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3654 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 16 May 2009 GRANT ROBERTSON: That was unbelievable from Todd McClay, as my colleague said, because we have not had one speech from him in this debate. It is interesting that the debate on the retention of public assets is the debate that the National Government wants to shut down the quickest. Is it not interesting that the one thing National does not want us to talk about in this Chamber today is the retention of public assets? We on this side of the Chamber know that the real agenda of the Minister in charge of this bill, Rodney Hide, is privatisation. That is the real agenda. Roger Douglas will not deny it. He knows that that is the real agenda of the ACT Party and of the Minister who is responsible for this bill. New Part 9, proposed by my colleague Charles Chauvel, will protect public assets for Auckland people at least for the time of the transition agency—because that is what this bill deals with. If we could put forward something that could protect those assets beyond that, then we would, because we know that the agenda of Rodney Hide and the National - ACT Government is to privatise those assets. We know that is the agenda. Simon Bridges: Give me the evidence. GRANT ROBERTSON: Simon Bridges wants some evidence. The evidence is the Minister in the chair—at the moment it is John Carter, although usually it is Rodney Hide. The Minister responsible for the bill and the Minister in the chair are the evidence for the privatisation agenda. Rodney Hide said that the transition agency would be responsible for the rationalisation of governance arrangements. We know what rationalisation means to people in the ACT Party. It means selling off public assets that have been built up over generations in Auckland. Generations of Aucklanders have contributed to the growth of the services and assets in their region. The parks, the swimming pools, and all the securities they now have in that region are the result of generations of hard-working Aucklanders, who are now having all that trashed by the National Government. National and ACT should be ashamed that they will not support this new part, because it would give at least a scrap of reassurance to people in Auckland that their assets are safe. The powers of the transition agency are so broad and so wide that anything is possible under it. Every single decision of the existing councils is under review. The wide-ranging powers of this agency need some kind of control, and that is what New Part 9 does. It ensures that for the time of the transition agency the list of public assets in schedule 2 will be protected. We know that the people who Rodney Hide will appoint to the transition agency will not be the kind of people who are interested in the protection of public assets. We know that the agency will be made up of Rodney Hide’s friends. Mr Hide will be the only person who decides who will be on the transition agency. What kind of democratic approach is that? Here is an agency that is taking on the powers of councils right across Auckland, and one man—Rodney Hide—is deciding who is on that agency. As my colleague Darren Hughes said earlier this morning, Rodney Hide has been playing National for years, and its members have fallen in right behind him. Rodney Hide will decide who is on the transition agency and who will control the assets of Auckland. We on this side of the Chamber have absolutely no confidence that the transition agency will not seek to sell off public assets. We have no confidence, because we know the background. It is the reason that Roger Douglas is back here. He has returned from the political grave to come back into this Parliament and force on that party over there the agenda of privatisation. That is why he is here. He tried it in the 1980s, but he did not quite get there in the end. He was foiled, so he is back now to run this agenda through the National Government. He and Rodney Hide will make sure that those assets can be sold off in time, and they will bring their cronies in to run the transition agency.
16 May 2009 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 3655 We on this side of the Chamber are saying no. We are here on a Saturday morning trying to protect the public assets of Auckland, which were built up over generations of hard-working Aucklanders who have said that they want assets they can all share in. They want swimming pools. They want parks that their children can play in. So here we are today, on a Saturday morning, saying that we will not let Rodney Hide run his agenda through this Parliament—we will not do that. National had the option to send this bill to a select committee. It could have done that. Why has it not done that? I want to see a member of National get up and say why the people of Auckland do not deserve a chance to make submissions on this bill. Why do they not have the opportunity to say they believe their public assets are important and that they want to ensure their children have parks to play in? That is the opportunity National should be giving Aucklanders today, and it has taken that right away. SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): I move, That the question be now put. Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I want to take the opportunity that Charles Chauvel’s amendment presents to bring home again why we are here today. The point about this whole debate is that the people of Auckland have not been given a chance to have a say on things that will affect their daily lives—things that will intimately affect the way their lives are governed in the wider Auckland region. That is why we are here. I am delighted that members of the public have taken the opportunity of the Committee sitting on a Saturday—in outside terms; in temporal terms—to come and see why we are doing this. Let me be completely explicit and transparent about this. The Government worries that our amendments are frivolous and vexatious, and that we are wasting the time of the Committee. Nothing could be further from the truth. The point is that this Government is trying to railroad issues through this House that the people of Auckland have not had a chance to examine through the usual democratic process of making a submission to a select committee. That is why we are challenging the faults, the deficits, and the liabilities in the legislation that is in front of us. My colleague Charles Chauvel has introduced an amendment here that goes to the heart of the matter. It is about the protection of public assets. There is no protection for public assets in the bill before us on the whole super-city structure that is being promoted by the Government, against the recommendations of the royal commission. There is no protection for public assets to remain as public assets. Let me just be clear what we are talking about here. We are talking about assets that people in local communities have agitated for, campaigned about, petitioned on, donated money towards, and been rated for, for years and years. They are places like the Long Bay Regional Park. They are places like Little Shoal Bay Foreshore Reserve in Northcote. They might be places like Rocket Park in Mount Albert. They might be places like Mountford Park in Manurewa—a very fine park named after a very fine Labour councillor, in fact. They might be places like the regional botanical gardens in Manurewa. Those kinds of local assets, regionally and locally held on behalf of the people for the public’s enjoyment, are many of the things that make our local communities as rich as they are. If we go to libraries and swimming pools—and if the members opposite would care to read the amendment, they would see those facilities are listed on it—we will realise this is a question of equity. This is a question about who gets access to books and sporting facilities unless they are held in the public domain for the use of the public. Those assets must be protected. It must be possible for poor families who do not have facilities on their doorsteps and swimming pools in their backyards to have access to the local facilities that have been built up over time, after having been petitioned for, argued for, and funded by local people.
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HIPKINS, CHRIS— Bills— Local Go
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