Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

By amending the Local Government Act 2002, the bill represents a significant step change in the way central government thinks about local government. The bill aims to achieve three main objectives. The first is to restore the purpose of local government to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities. These dimensions of community well-being need to be considered as a whole rather than separately, working together. Combined, they provide a mandate for the vital role of local government in supporting communities, whānau, and individuals to fulfil their potential and be engaged in the well-being aspirations of the community.

The second is to restore territorial authorities’ power to collect development contributions for any public amenities needed as a consequence of development and for reserves from non-residential development. The third is to make a technical change to the development contributions power. This clarifies the recoverable advances of financial assistance from the New Zealand Transport Agency do not prevent territorial authorities from collecting development contributions for the same projects.

I want to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for its work considering the bill. The select committee was unable to reach agreement on whether to recommend that the bill be passed or whether to make any changes to the bill. Naturally, I’m disappointed that this is the case. I will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper so necessary technical changes to the bill can be made at the committee of the whole House stage in the process.

I’d like to thank all submitters on the bill, especially the 34 submitters who made oral submissions to the select committee. The 131 submissions provided useful perspectives on the proposals. I was particularly pleased to see that the bill received a number of submissions from the local government sector and that these submitters generally supported the bill. Local authorities also expressed support for the detailed and helpful submissions made by Local Government New Zealand and the New Zealand Society of Local Government Managers.

The bill will provide clear authority for local councils to shape their activities based on what their communities require and reinstate community well-being into the purpose of local government. Restoring the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities to the purpose of the Local Government Act reinstates the position that applied before the previous Government’s amendments. This change restores the true purpose of local government—the well-being of communities—and, in fact, that’s what councils get elected for.

The specific focus on functions and service delivery introduced by the previous Government doesn’t accurately reflect the way local councils work or what they seek to achieve for their communities. So we’re going to fix it. A high percentage of submitters supported the reinstatement of the four dimensions of community well-being to the purpose of local government. Two of the most common reasons for supporting this amendment were that it gives local councils the mandate to take a leadership role in fostering democracy at a local level and ensures better outcomes for communities. It is crucial that central government supports local government in fulfilling these roles.

The majority of local authorities who submitted on the bill support the expanded powers to collect development contributions. Local government submitters said that making all public amenities eligible for development contributions funding means that existing residents are no longer required to pay the full cost of community amenities for new residents. They said that successful and sustainable housing policy is not just about building houses and infrastructure but it’s also about building communities, and I agree with those views. The expanded powers to collect development contributions reinstate the position that applied before the amendments made by the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Act 2012. These changes are consistent with the overall aims of the bill and the wider objectives of the Government. This amendment will help councils by removing a barrier to growth. It will also enable councils to provide the services communities want and shape the liveable places communities need.

I’ve taken note of the submissions made regarding the use of development contributions for community assets. Submitters noted that territorial authorities are increasingly providing community infrastructure partnership with third parties. They thought the law on development contributions funding should reflect this. I agree it is important to find innovative ways to provide community infrastructure. I’ve asked officials to investigate this policy approach more fully.

In conclusion, community well-being is at the heart of what local authorities do. So it only makes sense for the legislation to recognise this important role. To work effectively all levels of government must listen to the needs of communities. This is the only way to ensure social cohesion, inclusion, and develop thriving and sustainable local communities. The bill is forward looking. The change to the purpose of local government addresses the dynamic nature of well-being so that local authorities can best serve their communities now and into the future. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise in opposition to the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. This bill, if it should pass, will undo some very good work undertaken by the previous Government to focus councils on better governance, more responsible financial management, and improved efficiency. In 2012, we undertook some local government reforms which focused councils on their core roles of providing local infrastructure, local public services, and local regulatory functions at the least cost to households and to businesses. These four well-beings reinstituted into that Act will undo that good work. It will permit councils to a much broader remit on what they choose to spend hard-working ratepayers’ money on, with very diffuse sorts of justifications for why they might do that. Should this pass into law, there will inevitably be rates rises as councils feel validated and, indeed, empowered in untargeted spending. It will take away the discipline from Better Public Services and Better Local Government efficiencies.

The development contributions element is at least as bad, if not worse. It simply permits the council to target new-home buyers, first-home buyers, to pay a greater share of facilities, infrastructure, reserves that the council might have decided that they want in the area and which should be more appropriately levied across the broader ratepayer base. But, instead, it allows levies to be charged for such facilities and amenities, which isn’t the case under law today. And what will happen—will absolutely happen with those increased development contributions—is they will be passed on to the homebuyer. And so if we have first-home buyers—and there is at least general agreement across the House that we want greater supply of housing; we want housing to be more affordable for first-home buyers—then then putting in legislation that will see an increase in developer contributions that will be passed on to those first-home buyers cannot possibly help them with housing affordability.

