Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister for the Environment: I move, That the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. Once again we recap that the purpose of this bill is to provide more flexibility to the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel to help ensure that it can deliver its recommendations on the proposed Auckland Unitary Plan to the Auckland Council by the statutory deadline of 22 July 2016.

The Auckland Unitary Plan is the largest and most complex plan in the country, and it is appropriate that we make sure we do everything in our powers to ensure it is delivered on time. In order to achieve this, the bill has three main components. Firstly, the bill reduces the quorum required for hearing sessions from three members to two members; secondly, it will allow an increase in the possible number of appointed hearings panel members from seven to 10, excluding the chairperson; and, thirdly, the bill will enable the hearings panel to make its recommendations on the proposed Auckland Unitary Plan in stages, after hearings are completed on a particular topic rather than in one final report.

As previously mentioned in earlier hearings, this bill represents an important opportunity to enable the hearings panel to continue its good progress and make its recommendations to the Auckland Council by the statutory deadline of 22 July 2016. It is also of unprecedented importance in our country’s plan making, and it has the potential to set a high bar for future plan making.

I am grateful for the efforts of all those who have contributed towards the successful package of this bill to date. My thanks go to the officials who have worked on the policy development of this proposal in the bill, and to the drafters who worked on the detail of the legislation. I also want to acknowledge the work of the independent hearings panel in Auckland. Finally, I would like to thank all of you who worked with me in this House to enable this bill to have its third reading here today. I proudly commend this bill to the House.

Labour has supported the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill because it supports an effective and timely process to progress Auckland City’s unitary plan. What we do not support is the appalling process followed for this legislation. This bill was announced by the Minister for the Environment on 16 September. That is more than 2 months ago. That was plenty of time for this bill to be read a first time in mid-September and to go to a select committee for the public to have a chance to have their voices heard. That was plenty of time for the select committee to scrutinise the bill carefully for any errors or things that did not look likely to make the changes that people thought were necessary, and that was plenty of time for the Parliamentary Counsel Office and for officials to be quizzed on whether the bill will achieve its objective.

Did that happen? No. Why did it not happen? Throughout every stage of this bill, no adequate explanation has been given to the House as to why, instead of proper process and normal process, this bill was introduced at 25 to 11 last night and pushed through its stages. What the Government could have done during the Committee of the whole House was to have the Minister in charge of the bill in the chair and ready to answer questions legitimately put to him by members of that Committee. Did that happen? No, it did not happen. We had Minister after Minister sitting dumbly in the Minister’s chair in the Chamber ignoring the questions. One Minister finally got up and gave a 40-second answer, which was wrong.

💬 Hon Louise Upston: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a well-traversed convention in this House not to refer to the absence of any member at any time.

Speaking to the point of order, it is not against the Standing Orders to say that the Minister in charge of the bill was not in the chair.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, the matter has been traversed. Of course, the Hon Phil Goff referred to the Minister not being in the chair and not to the Minister not being in the Chamber.

The huge irony over the debate over this bill during the stages it has gone through is that as well as seeking to facilitate an effective process of hearing submissions by the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel, the bill had a second purpose. The second purpose was to validate legislation that had been rushed through the House previously on this very same issue and to correct the errors and to retrospectively make legal what had been done illegally. I say “irony” because the lesson of that to the Government—there were three instances where we had to validate legislation that was inadequate and where activity was not lawful—was surely that you do not rush legislation through, you give it proper consideration, and then you have a better chance of getting it right. But we, again, at the Government’s insistence, have seen legislation rushed through, and it is bound to come back to the House because it is not adequate. Despite the appalling process, which not one single National member sought to justify, the Labour Party supports the intent of this bill.

The goal of the legislation to bring in the super-city in Auckland was to bring together eight separate councils into one, to cover an area that is, in effect, one city. The next step that is necessary to realise the benefits of that is to replace 13 district and regional plans with a single unitary plan for resource management. That means that we can put behind Auckland a history of complex and fragmented resource management planning, and we can, hopefully, facilitate quicker and more environmentally sustainable development, both rural and urban, and in the marine environment.

In order to make this process happen more quickly there was a decision made, which I support, that instead of a 10-year process under the Resource Management Act, previous legislation set up a system where the council would notify the Auckland Unitary Plan and then the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel would hear submissions on that plan and would recommend back to the council. Well, that independent hearings panel, chaired by Judge David Kirkpatrick, has done a very good job. It has heard about 9,000 submissions. But in the last part of this process we are looking at site-specific issues, and there are 5,000 submitters who want to be heard.

The statutory deadline for the independent hearings panel to report back to the council is 22 July 2016. It did not look like it was going to make that deadline, and it benefits nobody for the bringing into effect of the unitary plan to be further held up. That is why this bill makes three changes that the Labour Opposition supports. It will reduce the quorum; it will increase the pool of panel members that can be drawn upon; it will allow the panel to report back after each issue that it deals with, with its recommendations; and it will allow more than one panel to sit simultaneously.

Those things are good and we support that, and that is why we are supporting the bill. What we were not able to do in the Committee of the whole House, however, was get answers to certain questions that were validly raised. One question was that if you reduce the quorum to two and you have got two members on a hearings panel, what if they disagree? What sort of recommendations are they going to give back to the council? Well, the Minister did take a call on that one, to say it would not be making a recommendation. I am sorry, but the point of the independent hearings panel is to make recommendations to the council, and who would make that recommendation but the people who heard the submissions on it? So the answer was a nonsense, and time and again we could not get answers on whether this bill will do exactly what everybody in this House might want it to do.

