Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3)

I rise to take a call on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) in its second reading. As the sponsor of this private member’s bill, it is an honour to be able to speak tonight to its second reading in the House. Can I acknowledge the Local Government and Environment Committee chairperson Scott Simpson—I was about to say the “Hon” Scott Simpson; he is an honourable member—and also his deputy chair, Todd Muller, who was there as well. Thank you to all the other members of the select committee—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Anyone else?

Sorry, no, you are right there, Mr Faafoi. I should read out those members. Yes, there was Paul Foster-Bell, Matt Doocey, Joanne Hayes, Nuk Korako, Ron Mark, Todd Muller. Mr Faafoi, you are not on there; I thought you were calling out your name.

💬 Kris Faafoi: I’m on the Government Administration Committee.

Ha, ha! I do want to acknowledge and thank them for that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! And we will have a bit less from the other side. We have a slight problem. The member has a duty at the beginning of a speech, and that is to move the motion. I suggest the member does it.

Apologies. I move, That the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Thank you.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: But don’t start again.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, he does not get extra time for fouling up.

Ha, ha! I just want to acknowledge that when it came into the select committee, there were 17 written submissions on the bill. One of those submissions was actually acknowledged in two parts. Out of that, there were 10 submissions that were positively in favour, five that were in support with the appeal to make some amendments, and only three that were opposed. Those three that were opposed were from those who were currently members of more than one local board.

This bill, in its intent, aims to address a loophole in the current legislation that allows local board members in Auckland to serve on two or more local boards. When a person serves on more than one local board, there is a real potential for conflicts of interest. Local boards are important to the democratic process, and this bill protects their integrity.

In support of that intent, I would like to read from the Auckland Council’s submission. In its submission, I think it actually addresses this issue quite succinctly. On page 3 of its submission, in section 7, paragraph 11, it declares this: “Membership of more than one local board at a time has the potential to create the perception of conflicts of interest as local boards are required to represent local interests in their area. Experience has shown that board members have heavy workloads, particularly the full time chairperson role. It is currently possible for a successful candidate to chair one local board and sit as a member of another. Membership of multiple boards potentially reduces the ability of the person concerned to effectively represent the views and preferences of their different local communities.”

In that regard, we believe that this is important. I do know that the member who is not here, the member Phil Twyford, also talked about—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker. There is a member who did talk about the intent in support of that. He too would like to put forward a bill that addresses this very loophole. I know that he has also been in support of this.

Paragraph 12 of the Auckland Council submission—I think that is important, too. I just want to quickly summarise the point here: “We suggest that the elected members should be able to sit on one local board only at a time and support the proposed amendments to the LGACA to reflect this. This would ensure full representation in all local boards and areas.”

We believe it is important that full representation be available to all communities. I know that, currently, we have now had two terms of the Auckland Council and those on local boards. What has been encouraging to see is the widespread representation. I want to acknowledge that in the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki ward—in fact, we have the councillor Denise Krum, who was down here, but we also had two friends of mine—Josephine Bartley and also Chris Makoare, who had the opportunity to gain representation as elected members of their local boards. I believe that is a good example—that when we ensure that there is an opportunity for others to represent their local communities, this becomes important as well.

I just want to talk about some of the key provisions that are in the bill. The bill provides that candidates standing for multiple local boards must provide a written notice to the electoral officer specifying the local boards they are seeking election to and the ranking in order of priority that would apply if the candidate was elected to more than one local board. And I think that is important, because then that gives a clear indication to voters that though they may be seeking election to different local boards, actually, their priority would be for a specific area, as well. Candidates must also identify their priority in rankings in their candidate profile statements.

I believe, also, that one thing that did come up in discussion on the clause was that we wanted to ensure that once this bill was gazetted and given the assent—we think it is important, and it has come up through submissions—there was not a retrospective element to the bill. So those who are currently serving on two or more local boards are not impacted by this. The bill provides that nothing new affects the current membership of any person who is a member of more than one local board as well.

My comments are brief at this moment. I think that we have covered a number of the key issues that are inside this. I just want to finish off my comments by talking about the importance of the local boards and the roles that they play in local government. They can negotiate local service standards, manage local facilities—parks and local events—draw up local board plans, promote local leadership, identify and propose local bylaws, input into the council-controlled organisations and economic development plans. They have a budget with autonomous decision-making and authority over $1 in every $4 of council’s core budget spent in their local area. So that delegation of authority becomes important to be able to ensure that they spend, procure, and allocate in the appropriate areas. Certainly I know that in the local boards in our area we have seen that happen.

I do commend this bill in its second reading to the House. I look forward to the other comments of other members. My sense is that there is widespread support. It is not a big bill. It is not a controversial bill but it is one that we think is important to, at the heart of it, allow for greater representation throughout the Auckland area, in particular for those in our communities who represent the interests of our local communities as well. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, and thank you for this opportunity. I rise to make a relatively brief contribution to the second reading of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3). Can I congratulate the member Alfred Ngaro on bringing this particular amendment bill into the House. I was not on the Local Government and Environment Committee, but just from the general comments around the previous bill and the robust debate about that and, of course, this one now—I congratulate the select committee on the hard work that it has done on this particular bill and on the one that we have just heard. Mr Ngaro talked about the 17 submissions and how there is a general consensus, in fact quite a majority consensus, for this particular amendment bill.

Although the bill might be small, I think that in the big scheme of things, in a place such as the great electorate of Tāmaki Makaurau, it is actually a very relevant thing. It reminds me of a whakataukī. Given that the National Party is really keen on whakataukī this evening, I thought I would put in one of my own: ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi [the worn-out net is cast aside, and the new one goes fishing]. The great thing about that particular whakataukī is that it allows for new leadership to come through. It does not allow people to monopolise such key positions within our communities.

I do want to acknowledge the speech given by Mr Ngaro about the importance of the role of local boards, and no more so than in Tāmaki-makau-rau, given it is such a big city and quite often a lot of people can find themselves lost in the urban milieu. But it is important that particular areas in Tāmaki-makau-rau find a voice, one that is relevant to their community, and it is even better if they can find leadership within their own community. I take the point made by the member about how important it is that those seeking election at local body level actually live in and serve their communities. That is an important point to make, and there are challenges within Tāmaki-makau-rau about that. Quite often you can serve a particular local board but live just slightly outside of the area. But the main thing is that your heart and the intentions, goals, and aspirations you have for your community are best served by those who are local.

New section 11AA, inserted by clause 6, talks about what the exact intention of this bill is, which is to prohibit members from standing as elected members on multiple boards. I do wonder, though—and I put this to the debate in the House this evening—when I consider Māori and Pacific Island representation on local bodies, there seems to be a lack of fair representation or equitable representation on those bodies. I wonder whether this particular amendment might have an unintended consequence. It might—what is the word—stop or discourage those of Māori or Pacific Island descent from representing their communities. I say that because—although, Mr Assistant Speaker, I see that you are frowning at my comment—if there is one thing that I do know about Māori representation on boards, whether they be Māori boards or non-Māori boards, it is that it is really, really hard to find the correct skills and expertise to bring to those leadership roles. What you quite often find is one person wearing multiple hats. I would hate to see that particular set of skills or talents lost as an unintended consequence of this particular bill. But the bill is relatively technical.

I once again, in conclusion, just want to congratulate the member on bringing this bill into the House and also on his acknowledgment of the member from this side of the House who is passionate about local body politics. In conclusion, can I just say to those who are intending to stand in the upcoming elections in Tāmaki-makau-rau: “All the best.”, because we all across the House here understand just how hard it is to put your hand up, to seek representation of your community. So I wish them all good luck—in particular, one member—and I will end there. Tēnā tātou katoa.

It is a pleasure to stand to take a call in the second reading of this Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) in the name of my friend and colleague Alfred Ngaro. It is a member’s bill. When I was chairing the Local Government and Environment Committee, which considered this matter, I was very conscious of the hard work and dedication that Mr Ngaro has put into this bill, notwithstanding in fact that originally this bill was entered into the ballot in the name of the Hon Maggie Barry, who, upon her ascension to Cabinet, was able to ensure that Mr Ngaro was able to pick up the bill. He has done a very good job of stewarding it through the select committee process to the second reading here this evening. I want to congratulate him on that.

It was fortuitous that this bill, through the vagaries of the members’ ballot, should have been drawn at a time that enabled it to come to the House prior to the local government elections, which are to be held later this year. It was very fortuitous, in fact, because Auckland, as members will be very well aware, is the only jurisdiction in which we have these bodies that are known as local boards. For instance, in my electorate, where we have a number of district councils, we have community boards. But in Auckland, as a result of the amalgamation and the creation of the Auckland Council, we now have these creatures called local boards.

As, I think, an oversight in the original legislation, it was possible for people to be elected to multiple local boards at the same time. The real difficulty there is not so much that those people may not have been physically able or indeed had the capacity to attend diligently to their duties and responsibilities as elected members of more than one local board, it was the perception and perhaps also the potential for there to be a conflict of interest in those two roles that was really at the nub of this bill being promulgated. So, as we know as members of Parliament, often in politics it is the perception that is more important sometimes than the reality. This bill seeks to identify and clarify a situation that was relatively rare but had occurred, and to resolve that, so that the perception of a potential or a real conflict of interest could not arise again should a single individual be elected to more than one local board.

This bill received careful consideration by the Local Government and Environment Committee. Members gave it diligent attention. We received 17 written submissions and we heard four of those as a committee. I thought the submissions were all thoughtful. They were well considered. They were useful, in terms of us considering the bill, and they aided us in our deliberations. The bill is one that I think is small in its detail, but it has quite a significant and wide impact. It is a bill that, I think, needs to be passed by this House. It is a bill that, after careful consideration by the Local Government and Environment Committee, I am very happy to support and commend to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I am pleased to take a short call on this Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3). Labour will support the second reading of this bill. The bill will amend the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009, to prevent candidates from serving on multiple local boards at the same time. Labour supported this bill to the select committee. The issue was brought up by a colleague of ours as early as 2011, and it is just simply hard to believe that someone can do justice to the people whom they serve while being on multiple boards. Although this bill covers the Auckland region, there was obviously some interest to hear evidence of how widespread this situation is of having one person holding more than one local authority or district health board position at the same time around New Zealand.

I just thought it would be useful, as a contribution, to go through the submitters, where they surmise both the supporters for this bill and those who were opposed to it. The chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee, Scott Simpson, mentioned we had 17 written submissions. Those who appeared before the committee who supported the bill raised issues around the bill promoting fair local representation. A person can only effectively represent the community of the local board area that they reside in. They also raised the issue about the bill reducing the potential for conflicts of interest. They went on to describe that conflicts may arise where a member must divide their attention between the interests of two or more separate communities. If meetings clash, the member must make a choice about the attendance, and this could be to the advantage of one local board and to the disadvantage of another. Another submitter talked about local boards each competing for a share of the same budget. Another reason to support the bill was that it avoids and mitigates a range of possible negative outcomes associated with the workload of local board members, with the ability of voters to make informed choices.

For those who opposed the bill, it is important to get a balance. There were some very good submissions that said why they would oppose the bill. It has been raised by previous speakers on this bill. They talked about the actual potential conflicts of interest and the problems that need to be resolved. Members of multiple local boards are well connected and can facilitate the sharing of information, resources, and insight across local boards. So there is an argument around continuity at the governance level, between boards. Many of the local board members are currently serving on more than one local board, and the bill interferes with the will of voters and their ability to make informed decisions. I guess the last point, around those who oppose the bill, was the potential for the discouraging of quality candidates from standing for local boards.