On top of that, the law—the legislation—would permit those same territorial authorities to levy businesses’ development contributions for amenities that have got nothing to do with their businesses, their business purpose, and may not even be in the general or immediate vicinity of where those businesses are. It’s simply a means for some greater taxation by stealth: putting in and enabling and empowering councils to, basically, get into the back pockets of New Zealand ratepayers, householders, and businesses. It isn’t a good approach. It will undo the hard work we undertook to make sure that councils were appropriately focused on delivering the right sorts of services and infrastructure to ratepayers and businesses most effectively, and particularly cost-efficiently, for them. We oppose this bill.

Just when everybody thought peace reigned over the House this evening, and a number of bills were pushed through the House—and I think excellent bills—we come to yet another excellent bill, but, sad to say, the other side won’t be supporting this bill.

As the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, every community I’ve been in to understands why this bill is needed. They understand that we can no longer look at simple fiscal bottom lines—that as a community we must address the issues around the environment, around community well-being, around community connection, around a whole host of things that, sadly, can’t be seen by the other side of the House.

Many of the submitters, while some raised rather technical aspects of the bill—and the Minister of Local Government, I feel, has covered that off quite well this evening, and no doubt more debate will be entered into as this bill proceeds through the House—acknowledged that a focus on well-being more broadly speaking, not just by the central government but by local government, was much needed. In fact, many were saddened by the action taken by the last Government to remove the well-beings from this particular piece of legislation, and they felt that since those were removed in 2012, all that councils seemed to focus on were the three “Rs”—and I’ve mentioned in the House what those are: roads, rates, and rubbish. Now, I don’t know where roads, rates, and rubbish talk about community well-being, cultural connection, or environmental safety and well-being. I don’t see any of that. Simply, roads, rates, and rubbish aren’t good enough, and the community have spoken.

What the member Brett Hudson failed to see in his contribution is that everybody is part of a community—families, young people, old people, and, dear I say it, businesses too. The businesses I have spoken to are happy to contribute to make sure that the community that they operate in actually operate in a safe community, one that’s connected—

💬 Simeon Brown: Name three—name three businesses.

If that member could pull his focus away from his young child—and I congratulate that member—I can speak about many Māori businesses in Tāmaki-makau-rau—

💬 Simeon Brown: Name three.

—who are more than happy. Tipene funeral homes. Do you want me to carry on? That is one phenomenal—

💬 Simeon Brown: Yep; I said three.

—Māori business. Te Raukura Hauora O Tainui. Can I say another one? Whānau O Waipareira, who I took the advantage of being with today to look at what well-being looks like in west Auckland. What is clear from all of those who are involved in the community is that well-being is an important aspect of that, and this bill enables them to do that. It enables not just local government but also community to be involved in what’s important to them. I’ve said it on many occasions, and some of the members might have heard this.

I visited Wairoa some time ago, and I was—

💬 Hon Meka Whaitiri: Yay-ya!

Wairoa—good old staunch Wairoa. The member the Hon Meka Whaitiri will know the people in Wairoa well. The deputy mayor welcomed me and said, “Minister, welcome to Wairoa, and don’t bloody tell us what to do.” Now, what that says in Wairoa-speak—and correct me if I’m wrong, the Hon Meka Whaitiri—to me is “Let communities make decisions that are good for that community.” It’s pretty simple, and that’s lost on that side of the House. In fact, I’m really disappointed—I’m really disappointed—but not surprised that that is the position taken by that side of the House.

So what we’re enabling the community to do with this type of a bill is make sure that local community have a say in what well-being is for them, because everything is important to local community. I know members on that side of the House who have actually been saddened by a decision by a local government to take away libraries and other resources in a community which, on this side of the House, we consider to be essential parts of that community. This bill will make sure that we reinstate that. So on this side of the House, we are happy to support local government and those communities within local government to actually make sure that they get what they need to thrive and be a community which is a beacon for well-being, and I commend the Minister for her work on this particular piece of legislation.

We have no doubt that on the stump, at the end of the year, when local body politicians are standing up to look for the vote, they won’t be talking about simply rubbish, roads, and rates. What they will be speaking to is the hearts and minds of the voters, and it won’t be just about roads, rubbish, and rates; it will be about the kinds of amenities that that community wants to see in their community, and be it not the job of central government, or even a particular management far removed from that community, to tell them what’s best for them.

