Walking Access Bill

I will take a call on these clauses to record the fact of the changes that have been made by John Acland and the Land Access Ministerial Reference Group. I acknowledge his presence here tonight. I say that the Walking Access Bill is a better bill for the involvement of the committee that went around New Zealand, and I think the Minister in the chair, the Hon Damien O’Connor, acknowledges that, as does the Opposition.

I want to record again the fact that when this bill was introduced, the National Opposition opposed it because of the interference it had on property rights. Of course, one of the things the National Party takes a keen interest in is property rights, and I have to say that although there are still some parts of this legislation that we will need to be keeping a keen eye on and a careful watch over, the issue of property rights and the way it has been developed are a credit to those who have been involved. Obviously there was keen note taken of the issues that were raised.

It is commendable that the bill has come back in the form it has. The Local Government and Environment Committee obviously picked up on the issues raised in order to make the changes it has. In hindsight—and hindsight is always a wonderful thing; one generally gets it right 100 percent of the time—maybe the Government should not have introduced the bill in the form it was introduced, but to its credit it has accepted the recommendations that have been made. That has meant that Parliament can now accept the bill in the form it is in.

Having said that, I note that there are one or two things during this part of the debate that we will have to keep a careful watch over. The bill does have the potential of creating yet another bureaucracy, and another whole lot of rules and regulations.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Oh!

We certainly do not want to end up with something like the Department of Building and Housing, which Clayton Cosgrove administered for such a long time, because that will have to be something that in the future we dismantle. We do not want to have to go through something that gets established and then dismantled again. I say to this Parliament that we need to urge caution as we put this bill through. The intention of it is right, but it certainly has the possibility of allowing extra costs to go on to the community, and, indeed, rather than creating the opportunity for people to have rest and recreation, which is what it is for, it could potentially create a whole lot of frustration. I make those points particularly when we look at the codes of compliance and the impost the legislation could put on local government. There are some real risks around that part of the legislation.

I want those comments to be recorded in Hansard so that, in time, people who are involved in administering this bill can look back and see the wise words of the Opposition, and realise that, actually, the Opposition was on top of it, and that these sorts of issues need to be monitored carefully. One of the things we often do in this Parliament is pass legislation without actually thinking forward 10 or 20 years to see what its likely impact will be. We need to treat this with caution as we move forward. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate.

I am somewhat motivated by the words of John Carter in regard to one or two issues here.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: You must be joking.

Well, Mr Cosgrove may laugh, but there are some significant issues here. It very much depends on the expectation of the public and how quickly they want this resolved, and on the attitude of landowners and how willing they are to enter into negotiation. It very much depends on those people who have set up structures for private capture for pecuniary gain—and at this stage those people are in a minority—and whether that will be an increasing trend, on whether negotiation will resolve that, and on how that might tie up the Walking Access Commission. Those things need to be said. I think it also needs to be said quite clearly that if the Walking Access Bill does not resolve some of those issues, we will be back in this House, facing some debate on some amendments to this bill. We need to put that on record.

The first clause, the title clause, is what we are we are debating. The bill is entitled the Walking Access Bill, and that might conjure up all kinds of things in people’s minds, but essentially the bill is about negotiated access. That is the first point that we need to put out there. There has been a degree of goodwill. It has been about a 5-year journey since the first ministerial reference group set up by Jim Sutton met.

I have said before in this debate that I think Jim Sutton made an error of judgment when he said he wanted the group to look at the wander-at-will provisions, because that just got all the landowners’ backs up. We lost that goodwill for quite a period of time, but we have now got it back on track. This bill states clearly that it is about access by negotiation. That fact is not embraced in the title, but it is embraced in about seven places where that terminology is used. That needs to be quite clear. We are recognising property rights; it is a walking access bill.

We are also talking about clause 2, the commencement clause. This bill has been a 5-year journey, and I think there is a sense of expectation on the part of the recreational community that this will be advanced. I am not sure how long after the bill is enacted—and the Minister in the chair, the Hon Damien O’Connor, might like to respond—that the Walking Access Commission will be set up. The bill is also very light on how those people are appointed and what skill sets they have. It is even relatively vague about the numbers—somewhere between five and eight. I can understand that we do not want the Walking Access Commission to fall over if one member becomes indisposed, is not able to attend, or whatever, but the bill is quite vague on those matters.

Although clause 2, “Commencement”, states that the bill will be enacted, it does not mention what the time frames are for the Walking Access Commission to be set up and operational, or its terms of reference. The fleshing out of all of that is not in the bill. However, the National Party is supporting this bill. We think it is a step forward. We look forward to the third reading.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading