God save the people of Auckland would be all I would say.

The local boards are the ones that for the last 3 years have fought to make the city the success that it is and to maintain the voice of the communities at that level. Many of the local boards have kept some of their delegations, particularly around land use and the use of the parks and reserves to make sure that Auckland City could not take away the local voice on what happens inside their parks, reserves, and sports fields.

The local boards have again and again and again gone into the governing body and reinforced that this is a city of many communities with many diverse needs, the Rodney Local Board probably more often than many. The Waiheke Local Board has been there quite a lot, as well. But the Rodney Local Board, which covers 46 percent of the land mass of Auckland with a rural voice, has needed these delegations and has needed this opportunity, and the city has needed those local boards.

I do not want to take up a lot of time, because this bill is necessary. Not only is it necessary but it is absolutely vital that when considering any other amalgamation inside this country, local boards are part of that decision making and rural areas are given the ability to stay outside of any amalgamated city; if not, they must be given a strong, strong voice at any governing body level through that representation at a local board level. I commend the Minister of Local Government for extending these delegations, and I wish all the local boards of Auckland well with the new members who are successful in the coming local body elections.

We find ourselves again at this juncture where the Opposition is having to clean up the Government’s mess, a mess that it created when it rushed into the reform of the Auckland region without giving due consideration. The Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) also highlights that the Government got it wrong. The Government got it wrong, and I want to follow the theme that my colleague Phil Twyford began. He talked about a little general, and you will recall this House debating that particular bill, the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, and how the people of Auckland were retaliating against the bullying tactics of this particular Government, and how Mr Hide, who was the Minister of Local Government who ushered that bill through the House in those early stages, rushed as it was, did not care about the impact that it would have on the people. In fact, I recall that some of the submitters on that particular part of that bill in those early stages referred to Mr Hide as this “Dark Knight” who was turning up to—and these are their own words—rape and pillage the Auckland region by destroying local democracy.

So I am pleased that we are able to help the Government fix up the mess that it created, by continuing the powers that local boards ought to have in carrying out their particular work. The local board that services my community, the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board, is a champion of a local board, except for one member on there, and that member is a former National Party chair of that particular electorate, but she will not be standing and, therefore, I am pleased to note that she is gone. But she is also one of the members who, as I understand it, when the local board was talking about supporting the living wage, did not support the decision of the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board.

It might be funny when we say that this is the Government’s mess, and it would be funny if it did not cost money. I recall in those earlier debates that this was the Government that kept harping on about the rates increases and that the structure it had would deal with the rates increases. In fact, I recall Mr Hide saying, you know, that Aucklanders would not have to pay for rates increases, and he kept on complaining about too many workers servicing the Auckland region. And there were people in the Auckland region who believed that rhetoric, but I think more and more people now recognise that they were duped by that Minister and they were duped by this particular Government. It was difficult for people to believe then, because there was a bit of emotion around the whole reform that the Government introduced. But now they see that Mr Hide was saying that there would be no rates increases, and that somehow this structure, which would service 1.5 million Aucklanders, would not impact on the ratepayers generally. But, look, what we did not understand at that time was that Mr Hide and his National Government lumped upon all the local boards throughout Auckland a huge bill of $200 million - plus, even though Mr Hide went out and about and said that the merger would cost only $90 million. We now know that it was in the vicinity of $200 million or more.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Come back to the bill.

Well, yes, Mr Chairperson, I am. The point I am making here is that there were many promises made to the people of the Auckland region—promises that today local board members of the 21 local boards, as well as the councillors, have to try to fix. That is the purpose that we are here for. We are trying to fix the mess that this Government has made. So, absolutely, we want to extend the powers to the local board to be able to get on with the work that it has been elected to carry out.

