Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. New Zealand has a strong and growing economy, and, as a result, we are seeing regions right across the country grow and thrive as never before. However, with growth comes challenges, and we know this growth puts pressures on local authorities. So we need to ensure that essential infrastructure services are provided efficiently and sustainably.

The current legislation does not do enough to support changes to the delivery of these services. In some cases it would require making radical changes, or large-scale amalgamations of multiple councils, to achieve results that are in the best interests of the regions and their residents. There are already a large number of shared services between councils across the country. Many of these are doing well, including here in Wellington, which serves as a good example in the water space. But there are few shared services in areas like transport, and there is no legislative framework for the management of large organisations delivering core water or transport functions on behalf of multiple councils.

This bill will support improved service delivery and infrastructure provision at the local government level. It provides for a more flexible and responsive process by the Local Government Commission. It also allows local councils to lead their own reorganisation processes for the first time. It provides for more collaborative structures for councils to use when delivering services to their communities. These new processes and tools are designed to be enabling and will result in changes for councils only if that change is in the best interest of the region and makes sense locally.

I want to convey my appreciation to the Local Government and Environment Committee, which closely examined the bill and recommended, by majority, that it be passed with a significant number of amendments. I am disappointed, however, that having spoken with the local government sector, having listened to its feedback, and having made a large number of the changes that had been asked for, the Opposition members of the committee were still not prepared to support the bill. I understand that the committee received 188 written submissions, heard oral evidence from 84, and that many submitters supported the bill’s intent to enable improved service delivery and infrastructure provision at the local government level. However, I believe many also expressed reservations about the way that the bill set out to achieve this. The select committee has acknowledged the submissions of Local Government New Zealand and the Society of Local Government Managers, which were particularly useful from both a policy and a technical standpoint.

There were a number of points on which submitters had particularly strong views. The introduced version of the bill allowed the Local Government Commission to create a multiple-owned council-controlled organisation (CCO) without the agreement of all affected councils. Whilst the bill was never intended to enable the commission to impose CCOs without full consultation with local authorities and communities, it obviously caused concern. I am therefore pleased to note that the power for the commission to create those multiple-owned council-controlled organisations without the agreement of all affected local authorities has been removed from the bill.

Concerns were also raised about apparent unilateral powers for the Minister of Local Government to require additional information relating to council performance. Having spoken at length with, and having listened to the sector, I am satisfied that the local government sector can and should lead performance improvement programmes in collaboration with central government. We therefore support the select committee’s initiative to remove these provisions from the bill.

Other changes have been made to address a number of points where submitters had particular concerns. A number are to clarify certain aspects of the bill and avoid misinterpretation. For example, where councils had to seek the approval of the Local Government Commission before consulting on the establishment of multiple-owned CCOs, changes have been made to clarify that the Local Government Commission must grant permission unless it is satisfied on reasonable grounds that the disadvantages significantly outweigh the advantages.

Now that these changes have been recommended, I believe we have a bill that will be more practical for the local government sector. The intent is clearer, and the opportunities it provides are more accessible. We have a bill whose core reform principles remain: to encourage and enable timely improvements to the delivery of services and provision of infrastructure at the local level. We are introducing the ability for councils to lead reorganisation processes directly, if they so choose. This will be the first time that councils will be able to lead processes like this, and many councils have told the committee that they are supportive of this empowering change.

There will be an improved menu of options for councils to choose from when delivering services, including CCOs, joint committees, and transfers of functions. This is a bill that will also provide for new, flexible reorganisation processes. The Local Government Commission will be able to tailor its approach directly to local circumstances and issues, not just in terms of what is under discussion but also in terms of the process and consultations with councils and the public. It will have greater latitude in responding to reorganisation proposals, so that the most pressing receive its urgent attention. Along with its independence and this greater flexibility, the commission will be held to more stringent and transparent accountability arrangements.

I do need to point out that the local government commissioners are doing a fantastic job. Over the last couple of years they have taken a collegial approach to their conversations with councils and communities. The changes we are proposing through this bill will help ensure that this collaborative, transparent model of engagement is embedded in the way that the commission works.

I would note that while a lot of the bill is concerned with governance and accountability mechanisms for CCOs, this is not because CCOs are the preference. These reforms are not designed to impose a set of structures on local government. Rather they are intended to create a system of rules to ensure that shareholders can maintain an appropriate level of oversight over their council-controlled organisations.

The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) will lead to better local outcomes for our communities. As a result of this bill, we expect to see affordable and sustainable value for ratepayers and residents, through more cost-effective delivery of services and infrastructure. We will see councils empowered to jointly deliver water and transport services, which could achieve benefits from scale, integration, and specialist expertise.

The Government supports the recommendations made by the Local Government and Environment Committee on this bill. The empowering nature of this bill is an opportunity for the sector to show its local strategic leadership, which may require hard decisions about difficult options in order to secure a positive future for its communities. The need for decisive action varies in its urgency, but it is very real. For some struggling councils, the status quo is already not a viable option.

The Government hopes that councils will take up the tools and opportunities presented by this bill, such as the new locally led reorganisation provisions, and use these to assist with improving their service delivery and infrastructure provisions.

Finally, I want to thank the select committee for the work it has done on the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

It is my pleasure to take a call on this Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) and to lay out very clearly that Labour will not be supporting this legislation. This is not a decision that we came to lightly. It is one that we are disappointed to have to make, given the amount of time and opportunity there was in the Local Government and Environment Committee to fix up a very untidy piece of legislation.

I think it is worthwhile considering the history of this bill. It was introduced back in June 2016, by the then Minister of Local Government, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. Obviously, we have had a change of Minister in that time. It was then referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee on 15 June 2016, with submissions due by 28 July 2016. In this short period of time, 188 submissions, including 66 from territorial and local authorities, were heard. The Minister had to ask for a 5-month extension to the report-back date, and according to the Department of Internal Affairs report back, that was because the submitters regarded the consultation prior to the introduction of the bill as inadequate.

So what we have here is a really important piece of legislation, with a very clearly defined set of stakeholders, that simply has been botched from the beginning, by this Government. It failed to consult properly with the local government representatives before it was introduced, so it is no surprise that the Government got it wrong. This is a piece of legislation that the select committee was able to do some work on, but, unfortunately, all the changes that were required to make this a workable piece of legislation and something that actually would be in the best interests of the country were not agreed to at the select committee. It is for those reasons that Labour is unable to offer the Government its support for this bill.