So while that side of the House might jeer at what’s being done on this side of the House, I’m proud that in communities right across this country, we will see some positive action—in particular, on the environment. That is one of the well-beings in this particular bill, and while that side might not care about the environment—in fact, their environment policy is to kick the can down the road for another 20 to 30 years. What we’re saying is that, actually, let’s empower those communities at a local government level, at a community level, to make sure that the environment is far more sustainable and is more in tune with how that community lives and what that community wants.

The environment is important. This Government has made a clear stand on the environment, unlike the last Government, who kicked the can up the road for another 20 to 30 years. That’s their fault, because now they’re too shy to get on the bus on what is, essentially, a very good bill. I have no doubt that as this bill progresses through the House, the other side will soon see the light when they realise that not only did the New Zealand public vote for change in central government; there will be a big swing come the local government body elections towards the end of this year, one that will see good well-being, one that will see community speaking for community, and one that doesn’t just focus on the three “Rs” that have already been mentioned in my contribution.

As this bill progresses, there is a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table from the Minister to make sure that this bill, once again, is well received amongst the community, to make sure that community find their voice in local government. I commend this bill and the work done by the Minister to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to stand in opposition to this bill. I would like to acknowledge the previous speaker, the Hon Peeni Henare. He is normally good on his speeches, but I am disappointed with his speech today and what he has said.

This side—the Opposition—is in opposition because that coalition Government has been increasing the taxes time and again, and this bill is no different. It is going to increase the rates, it is going to increase the developers’ contribution, and that is going to increase the prices for the houses for first-home buyers. That Government has been advocating for first-home buyers, but what we see in this bill is that the development contribution, which will be increased, will be definitely passed on through the sections, and the houses which will be built will be more expensive than what they are today.

What we have seen in the past: this Government has been helping the councils to increase the rates and to increase the taxes. We saw a regional fuel tax implemented in Auckland, and that has been passed on to the consumers. It is pinching them. What we have seen in the past year: a $50 increase in the rents across the country. That is, again, pinching the back pockets of the people.

The previous speaker mentioned that he has talked to a lot of businesses. I would like to quote from some of the submissions made by the businesses to the Governance and Administration Committee. During the select committee process, we listened to 34 submitters out of 131 submissions, and what Business New Zealand said in their submission opposing this bill was that the bill should wait until the Productivity Commission submits their report, and the Government should wait for it. That is going to happen in November, and this bill, which was reported back last year in September, has been waiting for a second reading. They’re talking about the well-being. They didn’t talk about well-being for almost eight, nine months. Suddenly, they have woken up and are talking about it.

What the Local Government Business Forum has said in opposition to this bill: again, they said the new mechanism is going to increase the rates of the section. They also said there is still a lot of unnecessary council activity and overexpenditure which needs to be addressed. We were hoping that this Government will be looking to those areas rather than passing on new taxes, new contributions, to the people. That is not what we want to do; that is why we are opposing this bill in the second reading.

Well, I have to say to my Cabinet colleague the Hon Nanaia Mahuta thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you on behalf of all of my Local Government New Zealand whānau—my former colleagues, the mayors that I worked with, and the councillors I worked with up and down the country.

I recall very, very clearly the reaction of Local Government New Zealand when the 2012 amendment bill went through, steered by the Hon Nick Smith. We who were in local government at the time remember very clearly the stigmatisation, the demonisation, the demeaning, and the belittling of local government politicians up and down the land as the Hon Nick Smith justified the removal of the four well-beings by telling everybody that local government was inefficient, was wasteful, was spendthrift, and didn’t know how to manage their assets. The same man actually called 70 of us to a meeting in the Grand Hall to tell local government—all the mayors and deputy mayors and CEOs—what was going to happen, why it was going to happen, and that there was nothing we could do about it.

It was interesting. I predicted at that meeting, about 15 minutes before it started, that he wouldn’t be the Minister in two days’ time. The Hon Fran Wilde, at the time chair of the Greater Wellington Regional Council, was astonished and asked me why. I said, “Well, I just heard a speech as I came into town, given by the Rt Hon Winston Peters, where he highlighted some matters that Mr Smith had to face up to.” And he was consequently removed.

