Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill

I am very happy to stand and take a call on clause 1 of the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill. In doing that I want to just perhaps explain to the Committee why I believe that it is so important to go through this bill—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Can’t do that on a clause 1 of a Committee stage.

Well, with the leave of members, and just to set the scene of this bill, I think it is important that we do address the clauses of the bill in their entirety. Of course, clause 1 of the bill refers to—

💬 Hon Annette King: It’s delaying tactics.

No, it is not, actually. I am trying to find my copy of the bill. I think that is important, because there are members of the public back in Ōāmaru who care a lot about this bill and have had quite a bit of dialogue with the Local Government and Environment Committee.

💬 Hon Annette King: They’ve waited for years for it.

No. I think it is probably fair to them that this process is not truncated in any way. If it is truncated in any way, they will not feel as if their word has been listened to.

The Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill deals with three lots of land: one in Ōāmaru, one in Palmerston—neither of those are controversial, and they were passed through the select committee—and the third part, known as Forrester Heights, which has been controversial throughout the passage of this bill through the Parliament and, indeed, in the local community. That is why I think it is so important that we give good consideration to the entirety of this bill in the Committee stage. I will not talk too much on the first two parcels of land, but Forrester Heights was land that was wrongly designated back in the 1930s as a reserve under the Reserves Act. That designation, as it turns out, was wrong. Through the process of the consideration of this Committee, it is being determined that, actually, the land was reserved in aid of borough funds. It was an endowment in aid of borough funds. Once that is settled, the Waitaki District Council can then dispose of the land as it wishes. It is that which has caused so many problems for some of the locals. They do not see the difference between the classification of the land and the use of the land. With that full explanation, thank you.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 Interpretation