There is a very, very fundamental principle for us on this side of the House when it comes to local government, and that is that we should keep the “local” in it. That is something we believe in, to our very core. This piece of legislation erodes that very and most basic principle. This is a bill that, if the Government had any sense, it would have let it languish on the Order Paper for a few more short weeks, and it would not have seen the light of day in this House. Quite frankly, it is an embarrassment from go to whoa for the Government—this piece of legislation.

While what we are seeing in the reported-back bill is an improvement on what first landed on the select committee’s desks, it still has serious flaws in it, which we are going to traverse at great length, I would like to point out—great length—through the Committee stage. We look forward to taking a very long journey through the problems of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) and the ways in which the Government has botched it.

The bill as it was introduced—let us think about who did oppose it. It was opposed not only by local councils, regional councils, and district councils, but also by Local Government New Zealand and the New Zealand Society of Local Government Managers. It was seen as a serious intrusion by central government and unelected bodies—that is the Local Government Commission—on the business of elected local government organisations; that what it was doing was really taking away the ability of those jobs to govern at that most basic of levels, the local level.

The bill as it is reported back seeks to promote larger councils and council-controlled organisations and greater central government influence, and that is where we have a problem. It is the ability of the Minister to intervene—it is the ability of the Minister to influence via the commission that is the basis of Labour’s opposition. We had concerns about the additional powers conferred on the Local Government Commission, which—let us never forget—is an unelected body. We can appoint the best and the most skilled people to that body, and it is not an objection to those people, but it is against the fundamental issue that the Local Government Commission is an unelected body that will be making decisions that should be in the hands of a democratic process, not Government appointees.

We do not say that just because at the moment—until September—National leads this Government. We would say that when we are in Government too—that we believe fundamentally in that. We do not see how this will benefit local democracies when we have the power of the Minister to direct the work that the Local Government Commission carries out. That is not something that is in this country’s best interest and is not something that we can support. The fact that central government, via the Minister, will appoint members of the commission with only one appointee needing to have local government experience does not bode well for the independence of that commission.

Local government is a fascinating but complex beast, and I would like to know that these people who are being appointed to the commission have some experience in that sector. This is not a place for bland managerialism. This is a place for people who understand the sector: the needs, the opportunities, and the challenges of local government; not Government cronies from whatever side being appointed to make decisions in an entirely undemocratic way.

Enhancing the powers and scope of the unelected Local Government Commission is risky and at odds with the stated aims of promoting council-led organisations that are covered off in this bill. We want to make sure that critical utilities retain public ownership, and that should be a question for elected bodies, not Government-appointed local government commissioners. This should only ever be a decision that they can make.

It is unclear where the justification is for the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2), which we have sitting in front of us, or how it will lead to any real community benefits. When we get to the Committee stage of this bill we will be asking the Minister, clause by clause, where the community benefits are and how this makes things better for our local authorities and for our communities, because local government legislation is fundamentally about everyday New Zealanders. We are all beneficiaries of what local government does and that needs to be understood.

Something else that I want to get on the record is this: when we come to vote on this piece of legislation, this legislation may well pass with the barest of majorities—in fact, a one-vote majority. I would like it on the record that that vote will be the vote of Todd Barclay, and this is the reason that we have a Government that has failed to act in a moral way in dealing with this situation. So we have five pieces of legislation that this Government has muddled, befuddled, and completely botched up because it cannot handle a legislative agenda. It is now down to the wire and it is having to rely on that vote to get them across the line. What we have is a piece of legislation that is not in the best interests of this country—that is concentrating more power into the hands of a Minister and an executive in an arrogant way that absolutely ignores what is best for local communities and for local communities to be able to make those decisions for themselves.

But what adds even more insult to injury is that we have a Prime Minister who has not acted in a way you would expect a leader and a Prime Minister to act, because he needs to get this shambles of a piece of legislation across the line. [Interruption] This is about the bill, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is about how this bill will become law in this country, and it will be up to the voters of New Zealand on 23 September to make a decision as to whether this is the kind of leadership they want, whether this is the way they want their legislation passed. I put it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to this House that this speaks to the situation that we now have after 9 years of this Government—a Government that has no moral compass—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Stick to the bill—

—and a piece of legislation that is clearly not in the best interest of communities. Labour cannot support this. We worked hard at select committee to get the changes over the line that would make this a piece of legislation that we could vote for, but it is simply yet another piece of flawed and broken legislation from this Government, which if we are unfortunate enough to have this Government back in power—well, we will need to do it as a Government anyway—will have to be back fixing it, because this has been a shambles from time the bill was introduced.

It is a pleasure to be talking to the second reading of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2). Mr Deputy Speaker, I feel sorry for you, listening to that tripe—absolute tripe—from that previous speaker, Megan Woods. What I would just like to do, first of all, is acknowledge the previous Minister who introduced this bill into the House, the Hon Sam Lotu-Iiga, and the former chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, now the Hon Scott Simpson, for working their way through the bill.

As has been noted previously, the bill was introduced into the House some time ago, back in 2016, but the Government has deliberately delayed its finalisation to take into account the views of many of the submitters, including Local Government New Zealand and the New Zealand Society of Local Government Managers (SOLGM), as well as other relevant parties. That is a Government that is listening to what is going on, contrary to the assertion made just before.

The purpose of this bill is to give local authorities more flexibility to coordinate and combine resources and infrastructure, especially in relation to networks across their regions. At present, unfortunately, legislation does not provide for that very easily. So this bill is about providing greater flexibility at the choice of the local councils involved.

Given the financial constraints of many of our smaller territorial local authorities (TLAs), it is becoming imperative to—and, in fact, they are wanting to—actually coordinate and collaborate better with other relevant local councils, particularly contiguous ones. This bill provides for that, but it also provides for larger organisations and larger councils to come together under their agreed arrangements, so that they can better coordinate their capital spend planning and how they utilise their operations and their infrastructure so as to get a better outcome for their ratepayers.

Now, this is something that they will want to do. That is driven by them; it is not driven by us. And there is a perverse view about that. So this creates the opportunity, particularly for infrastructure such as transport and also for water and waste-water services, in particular, to come together across multiple jurisdictions. It also creates the opportunity for other, what are now termed, substantive council-controlled organisations (CCOs), where there are assets of more than $10 million involved, or by agreement, to provide greater certainty where there are multiple-owned CCOs—or, what I mean is, owned by many CCOs and controlled by them.