The failure of the Government to allow this to go to a select committee also meant that we were not able to challenge the Minister in charge of the bill in terms of the claims that he makes for it. I want to quote him on two claims. First of all, he said that the bill was needed before the expiry of the special housing area legislation. Well, I would have liked to ask the Minister what bad effect that would have. The Minister has set a target of 39,000 new houses over 3 years. When the council was asked last week how many of those houses, 2 years into the 3-year period, had been built in special housing areas, the answer was 102—102 out of the 39,000 target. So, first of all, it is very hard to accept from the Minister that special housing areas have been effective. They have not. They have been a dramatic failure.

The second thing the Minister has said is: “This bill is needed to maintain the momentum of lifting Auckland’s housing supply.” I hope that the new unitary plan will facilitate addressing the crisis in the availability and the affordability of houses in Auckland. The Productivity Commission has said very clearly that the problem with Auckland is that there is going to be a million more people in the next 30 years, and we have got restrictive laws that will not let the city move out and will not let the city move up. If that happens, it said, what is affected by those pressures is price and affordability, and that has impacted on price and affordability. Land is more than half of the cost of a new home.

So we hope that the new unitary plan will allow, properly, the city to expand, balancing out the needs to protect the most valuable rural land, and we hope that it will allow the city to go up, balancing that need with good urban design and plenty of public open space. So to the extent that the unitary plan can help, we support that, but I absolutely challenge the Minister in his claim that this bill is going to resolve Auckland’s housing crisis. I challenge that on the basis of the fact—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has expired.

It is a pleasure to take a short call in this third reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill, in the name of the Minister for the Environment, Dr Nick Smith.

It is interesting following the member for Mt Roskill, who is on Sunday going to make a significant announcement about his future and his future ambitions, not only for himself but also for Auckland. During the first and second reading debates we heard him go through his lines. He was practising them well into the night last night, and again today he has been running those lines, ready for his campaign launch on Sunday. Indeed he has just updated his Facebook page with a nice superimposed photo of himself standing on what looks like the Devonport foreshore with a nice Sky Tower backdrop. I guess we are going to see an awful lot more of that.

But the member does make a very good point in the support of this bill by the Labour Party. The Labour Party understands, as does the Government, that in order for Auckland to succeed in terms of its new unitary plan, then we have to work through these hearings and get them completed before 22 July next year. It is in nobody’s interests, as Mr Goff said, for that deadline date not to be met. When Auckland succeeds and when Auckland succeeds well, then so too do the regions and the provinces around Auckland and around the rest of the country. So it is in all our best interests for us to do that and get this through.

It has been a very large task so far to complete what has been the largest planning project of any territorial authority in the 24-year history of the Resource Management Act. So far the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel has made excellent progress on its work hearing the submissions, but there are some 5,000 yet to go. That is not going to be possible unless the changes that are going to be implemented in this bill are passed by this House.

I think we have got general consensus across the Parliament that the three main provisions of this bill are good and that they will achieve the results that we are looking for, in terms of speeding up the process, allowing more flexibility in the hearings process, and ensuring that people do get their chance to be heard by the hearings panel.

There are three main points to this bill. The first is that it will reduce the quorum for the hearings sessions. This will reduce from three members to two members. That is a sound, practical, sensible administrative change. The second item that this bill seeks to achieve is to increase the size of the panel. The possible number of appointed hearings panel members will go from seven to 10, and that, again, helps with the flexibility of the hearings process. The third point that this bill seeks to achieve is to enable the panel to make its recommendations in stages. That has not been the case up until now, and so the panel will be able to complete a series of work, make its recommendations, and then move on to another piece of work before having to report it in full.

I think that is the kind of practical, pragmatic flexibility that the hearings panel requires in order to complete its work before 22 July. It is a pleasure to commend this piece of legislation to the House.

As my colleague Phil Goff has said, Labour is voting for this bill. Why? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that the Auckland Council asked for it, and we think it is appropriate, in the appropriate spirit of partnership between central government and the elected representatives of our largest city, that there should be a relationship of cooperation. If it seems like a good idea and the Auckland Council is asking for it, then it is appropriate that we should be supporting this initiative. The second reason is that the draft Auckland Unitary Plan is vital, and here is one thing on which we do agree with Nick Smith. This unitary plan is vital for reforming the planning rules that are critically important to fixing Auckland’s housing crisis, getting the flow of new housing construction under way, and building a better, more prosperous, and more liveable city. Those are the two reasons.

What is really significant about this bill is that it comes after 7 years of a difficult, problematic relationship that the National Government has had with Auckland. There have been 2 years of imposing the super-city on Auckland, riding roughshod over the desires of Aucklanders, and then, having set up the super-city, 5 years of fighting, white-anting the Auckland Council, and scapegoating the Auckland Council for the many policy failures of this Government, not least in housing. I say again to members opposite: “What took you so long?”. There have been 5 utterly unproductive years of fighting and blaming the Auckland Council for things like the housing crisis, but at last we see in this bill a practical, cooperative measure that will do good and will benefit Auckland and benefit the country.

