Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill

Clause 4 of the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill is the purpose clause. It is probably one of the two most substantive clauses of the bill, so I expect to hear some very good contributions on it. I know that the Labour team is certainly very keen to make contributions on this important bill. The Labour members really have rallied to the call. I am very impressed with the caucus, because its members certainly have rallied to my call to see Hamilton as being a really important feature of New Zealand. That is evidenced by the Labour team’s contribution to the debate so far, which will continue.

The bill states that “The purpose of this Act”—presuming it becomes an Act—“is to … repeal the Hamilton City (Parana Park) Empowering Act 1958;”. Why is that? It is because the Hamilton City Council has determined that that particular Act of 1958 does not have the sort of flexibility that the council needs in order to administer the park under today’s conditions. We have heard that today’s conditions include the interesting concept of passive recreation, which we still have not really quite got to the bottom of. We are surprised that it was not in the interpretation clause. But never mind; that has gone by the by. We have missed the opportunity to have clarification and a definition of the actual meaning of “passive recreation”.

The bill is about enabling Parana Park to be not only vested in the Hamilton City Council—and we will debate that more fully when we get to clause 6—but used for passive recreation. I move around those areas quite frequently, and I would like to know what passive recreation is, so I can make sure that I do not have recreation that is not passive enough or that is too passive. I would like to know exactly what is required these days when one is in Parana Park. In fact, I will be there on Anzac Day this year, because, as we have heard, the memorial park adjacent to it is a really important part of the ceremony on that day in Hamilton.

I too am concerned about the point that my colleague David Shearer just raised about the 0.4 hectares that seem to have gone missing in terms of the way the land has been described. I ask the member in charge of the bill, David Bennett, what he has done with the 0.4 hectares. Where has that gone? All joking aside, I really want to make sure that we have the description right. We are describing for the first time in legislation now quite specifically that this land will be known as Parana Park, and then we are saying what the land is. I want to make sure that we have the right description of the land. My colleague told us that there was a very full explanation in three different parts when this bill went before the Local Government and Environment Committee and that it set out exactly the legal description of this land. In that legal description the land added up to 0.4 hectares more than the resulting replacement clause that has come out of the select committee.

I know that the Labour team will want to know the answer to that before we support the clauses further along in the debate. We will want to make sure there is not an inadvertent further confiscation of land going on. I am sure that would be an unintended consequence from the Government benches. It would absolutely be an unintended consequence from the Opposition benches. We are supporting this bill, so I sincerely ask the member in charge of the bill to respond to that issue in order that we can all be assured, in supporting the further clauses of this bill, that we are not supporting something that has an unintended consequence. As I understand it, the purpose is to make sure that the Hamilton City Council has certainty that the legislation fits its needs. I congratulate the city council on bringing this bill forward. I should have said: “drafting the bill for the member to bring forward”. David Bennett was quite right to frown at me.

Before I call the next speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, who has been trying hard to get the call, I wish to bring to the Committee’s attention a miscalculation in the votes on the closure motion to clause 2. The correct number is Ayes 76, Noes 43. It does not change the outcome. I seek leave for the record to be amended. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There is not. It will be amended.

It is good to get those votes tidied up, but where is that 0.4 hectare? I wonder whether there would be room on that 0.4 hectare to form “Bennett Park”. That is what I want to know, and I wonder whether that is where it has gone; it is possible. It could be a place for passive recreation, or it could be more of an active recreation spot; we do not know.

Clause 4, “Purpose”, is the guts of what this bill is all about. The clause states that the bill vests the land in the Hamilton City Council as a recreation reserve under the Reserves Act 1977 and repeals the Hamilton City (Parana Park) Empowering Act 1958. I happen to have the Act in my hand. The original 1958 Act was used mainly to change the use of the dwelling house, which had been handed over to the council for use as a children’s convalescent home, but as far back as 1958 that purpose was no longer suitable.

The purpose of the original Act was laid out as follows in the preamble: “Whereas George Parr, of Hamilton, farmer, deceased, who died on or about the twenty-sixth day of February, nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, did by his last will, probate whereof was granted to the Public Trustee, give and devise his freehold property, being Number 3 River Road, Hamilton, and being part Allotment 219 of the Parish of Kirikiriroa, as the same is more particularly delineated on a plan deposited in the Land Registry Office at Auckland under Number S 3401 and thereon subdivided into Lots 1, 2 and 3 (hereinafter called Parana Park), unto the Mayor, Councillors, and Burgesses of the Borough of Hamilton to be used as follows:”. I will not go into the exact uses, as we have covered those quite well.

