Auckland’s Independent Maori Statutory Board members keep their seats on council committees but they lose their voting rights
Parliament has passed a range of local government law changes, including the removal of the “four well-beings”, and reduced the role of Auckland’s Independent Maori Statutory Board, also known as Houkura.
Local Government Minister Simon Watts said the changes put councils’ focus “back on core services like roading, infrastructure, water and rubbish”.
“Councils will continue to make local decisions, but the expectation is clear: essential services and sound financial management must come first,” Watts said.
He said it was part of a wider programme “to restore discipline, improve performance and get councils focused on the basics”, as well as reduce pressure on rates.
The Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill passed 67 votes to 55 on 16 September, in a sitting the House had taken under urgency.
The purpose of local government has a history of being modified with each change of government.
The four well-beings of social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing were first written into the Local Government Act by the Labour Government in 2002.
A National government took them out in 2012, replacing them with a duty to meet community needs for good-quality infrastructure and services in the way most cost-effective for households and businesses.
Labour’s Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta reinserted the four well-beings clauses in 2019, and this amendment undoes that change.
The law does not stop a council funding anything, but core services have to come first.
The change to remove the voting right for anyone sitting on a council committee who was not elected to it has drawn a fiery response from Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.
It was extended to the Auckland Independent Maori Statutory Board three days before the vote, by an amendment paper that never went near a select committee.
“My suggestion to Wellington is to butt out of our business,” Brown said.
“Auckland is quite capable of making decisions that work best for us.”
Brown said the Council’s committees and advisory groups added to local democracy rather than detracted from it.
“If the problem is unelected people making decisions, perhaps they might like to get rid of NZTA and list MPs while they’re at it?” Brown said.
“This is another ill-thought-through policy that will wind up costing the ratepayers with no real benefit to Auckland,” he said.
Brown also released a letter he had sent Watts in July, signed by himself, Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson and councillor Richard Hills.
It warned the Council would look at pulling out of the Auckland Deal if the change went ahead.
In announcing the change, Watts said the Board would continue to perform its functions and provide advice to the Council.
Labour’s local government spokesperson Tangi Utikere told the House the sector had not asked for any of it.
“This is not a bill that the local government sector has been waiting for,” Utikere said.
He said the Government was “afraid of wellbeing”.
“How rude it is and devaluing it is to suggest that actually, no, they can come along and they can participate, but they just cannot vote,” Utikere said of the Board.
The Board has six months before its members sit at the Council’s committee tables without a vote.