I want to talk more about the local board in Māngere and Ōtāhuhu. We have got seven members in there. It is the local board that represents both the region of Māngere as well as Ōtāhuhu. I suspect that another mess that we are going to have to clean up at some stage is the fact that the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board is a bit lopsided. It has six representatives from Māngere and one representative from Ōtāhuhu. I suspect also that when you look at the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board, again, you would see a bit of lopsidedness there. Papatoetoe has four members on it, whereas Ōtara has three. These are all significant communities—all significant communities. Again, that is another mess that we are probably going to have to pick up.

I note that the other night the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board complained about the fact that there is insufficient quality staff supporting them. That reminded me again that when this Government was ushering this particular bill through the House, Mr Hide, I recollect, complained that there were too many staff members servicing the Auckland region, in the vicinity of about 10,000 people, and his plan was: “Let’s get rid of some of those staff.” And they got rid of about 2,000 staff members. Members of the Committee may recall that The Aucklander newspaper conducted an investigation at the time of what this would mean. What the newspaper found out was that Auckland ratepayers were going to be billed $2 million a month to outsource planning work to private consultants. Not only that but the newspaper also found out that the value of contracts let in the planning department was in the vicinity of $8.75 million. A lot of the ratepayers from Auckland do not know about that, and I think it is our duty to help them understand that despite the rhetoric of this Government that this structure was going to save ratepayers money, what it actually did was it lumped millions and millions of dollars on the shoulders of ratepayers in Auckland. That is the mess that the Auckland Council, people like Len Brown and people like Penny Hulse, the deputy mayor, are trying to fix at the moment.

Here is the thing with the local boards. When this Government brought in this particular structure, it did away with existing councils—Manukau, for one. It was envisioned at that time that we would not lose our culture and we would not lose significant asset holdings of the council. We were told that that was not going to happen. Well, what has happened now is exactly what we envisioned would happen. We have lost the culture of people and community that Manukau built up over the years. We have lost our shareholdings in the airport that we once prided ourselves on. In fact, we have lost the ability to provide free swimming pools to elders as a result of the structure that this Government imposed on Auckland ratepayers.

So, absolutely, we are trying to clean up the mess that this Government created. We are starting off with agreeing to this technical bill, in that we are saying that, yes, we will support this bill to ensure that local board members are able to carry out their functions and service the community that has elected them on there.

I note that the voting papers came out on Friday. I have not received mine yet. Hopefully, I will get them soon. But I am looking forward to electing all seven members of a particular ticket that is running in our electorate. I will not say who the Labour Party members are. They know who they are. There are other tickets running along there. I am hopeful that when people read the brochure that is sent out with their voting papers, they will be able to identify the seven members there. The point, when it all comes down to it, is that the theme that Phil Twyford started our response with is absolutely correct: that is how the people of Auckland felt. When they said that Rodney Hide was the “Dark Knight” and a dark horse, what they did not envision was that the next general to roll up would be John Banks. But he rolled up and flew in in a helicopter. Then he could not decide whose helicopter it was.

Kia ora. The Greens will be supporting this bill, the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2), but I am going to take a short call to talk about local boards and their delegations. Like previous speakers, we actually think that this legislation should have come to the House a lot sooner, not on the eve of the elections. However, it is a good time to reflect on how the super-city structure has been operating and how local boards have been operating as well.

In preparation for the Committee stage of this bill, I have been looking at the functions of the local boards and refamiliarising myself with the delegations. The role of the local boards is to enable democratic local decision-making in the super-city area, the Auckland Council area. That is an area that encompasses about 1.4 million people, and there are 21 local boards that are tasked with the job of protecting and enabling local decision-making. That is a total of 149 local board members.

When the super-city was created in 2009 through the legislation that came from the National Government, there was a lot of panic, I would have to say, in my community. There was a lot of fear that we would lose our decision making and that we would be unable to make any progress with what is a very large bureaucratic machine that runs our city. I have to say that the local boards have protected some of that decision making. They have not been able to protect as much of the decision making as previous community boards and previous councils did, and that, I guess, was the whole point of the amalgamation.

