Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill

I move, That the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill be now read a second time. It is with great pleasure that I move the second reading of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. This is an omnibus bill that is provided for in Standing Order 262(1)(e). The intent of such a bill, which I will refer to as a “ROLD” bill, is to make changes to a land status that cannot otherwise be dealt with easily. “ROLD” bills deal with authorisations, transfers, and validations of matters relating to Crown land, reserves, and other lands held for public or private purposes. Such bills can be used to correct historic oversights and errors, or to clarify and simplify issues regarding land status—particularly, when determining whether a certain use or method of management is legally permissible. The last “ROLD” bill was enacted in 2003, and by 2008 sufficient matters had arisen to warrant this present bill. It is being read again in the House today as a result of a comprehensive consultation process and thorough consideration of public submissions. I would like to put on record my thanks to the Primary Production Committee—which, at the time, was chaired by Shane Ardern—and to all the other members of the committee who have been involved in progressing the bill to this point.

Among the provisions considered by the committee are several that provide benefits to communities and community organisations throughout New Zealand. For example, clauses 38 to 41 of the bill remove a restrictive clause from a 1901 statute and make it possible for the Dunedin City Council to regularise a long-term lease for the use of reserve land by the Port Chalmers Bowling Club, thus ending many years of uncertainty for the club. If we go further north, clauses 28 to 34 remove specific hospital-related purposes and other constraints on five titles for land held by the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board. That change will enable the board to make more effective use of the land when providing health and disability support services to the Nelson-Marlborough community. And in Northland, clauses 21 to 23 formalise a community-supported agreement that reserve land in Māhinepua Bay be vested as a Māori reservation with the trustees of the adjoining Māori reservation.

Shortly I want to go through two substantive changes to the bill, but, first, I would like to comment on a general issue that was raised during the select committee process, and which is referred to specifically in the Primary Production Committee’s commentary on the bill. An overriding issue, which arose in discussions on a number of clauses in the bill, is whether applications that could be considered controversial should be included in a “ROLD” bill. The convention is for “ROLD” bills to deal with non-controversial matters. However, several applications—and two examples are the Auckland City Council’s application relating to Albert Park and the Department of Conservation’s application relating to land adjoining Auckland’s volcanic cones—were considered by some to be controversial. The committee questioned whether a “ROLD” bill was the appropriate legislative vehicle for some of these issues. The committee felt it was being asked, effectively, to rubber-stamp what were controversial issues, and it questioned whether or not councils may view the bill as an opportunity to avoid other difficult and time-consuming legislative processes. This is a matter that Parliament may wish to consider. However, it is worth noting that the convention that “ROLD” bills deal with non-controversial land matters was intended to ensure that changes remain technical. The reality is that most of the changes in this bill as reported back by the committee are technical changes that deal only with administrative and technical details.

The Primary Production Committee recommended two substantive changes to the bill. The first was the result of a decision by the Department of Conservation to withdraw its application relating to the Sugar Loaf Islands in New Plymouth. The committee has recommended that clauses 42 to 44, which relate to this application, be deleted. This change had the consent of all parties involved, and I am comfortable with the removal of these clauses. I believe the committee has also recommended the insertion of clauses 34A, 34B, and 34C, which deal with a parcel of esplanade reserve land at Ōpua in the Bay of Islands. I believe the committee acted with good intentions when it recommended the insertion of these clauses; however, I do not believe they are suitable for inclusion in the bill. To that end I intend, during the Committee stage, to move a Supplementary Order Paper seeking their deletion, and I will provide detail of that in the Committee of the whole House.

I will also seek your support during the Committee stage for a number of other proposed amendments. Most of these are of minor and technical nature. For example, updates are required to reflect the changes in Auckland local government that have taken place since the committee reported the bill back to Parliament. Clause 5, which amends the Reserves Act 1977, is to be deleted because the matters dealt with by this clause have since been resolved by the statutes amendment legislation that was recently enacted in this House. Technical amendments are also proposed to clauses 21 to 23, which, as I mentioned earlier, formalise a community-supported agreement to have an area of esplanade reserve at Māhinepua Bay in Northland declared a Māori reservation. These amendments clarify the process to be followed to achieve this aim. Clauses 18 to 20, concerning Waitaki District Council’s application regarding Lookout Point, are to be deleted. These clauses are no longer required because the matter they deal with has been resolved by the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Lands Empowering Act. I also intend to recommend the deletion of clauses 10 to 11, which concern decision making for earthworks on Auckland volcanic cones, and clauses 24 to 27, which concern Marlborough District Council land in Picton. I have made this suggestion in order to allow further consultation with interested parties.