I think the other really notable thing about this bill is that one of the things that the draft unitary plan will do is it will give us a measure of progress in reforming the planning rules, particularly all of the restrictions and the limits on height and density that are such a barrier to the supply of affordable housing, and a better choice of housing types in places where people actually want to live.

This bill really comes after years of the National Government being dragged, kicking and screaming, towards a more rounded view of the need to reform the planning rules. For so long this problem for Bill English, for Nick Smith, and for others in the National Government was all about sprawl. They were scathing of Auckland’s vision and plan for a compact city.

In a remarkable turn-round we have now got the Prime Minister issuing an edict to Aucklanders, telling the good folk of the leafy suburbs in East Auckland that they have to get used to living in apartments. That is what he said. The memo has gone out. I know Paul Goldsmith is horrified by that—at having to explain this to the people whom he would like to have as his constituents, if he did not have to put up with this terrible, awful, shoddy sort of deal with the ACT Party in Epsom. He would have to explain to them that the National Party says that there is going to be high-rise apartments all the way across Epsom. But that is the reality.

Now the Government is rushing this bill through the Parliament, under urgency. If the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel is successful in doing its business, it will free up the constraints to some degree on density and height, and that will be getting rid of an important impediment to the kind of development that Auckland needs. We have, in the course of this debate, set out a number of our concerns about this bill. I was sorry to see my tabled amendment not get enough support to be adopted; that amendment would have changed the rules for the appointment of members of the hearings panel. Instead of this Government, through the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation, just imposing its choice of panel members on Auckland, it would have allowed the Minister for the Environment and the Mayor of Auckland together to decide who should be on the panel. Surely that would be appropriate—surely that would be appropriate. Normally in Resource Management Act rules it is the councillors, the elected representatives, who ultimately make that choice about who is appointed onto these decision-making panels, so it is an extraordinary thing that the National Government assumed its right to tell Aucklanders who should be making these critical decisions about the plan.

Also Government members did not support my other amendment, which would have limited the scope of the panel to make recommendations in the draft unitary plan only within the scope of the submissions. Again, I think this Government has overreached when it designed the independent hearings panel process by giving it the extraordinary power, really, to make recommendations on whatever it likes, regardless of whether it has received submissions on those issues.

We had no real response through the Committee stage to the questions that we put to the various Ministers in the chair about whether or not it made sense to allow the panel to make recommendations on certain topics through the course of the hearings schedule and not to wait until they had got all the evidence before they then deliberated on the whole, weighing up all the evidence. We think that raises the possibility of some incoherence—a piecemeal approach to dealing with what are complex and interlinked issues.

The other concern that we have, in conclusion, as we draw to the end of this process, and as so many members on this side of the House have said, is the irony of this bill, which is basically about public participation in the planning process and trying to ensure good decisions and that communities are able to have a say in these important decisions. The very bill that is trying to deliver this is subject to a truncated process, being rammed through the House under urgency with no select committee scrutiny, no ability to really tease out the issues, get expert advice, or for the public to have their say. There was no good reason to be in urgency at all, except for the incompetence of the National Government’s management of House business, so it is a very, very poor show in that regard.

We support this bill because we believe that the new rules that the independent hearings panel will, we hope, usher in will deal with things like all of the decisions around zoning, the urban growth boundary, and height and density limits. Improving these rules is vital to Auckland’s future prosperity. It will be very difficult to fix the Auckland housing crisis without improving and reforming these rules. But we have to say that it is not a panacea. For 10 years now senior National Party politicians like Nick Smith and Bill English have routinely blamed Auckland Council for the high cost of housing and blamed the Resource Management Act, as if it was some kind of panacea. Bizarrely, they have been saying that for 10 years but have done nothing about it.

The draft unitary plan that I think we all hope will improve those planning rules for supporting more and better urban development will be the first significant change to town planning rules in Auckland in that entire period that we have had to put up with and to listen to Bill English and Nick Smith scapegoating the Auckland Council and the Resource Management Act for these problems, even though they have done nothing about it. So putting aside the things that the Government chooses not to do and will not do—cracking down on speculators, actively building large numbers of houses—the Government refuses to do the very things that it could do, use the levers that it could pull, to fix the problem. At least now Auckland Council is one step closer to doing what it can do to improve the rules that govern Auckland’s development.

I rise to take just a short call in the final reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill.

It is always such a joy to take over from Phil Twyford. I would have to say he is one of the most negative people in this House, is he not? It is incredible. It is always raining—it is always raining in Phil Twyford’s world. I mean, fundamentally, Labour supports this bill. It supports it. It says: “It’s vital for reforming Auckland’s planning laws. The Auckland Council supports it, so we support it too.”, but he bemoans it every step of the way. He has got his black suit and black tie and frown on and his arms are folded. Every bit of it he finds frustrating to talk to. But—

💬 Dr Shane Reti: Half empty.

Exactly—glass half empty. As I say, it is raining every day in Phil Twyford’s world.

💬 Scott Simpson: He’s worried about Simon Lusk.

I suspect you are right.