But the biggest area where local boards have had trouble and where general citizens, residents, and ratepayers of Auckland have had difficulty is in trying to find out what happens with the council-controlled organisations. I am not the only person who has issues with the council-controlled organisations and, in particular, the seven big ones that were set up through the legislation that set up the amalgamated city. Those council-controlled organisations are not democratically elected and frequently are not accountable. I guess that what happened with Ports of Auckland and the dispute there over the last year is an example of the worst sort of lack of accountability. Ports of Auckland is owned by the citizens of Auckland and governed by a board of directors. That board of directors is accountable to a council-controlled organisation that was set up through the amalgamation of the super-city, and that council-controlled organisation is Auckland Council Investments Ltd. None of the councillors, no local board members, and no elected official was able to get a straight answer about the cost of the industrial action that occurred during the dispute at the Auckland ports. My point is that democracy was on the line and democracy has been on the line as a result of the amalgamation. The people who are holding the line are the local boards and the local board members.

There has recently been an analysis of how the super-city is working. In fact, the Auckland University of Technology School of Social Sciences and Public Policy recently has released its research on what it calls the super-city project. It released it in August. The mark that it gave to the super-city or Auckland Council was a B. One of the comments it made was that the structure of local boards and the council—the council, if you will remember, is the governing body on one side and local boards on another—is not particularly well understood. I guess that is something we have to continue to work on.

It will be interesting to see what the voting return will be for the elections coming up, because even in the last elections for the council, which were the first elections for local board members, the return rate was about 51 percent. Only 51 percent of Auckland ratepayers actually voted for their councillors, their local board members, so only 51 percent voted for their elected representatives.

In smaller areas—and I think it is true with the Rodney local board area, as well; it is certainly true with Waiheke—the voter turnout was a lot higher. On Waiheke Island, where we managed to keep our own local board, there was about a 64 percent voter turnout, but we still have about a third of the people not participating in the democratic process. When people do not participate in the democratic process, they leave the decision making up to decision makers who have not been elected by a true majority. In these coming elections we are seeing more of an interest, and certainly on Waiheke the election of the local board members is almost a blood sport—that was my experience.

💬 Carol Beaumont: What happened to peace and love on Waiheke?

We take our local democracy incredibly seriously. Some of the delegations that the local boards have been able to exercise over the last 3 years have not just included developing local board plans, negotiating local board agreements, and negotiating service levels but been around advocacy on regulatory matters, as well. I have to say that the majority of members on our local board on Waiheke have been absolutely appalling and have not been advocating for our community, and yet it says specifically in the delegations and in the purpose of local boards, in the governance statement for Auckland Council, that that is a role for local boards—that they advocate. That is what they are supposed to be doing.

So these elections on Waiheke are seeing quite a lot of discussion about that role. We have had people saying that local boards are powerless, that local boards cannot make decisions, and that they are unable to properly represent their communities to the council because they are limited in what the delegations say, and that is simply not the case. I know for a fact that the only local board member in this House, Tracey Martin, has worked very hard and that her local board has worked very hard to advocate to Auckland Council on behalf of the people of Rodney, because it is a co-governance arrangement. We will be supporting this bill through to its final reading. Thank you.

It is my pleasure to take a call on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2), which, as my colleagues have already raised, is a technical bill that will enable local boards to delegate responsibilities, duties, or powers that are already conferred upon them by the Local Government Act. So, essentially, it allows them to keep doing what they were doing, but I think it is important to be clear that what they have been doing has not always been a clearly defined role. In fact, local boards very early on, under the new super-city structure, very much had to carve out the roles that they would play. It was very ill-defined as set out in the primary legislation, or as not set out in the primary legislation, as the case may be.

I want to pay tribute to local board members, who have done a fantastic job over the past wee while, the past few years, of interpreting their role, defining their role, and doing as much as they could to give local voice, local say, in the areas they were serving, where, actually, in many ways, the super-city legislation gave them very few powers. So they have had to do a lot of work interfacing with council-controlled organisations and the council in order to define their role as place makers.