For the first time, the councils will be able to lead the reorganisation proposals, in consultation with their communities and neighbouring councils. Parts of those reforms mean that when they do want to do that and their CCOs are set up, those CCOs will have the right to have bylaw-making powers, and also the ability to collect certain revenues. The changes in the bill have made it very careful that those changes are subject to the controlling councils.

There have also been substantial changes to the Local Government Commission. This bill provides for the commission to have enhanced powers to work with councils and Government to support their reorganisation proposals. There are a whole lot of administrative issues around the commission, to enable it to work better, but one of the key changes is that the Minister has been given the authority to set out an expectation for the commission, but the commission must then report back by way of statement of corporate intent and an annual work plan.

One of the key changes is that, previously, TLAs had to get the approval of the Local Government Commission before consulting on transfer proposals. One of the crucial changes is that the commission must agree to any TLA proposal unless it is satisfied, on reasonable grounds—and I just note that point—that the disadvantages of the proposal significantly outweigh the advantages of the proceeding transfer. This has shifted the obligation and given more powers for councils to put forward proposals and less authority for the commission to overturn them.

My last point, contrary to the last speaker—I just do not know where she is getting her information, but I just want to put it on record—is that this bill has the support of Local Government New Zealand—

💬 Michael Wood: No, it does not.

—and SOLGM. There is an assertion that it does not—it does. On this basis, I am very much looking forward to debating the merits of this bill as it progresses through the House. Thank you.

Meka Whaitiri—a 5-minute call.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. E ngā mema o Te Whare, tēnā tātou katoa. Is it not interesting? Is it not interesting that when we come to a bill like this, we talk about the intention and then the reality—where the reality hits the road. We have just had both Minister Tolley and that member who has just resumed his seat, Andrew Bayly, talk about the virtues of this bill. This side absolutely wants to support a modern local government sector. We absolutely want to support it, but not at the expense of taking away control from our duly elected local officials, and that is what this bill is doing. It is actually saying to every council around New Zealand: “You actually don’t know how to run your affairs.” When it comes to water—

💬 Hon Member: No, it doesn’t.

Yes, it does. When it comes to water and transport, the message this Government is sending to every council around this country is: “It’s all right. We’re going to come and rescue you, because we don’t think you know how to operate at the local level. We actually don’t think you’re making good, sound judgments on your locally owned assets, be they transport or water.” But do not worry—do not worry—because this National Government, with its one-vote advantage from Mr Todd Barclay, will get this bill over the line!

The question I pose to this Government is: what is the problem that this bill is attempting to solve? I listened to the Minister. I listened to the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee. I was listening for what the problem is that this bill is trying to address. I could not hear it—could not hear it.

The next question I ask is: does this bill promote local democracy? It does not, because it empowers the Local Government Commission, which, we all know, is unelected, to make decisions on where we may reorganise. Where does it get its riding instructions? Not from the councils; it gets them from the Minister, under this bill. The Minister will actually lay out where the commission will go hunting to reconfigure the way our councils should be. This goes to the opening point I made about this being the bill that is going to determine how councils around the country are going to organise themselves around water and transport assets—assets that we, as ratepayers, own, but this Government believes it knows best what to do with.

The second question I want to ask is: why is the Government promoting a non-elected body to determine how councils organise themselves? We do not have to go very far to look at the botch-ups of the recent amalgamations. And is this bill an attempt to address that? Is it an attempt to address the botched-up, forced amalgamations that, thank goodness, local people, particularly in our electorates—my good colleague Napier MP, Stuart Nash, and I have stood up and said: “No way. No way do we want forced amalgamation.” That was in only one of many areas, and this bill is attempting to do it again.

But in the time I have got left, I want to talk about Local Government New Zealand. I want to talk about its concerns as expressed at the select committee. There were five concerns that it identified. It talked about the lowering of the threshold required to initiate a reorganisation investigation, and the powers of the Minister of Local Government, effectively, to direct the Local Government Commission to undertake an investigation, and I have touched on that in my previous comments. Secondly, there is the ability of the Local Government Commission to shift activities into council-controlled organisations (CCOs) and away from the direct control of local authorities without first securing the agreement of local authorities. Thirdly, there are the provisions that will allow substantively and multiple-owned CCOs to require their shareholding councils to amend their development contribution policies. Fourthly, there is a lack of mechanisms such as the individual shareholder’s agreement to ensure that multiple-owned CCOs act in accordance with each shareholding council’s policies, priorities, and service levels. Fifthly, there is the ability of the Minister of Local Government to set performance measures for council activities, including substantive CCOs.

I want to acknowledge that the select committee worked really hard to address these five concerns put up by Local Government New Zealand, and that member Andrew Bayly saying that it supports the bill is debatable. That is why we are debating this important piece of legislation here in its second reading.

I would say that with those five issues raised by Local Government New Zealand, it has not gone deep enough. That is my proposition to this House. Those five fundamental concerns raised by Local Government New Zealand have not been adequately addressed in the bill that we are debating in the House in this second reading. That is something that this Government needs to take on board. It is why Labour is standing up for local councils, democracy, and the control of our elected officials making decisions. Kia ora tātou.

Mr Bayly stated in his speech that this bill allows councils to better coordinate services. Well, this already happens, and let me give you an example. In Hawke’s Bay, for example, there are 30 shared services agreements between Napier City Council and Hastings District Council. This is about councillors sitting down together and deciding for themselves what works and what does not work. It is a fantastic model of councils working together. There does not need to be legislation that forces this to happen.

Mr Bayly also outlined the fact that these new council-controlled organisations (CCOs) have the right to pass by-laws and to raise revenue—but this is undemocratic because the CCOs are not responsible to ratepayers. I actually think this bill is amalgamation by stealth.

Along with my good colleague Meka Whaitiri, I met with Local Government New Zealand, including the chair, a chap called Lawrence Yule, who is a National Party candidate, and if anyone knows anything about local government, it is Lawrence Yule. He told Meka and me that he was against the bill. He outlined very clearly the reasons why the organisation that he represents, Local Government New Zealand, did not want this bill.

If this was going to add value to councils or if this was going to drive growth in the community in any way, shape, or form, then we would be supporting it—there is no doubt about that—but it just does not do that. The thing is that this is not just me or Megan Woods or Meka Whaitiri saying this; this is the mayors and the councillors themselves, who are elected by the communities that make up the diverse fabric that is New Zealand.