If I may, I will just make some reference to the fact that this is an Auckland-focused bill. Auckland is the largest city in our country. Clearly there are enough people, I believe, in the great city of Auckland who have the skills and who could put their hands up to stand for local boards. But if you take a place—for example, my electorate of Wairoa—where the population is not as great, then you start seeing that there will be challenges in ensuring that you have got good candidates standing up for the smaller towns versus a large metropolis like Auckland. We do need to tread carefully. Preserving the rule that you cannot serve on multiple boards needs to be balanced with the reality that in some catchment areas you just do not have the candidacy there.

I support the comment that my colleague Peeni Henare made—succession, and that one of the unintended consequences is that you prohibit or disadvantage particularly Māori and Pacific candidates from putting their hands up and standing on these important boards, because of this perspective that they bring to any governance board. I stand in support of the bill. It would be good if there was a particular mechanism that applied a “horses for courses” lens over it to ensure that in big cities you have that clarity about standing on multiple boards, but that smaller towns—like the ones in my electorate that I have mentioned to you, like Wairoa and Central Hawke’s Bay, where we do not have the population to attract good-quality candidates—are not put at a disadvantage through the passage of this bill. I know we are talking about only Auckland, but there is a potential that it could go further. It would have been nice to hear some submitters who talked broadly, outside the boundaries of the wider Auckland area. But I just think it is something that, as members of this House, we need to consider when we are passing legislation—that it does not have a wider effect and disadvantages certain members of our communities out there. I commend this bill to the House.

I too rise to take a reasonably short call on this, the second reading of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3), and, of course, to congratulate the member Alfred Ngaro on having a bill drawn from the ballot and making it through to the second stage with what seems like a high level of support in the House for it. The Greens too do support this bill. It is not a world-changing bill; what it does is it will prohibit membership of more than one local board. Out of the 149 elected members in the Auckland area, five are currently on two boards. This bill will not change that for those elected members. This is for going forward and, in the future, to ensure that that practice does not continue and certainly does not extend. That is an idea that the Greens support, and the arguments that were made by the submitters in favour of this bill on the grounds that if you are on two boards there is a really high chance that you are going to come into conflict with the needs of those two different communities when you are putting a case for a budget bid, when you may be competing for shared resources.

Also, there is just the point that we know that local boards are that level of governance that is most connected to the people. What a difference it is when you are in your local community, you run into your local board member, and you get to have that conversation with them about the traffic lights that are down the street that are causing a problem, the footpath outside the school, or any number of the issues that are a concern to our local communities. If you are on two boards, chances are you are not going to be as present in one of those communities; you will be more present in one than you are in the other. This helps to simplify that problem and make it clear that we ideally want our local representatives to be clearly committed to one community and not put into a situation of being in conflict.

I do note that the Orākei Local Board made, in its submission, the recommendation that the candidates standing in local elections not be required to state on their candidate profile statement whether or not they live in the area for which they are seeking election. I think the board members were making the point that they saw the skills as more important than the embeddedness in the community. I think the reference was made to this House and the fact that there are members in this House who are electoral representatives who do not live in the electorate that they are representing. There was a question where they thought that maybe the intention of this bill, and the fact that central government, or this House, was going to be making these decisions for a local community, when it could be said that there is not the same degree of consistency at this level.