As a resident in central Auckland, obviously I sit under the area of the Waitematā Local Board, which, in particular, I want to say has really been an exemplary board in terms of defining its role and working alongside the council-controlled organisations and the local council. In particular, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the role of Shale Chambers on that board as chair and some of his team members, like Jesse Chalmers, who is leaving the board and is moving on, but there is also Christopher Dempsey, Pippa Coom, and Tricia Reade.

💬 Carol Beaumont: Great board.

They are particularly unified in the—did I say Pippa Coom? I hope I did. They are particularly unified as a team because they shared a vision as City Vision candidates. But some of the work that they did in particular gives the Committee an indication of where the board has delegated some of its voice back out to the community. In particular, they are things like the Ponsonby Road masterplan, where the board took the initiative to create a reference group to work alongside the community and business and other representative groups to come up with a masterplan to consult the community on, and it is a particularly innovative plan. It really challenges some of the views that have been held in the past by council-controlled organisations like Auckland Transport around the greater use of cycle lanes and around how you integrate that in very busy thoroughfares like Ponsonby Road, and how you encourage the greater use of public transport and other modes of transport. That is a way that this local board has chosen to use its duties and the powers conferred on it by Auckland Council to actually empower members of the local community, and it has been very successful at that.

There have been other examples where I have witnessed, for instance, the board having to grapple with the very contentious issue of parking. In areas like Saint Marys Bay and Freemans Bay you get overflow from the city, where people seek to park there, particularly because we have had an improvement of a lot of the overbridges into the city—this being another initiative of the local board. That means that commuters can park in the suburbs and quickly commute down into the city. We are being a victim of the local board’s own success. To deal with that, the local board has taken the initiative to work with the council-controlled organisation and work with Auckland Transport to try to come up with something that works for the residents, where they get first dibs on their local parking. But how you manage that in a way that is cost-effective is very hard, and so I commend the local board for what it has done there.

Use of public space is another area where at first there was a view that local boards would be able to determine only things like what the playground equipment would look like. They have managed to go well beyond what the primary legislation originally set out for them and to do things like in my local area, where I live, where the local board has proposed an upgrade of Myers Park. It has been a thorn in the side of residents that we have a beautiful public space in the centre of Auckland City that has become a space that is simply not viewed as a safe space by public residents. It is an inner-city park, there has not always been good lighting, it is surrounded by quite mature vegetation, and it has been used by the homeless and others as a place to sleep in the evenings, and so people have sometimes avoided that area. The local board has gone through multiple public consultations on a plan to upgrade that space, and, again, the consultation has been fantastic, and the local interaction. It has not been consultation that has been conducted out of Auckland Council; it has been right there in the inner city, and that has been absolutely fantastic.

Some of the other innovative things that local boards have been able to do through these powers of delegation, through the proper interaction between the board and the council-controlled organisations but even through central government agencies like the New Zealand Transport Agency, have been like those in Auckland Central, where there are spaces like the Campbell Free Kindergarten. Almost anyone who has driven through Auckland may at some point have driven past this. When you come to Victoria Park Market and you have got the Birdcage there on the right-hand side, on the left you have an extraordinarily old kindergarten that sits on the edge of Victoria Park. That was a historic building that essentially was sitting right next to a massive piece of transport infrastructure, which was the area where the New Zealand Transport Agency was building the tunnel.

The local board did something very, very innovative. It came together with the New Zealand Transport Agency and said: “Look, we’ve got a space that needs to be upgraded and that we could use as a public space.” The New Zealand Transport Agency needed an extra storage facility for some of the equipment working around the tunnel. They collaborated, upgraded the space, and now we have a fantastic community facility that is absolutely brilliant.

But it is not just that. Local boards are required to constantly input into what the council is doing. We cannot underestimate how much work is required in that regard. I counted in the last year alone, to July 2013, that the Waitematā Local Board consulted on 25 different plans or things like alcohol plans—absolutely any and every initiative you can think of, it was inputting back to council on. So that is an example of where we have that ongoing two-way relationship.