We thought, in local government, that was a jolly good thing because that Minister failed to comprehend in any shape or form whatsoever that from local government’s perspective, the well-beings were fundamental to how one cared for one’s community. Well, I mean: social well-being. Looking at the economic well-being—we always thought that National, of all parties, would have understood that you needed to factor in the economic well-being into your annual plan, your long-term plan, and your ultra - long term plan. But, clearly, they disagreed.

Environmental well-being—focusing on the environmental well-being meant that as a mayor I could listen to my community, who said they no longer felt it appropriate that we continue to discharge waste water into the Mangatarere Stream. Councillor Jill Greathead, who formed the Mangatarere Restoration Society, was adamant that we needed to get out of that. Hapū Hurunui o Rangi made it very clear to my council that we needed to come up with a plan that enabled us to stop discharging waste water into the Mangatarere Stream, in line with making sure we catered to the environmental well-being of our community. But oh, not Mr Smith. He said it wasn’t important. Well, it was damn well important as far as we’re concerned, and that’s why we invested the money we invested into land-based systems. Getting out of the Mangatarere Stream became an environmental must for my council.

Catering for the social well-being does little things that focuses the mind of your council on ensuring, for example, oh, maybe something that central government should have been thinking about at the time, like that there are no homeless people and like that people aren’t living in cars, Mr Simon Bridges. You focus on the well-being of your community in the same way central government should focus on the well-being of the nation. But these things—this sort of proposition that economic, social, environmental, and cultural well-being are of no significance—comes from the minds of bean counters and pencil heads who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

People who put big business profits—Mr Kanwaljit Singh, how disappointing, raises the issue about how terrible it was that property developers had to pay a development contribution for the infrastructure they were going to tap into that had been built and paid for by previous ratepayers. Well, hell, where we came from we heard ad nauseam from Ruth Richardson in Canterbury that the market forces would meet the need. But, see, there’s the irony. It’s not right to have a development contribution, but it’s perfectly fine to have a council-controlled organisation levy everybody with an infrastructure charge ranging from $7,000 to $27,000. Me thinks that there is a phrase that fits the description of that type of argument, but we’re not allowed to use the word in this Parliament.

There are people all over the country right now who are deep-seated card-carrying members of the National Party who work selflessly in local government. They were overwhelming in their condemnation of the National Government of the time. In fact, the remit at Local Government New Zealand conference that year passed with an overwhelming majority to lobby central government to restore the well-beings back into the Local Government Act, and that is what this House is aiming to do. That is what the Hon Nanaia Mahuta has brought to the floor of the House, and New Zealand First supports it 150 percent. And let’s look forward to the third reading of this bill.

To all of my whanaunga out there in Local Government New Zealand, you work hard and we appreciate what you do. Take satisfaction right now that this Government has listened to you and is doing exactly what you, Local Government New Zealand, asked us to do.

When we consider this bill, the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill, a key question we should ask is should we apply fiscal discipline to local governments—should we apply fiscal discipline to local governments? We on this side of the House will say yes, and that is why we did local governmental reforms and amended the Local Government Act 2002 seven years ago. Our Better Local Government reforms achieved a lot. The reforms provided clarity around the role of councils, stronger governance, and improved efficiency and also more responsible financial management. That’s what we achieved through our local governmental reforms seven years ago. We believe that ratepayers need to be assured that their council is spending their money wisely. This is their right, and for that reason local government needs to focus on services which matter to ratepayers, and they need to deliver high quality services to their ratepayers.

Labour, however, has decided to reverse National’s reforms and re-insert the four well-beings. An immediate consequence of this will be the rise of rates because councils will not be restrained in untargeted spending. So this is an immediate consequence—and not only that; we will also see the rise of development levies, because development contributions will again be levied on developers for infrastructure such as museums, libraries, and swimming pools. So as a consequence of that, section prices will go up because developers will, of course, pass on their development contribution through section prices. And who will suffer? First home buyers—first home buyers. So that will be a blow to the Labour-led Government’s effort to provide affordable housing. So this is yet another poorly thought through Labour-led Government policy.

We urge the Minister to defer the bill. The Productivity Commission is conducting an inquiry, and we should wait until the inquiry is completed and the findings and recommendations are considered. Then we will see.

Business New Zealand share our view. They say in their submission the bill should not proceed at this stage, at least until the inquiry into the drivers of local government cost and its revenue base concludes. The inquiry could propose changes to the Local Government Act, including different funding options. So we do have people there asking the Minister, the Government, to defer this bill. However, the Labour-led Government will continue to push this to go through, so I oppose the bill.