That description is quite close to the description we saw in the original clause 3 of the bill as introduced. The purpose is to repeal the original Hamilton City (Parana Park) Empowering Act 1958, which describes the piece of land in the terms used in the original interpretation. It was amended by the Local Government and Environment Committee, probably for very useful reasons but reasons that have not really been particularly well clarified in the House. The Department of Internal Affairs report to the select committee on the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill recommended no amendments to clause 3. I should imagine that is because it fitted the purpose of this bill so closely, but that is a matter that we have moved on from now, although unfortunately it has not really been canvassed all that well during the debate tonight. It might be useful if the member in charge of this bill or the chairman of the select committee were able to clarify that matter. I think it would tidy up a few things.

The purpose of the legislation is to repeal the Hamilton City (Parana Park) Empowering Act, and then to vest the land in the council as a recreation reserve under the Reserves Act 1977. I note that the majority of submitters disagreed with clause 4(a) as it stands at present, and recommended that the land should be vested in the council as a historic reserve. It appears again that the select committee did not consider that was an appropriate action to take. The officials’ comment on this is that the clause gives effect to the advertised object of the bill to vest Parana Park in the council as a recreation reserve under the Reserves Act 1977, and that the proposed amendment by the submitters would be outside the scope of that advertised object. But that does not really describe why that was considered to be an inappropriate course of action. It would be useful to the Committee if either the member in charge of the bill or the chair of the select committee could give members some explanation about that.

I move, That the question be now put.

I will pick up from where my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway left off, in raising the question of why the choice has been made to make the subject of the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill a recreation reserve and not a historic reserve. There were, among the submissions received at the Local Government and Environment Committee—

💬 Simon Bridges: You should be talking about Gloria Park.

The member for Tauranga has a lot to say, and he thinks he is a bit of an expert on local government. But in 6 weeks of select committee hearings on the Auckland super-city legislation, the only thing that member asked about, after we had just sat through a long submission from the chief executive of the Museum of Transport and Technology, was the cost to get into that museum these days.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The member knows why I am on my feet. It is about content; the member will focus on clause 4.

Thank you, Mr Chairman, for refocusing this debate away from irrelevancies like the member for Tauranga.

The question at hand is why this legislation classifies Parana Park as a recreation reserve and not a historic reserve. That is the question, and it is highly relevant to the purpose section of this bill. The committee received a very interesting submission from the Waikato Tree Trust, and this was the main point that the trust made to the committee. It argued that clause 4(a) should be amended to vest the land in the council as a historic reserve under the Reserves Act 1977. It made the argument that that would fit much better with the historic character of the area.

The trust also made the point that what really distinguishes Parana Park, right next to the Waikato River, is a fantastic stand of mature trees. The trust presented evidence to the committee that identified 27 historic trees in this reserve, including five English oaks that are more than 100 years old, and that were planted originally by George Parr as part of his settlement of the area. These trees are over 100 years old and were planted by George Parr himself. There is also an elm, a red oak, and London plane trees—all over 80 years old—that were also planted by George Parr. That really is the major reason for Parana Park to be considered a very special piece of the Hamilton landscape. To make it a historic reserve in this law would better recognise that.

The Waikato Tree Trust felt that the Hamilton City Council has not adequately recognised the importance of these trees. It proposed that in the schedule of trees, the council go and register and protect those trees, because as this Committee will know, the National Government has taken away the right of city councils and territorial authorities to protect trees of special significance by using group protection orders. So if councils want to protect our bush anywhere in their territories now they have to individually list every single tree, and that is precisely what the Waikato Tree Trust hoped to achieve in this submission. It felt that by making Parana Park a historic reserve instead of a recreational reserve, that would strengthen the protection of these mature trees. The trust noted that under the Reserves Act, historic reserves “are established primarily to protect and preserve in perpetuity places, objects and natural features of historic, archaeological, cultural and other special interest.” I think that it is arguable that that is a much more significant feature of Parana Park than the so-called passive recreation that we have spent some time discussing today in the Committee.

I want to pick up on what my colleague Phil Twyford was speaking about in relation to the purpose of the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill, which is set out in clause 4. I will address the issue he has just brought up. He mentioned the aspect of the value of Parana Park being historic as well as recreational. We have covered that issue quite a bit, particularly in respect of whatever passive recreation constitutes for the park. I imagine that passive recreation constitutes something along the lines of non-organised sport—something like people going to the park for a picnic and playing with a frisbee, rather than playing a full-scale rugby game or soccer game or whatever else. But there is an important point here, which was subject to some debate, and certainly a division emerged amongst the submitters on the bill.

The Hamilton City Council favoured having a recreational reserve over a historic reserve. I will just touch on the council’s thinking, because I think it is important. The council’s submission looked at the various classifications of the park. It looked at the possibility that the park should be classified as a historic reserve and thought that it had some merit for it to be classified as such, but on further investigation the council believed that the powers under the Reserves Act 1977 for a park to be a historic reserve focus on the historic values of the reserve, and the council felt that that did not adequately address the park’s recreational role. Therefore, the Hamilton City Council submitted that the recreational reserve option was strongly favoured, and I guess, from its perspective, we can see its point.