One thing I do agree with Mr Twyford on is that this is a very critical bill for Auckland. It absolutely underpins enabling it to get its draft unitary plan completed by the end of July. Clearly, that absolutely has to be met, and so we find ourselves with 5,000 submissions still yet to be heard and a Government saying: “Right, we need to have some pragmatic solutions to enable that to happen.” Three solutions we have put on the table, three we have got nearly everybody’s support on.

Firstly, we are reducing the quorum, which is a totally sensible thing to do. Secondly, we are appointing some more hearings panellists to enable the 5,000 to be heard in an effective and efficient way, and, finally, we are ensuring that as the sections are completed they can be reported on, instead of waiting until every single one of those sections is done. It is common sense. It is a Government that saw that we needed to act. We have done. We have done it under urgency, and I know the people of Auckland will thank us for it. I commend this bill to the House.

It is my privilege to rise to take the first call on this, the third reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I am very pleased to do so because I am a resident of Auckland and, like all of the speakers on this side of the House, we all have experienced local government in Auckland because we have actually lived there.

As for myself, I have actually been involved in local government in Auckland as well. Like Tracey Martin from New Zealand First, I was a local board member after the amalgamation into the super-city; whereas, from the three speakers that we have had so far from that side of the House, National, we have not yet had anybody from Auckland commenting on it. I guess, for me—

💬 Pita Paraone: Other than to close it—seek closure.

Other than to seek closure in previous parts of the bill.

I guess, for me, that is sort of like a symbol of how the Government actually responds to Auckland. There is a whole bunch of people who do not necessarily live there and who do not necessarily understand it, but who are attempting to make rules and to control the local government in that area, and the Government has done that consistently since it first came into office in 2008.

There have been 16 pieces of legislation since 2009, all of which have been a direct interference with local government in Auckland. It is because Auckland is the powerhouse of the country that this Government, has—[Interruption] I am sorry if I have offended your sense of your own—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not bring me, from Whanganui, into it.

Ha, ha! Whanganui is a mighty city indeed; however, this is about Auckland and about 16 pieces of legislation about Auckland.

The interesting thing is that when the amalgamation happened way back in 2010, when it was finalised, there was this discussion about how it was going to be a saving for ratepayers. But actually, if you look at the legislation and just what the legislation costs, it has been a shambles, and it has been a huge cost to taxpayers as well.

This bill that we are currently discussing for its third reading, which has gone through urgency over the last 6 hours—and that is how long it will take, before it is finally through, and that has been a truncated process—has actually cost the taxpayers in New Zealand just under $250,000, and that is because for every hour that the House sits it costs $41,384. So if you times that by, you know, another 15 pieces of legislation, you are starting to get into millions—up to about $2.2 million just to meddle in the local government in Auckland.

We have been opposed to this bill because we see it as another attack on the democratic rights of local government to control its own decision making. We were opposed to the original Act that this bill amends. We were opposed to it because it gave the Government the powers to determine who will be the hearings commissioners to hear the first Auckland Unitary Plan.

We know that we need a unitary plan and we know it is groundbreaking to get a unitary plan for a city that size, but we have also been very concerned at the truncated process that has been allowed for that very important piece of regulation that is being developed up in our biggest city in the country. Essentially, this Government set in place time frames that were not achievable, and it put that in the statutes.

So we have had to come back, under urgency, to pass legislation that not only once more gives the Government the ability and right to appoint more hearings commissioners who will hear the submissions on the plan but also enables them to get through another 5,000 site-specific submissions and report back by July next year. The July next year period is purely arbitrary, and the fact that we went into urgency to do this is also completely unnecessary because, as we have heard from other speakers, there was the opportunity to have a truncated but democratic process to hear submissions on this bill, to hear from the experts, and to hear personally from Auckland Council. We could have done that if we had started the process at the time when the Minister actually announced that this was what was needed in the legislation in order for the recommendations to come back to the council.

We are the only party in the House that is opposing this bill, and we take on board the fact that Auckland Council actually supports it because it wants to get through the unitary plan process too. But there were solutions that we had offered right from the start. The development of the draft plan was a very democratic and consultative process run by Auckland Council. At the time we said, like many others in the House, that if we had adopted the draft plan, then we could have gone on from there and we would have had more time. However, that was rejected by that side of the House.

We have taken a stand to oppose this bill because we are constantly concerned about the way this Government will frequently decide to shortcut democracy in local government. We have seen it time and time again in Auckland, but we have seen it elsewhere across the country. I guess the classic one is the removal of the Environment Canterbury councillors, and that was because they were not playing ball. They were not singing from the same song sheet as the National Government. What did the Government do there? It sacked the democratically elected representatives and it replaced them with its own hand-picked commissioners. We have had elections in Fiji before we have actually had elections for Environment Canterbury representatives. It has been this consistent meddling with local government that really does disturb us.

One of the absolute founding principles for the Greens is around appropriate decision-making. Appropriate decision-making means that decisions get made by the people who are affected by them. In the case of Environment Canterbury, that has not happened.

Basically, the people whom the Government wanted to make the decisions have been dumped, and certainly with the appointment of hearings commissioners, although it says in this bill that when appointing these extra hearings commissioners the Ministers will consult with the statutory Māori board and they will consult with Auckland Council, it is a totally different thing from actually having the ability to make the decision or being part of the decision making about whom the council wants, whom the elected representatives want, and being able to hear the submissions that will be coming through that will be part of the framework and the documents that will set the rules for the development of Auckland for the next 30 years.