E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. You’d think, listening to the National Party, and, indeed, listening to that last speaker, Jian Yang, who asked the question “Should we apply fiscal discipline to local government?”, that we were somehow stripping away any sense of responsibility, economically or fiscally, from local government. That is not what is contained in this bill at all. If the Opposition were to take the time to read through this relatively small piece of legislation—it’s pretty quick to read through—you would find that the purpose of local government is being reinstated as, and I quote, “to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities”. That is absolutely the opposite of taking away fiscal responsibility. It is there, clear as daylight. Instead, what we’re saying is that we want to ensure that the framework which local government is operating in is autonomous and that they have the responsibility and the ability, actually, to implement decisions that affect their local community that are not prescribed by central government.

Who do we in this House think that we are? It is a core fundamental principle of this Parliament, of parliamentary supremacy, that parliaments cannot bind future parliaments. So who do we think we are if we as a Parliament can bind local governments’ hands and say that they cannot address the needs of their local communities? Who do we think we are? We are not so constrained.

I’d also like to address the fact, which has been raised by a number of speakers so far, about fiscal responsibility, because what we’ve seen over the past few decades is that the mandate of local government has crept. They have had the finger pointed at them a lot and been told that they have to do more with less. Their responsibility, their mandate, has crept, but the coffers have not grown. Local governments are relying on rates and relying on things like dog licensing fees to pay for the services that their citizens expect. To benchmark this against international examples, it’s the case that in New Zealand, local governments get about 11 percent of Government spending. They get discretion over about 11 percent of Government spending. Internationally, it’s 30 percent.

So the point that I’d really like to drive home tonight to both members of Parliament and those members of the public who may be tuned in to Parliament TV and enjoying themselves, I do hope, with this lively debate is it is time for local government elections in October of this year, and that accountability, fiscal or otherwise, that the Opposition is talking about will be brought to bear through the magic that is democracy.

The Greens proudly stand in support of this piece of legislation and would like to commend the Minister in charge, Nanaia Mahuta, because this is an incredible step in the right direction towards recognising that the well-being of our communities, the mental health of our people, is seen and reflected in far more than the books.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I listened to that last speech with interest. I would very much like to invite the previous speaker, Chlöe Swarbrick, to the Rangitīkei to tell my seven councils and my dog owners that their money is being spent on roads and social enterprise. I think the dog owners would give her a fair old flea in the ear and they’d give those mayors and councils a fair old flea in the ear, too, so I don’t think that’ll work.

But, anyway, I wanted to just go back to where the Minister was when she started, because she claimed this bill alters the way central government thinks about local government, and I think to some extent it will do in the future. But I want to take us back a few years, because I think this bill has its origins in 2002, in fact. If you think about 2002, we brought the well-beings into local government at a time when, frankly, the Government wasn’t supplying the well-being and the services it should have done around local government. You’d have to wonder whether that’s not going to be repeated in 2019.

The other thing I want to talk about is development contributions. They were brought in the same piece of legislation, and I was a very part-time part of local government at the time. I had a little bit to do with the implementation of this, and it was a very confused process, the implementation of the development contribution regime. The reason it was confused was because there was no development happening, and anyone who was in property or in development at that time will realise that bulldozers were parked up for many years. Of course, when you bring a development contribution in, you’ve got to calculate the future cost to get it to fruition, and when you’ve got no development happening, it’s almost impossible to calculate the future cost of developing something in advance of a development that might not happen. So there were a lot of problems with the development contribution regime in its early days, and I think there will be problems with it again, because it very much looks like we could be entering another phase where we end up with very little development taking place.

So whilst I think development contributions have their place, it is a very difficult system to implement. It’s difficult because you can’t anticipate what’s going to happen in the future. So I think that, whilst these things have a place in local government when all goes well, they are difficult to implement at times. The reason that we are not necessarily in favour, or are not in favour, of these measures being implemented is that they are very difficult to control and to get a measure on, particularly the development contribution regime.

I just want to go back to the cultural well-being or the well-beings, because, when well-beings were brought in in 2002, they were viewed with huge suspicion by local government. They were then, gradually, over the years, picked up, and I think probably had a time when they worked pretty well.

The problem was that local government was in a regime where they’d spent 10 or 15 years picking up on a generation of lack of investment in infrastructure, basically. That’s what’s caused a large part of the increased costs of local government in recent years: spending money that was never spent in the days of my parents’ generation—because they lived through a time of zero and 1 and 2 percent rate increases for 40-odd years. They didn’t need to spend on infrastructure; we now need to spend on infrastructure.

