Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) - New Zealand Parliament

3738 Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill 16 May 2009
is a great day for Auckland. It is a great day for the country. It is a great day for
democracy. I support all those things.
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I begin tonight by thanking the
parliamentary staff who have stayed with us right through the proceedings of the last
week. I would like to recognise the messengers, our security staff, those who have
looked after us, and those who have fed us. We have had a few long hours, because this
is an issue we all care about. [Interruption] Members opposite may laugh.
I will give a little geography lesson about Auckland. There is a road called Dominion
Road—Crowded House wrote a song about it—and it runs pretty much right down the
middle of the isthmus, south of Queen Street. To the east of that road, as the eye turns to
the east—past the bronze statue on Manukau Road of Rodney Hide on his charger—
and out to the valleys and dales of Remuera and Glendowie, where Don Brash used to
live, it votes blue. It votes blue out in those hills. That is where the old money lives, but
I say to Gerry Brownlee that he would not know about that. We turn our eyes to the
west, and that is where the real people live. They vote Labour, more often than not.
Those people are pretty damn angry at the moment.
This bill is not about us—it is not about members in this House. It is not about the
tag wrestle, it is not about the pet names—[Interruption]—and it is not about the
members who have come back to the House tired and emotional, I say to Mr Quinn. It is
about the thousands of Aucklanders who are watching tonight and wondering why this
is happening. The people have in their gut a strong feeling that something has been
taken away from them this week—some sense of history, some sense of identity, be it as
residents of Waitakere, or of the proud North Shore, like its mayor, or of Manukau City.
We might laugh and call each other names, but at the end of the day we know that the
people will have the last say.
It is true that the Government has stolen the cities of Auckland. It did not need to do
it. We needed an integrated regional body, and the royal commission delivered it. But
the royal commission did not ask us to steal the cities. It said we should preserve the
cities but make them work leaner and better. The Government could have done that, but
it chose not to. What it did say was that it would consult Aucklanders, but it did not.
The Government did not consult Aucklanders on the royal commission, it did not
consult them on the bill, and it has not been back to Auckland.
The Government says that this bill is going to a select committee. That would make a
change! I wonder whether the Government will give the submissioners more time than
they gave the submissioners on the changes to the Resource Management Act. There is
a lot of quiet anger out in New Zealand about that process, too.
The Government has stacked the deck to keep its mates in power. That is the part I
cannot get over. There are eight at-large councillors. If people do not have quarter of a
million dollars for a mail drop, they should not apply. It is only for the rich and famous.
Nineteen out of 20 councillors, historically, have been white men from Remuera with a
lot of money to spend. That will go down in west Auckland like the proverbial bucket of
sick, because westies will not stand for it. Sam Lotu-Iiga, and I am using his proper
name, thinks it is funny for now, but there is a little clause in the other bill that
guarantees he can have a quiet retirement from Auckland City without calling a byelection.
That is an outrage—while we are on the subject.
There will be eight at-large councillors, and by my reckoning that means Waitakere
City will get two. So 200,000 people will be represented by two councillors. That area
is twice the size of a general electorate in a general election. That is not democracy as
Aucklanders know it, it is not democracy as they care about it, and it is not democracy
as they will vote to exercise it.