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3624 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 16 May 2009 Here is where the plot gets thicker. The agency will not report through an independent governance process to the Cabinet of the New Zealand Government, which would be, of course, the normal process for any State-owned enterprise or Crown entity. No—this agency reports to one Minister, the Minister in the chair, Rodney Hide. Why on earth would that be? It is certainly not good governance practice, which is why in new Part 11 we are introducing the Auckland Transition Agency Review Commission with additional juridical oversight. Members opposite have obviously been lobbied hard by Ports of Auckland. Ports of Auckland says that this legislation will not do. It is a private company trading in open markets, it has its own board, and it wants to be a special case. Let us admit that there are grounds for that special case, but why for Ports of Auckland? Why not Watercare Services? If the National Business Review and Trans Tasman are to be believed, the Minister in charge of this bill is going to appoint the chief executive of the water company to be the chair of the transition agency. How will they deal with that conflict of interest? I would not want to be that person. I have great respect for Mark Ford, and I think he is a very able man, but I would not want to be in his shoes. I hope he gets firstclass legal advice about his liabilities and his risks, because I think he is exposed. I think the Minister, in his rush to railroad this legislation through the House and to create a very clean reporting line that allows him to bulldoze his way through normal legal convention, is exposing one of the more able executives in the Auckland business community. I hope for Mr Mark Ford’s sake that he thinks very carefully not only about whether to accept that appointment but also about the conditions upon which he accepts it. I am sure that Mr Mark Ford would appreciate what the Opposition is doing to try to provide better independent cover, oversight, liability, and risk management through this important part that is being very seriously introduced this morning. I hope the Government members who are sitting here, and who will be getting used to sitting here, will give this new part their earnest consideration. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): It is a pleasure to take a call on new Part 11, which establishes the Auckland Transition Agency Review Commission. The Leader of the House, in relation to the first speech given on this part by the Hon George Hawkins, said it was bureaucracy gone mad. Hon Darren Hughes: He’d know! GRANT ROBERTSON: He would know about that, I say to Mr Hughes, because since being in office the National Government has established 36 review committees. Most of them have been set up by Mr Brownlee, who is trying to review what he knows about the energy sector. Unfortunately, he does not know a lot, so he has had to establish 36 review committees. This particular review commission has been established for a very, very good reason: National has pushed this bill through Parliament under urgency, denying Aucklanders the right to have a proper democratic process. In the light of that and of the fact that last night we sat in this Chamber and established, without a select committee process, an agency that would be responsible for $28 billion of assets and for 6,000 people’s jobs, we need a review commission. This is a serious amendment and a serious new part, because this Government has decided that Aucklanders should not have a say about the transition to a super-city. It has tried to push that through without any input at this important stage in the process. A review commission, as established under Part 11, would be able to let Aucklanders have a say. We see very clearly, when we look at this part, that the review commission will be established on a far fairer basis than that of the transition agency it will seek to review. If we note the membership of the Auckland Transition Agency Review Commission, we realise it will consist of the chair of the commission and five commissioners. We noted
16 May 2009 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 3625 in the debate last night Part 3 that clause 11(1) states: “The Transition Agency must have a governing body consisting of a chairperson and no fewer than 2 but no more than 4 other members appointed by the Minister.” There we go; we will finally have a sufficient number of people to look at this matter properly. I now turn to how those people will be appointed. For the review commission we have an appointment process that will involve a range of people. It will involve people such as the Prime Minister, the Minister of Local Government, the Minister of Māori Affairs, and the Attorney-General; they will all be involved in the appointment of the commissioners. That is unlike the Auckland Transition Agency, where one person will appoint the members of the governing board, and that one person is the Hon Rodney Hide. The Hon Rodney Hide said that the Auckland Transition Agency will be responsible for a rationalisation of governance arrangements in the Auckland area. Members on this side of the Chamber know very well what Mr Hide and his ACT Party friends believe is a rationalisation of services. It is not about making them more efficient, and it is not about making them effective; it is about cutting and slashing them. That is the agenda. It is about privatising assets, taking them away from the people of Auckland, taking them away from the people of New Zealand, and returning them to Mr Hide’s mates. That is why, in this part, we are asking for a review commission to be appointed in a way that will reflect a wider set of interests than the narrow ideological interests of Rodney Hide. We are certain that when Auckland people see a review commission established in this way, they will know they are getting a proper review of arrangements for Auckland governance, rather than the sham of democracy that we have seen from members on the other side of the Chamber. I also want to refer to another reason why the review commission is vitally important. Clause 13(1)(b) of Part 3, which we passed last night, states that the transition agency will have the ability to look at and review every single item on the agenda of a meeting of an existing local government organisation during the transition period. If that is not the action of the nanny State, I do not know what is. Every single item, down to the toilet rolls and the stationery, of a local government organisation in Auckland will be reviewed by the transition agency. What kinds of decisions will we get in that environment? We need to be able to review those decisions and ensure that Aucklanders have a proper say about what is happening to their local government organisation. The transition agency is a sham from the Government. NATHAN GUY (Senior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on new Part 11, put forward by my colleagues, which introduces the Auckland Transition Agency Review Commission. Having sat through the debate on the bill, I have become more and more concerned about elements that give total and utter control to the Minister of Local Government. I think there should be some kind of independent judicial oversight and review of that. If members look, for example, at Part 3, which we passed last night, and the establishment of the governing body of the Transition Agency, we see that no more than two people are required on the Transition Agency. That is a concentration of a huge amount of power in the Transition Agency. We do not know who those people will be. They could be Richard Prebble and Christine Rankin for all we know. They could be Melissa Lee and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga for all we know. Hon Member: A third job. CHRIS HIPKINS: They could give him a third job. The Transition Agency will have a huge amount of power, so there should be some oversight of what it is able to get up to. There is a very, very tight time frame for the implementation of these local governance reforms. Clause 13(1)(a) suggests that the Transition Agency has to have
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HIPKINS, CHRIS— Bills— Local Go
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