Where it has been absolutely critical has been areas like the Auckland Unitary Plan, obviously the biggest guiding document for Auckland City, but also for controversial issues like the local alcohol plans, where we really require local input in order to guide what local residents want to happen in their area. We do run the risk, if we do not have that local voice, of having, for instance, one community making a decision about having a one-way-door policy that ends at a certain time—it might be earlier than, say, what is going to happen on K Road—and then we will suddenly get the flow-on effect of everyone coming into the city as a result of those differing plans. Having a local board able to tap into what is going on in those other areas, listening to your community voice, listening to business associations, and constructing something that works for everyone is absolutely fantastic.

Not always is it the local board guiding some of the activity in the local area. Sometimes it is the community, like in my area, where the K Road safety group has formed itself because of ongoing safety issues. In that instance the local board has actively said: “Look, we’ll come on board and help work with you to ensure that we make the most of the council facilities that we have access to as a delegated local board area.” But also it is willing to champion to local council when it makes the wrong call on something, because, of course, the council does still have those powers around planning decisions. A critical example, for instance, in Arch Hill at the moment is the fact that Bunnings warehouse has come and got planning consent from the council in order to build a massive Bunnings structure in the middle of a residential area—in the middle of an area where the council has otherwise indicated that this is prime residential property. We should have mixed-zone areas, we should be building four storeys up, and then what does it go and do? It grants planning consent for Bunnings to stick a massive warehouse in Arch Hill. It is an absolute disgrace. So in that situation we have had the local board come on board and say: “We are not in favour of this. We will represent the local community to the council. We do not have delegated authority, but we do have a voice that can express.”

For me, these are great examples of what local boards can do. That is a reason why people must vote. These are all of the issues that they have a voice on, on the community’s behalf.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2). I am sure others have mentioned this, but really it is a very technical and short bill that Labour supports. It was reported back unchanged from the Local Government and Environment Committee and basically amends the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act to enable local boards to delegate responsibilities, duties, or powers conferred on them. In the bill the substantive bit is really the bit that says what they can delegate and the bit that says what they cannot delegate. The fact of the matter is that the reason we are here is the process used to get this legislation in the first place, which rushed the legislation through under urgency. Many of us will always remember those debates that set up the so-called Auckland super-city, and this is part of that.

As others have mentioned tonight, one of the issues around local boards was actually the absence of a clear outline of their responsibilities established in the Act itself. All Auckland-based MPs have seen a lot of work going on by our local boards and, as others have said, the boards have made a good fist of it. Most of them, I think, irrespective of their political persuasion, have made a good fist of the job and tried hard to represent local communities. I am going to talk about my own board, which has done some very, very good things.

I suppose one of the issues is that, ultimately, the local boards in most communities, I think, have still not been completely understood as to what their powers are and are not. There are still people who call them community boards, for example. There is still a lot of confusion in that the governing body, Auckland Council, is called the council when, in fact, it is the governing body. Auckland Council is, in fact, made up of two parts: the governing body and the local boards. The local boards are a vital part of the decision-making process. There are still people in my area who fondly recall the One Tree Hill Borough Council, or the Mount Wellington Borough Council, or the Onehunga Borough Council. That is because people value the democracy that they had. They elected their councillors, they elected their mayors, and they did all of the things that they did, whereas now you have got local boards that, actually, on the whole, represent areas larger than many districts and cities in New Zealand. So there is still a need to work on what their role is and to clarify that.

Auckland University of Technology has done a report, Super City? State of Auckland, that does talk about that and talks about the need for greater clarity around the role of the council both in terms of the governing body and the local boards. I think that that is a vital conversation that we need to have to strengthen the governance arrangements in Auckland, our largest city. Another of the significant findings of that report is that there are too few Māori, Pacific, and ethnic people and younger adults holding elected positions on the council. Also, my colleague Denise Roche talked about the council-controlled organisations and specifically mentioned the need to have more women involved in the council-controlled organisations. So there are some issues there that the Auckland University of Technology has picked up.