We acknowledge the fact that those appointed commissioners have, by all accounts, been working incredibly hard and probably doing a really good job. But the process—we worry about the process. We worry about the fact that the changes in this bill will mean that there will be only two commissioners hearing submitters rather than three. We worry about the mistakes that this bill is actually fixing up, validating stuff that has happened before.

We worry about that because, potentially, we may make similar mistakes because we have been through this urgency process. All in all, we are opposing this bill, and we are the only ones in the House who will be. We are doing it absolutely on a point of principle about democracy for Aucklanders.

It is with mixed feelings, actually, that I rise to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I say “with mixed feelings”, because it could have been a sweeter moment had we gone through the process.

Let me be very clear about the position of New Zealand First when it comes to super-cities. New Zealand First is not a supporter of the changes that were enacted in 2010 and the creation of the Auckland super-city. We never ever bought into the argument that by lumping all those city councils in together we would see improvements in efficiency, we would see reductions in staffing levels, we would see reductions in overheads, we would see reductions in rates, we would see reductions in the rate of increases of rates, and we would see greater cohesion. We never bought any of that argument because, for many people, a bit of common sense tells you that the bigger those things are, the more difficult they are to maintain and the further away the governance moves from the people.

There is ample evidence of that internationally. In fact, if one has a look at what is happening in Brisbane right now, where they are de-amalgamating because they have learnt the lessons the hard way, it was already written that the Auckland super-city—which the National Government created, supported by Rodney Hide—was always going to fall short of the claims being made to justify its creation. So it was no surprise, when I got a hold of this bill and started doing a little bit of research, to find, as has already been mentioned here a couple of times, that in 6 years—it is only 6 short years that the Auckland super-city has existed, or since the legislation was passed, anyway—this Parliament has redressed that legislation no fewer than 16 times.

And here is the prediction: we predict that this is not the last Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill that we will see. We predict that there will be more yet to come, as more of the worms start creeping their way to the surface and as Auckland City continues to make it known to the Government that there are flaws that need redressing. This is one such flaw. It is an issue that New Zealand First understands, and we empathise.

What we do not empathise with is the way in which this legislation has been progressed through the House. In fact, we said in the second reading and, I think, during the Committee stage that the huge irony of what has happened here over the last couple of days has been in this simple fact: this legislation seeks to correct faulty hearings processes and seeks to enhance them, but the process by which the Government has chosen to do that—urgency—has actually denied the people of Auckland their opportunity to have a full democratic process through which they would be heard. In short, the Government has knee-capped the hearing process here in Parliament by putting this bill through under urgency. Why? Well, we do not know why.

Normally when the Government brings urgent legislation to the House, it is critical, it is crucial. There is something quite momentous that has happened. Something is sailing on a time line and it has to be corrected very, very quickly, or it is controversial, hugely controversial, and the Government wants to get it done and dusted really quickly to avoid the backlash in the public arena and the political debate. But none of that exists here. In fact, had there been a select committee process, we would have had a rather unique situation where 100 percent of the House voted in favour of the bill.

So I guess we suspect here that there are people sitting behind the scenes—whether it is the Leader of the House, or the Deputy Prime Minister, or senior Cabinet Ministers—scratching their heads, wondering what the heck it was that Nick Smith told them that convinced them that this bill needed to be done through urgency. I have got a sneaking suspicion that people will be asking Nick Smith, when he gets back from down the West Coast, what the issue was. Why could this bill, having been introduced in September, not have gone to the Local Government and Environment Committee? You have got a very, very good select committee there. It works in a very collegial manner, chaired very well by Scott Simpson and backed up by Todd Muller very, very well. The committee actually functions exceedingly well—some might even say too well, because it is a joy to go along to that committee.

There is no reason why the Government should have feared referring this bill to the committee and saying to the chairperson, Mr Scott Simpson: “Look, we really need to turn this round. There are some tight time lines, but we actually want to give it the full benefit of a hearings process. Let Auckland people have their say. Let the committee question the Minister, question the department, question Auckland Council, and get a greater feel for what the issues are behind the legislation. Get it reported back to the House and then we can put it through.” I know it would have gone through without any hassle at all. We certainly would have had shorter speeches on this side of the House—there would not have been a lot more to say. Much of the debate here has been about the process, which is the irony of the whole thing. So I have no idea why the bill went through this process, but I am pretty confident in the back of my mind that there are ongoing discussions, comments, and questions being asked on the Government benches as to why the Government used urgency. The truth is that given the way the Local Government and Environment Committee operates we could have done better. I have already covered that.

So what are the changes that this bill makes? The changes have already been canvassed well. There is a change to the quorum—it will be two instead of three—and New Zealand First signalled right at the outset that we had reservations about that. With a quorum of two, if you need to take a pause does that mean the whole hearing has to grind to a halt? Does it have to stop because one member has ducked out of the room, whether it is to go to the bathroom or whether it is to take an urgent phone call from their partner because something disastrous has happened? The beauty of having a quorum of three is that one person can vacate the room and the hearing can continue.