So it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens as a result of this bill, but we certainly haven’t seen our way clear to support it. Thanks, Mr Assistant Speaker.

This is a split call—five minutes. I call Jamie Strange.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill in the second reading. I’d like to acknowledge the Governance and Administration Committee, of which I’m a member, and the chair, Brett Hudson, for the excellent work that he’s done around this.

This bill has one main objective: to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities. We’ve heard from other speakers tonight that these are commonly called the four well-beings—social, economic, environmental, and cultural.

Now, when this coalition Government was formed, councils across the country breathed a sigh of relief. The reason they breathed a sigh of relief was because they knew they would have a Government who would listen to them, who would engage with them rather than sort of lord it over them. Councils are, broadly, very supportive of this bill because they support the four well-beings coming back.

Let’s just have a look at some of the submissions. There were about 140 submissions. One of them came from Age Concern Tauranga—that Labour Party stronghold of Tauranga. “Age Concern Tauranga considers that the restoration of the purpose of promoting community well-being to the local government act is an important step forward in ensuring better outcomes for New Zealand’s communities.” The key word here is “community”. The key word is “community” because when we have strong communities—strong healthy communities—we have a strong nation.

So let’s have a look at these four aspects. The first one is social. So we’re talking about things like playgrounds, pools, parks, and reserves. We’re talking about places where people come together to congregate, to build community. Have a look at the economic aspect. The greatest strength of our economy is to have strong, healthy families and strong, healthy communities, because then people can be productive. Without that base, there is no productivity.

The environment: we have one planet. We’ve been listening recently to some students who have been protesting about climate change, and we’ve been listening carefully to them. Because we do have just one planet, it’s important that we look after the environment.

The next one is around culture. I’d like to pick up on a submission from Creative New Zealand. This is what they said: “we see the Bill as having a significant effect on how territorial authorities choose to support arts and culture in their areas.”

I’d just like to mention my home town of Hamilton, where there is a lot of public art—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Isn’t that a favourite tourist place or something?

I think it would be remiss of me to not add in here that Hamilton recently received an award for the most-visited city or town in New Zealand over the summer months. Unfortunately, I think the secret is out—the long-held secret is out that Hamilton is a wonderful place to live and visit, as we know. So there’s a lot of public art in the city, and people congregate around that. It creates meeting places, it creates community, and Creative New Zealand support this bill for that reason. South Waikato District Council also talk about the four well-beings and the importance of the four well-beings.

I’ll just close on this final submission here from Economic Development New Zealand. They say, “our members are overwhelmingly supportive of the reinstatement of the 4 well-beings in the [Local Government] Act 2002.” This is Economic Development New Zealand, because they understand that you can’t separate economic productivity from well-being; they’re connected, they’re joined. “Members view the 4 well beings as [being] inseparable and encourage an alignment of effort and strategy at an organisational level, both horizontally and vertically.”

I’d like to acknowledge the excellent work that Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta’s done in the field, in bringing this bill to the House, and support it.

I call Dan Bidois—five minutes.

It’s a pleasure to rise in opposition to the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill. I want to just touch on what the previous speaker, Jamie Strange, talked about before when he said that councils support this bill. I want to say to that speaker: of course they would support the bill. They support the bill because it gives them less accountability for delivering what they’ve promised to do. They support this bill just like a student who is having exams and doesn’t want another exam would support that move, because of course you’d rather have less accountability than more. So my issues with this bill are around holding councils accountable—holding councils accountable—for their fiscal discipline and the promises that they’ve made, particularly the elected members, for delivering on services in their constituencies.

I want to go back to what is the function of councils. Of course, they are charged with levying rates and then, on the other side of the equation, providing services. I think the core function of councils is pretty clear in terms of governance but also service delivery and providing a regulatory function. The results are pretty clear from this bill, in my eyes: we will see more rate rises because there will be less accountability that results from this bill. I can go into, in my own electorate, misspending of council money on pet projects that can easily be classed as a cultural or a social benefit but that have not delivered any real tangible benefit to the public, and that is why I do not support this bill.

Let us get to the real issues in my electorate of Northcote in terms of well-being and what affects well-being for the people of Northcote: they’re issues around transportation. When you are spending an extra hour in your car, that’s an hour less that you’re spending with your family or less on productivity. So it goes without saying. The other is housing infrastructure. We have a huge amount of intensification going on in Auckland. What we need is a council that is going to deliver on the surrounding services around these housing developments, and we’re not seeing that in terms of this council—Auckland Council in particular.