I want to talk about my own local board. It has done, I think, a very, very good job. The Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board has two subdivisions. The Maungakiekie part is currently represented by three community independents. They have actually been elected unopposed, so they are obviously well regarded in the local community: Simon Randall, Bridget Graham, and Brett Clark. And there is the Tāmaki subdivision, which is actually a Labour team—a very good team, yes—Josephine Bartley, Chris Makoare, Leila Boyle, and Alan Verrall. Three of those people are standing for election again, just to remind voters because, of course, voting in the local government elections is very, very important. So Alan Verrall, Chris Makoare, and Josephine Bartley are all standing for re-election.

Getting back to what this local board has done, the major thing that the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board has done is that it has delivered on the Onehunga foreshore project. It actually controls the funding of a substantial restoration of the Onehunga foreshore, something that the community has fought for over many, many years. It is delivering a music and arts centre in Glenn Innes. It has done a huge amount to fund community events. One thing I particularly want to look at is its focus on housing, a big issue in the area. It has developed—

The theme that underlies this whole debate on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) is democracy, and a number of colleagues have referred to the debates that took place during the passage of the super-city legislation. We debated long and hard the pros and cons of the royal commission model and the model that was then proposed and adopted by the National Government and Rodney Hide as Minister of Local Government.

Jacinda Ardern spoke very eloquently about the local board structure in the Auckland super-city and about how there is little real power, virtually no regulatory power whatsoever, and limited budgets, and she spoke about how many of the local boards have eked out a role for themselves. I think it is fair to say that the model that was adopted essentially sees the local boards as an advocacy platform. They are a kind of public engagement mechanism, if you like, for the super-city. There is not much in the way of control of resources and assets. There is not much in the way of rule or regulation making. I think that has always been the Achilles heel of the structure—that it centralises so much power in the governing body of Auckland Council.

The flip side to that is that the governing body and the mayor have a powerful mandate, clear accountability, and a great deal of ability to lead and provide leadership. We have seen that in the debate about Auckland’s transport agenda, where Len Brown has led very, very strongly on building a world-class transport system for Auckland. We have seen successive Ministers of Transport—Steven Joyce, Gerry Brownlee—stand as human roadblocks in the way of the aspirations of the people of Auckland for a modern public transport system.

The local boards have no mandate and no power to articulate those aspirations, and it is really left to the governing body and the mayor to do so. I think it is all credit to Len Brown that he has successfully rolled over Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce—

💬 Grant Robertson: That is quite something.

—on the issue of the City Rail Link. He has rolled them over on the question of the City Rail Link and has won that battle. So Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee were just the latest of the generals sent by Wellington to subdue the natives.

The last issue on this general theme of democracy around the local boards is that I think it is fair to say that both of the council organisations—the governing body and the local boards—have stood up for their communities. They have stood up and articulated the aspirations for their communities. I think that is a triumph for the democratic spirit.

The last of the generals sent from Wellington to quell the Aucklanders was Maurice Williamson, who thought that he could—in the flush from his celebrity status in the gay marriage debate, and from his non-appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show—try his luck in Auckland. It was up to David Farrar to tell him that he was 25 points behind in the opinion polls. It was only a few days later that Maurice Williamson withdrew, with his tail between his legs.

So along with the story of these local boards, I think it is really a victory for the democratic spirit, and the ability of good people in their communities to make the best of a heavily centralised governance model, to make these local boards work, to stand up for their communities, to use the boards as a platform to make proposals, to engage with the local alcohol plans and the liquor licensing units that Jacinda Ardern talked about, and to participate in the debate around the Auckland Unitary Plan, as they have done. I think all these things are a credit to the people who put themselves up for election, to serve their communities through these local boards. And in spite of the efforts of a roll-call of National Ministers who have set out to constrain Auckland democracy, one after the other they have been sent packing.