I would love someone to show me a trust deed or an incorporation’s constitution where they actually have a quorum of two. But take the next point: if you have a quorum of two, there is a third person in there who is the chair, and if the chair is not able to be there and only the quorum of two turns up, who becomes the chair? My pick is that they will spend the first part of the meeting having a conversation about who is going to chair it. Of course, everyone loves to be the chair, because they get to sit up there and have the TV cameras on them. They get to call the shots and decide who is going be heard, who is not going to be heard, who is going to be curtailed, and who gets the questions. So those conversations about who will be the chair just seem rather pointless. So we have made that point, but we do not think we got satisfactory answers.

The other issue is around increasing the number of appointed hearings panel members from seven to 10—actually to 11, because it does include the chair. This is sensible given that the aim is to allow concurrent hearings to be held. The other issue is about validating the hearings that have already been held illegally. That is interesting. I do not know where else around the country a local government territorial authority would get away with that, but Auckland seems to have.

The bill validates closing dates for submissions received between 14 January and 28 February. That, again, raises a whole bunch of questions, which were never answered at all, about those people who understood that the closing date was 14 January, thought that was it, and did not get their submissions in, only to now find that, actually, the submissions that were received up until 28 February would have been legal, because on 19 November Parliament made them so.

I think that a number of issues were addressed in the amendments Phil Twyford put forward. New Zealand First supported those. We thought they were sensible. We thought it was right and proper, actually, and a better fit that the mayor and the duly elected representatives of the Auckland people have a say in whom the Minister for the Environment appointed on to that panel. Regretfully, that amendment was rejected, as was Mr Twyford’s other amendment. We in New Zealand First believe that those two amendments would have enhanced the legislation.

Again, had we had a full select committee process we might have been able to convince the Government that those two amendments were not harmful and did actually add to the quality of the bill, and given a bit more time we might have convinced the Minister to go with it. We might have convinced the Minister not to drop the quorum from three to two—to keep it at three. We might have convinced the Minister on Mr Twyford’s other amendment to replace section 144(5), in clause 5, with a hearings panel that—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but his time has expired.

E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. I feel it is my duty to assist “Major Mark” with some of the points that he brought up, so I will address those in my comments.

This Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill is very, very simple, and it does a couple of things that actually have direct comparisons we can make in this House. In reducing the quorum from three to two for the hearings it balances very successfully, in my view, taking a pragmatic and practical approach that will allow the Auckland Council to complete unitary plan hearings by the middle of next year with the need to be democratic, transparent, and accountable to Auckland ratepayers.

There is a very similar thing we do. In fact, the Education and Science Committee, on which I sit, has a reduced quorum and a subcommittee now, so that we can hear the many hundreds of people who want to come to submit on the inquiry into special needs and education. They are the parents of disabled children who are going through the educational system in New Zealand. I think it is disgraceful that the Labour Party denied leave for that subcommittee to sit during the period of urgency, thus inconveniencing the families of hundreds of New Zealand children in the educational system who suffer from disabilities and have special educational needs and learning differences. Those members should hang their heads in shame for that. We have a reduced quorum for that meeting, and there is a very simple reason: it is to balance practicality and pragmatism, versus the need to be democratic and as transparent and accountable as possible.

Secondly, on the need for urgency, I think this is also very clear. It is laid out in the bill. There is a statutory deadline of 22 July 2016. Hearings must begin in January next year to successfully complete them by that statutory deadline.

It is a practical and pragmatic bill, and I think it successfully achieves what we need to do to make sure the Auckland Unitary Plan is completed on time. I commend it to the House.

I call Jan Logie—a 5-minute call.

I rise to take a short call on this, the third reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. The Green Party, as we have expressed already, is not able to support this bill, as it is passing through under urgency without the proper democratic process—without enabling the people of Auckland to have input into changes to the oversight of a planning process that is absolutely critical to creating the Auckland that every person in Auckland desperately wants and has been waiting for, for a long time.

The detail of this bill is that it reduces the quorum required for hearings sessions from three to two. There have been issues raised with that, in the point of where the decision making will happen if there are locked perspectives when you have got an even number. There have also been issues raised around the increased potential for a narrowing of perspectives to be leading the direction of the plan when you have got only two people rather than three. Other concerns that have been raised around that point are just around the fact that, well, one person may not be paying attention, one person may not be available—then what, in terms of things being able to go forward?

So we think that those are actually genuine points that it would have been useful to have enabled Aucklanders to have input on, around their experience of the process so far and their desire for how they would like this process to look.

This bill also allows for an increase in the number of Government-appointed panel members from seven to 10, and, again, for us, this is a core point of difference between our vision of democracy and what it seems this Government’s is. We believe that in appropriate decision-making, the people closest to that decision and who are most affected by a decision are the ones in the best place to make that decision, not people based here in Wellington who, actually, may not even be able to see the gaps in their understanding of the realities in those communities.

It is particularly galling that this is happening under urgency and, again, taking away the right of the people of Auckland to have input and comment on that. It is not a small thing when the Government has voted down, consciously through the Committee stage of this bill, the opportunity to enable Auckland Council to appoint those people.

So it becomes very clear that this is not about the needs of Auckland; this is about what this Government wants. And then, again, it is imposing its vision, its will, on top of local government, and that is not how our constitutional Government arrangements are supposed to work. Central government has a specific role and local government has another role, and they should be freed up to be able to deliver that for their communities, for those locally elected members to be able to be accountable to the members of their community.