I ran a campaign in Napier and it was based around the “No to amalgamation” slogan. There was wide and varied debate. The people who wanted to amalgamate spent literally a couple of hundred thousand dollars on this. There were town hall meetings, there was a lot of advertising material, and this was probably the only topic of discussion around the dinner tables of Hawke’s Bay for about a year, I would say. So this was widely canvassed and widely discussed, and the arguments to and fro were well laid out.

The thing is that those four councils—Hastings, Napier, Wairoa, and Central Hawke’s Bay—all voted against it. They all voted in the majority against amalgamation. And the irony is that Lawrence Yule, who at that point was supporting amalgamation, could not even get it across the line in Hastings, his own area, and he was surprised. What he said after that was: “I misjudged the sentiment. I didn’t understand what the people wanted.”

I looked at the first reading speech of the former Minister of Local Government Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. It was delivered over a year ago, and he said: “The current legislation focuses on amalgamation to gain scale for shared services.” Well, the thing is that our communities do not want amalgamation. Where there are synergies that can be gained from shared services, then they happen. In fact, as Meka Whaitiri outlined, I actually think that this shows an arrogance at its worst, and that is that central government knows best. But, in fact, it does not and where democracy—

💬 Hon Members: National Party.

Sorry, what have I said?

💬 Meka Whaitiri: You said “central government”.

Well, yes, central government, but the National Government in this case. But what we see in our communities is that the local people say: “What does central government know about what my community wants?”. That is why we have elected councils. That is why local government works really well, because communities have a say in their own future. They can determine the vision that is provided and, do you know what? If they do not like it, then they vote the mayor out and they vote the councils out. If they do like the way the councils are providing, they put ’em in. Keep away, central government. Keep away, National Government.

This is not about democracy. In fact, I would argue that it is an erosion of democracy. That is why the Labour Party simply cannot support this local government bill. But it is not that we do not want greater efficiency in local councils. Absolutely, we do. In fact, if we had our way, I think we would probably empower local government in a way that drives efficiency and progress and a vision for the way we want our communities governed. This is not the legislation to do it. I think that the former Minister of Local Government actually should have listened to Local Government New Zealand and he should have listened to the mayors and the councils that he went around the country to consult, because they also said no. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) in its second reading. Since we are talking about local government, I just want to start by acknowledging the Waimakariri District Council; the leadership of its mayor, David Ayers; the CEO, Jim Palmer; and the whole of the council for their leadership post-earthquake. It is fair to say that due to the capability, the strength, and the resilience of the council, it has shown clear leadership, and that is why the Waimakariri has bounced back strongly since the earthquakes.

It is worth noting though that Kaiapoi was one of the most hard-hit towns. Kaiapoi used to have a council of its own, before the towns of Waimakariri came together, under one council. And you would say that, post that devastating earthquake in 2010, the Kaiapoi council would not have had the scale and capability to respond to the sheer devastation of that first earthquake in 2010. So I suppose the point of that example is to clearly show that economies of scale are something that we should be looking at. And I think when you look at the underpinning of this bill, it is about economies of scale and how councils can come together in the form of council-controlled organisations (CCOs) to improve service delivery, improve infrastructure, and drive down costs. There would not be one electorate MP or list MP in this Chamber today who has not had a multiple of constituent appointments about their council and how they get better value for their rates. And I think this is exactly what this bill is about.

It also shows very clearly, around the legislative process—we had the first bill, which was introduced in the version around CCOs and the councils. In that first draft it was not necessary that all councils agreed to the CCOs. We heard submissions. As people round the House have said, there were 188 submissions—75 from local authorities and CCOs, 59 from individual submitters, and 13 from community organisations. From that, this bill has changed somewhat, and it comes back in the form it is in now, in its second reading.

What that leaves open now is council needing to agree to the formulation of a CCO. What it basically means is that councils need to be open to the Government’s arrangements to drive up that service improvement, and infrastructure. When we look at one example of a CCO—transport has been highlighted, specifically in Canterbury. Post-earthquakes, we have had a lot of trouble around transport and transport solutions. We have had multiple councils involved. Getting them together, under a CCO, will provide that clear vision where they can come up with an integrated transport package—unlike, I suppose, what the Labour Party has thrown at transport recently in Christchurch, with its $100 million rail announcement that clearly only targets west Christchurch, and not all those commuters in north Christchurch.

So what we are looking at is a bill that will, ultimately, drive further service improvement, it will drive down costs, but, also, it will give many constituents of ours the feeling they are getting better value for money with their rates. Thank you.

The Green Party too is proud to oppose this appalling piece of legislation. Just to give a context to some of the feeling we have heard, we have heard some of the Government members talking to this saying that they listened, you know, and that they were very carefully listening to submitters and they have made all these changes.

I would just like to give the House a sense of the tone of some of the submitters, many of whom will have been National Party members. I do remember one particular submitter, who was an ex - National Party member of Parliament, I think, actually telling the Government it would not be re-elected if this piece of legislation went through in the form it is in. Some of the comments were “This legislation is ill-informed and ill-conceived.”, and that was from the Palmerston North City Council; “This represents a loss of local self-determination.”, from the Hutt City Council; “This bill strikes at the very heart of local democracy … There is real anger across local government that this has been dumped on us without consultation.”, from the Greater Wellington Regional Council; and “It is not just undemocratic, this is anti-democratic.”, from the Mayor of Napier.

A fundamental question was also posed by a local community organisation that works with the council in Upper Hutt. It asked “Why would you disempower people from participating to create better communities? We need to consider how to raise civic engagement, not take away people’s options for engaging.”, which is what this bill did and what this bill still continues—in the trend of actions from this Government—to do.

So I do want to acknowledge Local Government New Zealand and the leaders in local government for forcing the Government to listen and for working so hard with the officials to significantly improve this piece of legislation, and I do acknowledge that it has been significantly improved. However, in the Green Party, we still have very significant outstanding concerns and, from the tone of the submissions, we do not think that those concerns have been addressed.

Like previous speakers, we heard continually from submitters that they did not see what the problem was. They were finding that in their local areas—and we were hearing this from Canterbury, we were hearing this from Wellington; we were hearing this from all over—councils were collaborating and working effectively together without needing these changes. People did not see where the problem was, and we have to understand that this law change comes within the context of the Government’s suspension of democracy in Canterbury, the removal of the four well-beings from the Local Government Act 2002, and the restrictions on notifications and opportunities for public participation under the Resource Management Act. We are seeing a trend of just encroaching influence from this National Government into local government affairs.

We heard directly from Matt Doocey, the last speaker, about how councils need to be open to Government plans to drive service improvements and reduce costs. That is more of the same thinking—about those members knowing best. The thing is that, actually, our country and our constitutional arrangements, such as we have them, rely on this concept of subsidiarity and local democracy. Our councils have been tasked with doing specific jobs for their communities, and that the relationship in terms of determining whether they are doing a good job or a bad job is accountable back to their local communities, not this Government. That seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding and a thread in the legislation that we have been seeing through this House under this Government.

One of our concerns about this legislation is that it is has an increased role for the Local Government Commission, and this is an unelected group of people who are appointed by a Minister of this Government. Within the context of knowing this was happening and that this was probably going to go through in some form, there were discussions about trying to get more people on the commission with guaranteed local government experience, and even in that concept, in negotiations with the Government, all that it would give was to allow one person on that commission to be required to have local government experience. It really does send a message that, actually, this Government does not value the knowledge and the expertise of our local government leaders, and that, to the Green Party, is a problem.

Also in this legislation are greater powers for the Minister to set expectations and, effectively, direct the commission’s work. New section 31A in clause 16 of the bill gives the Minister the authority to specify expectations in relation to areas that may be subject to an investigation, and also to areas that may not be subject to an investigation. That is actually quite significant if there has been an amalgamation like the one that was put in place in Auckland, as an example. If some of those communities there decided to go to the Local Government Commission and say that they did not want to be part of the super-city—which we know was set up as a National Government policy—then, actually, the Minister would have the power to direct the Local Government Commission not to investigate a reorganisation, even though that community might want it. It is such a reinforcement of this power imbalance.

Also, there is the requirement on councils to seek the approval of the commission before consulting a transfer of responsibilities or an establishment of a multiple-owned water or transport council-controlled organisation (CCO). So this idea that this is just about supporting councils to be able to deliver and work together goes completely against that, because they are being forced to consult, and their wisdom, their knowledge, and their accountability to the communities is being undermined through these provisions.

We also have remaining unease about the additional role of the Minister in directing the replacement or revoking of performance measures for councils. Initially, the Minister was going to be able to set them up—that was in the initial review, which was quite extraordinary—and that has been pulled back to the Minister now being able to direct the replacement or revoke performance measures post a review. But it still kind of just puts that idea in place that a Minister from this place would have any responsibility for performance measures to decide the accountabilities of a council to its community. Surely, as we were often told by submitters, what matters in terms of accountability with regard to performance measures is whether you are delivering for your community, not whether you are delivering on the central government’s agenda of what it thinks you should be delivering on.

We also heard from the Minister that this legislation is about increased transparency. Well, the Government has put in some ability for Official Information Act requests through the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, but the limitations are that you would be able to access the information going into investigations and reorganisation investigations, but that will apply, and you will get access, only after the consideration, investigation, resolution, or determination has been completed. So that is kind of a little bit too late, folks. It is transparency after the fact, and I am not sure how much that actually counts as transparency.

We also heard from the Minister that this is not privileging CCOs as a model, and yet I think she needs to have communicated more clearly to her MPs who were on the committee whether that was her intent, because we have certainly heard from several of the National Party members about how the CCOs are actually the way to drive service improvements and reduction in costs. Yet those same members heard from submitters talking to us about an increasing problem around the CCOs that have already been created of contracting to larger organisations. Therefore, our chain of businesses in New Zealand is now being compromised, because small family-owned business that used to develop intellectual property and innovation from getting these contracts are being forced into the role of being subcontractors to these bigger businesses because the CCOs want to deal with only one, and we are losing a huge amount of capacity in our country as a result.

It is an interesting debate that I am listening to, and it is one of those delightful occasions when I find myself concurring with the views expressed both to the left and right of me, by the Green Party and the Labour Party. I am somewhat saddened—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Ah, quit while you’re ahead—that’s good.

—put that down; I actually said it—by the pathway that the Government has chosen to take in respect of local government.

In my time as the Mayor of Carterton, I stood helplessly by and watched this Government continue on a pathway, whereby through passing legislation it sought to advance amalgamations aiming at the size and scale and a repetition of what it achieved in Auckland—and, my, has that not gone so well! Has that not gone so well! We sit here, looking at this piece of legislation—continuing to look at this piece of legislation—as we have done over the last number of months. One glaring question leaps out: why? Why has the Government put this piece of legislation up in the first place? Why did it choose to do it in the way that it has done it? When it first entered their tiny little minds that there was something wrong in the State of Denmark—i.e. local government—and that they needed to intervene and write legislation—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Do you know about local government?

—well, we might just touch on a wee bit of that, the Hon Ruth Dyson—why did Government members not think, just for a fleeting moment, that they should go and talk with people who understand local government.

You see, one thing that I do know is that sitting on one side of the table at the Local Government and Environment Committee were five people with experience in local government. Sitting on the other side—although it was hard to keep track, with the comings and goings and things that happened—there were none. I think occasionally Mr Ian McKelvie popped in, which added one former mayor, but I also sit here and wonder how much sway that gentleman has in his caucus, because he is an experienced mayor. Actually—not quite so experienced—there is another mayor in that caucus: old Jono—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Maureen.

—and Maureen Pugh. There is local government experience in the National caucus, but there was none on the select committee. Why is that? It is probably because if those experienced members, with their personal views—which they do let out into the ether when they are trying to calm the rebellion in provincial New Zealand, and when their good friends say “What the hell are you people doing?”, they say things like: “Oh, no, no. Don’t worry—no. Ah, well, you know, if you’re in the caucus, you’re bound by caucus—you know. It’s sort of like you’re—well, it’s not about being whipped; you’ve got to go with the flow. You’ve got to go.” If you want to be elected back—if you want to be back on the list, you have to go with the Government’s policy and support the Minister. So what those ones with local government experience are saying in the hustings and what they are voting for here in the House today—this piece of legislation—are not the same thing.

It saddens me, as a former Mayor of Carterton, who does understand the concerns of local government New Zealand and who does talk to people like Lawrence Yule and other mayors, that this Government: (1) does not understand local government, (2) does not care, and (3) is not really interested in democracy and has no interest in localism. The idea of local people deciding for themselves: (a) how they want to elect their council, (b) how they want their assets to be owned or managed, and (c) whether or not they want to be divested of those assets that they have built up over 150 or 175 years, with money out of their own pockets, with no assistance at all from any central government, no matter what colour it might have been—no one seems to think, over that side, that these people might actually have their own views on how those assets should be held, whether they are held in council-controlled organisations (CCOs) or not. No one on that side of the Government seems to want to listen to the fact that there is a raging debate going on up in Auckland about CCOs and the control of them and the vesting of power in appointed boards that have no obligation whatsoever to listen to Mrs Buttons at 58 King Street when she says: “I don’t want our sewage system—our waste-water treatment plant—to be divested into the hands and the control of a bunch of appointed bean counters or corporates.” She does not want it.

When I hear National members stand up and say: “Well, we couldn’t imagine how Kaiapoi would possibly have handled the Canterbury earthquakes if it had still had a little council—because, of course, size and scale is what got Christchurch through!”. Seriously? Does Matt Doocey really believe that? If he does, he needs to explain to me how in 1929 when the 7.8 Murchison earthquake hit, all those little county councils and all those little borough councils—how did they get by? In 1931 Hawke’s Bay got whacked on 3 February, and got whacked again on 13 February. How many councils made up the Hawke’s Bay prior to the 1989 reforms? Dozens and dozens. How did they get by? Matt Doocey says they would never have survived.

In 1934 Pahīatua got whacked on 3 February. On 24 June 1942 Wairarapa got hit, and got hit again on 2 August—the biggest earthquake since 1931. It was massive. It knocked down the Carterton post office. On 22 February 1863 Hawke’s Bay got hit. How did they all possibly survive and rebuild and recover to be the wonderful places that they are, with all of the infrastructure that this Government now wants to take off them and vest into the hands of some corporate-minded bean counters with no ability for the ratepayer to have their democratic say about how those assets are managed, how high their rates are going to go up, how high the fees are going to go up, and what levies are going to be placed? How did those small county councils and borough councils ever, ever, ever get through those major earthquakes, Matt Doocey? I think you need to go back to school and do some learning. Spend some time talking to some local government people.

Actually, we would have been better off if the National Government had taken all of its members who had served in local government, stuck them on the select committee, and given them free rein to work with the Opposition members and produce a bill that we could all have come back to the House and supported—but it did not. It rammed it through, with no interest at all in what we have done in the Wairarapa. Talking about CCOs—CCOs are not the only solution to better management or more cohesive or collaborative management, and that is actually the word—“collaborative management”. Shared services work. Shared services in the Wairarapa has been going on for the last 10 or 15 years, and increasingly so. But the great thing about doing it that way is that the councillors get to sit on the committee—the duly elected people.

There is the message. If this Government does not trust Local Government New Zealand enough to go and talk to it and ask it what the bill would look like it if wrote it; if it does not trust the councils enough to listen to their submissions; and if it does not trust enough the mayors or the councillors who have just been elected in 2016, a number of whom were booted out because they believed in this amalgamation philosophy of the National Party, then what it is saying is that all of those card-carrying members of the National Party who are mayors, who are regional councillors, who are councillors, and who do chair these committees do not know what they are doing—do not know what they are doing—do not know what is best, do not know what is right, and are stupid. Actually, that may explain why such a large number of them are leaving the National Party in droves in provincial New Zealand, and why our membership is doing so well, and why our committees are building and growing. Finally, those people have actually realised, out in rural provincial New Zealand and in councils and district councils all over New Zealand, that the National Party has become too arrogant and too dismissive, and is actually not interested in their opinions at all.

I stand to take a short call on this bill. After listening to that contribution, I cannot support that member, Ron Mark, like I did yesterday. Some of the things that he said around this particular bill I have seen. I might not have been a mayor, but I have actually worked in local government, in quite a big organisation as well, and I could see that there needed to be some reorganisation back then about how it did things.

When I start to look at some of the issues that some of the councils are facing now to do with some of their infrastructure, and the amount of money that they do not have—money that they have not put aside to be able to address some of the infrastructural issues—then I start to look at this particular bill and I start to look at the role of council-controlled organisations (CCOs) and what they are able to provide to local government. Whether it be a large local government organisation or council, or whether it be a small one, we have to take into account that there is only so much money in the rates take, and I can say that whenever there has been a disaster, as that member read out, time after time after time, the councils did come to the Government and we supported them, just like the Christchurch ones.

One of the issues around the Christchurch earthquake was the horizontal infrastructure. That was a huge, huge bill, and as we started to unravel all the issues around the horizontal infrastructure we started to see that other councils were starting to look at how much it was going to cost for them. Therefore, I see the value of CCOs in their being able to take the plans and share out the knowledge that they have to other councils, to actually be able to contract in so we get a better deal for councils to address some of the bigger issues facing councils—issues that you cannot see above the ground. So I look at things. Whanganui District Council has issues around its sewerage, and it has big bills to build that brand new sewerage plant. I used to work there, in the health sector, and I saw all of that happening, so I can see the advantage of CCOs being able to actually come together with councils like Whanganui, in partnership with other councils, to be able to work through those issues with them.

They say that the CCOs will actually force an amalgamation. Well, the CCOs do have to actually have a poll around amalgamation—a poll to determine whether or not amalgamation will go through. That is what CCOs will have to go through, so when they say “Oh, you know, they’re going to make us go through amalgamation.”, that is rubbish. That is rubbish. The bill is very clear that there has to be a poll of all the ratepayers if local government is looking at that area.

If we start looking at the transparency of CCOs, we see that they are subject to the Ombudsmen Act 1975, so they are responsible. So, you know, when you say they going to go off and do whatever they want to do, they just cannot, because they are subject to the Ombudsmen Act 1975.

I could go on and on, but what I am going to do is I am going to stop now. I said it was going to be a short contribution and I meant it. I think that this is a very good bill. It is a good mechanism for councils to come together and to share resources under a CCO mechanism, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Eugenie Sage—a 5-minute call.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Tuarua, e ngā mema o tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou katoa. I am pleased to speak on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2). The level of spin from this Government has reached a whole new level when we have the Minister of Local Government talking about the “empowering” nature of this bill. That is alternative facts, and I think it might be a reflection of the fact that we have had a revolving door in the National Government in terms of Ministers of Local Government. Have we had six—or is it seven—Ministers of Local Government in the last 6 years. We have had the Hon Nick Smith, Sam Lotu-Iiga, Paula Bennett, and now the Hon Anne Tolley.

Is it because we have got this revolving door that they totally fail to understand the local government sector and seek to dictate to that sector, or is it a combination of that revolving door plus their ideology? I think it is a bit of both, because the sector made it very clear in its submissions that this bill had been developed without any effective liaison with local government. It was drafted in a very hasty way, it had a number of inconsistencies, and it was poorly thought-out. I think Local Government New Zealand called it “under done”. When you have poor process and a fundamental lack of consultation with local government, then you get very bad law.

But it goes deeper than that, because, as Local Government New Zealand said in its submission—a submission the Minister and others in the National Government do not appear to have read—on this bill, central government “appears to be saying that it does not trust the elected members of local communities to make the right decisions for their communities.”, and that there is a deep, deep, deep misunderstanding of the role of local government. It is not the administrative arm of the central government, as this National Government thinks it is, with the way in which this bill—and in other legislation, like its changes to the Resource Management Act—seeks to dictate to councils what they can do and seeks to undermine local democracy.

This bill as introduced was, and remains, extraordinarily heavy-handed. There has been a huge increase in the Minister’s powers, and that undermines local councils. It diminishes their ability to consult with their communities and to make decisions together with their communities. It increases the power of the Local Government Commission, which, as others have noted, is not elected. It is appointed by Ministers, and, yes, we are going to go up to five members, but they are all appointed members.

So the heart of this bill is actually the Government’s plan B. The reorganisation proposals in Northland, Hawke’s Bay, and Wellington did not work. They were roundly rejected by citizens in local referenda, and so what the Government has done with this bill is significantly increase the power of the Local Government Commission to go ahead with reorganisations, to force councils, initially, to establish council-controlled organisations to take over the assets that communities have built and paid for, in waste water, transport, and the like, and put those in the hands of council-controlled organisations, which are much less accountable. We in the Green Party think that that is a first step towards privatisation.

As one submitter said, the bill as introduced had all the hallmarks of Thatcherism. It represented a giant step towards the death of democracy, dressed up in the fiction that it was about promoting efficiency. Local government is not just about efficiency; it is about representation and accountability, and in the Committee stage we will consider and go through how the bill, as amended, keeps undermining those basic concepts.

The commentary on the bill has 24 pages about the changes that the Local Government and Environment Committee made. Those changes were forced on the Government because of the huge strength of opposition. But in terms of the powers that it gives to the Minister to direct the Local Government Commission, the Local Government Commission’s powers, and the preference for council-controlled organisations rather than councils to manage council services and assets, it is still going way too far, and it is undermining local democracy. That is why the Green Party opposes it. We want to revitalise local democracy. We trust local councils; the Government does not.

I am very pleased to stand up to speak, expressing the Labour Party’s opposition to this bill. I do so as, until recently, an elected member of the Auckland Council, and I especially acknowledge other former elected members in the Chamber.

This is a strange, dislocated, netherworld bill. It started off with a raft of ambitious proposals from the Government that would have gutted local government democracy and created an incredible degree of centralisation within our system. When faced with a tidal wave of opposition at the select committee stage, the Government has pulled back from some of the most egregious changes but, none the less, left us with a bill that no one is asking for and no one is happy with. It still has that noxious element of removing elements of local democracy within our system.

Before moving on to a couple of substantive points, I just want to address a couple of the speeches that we have heard earlier. My Bayly, in his comments earlier on, tried to give some reassurance to the House that people do not need to worry too much. People do not need to worry too much about the amalgamation possibilities arising out of this bill, and that the local government commission had to have regard to the degree and distribution of community support for reorganisation. Well, that is simply laughable to anyone in this Chamber who remembers what happened in 2010 when this Government overrode every single protection and every single aspect of the democratic system to ram through the forced reorganisation of Auckland Council. It overrode the Local Government Act. It took away the right of Auckland citizens to vote upon that reorganisation proposal, and it imposed aspects such as council-controlled organisation (CCOs), which covered core services, in the legislation against the will of the people of Auckland. So it is laughable to suggest that anyone could have a degree of trust in this Government not to force through reorganisation proposals if that is its wish.

Of course, we have seen that again and again and again. It has been a litany of failure—the reorganisation proposals for the Hawke’s Bay, Wellington, and Northland. Mr Doocey let it slip in his comments when he made it very, very clear that he favours small councils in our country being taken over by bigger partners, and reducing the number of territorial local authorities in our country. There is a silly sort of macho “bigger is better” mindset that sits in behind all of this legislation, and his belief that Mr Doocey expressed in his comments was that somehow if we amalgamate, things are going to get cheaper and rates are going to go down. Mr Doocey, may I welcome you to Auckland one day to come to talk to some of our ratepayers. It is an absolute nonsense that amalgamation automatically makes things cheaper or more efficient. It is absolutely established, in fact, in the academic literature, that the massive transition costs of forced amalgamations, or voluntary amalgamations for that matter, very often outweigh any of the efficiency gains that you get.

Let us talk about CCOs, which, really, are the Trojan horse in this piece of legislation for a more corporatised, less democratic form of local government in our country. Let us talk about the efficiency gains, supposedly, that CCOs get. Well, do you realise that within the Auckland Council’s structure—and I say this to the member’s opposite—that we now have eight vertically integrated silo CCOs within the Auckland Council structure? Each has its own communications team. Each has its own senior management team. Each has its own CEO. Each has its own board, for goodness’ sake! And each has all of the structures around that you need to support that. Thank goodness we have got Mayor Phil Goff, who is trying to make some sense of that now. But that CCO structure that was imposed upon Auckland has actually led to less efficiency and less democratic engagement between people and their council than we would otherwise have, and this bill seeks to impose that by stealth on other councils as well.

The reason that many members on this side of the House feel very strongly about this is it is actually a soft constitutional issue. In our country we do not have a written constitution that sets out the separation of powers between different arms of Government, but we are dealing with a democratic system here. Local government is about local people having a say, electing local representatives to make local decisions, to levy local ratepayers through rates, and then to spend that money. That is actually a part of our constitutional structure. We have one of the most centralised forms of Government in the entire world. More is done centrally in New Zealand than virtually anywhere else in the world. Yet this bill seeks to hug more and more powers into the bosom of central government.