Last is around water quality, which I know is a big issue in the area of Auckland but also around the country. We really need councils to deliver on their improvement in that, and it’s all very well to include the environmental indicators, but what we need is to make sure that they’re doing the investments, that they are actually making the investments in the resource allocation requirements that are necessary in order for our waterways and our beaches to remain clean.

So that’s what affects well-being in my electorate of Northcote: congestion, water quality, and housing infrastructure. And I’ll tell you what: you’re not going to get many people in Northcote who will say that council is doing a good job on any of these matters. So they really need to focus on core business, and that, really, is about levying the rates that are required but delivering as much as possible with the rates that they can, and delivering as much value as they can with this.

I do want to concur with my colleagues on this side of the House that I do think that this bill should be deferred. This Government is all about working groups, so why not wait for the productivity working group to come out with their report at the end of this year on local government regulation? Let’s see what they provide as advice, because the taxpayers are paying these people to do research, and I think that that is the best course of action in this circumstance. So it is my pleasure to oppose this bill, and I urge the Government to consider deferring this bill to a later date.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. The Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill—as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, it’s good to be able to see we are restoring the very heart of what local government does, and that’s providing to people. This side of the House, this Government, believes that there’s a lot more to life at that level than simply bean counting and being able to draw up your books at the end of the day. Yes, economic accountability is important—fiscal accountability, as we’ve heard, is important—but there’s a bit more to life, and we believe that. That’s why there were so many submitters—so many submitters—who came along to the Governance and Administration Committee to give those views. In fact, 106 of the 129 submitters who put their views forward supported the reinstatement of community well-being in the purpose of local government.

The reasons that were given to the select committee members can be broadly described in four key areas, which I would like to highlight because I believe that it’s important to know what the purpose of local government is. The first was to give local government the mandate to take leadership—to take leadership—in fostering democracy, to increase people engaging with their community and voting and being aware of the issues that are affecting their lives in their daily way. As we’ve already heard, there’s a bit more to that than just rates, rubbish, and roading. There’s a whole lot more. In my patch, in Hutt South, we see an excellent job being done by the Hutt City Council to bring families together, to provide services to children in school holidays, to give mums and dads opportunities to engage and provide support to each other, and to make sure that there are meeting places, playgrounds, and swimming pools. There’s a whole lot more to life than simply making the books balance.

Number two: reverse the trend towards fiscal centralism and centralised decision-making, empowering our local communities to take charge of their own lives and to take ownership and to engage. That’s a good idea, too. Number three: ensure better health and well-being outcomes—that we’re focused on outcomes, not just what goes into the machine—and that we’re looking at how that spills out into the daily lives of people and what differences that makes. The final one: to ensure councils are accountable for the effects of their decisions on community well-being. It’s ironic that we’ve heard so much tonight about “There’s no accountability.” when this bill does exactly that.

I would like to look at what Local Government New Zealand submitted to the select committee. They did a fantastic submission, and you would like to think that Local Government New Zealand has a good understanding of the issues at heart. They’ve argued that the reinstatement would strengthen place-based and integrated service delivery approaches, allowing local government to take a holistic approach, not putting things in silos but being able to take into account a range of factors—being able to take into account, for example, our Treaty relationships, our obligations, and how we engage with iwi within our daily work in the council to make sure that that’s provided for. Also, with the environment, those important interactions that iwi and environment are able to have—that we’re looking at our rivers, our awa, and the fish life in those and how that impacts upon local iwi and their views.

It enables and empowers local government to work with communities so their interests and concerns are taken into account on a daily basis. But, most importantly, what they said, which really intrigued me, was that it gave a stronger ability to have a relationship with central government—that there’d been a distancing between local and central and how they worked together. It is so important, particularly in areas where central government is funding, to know that there is an area where they can communicate and that there is a consistent voice between both. They felt that the reinstatement of those four well-beings gave a mandate and a broader purpose, and that was an important statutory signal from central to local government about how we perceive their role—that we are empowering them and we have confidence in their ability to deliver good things for the people that they look after.

The second area that is also important is it restores territorial authorities’ power to collect development contributions for any public amenities needed as a consequence for development and for the reserves for non-residential developments. Now, this is also an important area that we heard submissions on. The objective of the bill is to give that back so that it will assist in providing facilities such as sportsgrounds, swimming pools, and libraries—and how important are those facilities for the community? To enable and empower local government to have a wider mandate to be able to look at those areas and fund them appropriately—those are often the facilities that people use so much in their daily lives that make a difference to families who can’t afford to do other things. To be able to use swimming pools, for kids to be able to learn how to swim and to be able to get access to a book, a holiday programme over the holidays—those things are incredibly important.