This bill, again, overrides that, and it needs to be pointed out that this is happening under urgency, to amend a piece of legislation that was introduced under urgency, and that there have been 16 separate bills dealing with Auckland local government issues since 2009, since this Government has been in power. This is the fourth Auckland transitional provisions bill since 2009, because the Government put through the initial legislation under urgency, overriding local democracy, and it did not get it right. So many hours and so much money have been wasted in this House fixing up mistakes that would not have happened if there had been good decision-making.

It seems to me that this Government has an idea of efficiency that is all about realising its vision as quickly as possible. It does not seem to understand that efficiency is best served when as many people’s views as possible can be gathered together to produce the best result, in the best time frame to enable that to happen. It is about the quality of decision making and democratic rights, and we have to oppose the bill.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute in this, the third reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. As a member of Parliament in the Auckland area, for Manurewa, I just want to note that this process has been created in lieu of having council-appointed commissioners, who would have, in fact, gone through what would be an engagement with the over 13,000 people who chose to participate in the formation of an Auckland Unitary Plan. So I want to acknowledge all the people who took the time—all those Aucklanders; people who live in Tāmaki-makau-rau—and who, through their submissions, identified 93,600 requests, and there were over 1.4 million points registered in the 13,200 submissions.

For me, this bill has to be about local people having and creating an opportunity for their city to have a vision, and for us, it is about Auckland being the most livable city, so any critique of this piece of legislation has to be about ensuring the voice of local people continues to be heard throughout this process. Those local communities have to be Māori, and those local communities and local voices have to be Pacific, they have to be Asian, and they have to be representative of the people who live in Tāmaki-makau-rau.

When I look at this piece of legislation, one of the things that strikes me about it, particularly in Part 1, is the expedited processes but also the additional, I guess, power that this hearings panel has by virtue of this piece of legislation to actually produce recommendations that have not come from submissions. I find that incredibly undermining of a system that is all about local people having a say in their local community—about Aucklanders coming together and developing a vision in a unitary plan for our city that we want to take into the future.

This has been about building a consensus of a vision for Auckland, and what I see in this piece of legislation is actually an opportunity for people on the hearings panel who are appointed by the Government—so, the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation—who actually may not have the best interests of Aucklanders in hand. If we had looked at having a traditional process and those commissioners had been appointed by the council, then there would have been a relationship and an expectation that anything that those commissioners did would have at the heart of it what is in the best interests of Auckland and the vision that the governors of Auckland have. So in preparing for my contribution I did speak to councillor Alf Filipaina, and I do want to acknowledge the Auckland councillors who have had many hours of consultation in and with our communities about what they are trying to achieve.

Whether or not this piece of legislation is going to create something that everyone can be unified around, we will see in time. So what I am really interested in is that this process is going to produce a report and some recommendations by 22 July 2016. That is why we were in urgency and why we are now trying to pass this piece of legislation—it is to meet that deadline.

So what I want to be really clear about in the process going forward is that that is not the end of the process. In fact, that report and those recommendations will go to Auckland Council, and then it will be up to Auckland Council and our elected representatives as to whether or not we accept the recommendations that the hearings panel will provide. By September next year it will be the elected representatives of Auckland—it will be the people of Auckland—who actually have the final say about our Auckland Unitary Plan. I think that is really important to put on the record—that there is still an opportunity for local communities and for local people, through their local councils, to ensure that this process actually upholds our voice. Kia ora.

I rise to speak on the third reading of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. I must say that in the last few weeks I feel like I have risen more to speak about the development of Christchurch and Canterbury, so it is great to rise and speak around the development of another great city, Auckland.

When I look at this bill, three things stick out for me. They are around efficiency, effectiveness, and economics: reducing the quorum from three to two, increasing the hearings panel from seven to 10 members, and making the panel able to report back their recommendations in stages. Overall, this is a great bill, and I commend it to the House.

That was a pathetic contribution by that member, Matt Doocey. It had no reference whatsoever—no reference whatsoever—to what this is all about. This is about the people of Auckland.

I want to read out an email that I picked up this afternoon from an Aucklander. It says: “I have been listening to the parliamentary debate all morning and I am not happy about this issue being passed under urgency rather than going through a select committee process. Once again, the people and ratepayers of Auckland will have no say, and once again we will have flawed amendments to fix flawed legislation.” That was from one constituent in the Auckland region, Carol-Anne Armitage. But I suspect that that feeling and that mood is shared by many, many people in Auckland. She is absolutely correct: we are fixing flawed legislation that goes back to when this Government came into power.

This is the third and final reading of this piece of legislation. We have been denied the select committee process. We have been denied Parliamentary Counsel Office advice. We have been denied a regulatory impact statement. We have been denied, also, the benefit of receiving the knowledge, the wisdom, and the experience of people from Auckland. That is what we have been denied, as reflected in the letter of Carol-Anne Armitage, which hopefully this House will listen to. I can see the Government members hanging their heads in shame, because in the last contribution about economics and efficiency, Matt Doocey made no reference whatsoever to how this bill impacts on people in Auckland.