I think it is worth canvassing some of the other points that they had, which were that Auckland Council undertakes multi roles, and, for example, two full-time councillors are also members of the Auckland Transport board, and there are full-time councillors and full-time local board chairs who are also members of district health boards, licensing trusts, district licensing committees, and a wide range of other sports, community, and business organisations. So they were arguing that that concept of the job being too big was not valid when people were serving on multiple boards as it is. I think, though, my understanding in the committee, in discussions, and for the Green Party, is that there is a difference, because if you are on the district health board that covers one area that your board sits within, you are going to be arguing for that same community and you are not going to be in a situation of conflicting community needs where you may be pushed into representing one community over another in a particular process. Though the Orākei Local Board did also argue against what I am saying on the basis that they see in Auckland that there is an issue around the local boards not having a mechanism to connect them, and actually quite often they saw that there would be value in having people sitting on multiple boards to be able to improve the discussion and sense of coherence between boards and communities.

I think that is an interesting argument but not one that we believe is best solved by allowing members to represent multiple communities but rather by looking at the mechanisms of overall governance in Auckland and providing, possibly, some better bridging mechanisms between councils, and continually reviewing the processes for input into Auckland Council itself. It does seem as if there certainly is still more work to be done in that area to get our democracy in Auckland functioning in the way that we would ideally like to see it happen.

The committee has worked through some of the logistics of how this would happen. I think people may possibly be wondering how this would work. The idea that has been presented is that people can run for multiple boards but that they would be required to submit a form and say: “OK, I am going to run for these boards and this is my order of preference for what board I would like to be on.” So if they got elected to all three boards that they were running for, the one they chose as their preferred board would be the one they would take up the seat for. The other boards would then go to the next person. The candidate would be required to identify this priority ranking in any candidate profile so that the communities knew that they were running on multiple boards and what their listed preferences were. It does bring in, I think, a sensible degree of transparency. I do imagine that that would have an impact on how people voted in the communities, if they saw that their community was the third preference for the board that you were going to be on. I cannot imagine it is much of an incentive to run in those three places, but that, I guess, is part of the intent as well.

One other small aspect of this is that it will prevent existing local board members from running in by-elections for another council—to prevent that possibility of people leaving one place, going to another one, and another position opening up and you have this cascading by-election situation as people move from one to another. It seems unlikely but is a good thing to guard against, and that has been taken care of in this bill. So, in summary, the Green Party is happy to support this technical bill. It is not earth-shattering but something that we hope will help strengthen those principles of community embeddedness and good representation in Auckland. Thank you.

Well, I guess there has to be one, so New Zealand First will signal right at this point now that we intend voting against this legislation. New Zealand First has listened to the arguments and looked closely at the realities of those arguments. We would start by saying that the loophole, the perceived loophole, that is seen by the architects of this bill is a matter of opinion—it is a matter of opinion—and New Zealand First does not share that opinion. The explanatory note of the bill states: “The current law allows for local board power to be concentrated in the hands of a few people, which undermines the efficacy and fairness of the local electoral system.” Really? Is that right? Well, in actual fact, we would have liked to see some evidence that that was the truth, but it is so often in all the debate this evening that people have referred to the word “perception”. Well, we could talk about perception in respect of a whole raft of legislation that goes through this House that this Government has not supported. So we do not see consistency. We see that the perceived loophole is a matter of opinion, which is distinctly not matched by evidence, and certainly not matched by convincing evidence.

The argument that three people opposed the legislation could well be countered by the thousands of people who voted to elect these people whom the National Party has a problem with in terms of their holding two positions on two boards. That these people were elected by the people of those two boards says that there are thousands of people in Auckland who are quite comfortable with the legislation as it currently sits. We might argue that, in actual fact, it is the right of those electorates—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I would just ask the member to sit for a second. I would like to address the Minister of Education. For some reason, the member’s voice is bouncing across and going into the mike, so if she could just talk a little bit more quietly. We are getting her voice back here, and the member might prefer that that is not the case.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate that. We might argue that, in actual fact, if the good people of those boards so affected by this problem saw a problem, they would not elect these people to multiple boards. If they seriously objected to the fact that person A was standing in Papakura and standing in the neighbouring ward, they would not vote for them. There is a propensity of some political parties in this House to want to give preference to other people to aid them and assist them to get elected. That has been clearly indicated by the local bill that Mita Ririnui brought before the House in respect of the Bay of Plenty, which created reserved council positions on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council. It is a position that, ironically, the National Party members voted against.