However, I think some of the submitters disagreed. Phil Twyford touched on the tree issue and on the number of very old and historic trees in the park, some of which, as he mentioned, could have been planted by George Parr himself—

💬 Phil Twyford: They were—definitely were.

They were definitely planted by George Parr back in the 1860s. If we look at the park in relation to history, the park is on the banks of the Waikato River, and for the people of Tainui it has extraordinarily special significance in terms of its position and location by the river. It is right beside the Rangiriri area, as well, which is also of huge importance.

I will touch particularly on two submissions that were presented by Laura Kellaway during the course of the Local Government and Environment Committee hearings on this bill. She stated that “Historic parks”—and she made the differentiation between historic and recreational—“are special places that by capturing features relating to the community’s past, give insight into how the community was formed. This land, now known as Parana Park, can do that on many different levels”, and she went on to specify a number of them.

I mentioned the issue of the special significance of the park to Tainui, but right throughout history, from George Parr onwards, we see that Parana Park has special significance. The debate on the purpose of the bill, clause 4, that took place in the select committee as to whether the park should be a recreational reserve or a historic reserve is very, very significant. It is certainly significant to those people who submitted on the bill. I wanted to get on to this issue, because Laura Kellaway said: “In essence Parana Park is a historic place, as described in broad terms under the Historic Reserves Section 18(1) of the Reserves Act, and under terms of the Historic Places Act 1993.”

I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): We are struggling for relevancy here. I will give the call to the Hon Steve Chadwick, with a caution to make it relevant.

Mr Chair, I will be relevant to Parana Park, that is for sure, and relevant to the Local Government and Environment Committee members who considered this bill as part of the due process of examining any law that comes before the select committee.

I will talk about clause 4, the purpose clause of the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill. My colleagues speaking previously have touched on whether the park should be a historic reserve or a recreation reserve. As the spokesperson for heritage on this side of the House, I say Labour values the historical aspects of telling our stories as New Zealanders. I agree with what the Waikato Tree Trust and those from the Historic Places Trust told the select committee—on the day this bill was debated I was subbed on to the select committee.

I think that when we are looking to the future, how we look back on our past is of incredible significance. I think it is an opportunity lost that we are now calling this area a recreation reserve. I do not know what a passive recreation reserve is—it sounds like a legacy from the now-closed convalescent home that was on Pārana Park. There is an incredible history to this piece of land, going back to its confiscation from Tainui. That event is not commemorated in any way on this piece of land, and I think that is something the people of Tainui will go to the council over. It would have been even better if the council had reserved seats for Māori members, as the Bay of Plenty Regional Council (Maori Constituency Empowering) Act 2001 allows. Tainui will say that part of their history as Tainui needs to be recorded on this land. We have lost an opportunity here.

We have lost an opportunity to have this land designated as a historic reserve—as a reserve that would have commemorated the great history of the past. Actually, the opportunity foregone by Hamilton City Council is really interesting, because George Parr himself was the son of a Mayor of Hamilton. It sounds like he was a great fellow in the past life of Hamilton as a member of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. This guy, George Parr, advocated for issues that are still being advocated today. The sponsor in the chair, David Bennett, needs to pick up on that. George Parr was looking to connect the Waikato River with Waiuku by means of a canal. That is a great idea for an electorate MP, and I am sure that my colleague Sue Moroney will pick up that bit of legacy, that bit of history that should have been commemorated in this land being designated a historic reserve in clause 4. What a pity that that has not happened! The other issue George Parr was a great advocate for—and let us remember our history here and tell our stories, for goodness’ sake—was for a train service from Kāwhia and Raglan to Hamilton. I think a visionary like Sue Moroney, who has advocated for the rail link with Auckland, will certainly pick up what needs to be done about rail links in the greater Waikato, in memory of George Parr.

There are all sorts of pockets of history related to this bit of land, from the confiscation onwards. Another rather charming piece of history that could be lost is a little stone bridge there that spans Gibbons Creek. It connects Parana Park with the memorial park. That bridge was built at the expense of Annie MacPherson, who died in 1928.

How beautiful it would have been if this bill had designated this land as a historic reserve rather than a recreation reserve under clause 4. Historic reserve status would not have precluded passive recreation—that would have been an enabling component—but would have been a great way for the people of the Waikato and of Hamilton City to tell their history, which is a history that has been built with the people of Tainui. So I think it is an opportunity lost. I understand that the purpose clause repeals the Hamilton City (Parana Park) Empowering Act and vests it—

I move, That the question be now put.