I think it is true that Aucklanders have made the super-city work in spite of the best efforts of many Government Ministers and mayoral candidates. I think that is something we should be very grateful for. It is appropriate to remember this at the time of the local government elections.

I feel duty-bound to respond to a number of the claims that have been made by the Opposition this evening. I commenced the debate in good spirit and I intend to finish it in that spirit, but, really, in that regard, I cannot leave unanswered some of the statements that have been made. I just want to start with Mr Twyford, who finished by rolling out the rhetoric that in spite of the efforts of a roll-call of National Ministers to effect democracy in Auckland—

💬 Phil Twyford: You’re the only one who’s a democrat, Chris.

Ha, ha! Then, in the same breath, Mr Twyford said that the Mayor, Len Brown, has led a very strong fight to build a world-class transport system. Well, that is a fantastic effort. But let us think about that for a minute. How has Len Brown been able to do that? It is because we have one mayor and one council for Auckland, and a mayor who has a clear vision for the city and a clear set of priorities that he and his council can drive through. And how was that delivered? It was delivered simply by the fact that people like Rodney Hide, who has been criticised in this Chamber quite loudly tonight, actually had the temerity to go up and deliver a super-city, which has now got a clear vision and a set of priorities, and which Mr Twyford supported tonight through his comments on building a world-leading transport system. So thank you for that, Mr Twyford, and thanks for your support.

But let us be clear about something, something that has not been debated tonight. Who voted against the super-city? Oh, that is right—the Labour Party, the Greens, and New Zealand First. So it is kind of funny where we have got to now, where they are supporting a central vision and a wonderful world-leading transport system—fantastic—but in the same breath they voted against the very system that allowed that to happen in the first place. So I just wanted to make that point.

I also want to reply to Su’a William Sio’s comments about the costs, and how Rodney Hide rolled out additional costs in bringing it all together. What we need to also understand is the savings that this amalgamation has delivered. In this first year alone it was $81 million. Over 10 years—

💬 Andrew Williams: Haven’t made any savings. They haven’t made any savings.

You do not like it, Mr Williams, but there is $1.7 billion worth of savings over 10 years. That is the effort and that has delivered lower rates overall across Auckland. So it is important that people know that.

The other thing I want to follow up on is a few comments, also by Su’a William Sio, who said that the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) cleans up the Government’s mess. Well, let us be clear: when we put the amalgamated Auckland City together, no one thought that we would get a perfect solution on day one. We put this regulation-making power in place to actually allow local boards to be trialled. Actually, that is a pretty sensible move. What has happened 3 years down the track? Are we changing those regulations 3 years down the track? Not one iota. So, actually we got it right. We got it right.

Actually, if we had got it wrong, and if it had not worked perfectly, we would be changing that law now. Everybody in the Chamber agrees that, actually, the regulations now going into law were the right thing to do. So I am actually pretty proud of what we have achieved. I am proud of what Rodney Hide achieved. I am proud of what the National Government has achieved in putting this together and delivering a local voice.

The last comment I want to make is in response to Tracey Martin, because she made a very good point about local boards. Actually, I look forward to the support of Phil Twyford and the Labour Party and of New Zealand First and the Greens for the legislation—the Local Government Amendment Bill—that will come into the House at the end of the year, which allows local boards to be set up throughout the rest of the country. We are providing that democratic opportunity and those amalgamation opportunities throughout the rest of the country. So I look forward to your support, and I look forward to your support of those local boards and of that provision and that option as we go down the track.

I want to finish by acknowledging some of the electioneering that went on in the Labour Party speeches—[Interruption] I am not going to mention any members. That is not my role as the Minister of Local Government. I want to wish all members and all candidates the best of luck as we roll into this election. I want to ask all New Zealanders to step up and vote and to be part of the democratic process. Thank you.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 agreed to.

Clause 5 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.