This bill actually misses an opportunity. If the Government had have actually sat down with local government—as we have heard from other speakers who actually know something about local government today—and said “How can we work on collaboration better?”, then I absolutely know for a fact that people from local government would have said “Yep, we’ve got some good ideas about how we could do that, to be more efficient, and to deliver services better for our people.” Instead, we have got a typical National Government power-hugging piece of legislation before us, and I will certainly be voting against it later on this afternoon. Thank you.

Ā, mauri ora, e Te Mana Whakawā. Can I just start off by first saying that this particular bill has been supported by Local Government New Zealand and also by the Society of Local Government Managers. Let us just be very clear, just to start this off.

One of the things about this bill is that one of the Government’s key priorities is improving public services that are available in New Zealand. We know that a lot of our front-line public services are actually provided by local authorities, be they city, district, or regional councils. This bill empowers local authorities to provide better core services for their constituents—for their constituents. That is what the National-led Government’s better local services reforms—this is what they are all about. All of that is about advancing this particular bill.

One of the major provisions of the bill allows councils to take advantage of opportunities to operate in a more efficient way and to make better use—better use—of ratepayers’ money. This could be through joint ownership of council-controlled organisations (CCOs), where these CCOs can control infrastructure that benefits more than one council.

There is also, for the first time, the opportunity for councils to lead reorganisations, rather than any sort of reorganisation being initiated from the Local Government Commission. That is a very, very important part of this bill. This will be particularly relevant in areas where there is no desire for large-scale amalgamation but a smaller reorganisation would be in the interests of both areas.

The important thing throughout this bill is that it provides for changes in council structure to be locally led. There are also many other benefits for local councils found in the bill. It allows for greater use of council-controlled organisations. It makes the Local Government Commission more transparent, and that is the reason why Local Government New Zealand and, also, the Society of Local Government Managers actually backed this bill in the end—they backed this bill.

The National-led Government has led a huge improvement in the level of public services, and this is just another small part of the programme that we have embarked on to bring better public services to New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

The first thing to correct from that contribution is the mistake that the member Nuk Korako made that this bill has the backing of Local Government New Zealand. It does not. It has not had it from the start; it still has not got it now. This bill has been so problematic for the Government that it delayed a year between the hearing of submissions and reporting back to the House—or close to a year.

The member said that this bill allows the efficient cooperation of councils in respect of jointly delivered services. They can already do that. They do already do that. What they do not want to have is that forced upon them by central government, by this grouping that is full of appointees by the Government, a grouping that the Government controls and, therefore, can inflict upon local government, even if local government does not want it to occur. What are some real examples of this? All that time ago, I used to be on this Local Government and Environment Committee, and I heard the submissions. Councils came to us and they said: “We don’t think this is fair, particularly if we’re a smaller council. If a core part of our revenue comes from, for example, managing roads or water, if we, the council, are forced to cooperate with a CCO that takes that revenue away from us, the council, we cannot afford to employ a decent manager.”

Effectively, if councils are stripped of some of these functions and the spending that is associated with those core functions, they are left with such a small ambit that they cannot recruit the quality of chief executive and the quality of senior staff that they need for other parts of their organisation. So they might, as a consequence, lose capability in their planning department, or in their roading department, because they have had their water department hived off, against their recommendation, to a council-controlled organisation (CCO).

The next thing is that it is a loss of political accountability, and you would have thought that this Government, after it had been beaten back by citizens up and down the land about forced amalgamations, would have learnt its lesson. But, no, the National Government—it knows best. National lost in the Hastings-Napier area, it lost in the Greater Wellington area, it lost in the Wairarapa, and so what does it want to do? It wants to get to a similar outcome through this legislation. Did you know that a CCO contract might last 30 years? You could have a CCO contract for your water—that is, your drinking water—for your stormwater, for your sewerage, and for your transport. What is left for the elected officials?

How long will the contract be? It could be a 30-year contract. They will come along and they will say: “We need certainty of contract so that we can invest in the expensive equipment needed for this new, grand CCO.” It will be a 30-year contract, and the local authority will not be able to get out of it for 30 years. That is not local democracy. That is wrong, and, indeed, I think there is a need for controls on the length of these cross-council contracts with independent private providers of CCO services. If you are going to have a 30-year contract in favour of Fulton Hogan or Downer or any other contractor, how does a future council effectively exercise democracy if it thinks that that decision of a prior council was wrong? You should not be able to bind a future council for ever, and you certainly should not, through the Local Government Commission, be able to force that on councils.

There were lots of other complaints made about this by councils but, essentially, that lies at the essence. Why does this Government not trust locally and democratically elected councils to do as they have done for the last 100 years and make sensible decisions for the people who elect them and the people who pay their rates?

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2). It must be time for the retiring members of the Local Government and Environment Committee to round off the debate, following Mr Parker. I too was on the committee. While I was on the committee, Mr Parker did often speak a lot of sense, however, in regard to that contribution I must absolutely disagree.

This bill is about creating a framework to be improved, to create flexibility, and to allow councils to think laterally about how best to manage their infrastructure and services, and how best to manage complex issues moving forward. We can see that the issues facing especially the regions are quite diverse now, as we face issues such as depopulation and, obviously, providing essential services, without the rating base. So councils do have to think laterally about how to solve those problems and to think about driving regional development forward with, of course, the support of the Government.

This bill allows that. It is a “no obligation” way forward to look at the benefits of council-controlled organisations (CCOs). What this bill allows is for several councils in a region to come together and pool their resources to effectively manage infrastructure or services moving forward. This is the case in Southland. The members opposite have ranted and raved about the disadvantages of amalgamation, and that debate too is going on in Southland. There are very much people who do not want to see our four councils amalgamated, and there is the opposing view of people who want to see those four councils brought together as one.

However, what those councils have done is that—in the past they have always worked together, but as we have continued to develop our regional strategy, they are looking to formalise that relationship as to how to drive the goals of the action plan forward. A CCO is mentioned. Why is a CCO mentioned? It is because these governance arrangements allow the right people to be put in the right job to deliver results, and often elected officials do not necessarily have the appropriate skills to do that. So this is about allowing a flexible framework and one that improves the framework to deliver the best results. I am very pleased to commend this bill to the House.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.