The first impact is, again, Aucklanders were denied their opportunity to submit and have a say on how this bill impacts on them. This is not the first time. As the member of the Green Party said, nine pieces of legislation have gone through this House with reference to Auckland. Four of those pieces of legislation have been done in urgency. We are fixing flawed legislation, which was also done in a reduced process in 2010. Altogether there have been 48 pieces of legislation that have gone through this House in urgency, and each time this Government continues to deny the general public their opportunity to have a say. That is wrong—that is wrong. That is a flawed lawmaking process. It is not good practice.

I emphasise that, because some of us in this House have had the opportunity of travelling in the Pacific region, meeting up with parliamentarians from the Pacific, and holding up our select committee process as best practice. What do this lot do? They deny our own people the opportunity of experiencing what democracy is about. This is a pattern that we have seen in the last 7 years of this Government, and it continues to undermine democracy, it continues to deny the opportunities of Aucklanders to have a say.

There are a couple of things that I want to refer to in this legislation because I did not get the opportunity to speak during the Committee of the whole House. I want to make reference to clause 5, which inserts new section 144(4), (5), and (6). What this makes reference to is the scope of recommendations. Subclause (4) says: “The Hearings Panel must make recommendations on any provision included in the proposed plan …”. However, new section 144(5) says “the Hearings Panel—(a) is not limited to making recommendations … within the scope of the submissions …” but “may make recommendations on any other matters relating …”. Because we were denied the opportunity of having the officials’ advice, legal advice, and the advice from the general public, I cannot help but wonder. We have taken the right of Auckland City to appoint independent commissioners. Instead, we are saying that the Minister will appoint the independent members of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel.

I am going to ask this question, which I doubt the Government members will answer but I am going to ask it anyway. On whose interests will the independent members of the panel base recommendations that are outside the scope of public submission? Whose interests will drive those recommendations that fall outside what the people of Auckland will want? If the Government is appointing these members, I have to say I am suspicious. I am suspicious that instead of the independent members being independent, this Government will attempt, as we have seen in other situations, to influence the decisions that the independent members will make.

I want to make another reference to new section 161(8A), inserted by clause 7. In this new section we see that “The Ministers may appoint an additional member or a replacement member only after consulting the Auckland Council, the Independent Māori Statutory Board, and the chairperson of the Hearings Panel … ”. I want to ask what the meaning of the word “consulting” is when used in this piece of legislation, because we do not have an interpretation clause in this bill. And the reason why I ask is that I want to know whether the Ministers—when it says they are consulting the Auckland Council and the Independent Māori Statutory Board, etc., does that mean that they will go with their recommendation and simply inform them that this is what is going to happen? Do they ask for their view? And if their view is contrary to the Ministers’ view, whose view then dominates? It will be the Ministers’.

But I also want to ask what that would mean in Auckland. Samoan language is the second-most spoken language in the city of Auckland after English. And the word that I would rather see used in this piece of legislation is the Samoan word of “soalaupule”. Soalapule means to share authority. So I am asking again whether any member of this Government is prepared to answer the meaning of “consultation”. Does it mean that they share authority with the Auckland Council and with the Independent Māori Statutory Board? Does that mean that they seek their view and it is generally acknowledged and accepted? Or is this really meaning that the Ministers impose the person that they want on this panel?

As I have said before in earlier statements, I have the greatest respect for people on the independent hearings panel. But this is about Auckland. And, as I said before, there were only two people whom I would recognise as Aucklanders. And, granted, this area is an area of expertise, but community representatives can also get accredited to sit on the hearings panel. The University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology have done such courses so that elected members and others can be accredited to sit on these hearings panels. I do not see anyone there. In fact, with the greatest respect to the professionalism of people who are on the board, I often wonder, do we not have people in Auckland with the same experience and the same expertise who ought to be on this panel? It almost seems that this Government is so content and so intent on treating Aucklanders with contempt and treating Aucklanders like they are second-class citizens.

I want to come back to a point that Ron Mark made. We have a select committee that is very well and ably chaired by Scott Simpson. I wonder why it is that Minister Nick Smith does not trust the chair or that committee enough to pass this legislation in so it can consider it. I suspect the Minister is afraid that Scott Simpson may be too good and may become the Minister of Local Government. But this is the point. There are two reasons why the Government did not use the select committee process. One is Nick Smith is afraid of Scott Simpson taking his place, and two is to show his sheer contempt for Aucklanders. This is not the first time.

This is a Government, as I have said before, whose rhetoric sounds good, but underneath it all is all this stuff. It has never been straight with Aucklanders. It has been talking about how this bill is somehow going to save Aucklanders. The reality is that this bill has also been about fixing the mistakes that this Government made. Every time it rushes into legislation it makes mistakes. It makes mistakes, and when the pattern has been repeated, it means that this Government is incompetent—incompetent as far as Aucklanders are concerned.

Kia ora, e Te Mana Whakawā. It always great to follow Mr William Sio with fire and brimstone, as he just did previously. It is also an honour to be able to speak in support of this bill.

The situation here, really, is that this is great legislation. It was introduced into the House last night in an incredibly well-thought-out speech by Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. On this side of the House, I want to mihi them as well because we got some really important information there from a potential mayoral candidate, a housing spokesman, and a former Mayor of Carterton, and so we have got it all here. We have got it all here. On this side of the House the glass is half full; on that side of the House, mostly it is half empty. But, at the end of the day, in the final speech here, after all that was said and done, there has been more said than done so far, so let us get on with this legislation. I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House. Kia ora.