Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) - New Zealand Parliament

3726 Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Bill 16 May 2009
techniques. He has been giving advice as to how to sneak the measure through, how to
slip in the little words “as it sees fit” so that people do not understand their implication.
Rodney Hide will think it was well worth while his choosing the portfolio of Minister of
Local Government, because he has pulled off what amounts to a coup d’état. He is
setting up Auckland in such a way that at the next election not only will the eight
democratically elected Auckland councils be expunged but we will have an Auckland
Council with a mayor with the powers of a tsar. John Banks is the next likely mayor.
Once he is in complete control of the Auckland Council, he will unleash stage two,
which is to sell off the $28 billion of assets of the combined local councils.
I sought to table a cartoon before, but I did not actually table it. I would like to table
it now, because to me it is the only item in the media that has encapsulated what has
happened over the last 3 days. Here is the maniacal, demonic vision of Rodney Hide in
his yellow jacket with his proud little ACT motif, trampling on the councils of
Waitakere, of Papakura, of Rodney, of North Shore, of Manukau, and of Franklin. It
shows him stomping on them triumphantly. It is extraordinary that he has managed to
do that in such a way that he has conned New Zealanders and, it seems, the media, too.
He has got away with a coup d’état in a quite extraordinary and stunning way. I take my
hat off to Rodney Hide. It is “Rogernomics Part 2”. He has done it with devastating
audacity and devastating speed, and, seemingly, he has conned the media of New
Zealand.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia
ora rā. Thank you very much.
Over the last 3 days of debate it has been hard to remember what the Local
Government (Tamaki Makaurau) Bill is all about. It is not about the “Cousins and Aunts
and Uncles of Maui Council”, the “Melissa Lee Memorial Council”, or the “Auckland
Funsized Council”. The bill is the next step on from the Government’s decision on
Auckland governance. Making Auckland Greater is said to be about greater
communities, greater connections, and greater value. Perhaps it would have been more
appropriately called Making Auckland Divided; it is about great shame, great waste, and
great failure. The great shame is that after a robust consultation process and a
comprehensive report from the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, the
Government has hastily rejected any suggestion to provide for specific Māori
representation. The great waste is the Government’s apparent disregard for mana
whenua interests in establishing the Auckland Transition Agency. The great failure is
the almost certain probability, based on the current performance, that in a region that
has, by far, the highest Māori population in the world, there will be limited
representation of Māori—if any.
The caption that Māori Television has applied to this key news item is the Superman
shield. It is most appropriate to use this graphic to demonstrate the bill. The bill purports
to be more powerful than any legislation seen before it. It is able to leap 50 years of
controversy in a single bound. Based on a legislative process that will be faster than a
speeding bullet, this bill will, indeed, set up “Supermayor”—a mayor of steel, who
controls one super, overarching local authority for Auckland, sweeping out of its way
three district councils, four city councils, seven mayors elected at large, and 96
territorial authority councillors. But as any comic book fan will tell you, the blue, red,
and yellow cape of the superhero is eventually hung up, as Clark Kent resumes his real
persona as the mild-mannered low-level employee of The Daily Planet.
The real issue behind the widespread opposition to the super-city proposal is that
Aucklanders want to be heard and they want their issues to be respected. They want the
views they put forward in over 3,500 submissions to carry some weight. They do not
want a sham deal or the façade of making Auckland greater, while all they can see