So on the one hand we in New Zealand First sit here rather confused by the fact that National would vote against Labour’s local bill, which reserves seats to give all of those things that Labour has argued for today: a greater opportunity for Māori and Pacific Islanders to get elected. National members voted against that and now they are sitting here bleating on that allowing a person who shows the aptitude, the gumption, the work ethic, and the support of two wide communities to be so democratically elected to hold two appointments should be kneecapped. I find this astonishing in respect of the ACT Party, and we will be watching with curiosity to see how the ACT Party votes on this issue. We would share, we would think, a view that it is the right of people to stand where they wish and let the voting public decide. That is the core fundamental issue that confronts a true democracy. Democracy may not be perfect. Who said that? Winston Churchill? But it is the best form of governance we know.

How often have we been told by our parents, our grandparents, that if you want a job done, give it to a busy person. Give it to someone who cracks on, not to someone who needs a little leg-up to get elected because they are Māori or because they are a Pacific Islander, or because they are in some way disadvantaged and they cannot make it on their own. If you want to look at an example of people who get elected despite the odds, despite all the rhetoric that they are disadvantaged, look no further than Georgina Beyer. Georgina Beyer gets elected as Mayor of Carterton as a transsexual New Zealander and goes on, against the odds, in a highly conservative, blue-ribbon seat called the Wairarapa, to win the Wairarapa. Did she need a leg-up? Did she need a hand? Did she need preferential treatment, some people to mollycoddle her and look after her every little poor failing whim? No, she did not. She got it because she had the skills and the confidence of the people that she could do the job. Here we sit and National is advocating that highly competent, highly respected people with high work ethic should be denied the opportunity to be elected to represent multiple communities by those communities that so wish them to do so.

This little piece of legislation, which has been described here in the House tonight as nothing of real importance, might well come back to bite a few people on the podiums at candidatures in the next general election quite severely, because this little piece of legislation interdicts the very fundamentals of democracy. If someone has the support of their community, if those two communities so affected see no conflict of interest—and I have yet to see, in anything that was put before the committee, or hear anything that was said tonight that evidences this supposed perception of conflict.

Do you want a perception of conflict that National could deal with? Here is one. The Policing Act used to deny police officers the right to be on a council and be a member of Parliament—same as the Defence Force. It denies also members of Parliament from serving in the police force at the same time that they are a member of Parliament—not the Policing Act, but other legislation does. Why? It is because the three pillars that underpin our democracy, that separate the judiciary from the lawmakers to the law enforcers, were always considered sacrosanct. Yet what did National do? It overturned Labour-passed legislation in the Policing Act to stop police officers being councillors at the same time that they were police officers. It was argued when it was put through, by the police commissioner, by two or three police commissioners, and by the Police Officers Guild, that allowing police officers to continue to do that actually created a perception of conflict of interest that the person who was enforcing the law had become a lawmaker. And here we are sitting in the House saying: “Oh, there’s a perception of a conflict of interest.” Where is the evidence?

All I hear is envy. All I hear is grizzling and moaning that someone whipped someone else’s butt and got elected—not on one board but on two. Well, here is the message from New Zealand First: if you cannot handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you cannot match it in the community and convince the people of your community that you are worth electing, do not put your name up. If you cannot stand the fact that you get beaten by someone who is highly respected not just in their ward that they live in but in another ward, then do not compete. If National truly believes what it is saying here tonight, it will cease its practice of parachuting into rural New Zealand people like John Hayes, who did not live there, people like Alastair Scott, who does not live there, and gerrymandering the party selection process to ensure that these people are elected in safe seats.

There is a word that I am not allowed to use, so I will not sum up with that word. All I will say is that this bill smacks of being anti-democratic and New Zealand First will not have a bar of it. Thank you.