Today I asked the House to agree to introduce my members’ bill, called the Local Government (Council Controlled Organisations) Amendment Bill and set it down for the next Members Day. The government said no.
The bill would have made information held by ports accessible under the Official Information Act and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.
Currently, Ports are excluded in the definition of CCOs under the Local Government Act. An easy amendment to the Local Government Act, as proposed by No Right Turn, (thanks NRT) would have fixed this deficiency.
Obviously, the costly dispute at the Ports of Auckland has highlighted the need for this bill. The way in which the Ports of Auckland board and management have acted without transparency and accountability has made it very clear there is a need to ensure that these publicly-owned businesses are opened to the same scrutiny every other public institution faces.
We can get information about the local school or a public library, or even SOEs, but we can’t get information about valuable assets like our publicly owned ports, that are worth millions of dollars.
It’s hard to believe any government that claims it cares about transparency and accountability would have a problem supporting a bill like this one. But National is demonstrating that it’s all talk when it comes to open government.
So now the bill will go into the ballot. I’m not giving up.
Good on you Darien!
Good on you Darien. John Key and his Government don’t give a flying fig about transparency, stealth and secrecy and sneaky deals is their way of operating. As for them not to want transparency of ports obviously the ports are being lined up for privatising and no doubt Hutchinson, Pearsons former employer, is eagerly waiting to cash in.
Darien you’ve had two years since the Auckland Council legislation to introduce this. Why didn’t you do it in the last two years? Oh that’s right because you couldn’t introduce anything as a Members Bill last term because your party was fillibustering over the student association restructuring and there was no room for anybody else’s bills.
@eyepatch. Boring.
We love you Darien
@eyepatch – hard not to be entertained by this clever rephrasing of the ‘why didn’t you do it while labour was in government?’ meme…
I know this lot get tired from hiding under bridges all day, but that kind of trolling isn’t just boring, it’s lazy.
@eyepatch actually its because they hadn’t noticed the problem (and neither had National). Not a lot of people pay attention to transparency, and even fewer pay attention to technical definitions in legislation which undermine it. It took an industrial dispute to highlight the fact that Port Companies were treated differently to every other council-controlled body, that there was no transparency where we would expect it, while simultaneously highlighting the need for that transparency.
Now they have noticed, and they have responded quickly. Its taken less than three weeks to go from someone highlighting the issue to them putting a bill forward to fix it. That’s lightning, for politics.
I’ll support you on the day you also introduce a bill demanding secret ballots for all union votes.
while we all know that this bill has no chance whatsoever of being passed as long as the “sparkle” party is misusing the levers of power, it is a long overdue piece of legislation..and i would assume this to be policy from now on…
i for one was surprised that the ports were exempted from oia legislation at all…. rather suspicious…..
@mary…can you point to the correlation between port companies attempting to hold our imports/exporting ability to ransom and unions holding secret ballots? i have been to many union meetings where votes were taken… there has NEVER been any attempts to force members to vote any other way than their conscience dictates….you aren’t one of those who still believe those old tory tales of standover tactics are you? because if you want to know who it is that actually does that stuff… look no further than the ninth floor of the beehive….
My understanding Darien is that ALL private members bills go to a ballot so that even those members outside of govt can have a chance for a bill/ their voice to be heard.
You wanted the govt to go outside that privilege- that, I suppose, is why they said no.
One day, in a decade far far away when Labour are back in govt you could then ask the House to consider this.
@killjoy : wrong. Any member can seek wave to have a bill set down for first reading. If the bill is about transparency I would have thought any government might be interested.
Transparency is a continuum of degrees. Any Government would be interested in transparency of course, but not so desperate to expose all of their own supporters, funders and lobbyists machinations. Why wasn’t your Government interested Darien? I hardly expect Labour would have passed such a law as Government. All I can see is Labour wanting to get information that is valuable to their major funders and lobby groups (Unions in this case) and add grist to their own political mill, or perceive it as so. National would want transparency for the benefit of their major funders and lobbyists as well I would imagine, were an equal law to be passed where true transparency were to be enacted. Am I to be assured by Dariens post that once back in Government LAbour will introduce this ‘vital’ legislation and their Union backers will be assuaged.
@TimG the “meme” of Labour not doing the same while in Government is a valid one. Labour are quite comfortable demanding changes to legislation that they didn’t have the courage to make when they were in Government. It is a valid question as to why these changes weren’t made. Are they unnecessary when Labour are in Government but ‘vital’ when they are not ? It is very easy to promote unpopular legislation when in opposition, because the promulgator knows that there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell of it being passed, hence no damage, just publicity and some rather tawdry examples of political expediency.