While the Green Party welcomes some of the changes made to the original bill during its consideration by the committee, we continue to oppose the concept and the process overall.We believe that local government works best when it is genuinely local, in touch with its community, and able to function as a grassroots democracy. It is our opinion that the proposed super city will struggle to do this effectively. For example, councillors will represent huge constituencies and this will make it difficult for them to effectively represent the diversity of communities and concerns of all Aucklanders.
Community boards
We are concerned at the potential power imbalance between the new Council, which will be one of the largest organisations in New Zealand, and the local boards. The latter will have only 4-9 members—even fewer than current community boards and no staff of their own. We recommend a minimum of 11 members, adequately remunerated for the responsibilities undertaken.We also believe that the boards should be given an alternative name, as the word "board" is tarnished by the powerlessness and inefficacy of the current Community Board structure.
Māori representation
The lack of provision for Māori representation on the new Council is an abrogation of our responsibilities within the Treaty relationship, and flies in the face of submissions made by a vast majority of Aucklanders, Māori and tau iwi alike.
Voting system
The absence of Māori representation also means that it is more important than ever that the voting system used is Single Transferable Vote (STV) rather than First Past the Post (FPP), in order to maximise representation of Māori and others who traditionally find it hard to win votes under first past the post voting systems.We believe the most democratic form of voting for the new Council would be STV for both mayor and councillors. There is no sound reason why STV could not be legislated as the form of voting for the first election in 2010. Over a quarter of submitters supportedSTV and recognised the importance of the mayor being elected by a majority of voters.
Powers of the mayor
We are concerned that the mayor has excessive executive powers given to no other mayor in New Zealand and which are not recognised under the Local Government Act 2002. Under the proposed bill, the mayor will appoint the deputy mayor and all chairpersons of committees, and may even appoint him/herself as a committee chair.
We believe the mayor of Auckland should have the same powers as all other mayors, and that the deputy mayor and chairs of boards should be appointed by the Council, not the mayor.
We do however support the mayor's office being granted an automatic percentage of 0.2 percent of the budget as this will assist the mayor's ability to balance the power of the chief executive.There are a few areas where we believe positive progress has been made, including:
• the removal of "at large" councillors and recommendation that most of the new city be divided into multi member wards
• the recommendation that Waiheke and Great Barrier have their own, separate local boards, and that the rest of the region be divided into between 18-28 board areas based on history, geography and community of interest
• the decision to keep the Hunua dams and all of Auckland's regional parks within Auckland's management and ownership, including those which end up outside the new Council's boundaries
• the inclusion of statutory decision-making powers for the local boards, and the requirement that the Auckland Council must consider views expressed by local boards to ensure local input on regional as well as local issues. We also welcome the recommendation that funding allocated for local boards must be adequate to meet the real costs of implementing their services and facilities and administrative and operational costs.
Conclusion
Overall the Green Party continues to share the concerns of many submitters at the way in which the Government unilaterally revised the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, and imposed the new structure without a poll of Aucklanders, which is required under the Local Government Act 2002.We also fear the new governance structure may pave the way for privatisation of many local assets built up by generations of Aucklanders, and will seek to find legislative means to prevent this happening through either this or subsequent legislation.