I’m really proud to be a member of the Governance and Administration Committee and to see the good work that was done. It’s really disappointing to see that the National Party members, with their view in the select committee report, did not support that. I felt that the reasons given for not supporting were just not really substantive enough to understand why you would take that position. The only reason I could see was that this was simply seen as unpicking work that the National Government had previously done, and there was no ability to take a wider view to look at what the clear benefits are for going forward. We had so many local government representatives who do this on a daily basis coming to tell the committee that they were pleased, so proud and happy, to have those well-beings reinstated.

I think there is far more concern about the broadened scope of amenities and development contributions being levied, which is the key point made—charging businesses development contributions for amenities unrelated to their business operations. I think it’s important that businesses are connected into the community and are able to have a voice as well. However, reinstating the four well-beings, quite simply, does not prevent this from taking place.

I think we have a really good bill here. I’m proud to see local government having its voice restored, having a good connection with central government, and being able to be empowered to do the job it can do so well. The bill is forward-looking, and the change to the purpose of local government addresses the dynamic nature of well-being so that so many local authorities can best serve their communities. I therefore commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s been an extraordinary exercise to sit here and listen to other members of the House completely miss the mark on this bill. Of course there is more than roads, rates, and rubbish, as the prior speaker said, when it comes to local government. But let me outline two issues where you’ve completely missed the mark. I should know because just a short 18 months ago I was a city councillor in the super-city.

Here’s the two issues where you’ve completely missed the mark. One is how ratepayers feel and the other is your timing for this legislation. On the first, this is how ratepayers feel—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Can members refrain from bringing the Speaker into the debate, thank you.

Yes, I can. This is how the opposite side of the House should view how ratepayers feel. There is a serious lack of trust in local government and, specifically, Auckland Council right now. I wish the other side of the House luck for introducing something where they will interpret it as wide-mark budgeting, untargeted spending, and expenditure creep. And on the topic of development levies, that scattergun approach to development levies and the spending of it on swimming pools and museums—when you get your house in order, when a local government council gets its house in order, then you can go to topics like that.

The other bit of advice—my second issue that I take real exception to is the other side of the House’s timing. The Productivity Commission—you’ve kicked it off. The commission’s final report is due in November this year, looking at drivers of local government costs, and instead the other side of the House is doing this now? It does not make sense. You’ve completely missed the mark around how people—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe):Order! Order! Members, everyone settle down. You’ve got about three minutes left to go. Please do not bring the Speaker into the debate. And that’s interjections. If members don’t know how to use the personal pronoun “you” correctly, don’t use it at all.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I will finish by saying that the other side of the House, their timing is off. They’re not understanding the drivers of local government costs and they’re certainly not understanding the lack of trust and the lack of respect and undergirding foundational trust that does not exist in many councils around New Zealand, specifically Auckland Council. If you did that, then you’d be waiting for a different era in which to introduce the well-beings.

I’m very pleased to stand up and take a brief contribution in this debate. I particularly acknowledge other former elected members of local government who are in the Chamber. It’s difficult to know where to begin with this debate, because that must be about the worst line-up of Opposition speeches I’ve heard in this Chamber, and I sat on that side of the House in some pretty ropey statutes amendment bills debates late in the evening.

One interesting claim that was made was that allowing for councils to base their decisions around the well-beings of their communities is going to lead to some kind of rates blowout. We heard that repeatedly. It was clearly one of the talking points that members on the other side of the House had. Well, interestingly enough, I found some figures on the average rates increases in the years between 2014 and 2017 under the current regime. And guess what—guess what. Under the current regime, which does not take account of community well-being, the regime put in place by the previous Government, rates increased at five times the rate of inflation. Yet here we are, with members on the other side having the temerity to suggest that a regime that simply allows local government to look after the well-being of its community members on the basis of its knowledge about their communities is somehow fiscally irresponsible, when that is the track record of the legislation that those members are defending.

Where was the fiscal responsibility and the high dudgeon calls about it then? Where was that? We didn’t hear a dickey bird. Five times the rate of inflation! I would have thought that some of those members, including the previous speaker, Denise Lee, who was a member of a local authority at that point, might have been a little more informed of that point.

The fundamental point about this bill is that it’s about a respect from this House to our colleagues in local government. It’s about respecting the fact that elected members in local government know their communities. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.