Hide must come clean on Auckland council powers

“Rodney Hide needs to come clean about what powers the Auckland Council will have regarding the hiring and firing of Council-owned company directors ”, says Phil Twyford .

On TV One’s Close Up programme, Rodney Hide claimed the Auckland Council “could meet and sack one or all of the people on the CCO’s" , in response to criticism of his powers to appoint the initial directors of the seven powerful council-owned companies that will run most of the Super City's operations.

Labour’s spokesperson for Auckland Issues, Phil Twyford said Hide was again misleading Aucklanders in an attempt to calm public concerns about the super city.

"The truth is that the Council will be under the same legal obligations as any public body to act fairly and reasonably. If National stacks the boards of these companies with their hand-picked appointees, it won't be as easy for the new Council to remove them as Rodney Hide seems to suggest.

"Mr Hide's comments imply that the directors serve at the pleasure of the Council and could be sacked on day one with no justification. However this is not true.

What is true is that under the third super city bill Rodney Hide won't be subject to the normal transparency provisions in the Local Government Act for appointing directors.

The current law requires that the process for appointing and remunerating directors of CCO’s is a transparent one. But in the third super city bill currently before the select committee Rodney Hide has given himself the ability to override these provisions

CCO's control 75% of Council business, if the Council can't freely appoint people to these boards, confident in the direction of the boards, and then Aucklanders have been robbed again of their voice and effective control.

"Labour opposes the blanket imposition of these council-owned companies. The Government hasn't provided any justification for this heavily commercialised model. In fact four Government Departments advised against it for the transport agency. But if they do go ahead, Rodney Hide should certainly not be appointing all the directors. He should put caretaker arrangements in place, and leave the appointments to the newly elected Council.

"Just last week he was misleading Aucklanders by saying their local boards will have the power to "make by-laws", when the government have specifically ruled out the local boards having any rule-making powers.

“The sad truth of the Hide super city model is that the local boards can only advocate to the Super Council for a by-law, and lobby them to pass it, just like any other lobby group in Auckland can.

"Rodney Hide needs to stop playing games with Aucklanders and come clean about the facts surrounding who has the real power to make decisions about Auckland’s future – given very little of that power lies with Aucklanders themselves".

ENDS

© Scoop Media