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3626 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 16 May 2009 everything in place and be ready to function from 1 November 2010. We know that it will be very, very tight. Mistakes could be made. There should be some oversight and some ability to review the decisions that are being made, because of the huge amount of power that the Transition Agency will have. I will go further, and look further through the bill at some of the things the agency will do. It is also worth noting that under clause 22 all the expenditure for the Transition Agency has to be approved by the Minister. That does reinforce the need for some independent review, given the huge amount of control that will be given to Rodney Hide and the very hand-picked select number of individuals who will ultimately end up in total control of Auckland— Hon Member: $28 billion. CHRIS HIPKINS: —in control of $28 billion, and in control of—how many employees? Hon Member: Over 6,000. CHRIS HIPKINS: And in control of over 6,000 employees. That is a lot of people’s jobs and a lot of people’s lives that Rodney Hide will effectively be given control of. Hon Clayton Cosgrove: The Tsar. CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes—the “Tsar of Auckland”. Members should bear in mind that it is not the National Government that will be getting the control; it is Rodney Hide, the ACT Party Minister, with his 3.5 percent of the vote, who will have control of all of Auckland. There should be some oversight of that. I come back to new Part 11, which establishes the new Auckland Transition Agency Review Commission. It makes it clear that a judge has to be in control of it. It cannot be one of the political mates of the National Party or the ACT Party. They cannot make it Christine Rankin, Richard Prebble, or, John Banks, and we are very supportive of that. Hon Member: Why not? CHRIS HIPKINS: He is not a judge. If members would read the amendment we are debating, they would know that. This amendment gives the review commission the power to hear submissions. It gives it all the powers that a District Court might have in the exercise of its civil jurisdiction. If members look at the explanatory note of new Part 11, they will see that it sums it up very well. It states that the new part amends the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill “to ensure decisions concerning members of the public are subject to independent review.” Once again, it comes back to the notion of the concentration of a very, very large amount of power in a very, very small number of individuals. There has to be some kind of accountability, some kind of oversight. It is particularly important, in my view, given the way this bill has been rushed. The bill has not been through a select committee process, so there has been no public scrutiny. People have not had the opportunity to make submissions and say they think there is a problem with this part or that part, or that they would like this amendment or that amendment. Having sat through a number of select committee processes on pieces of legislation so far in my time in <strong>Parliament</strong>, I can say that I find those processes incredibly valuable. On the surface, during a first reading, a bill may seem perfectly logical and wellwritten, but it is amazing what technical issues—that we would not otherwise get a handle on—are picked up during the select committee process. By not putting this bill through the select committee process, the public are being denied that opportunity. Having an independent review mechanism in place would pick up any mistakes that have been made because of a lack of consultation. LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I move, That the question be now put.
16 May 2009 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 3627 MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I say to the National Government, which is desperately trying to shut down debate on new Part 11, that Labour members would like to have a discussion about it. We are putting up serious amendments to try to do the best we can to rectify rotten and flawed legislation. Given that this is the only debate on this legislation happening in this country, we do not think it is too much to ask that those members of this House who care about the rights of the people of Auckland, who actually care about democracy in Auckland, are allowed to have a debate on this issue. So I thank the Chair for giving Labour the call. I say to Government members that they might do well to listen to what we are saying, rather than squawking like headless chooks. Nathan Guy might think it is funny to kill democracy in Auckland, but the Labour Party does not. <strong>New</strong> Part 11 is very important. There is one very simple line in this part, which the Labour Opposition has put up, that might not seem like a big deal; clause 38(2) says simply: “The Commission is independent from the Auckland Transition Agency.” Do members know what? The Auckland Transition Agency is not independent from Rodney Hide; it is not independent at all. Because of that, people should be very concerned. This hand-picked bureaucracy will have all the powers of the current eight democratically elected Auckland councils. As I said last night in the debate, given that the Auckland Transition Agency is basically, for all intents and purposes, going to be the Auckland Council for the next 18 months, the people of Auckland, the ratepayers of Auckland, need to know that there is some kind of check and balance on the power of that organisation. I see Sam Lotu-Iiga laughing; he thinks he is about to get a third job, on the Auckland Transition Agency. I urge Government members to look seriously at new Part 11 and take a call to debate it, rather than just being annoyed that they are being made to work on a Saturday. Another very important point is that clause 50, “Hearings”, states: “The Commission shall meet every Monday and Tuesday of every week for the duration of the transition period.” This is a very interesting clause. When we go back to Part 3, which was voted on last night and was opposed by members on this side of the Chamber, we notice all kinds of clauses on the requirement for the Auckland Transition Agency to report to the Minister, but nothing about its need to represent the community. There is clause after clause about how the agency must report to the Minister at regular intervals on progress, and must provide a final report. What does the bill say the agency must do for the people of Auckland? The Government members have gone quiet now, because none of them have actually read this legislation. They have their research unit notes and they have been trotted down here to take closure motions, but none of them have read the legislation. Well, there is nothing in the bill about representing the people of Auckland. In fact, the agency is “to provide information to the public of Auckland … as it thinks fit,”. If we look at the process of this bill, which is going through the Committee stage without it having been to a select committee, we can probably guess that “as it thinks fit” will be never, unless the agency tells the councils not to buy toilet paper, as one of the Auckland councils suggested in the newspaper the other day. That raises a very important point. The Auckland Transition Agency has the power to veto any kind of spending a council wants to do. The agency will ask the Minister whether it is OK for the North Shore City Council to buy toilet paper this week, and the Minister will say no, because he is worried that the council will go over to Mount Albert and use it to block the bulldozers. The council can then say to the agency that, actually, the toilet paper is important for tourism; it needs to buy toilet paper for a lot of public toilets, and it is worried that without it people might not want to come to Auckland.
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HIPKINS, CHRIS— Bills— Local Go
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