I wish to make a few final comments on one of the provisions mentioned in the committee’s report. Clauses 6 to 9 enable a technical change to the status of a parcel of land in Albert Park, which has been designated as a local purpose art gallery reserve. This change is administrative and amends the definition of Albert Park in Auckland City for this purpose. The provisions in the bill enable the amalgamation of land in Albert Park with the adjacent parcel of freehold land, which the gallery sits on. Having both parcels on the same title will avoid costly and time-consuming administrative issues. The committee’s report outlines the concerns that some members shared with submitters who were opposed to the expansion of the gallery. Submitters were under the impression that the “ROLD” bill was enabling what they viewed as an alienation of reserve land in Albert Park. In a technical and legal sense, the clauses in the “ROLD” bill were not enabling any alienation. The former Auckland City Council reclassified the relevant land as local purpose art gallery reserve land in accordance with the Reserves Act 2006. The council submitted a notice of requirement for a designation under the Resource Management Act 1991, which was approved by the Environment Court in August 2008. Resource consents for works within Albert Park not covered by the designation were also granted by the Environment Court in its 2008 decision. It was these processes that gave the council the necessary authority to proceed with the expansion of the gallery.

Members of the committee acknowledged that there had not been any technical alienation; however, they felt that although the council had followed due process and was within its legal rights to begin the gallery expansion, the park was originally classified as recreational reserve with the intention that the land be preserved as open space. The Primary Production Committee did not approve of the city council’s approach to dealing with this matter, and I do have some sympathy with its view. However, any problematic issues with the gallery development occurred in processes beyond the scope of this bill. The clauses in the “ROLD” bill will prevent Auckland Art Gallery management from having to deal with unnecessary administrative difficulty in operating the gallery as it is. This will benefit all Auckland ratepayers by enabling the efficient and effective management of an important cultural and entertainment resource.

The provisions in this bill will give effect to applications by local authorities and Government agencies for technical changes to land status that remove administrative and technical barriers that would otherwise prevent owners and lessees from effectively and efficiently managing and administrating the land. I commend this bill to the House.

I stand in support of this piece of legislation. However, it has taken a while to get here. As the Minister for Land Information outlined, there was a bill that went through in 2003, and this bill was put up in 2008. As the Minister said, about every 5 years these sorts of bills come before the House because there are antiquated pieces of legislation or local government rulings, etc., etc., that need to be changed. They are supposed to be non-controversial. There were some controversial measures in this, and I will allude to those a little bit later on.

In 2008 this bill was brought before the House. In fact, David Parker was the Minister who brought it before the House. Here we find ourselves 7 years later, in 2015, and it is almost time for another one of these bills to be introduced—or what we do is we put forward a whole lot of Supplementary Order Papers so they negate the need for another bill. But the bottom line is that it should not have taken this long for this bill to get to its second reading. I think that even the Minister would acknowledge this. Richard Worth would acknowledge this if he was still in the House, but he is not. Maurice Williamson would probably acknowledge it if he was still the Minister of Land Information, but he is no longer. In fact, I think we were on about our fourth Minister for Land Information before we actually got to the second reading.

The Minister alluded to a number of Supplementary Order Papers that are changing original parts of the bill. We support these. We are talking about the Ōpua esplanade reserve land, except the Albert Park piece of land. But the fact that there are about four Supplementary Order Papers accompanying this bill and that they talk about changes that need to be made to the original bill just shows, I think, that this is a little bit sloppy. The reason I say that is I think that as a Parliament we need to send a message to local government authorities, or to district health boards, or to the Department of Conservation, or to whoever are approaching their MPs on behalf of constituents to get these sorts of changes made, that they need to go through a robust set of consultation meetings.

What we find here is that these changes end up in a bill, and then suddenly people go “Goodness me, I didn’t know about this. There was no consultation whatsoever.” The Ōpua esplanade was a classic one. There was no consultation whatsoever, and then they approached their local MP and they approached their local council saying “We need to change this. This is not right.”, and a movement starts and it ends up in a Supplementary Order Paper, as mentioned. It is reasonably non-controversial, but a good robust process must be gone through before legislative changes are made, or else it ends up just in a whole lot of mess.

There are couple of things that I think the Minister glossed over. She talked about the volcanic cones. She said that some thought that this was controversial. The vast majority of submissions were against this. Again, this is a classic case where I do not think that Parliament listened to the wishes of the local people. Albert Park is another classic one, to the point where the select committee actually made a recommendation in the paper saying that this is not good law. And it is typical of John Banks—he was mayor at the time. What the council did was run roughshod over the process and then come to Parliament and say they wanted to change the law for something they had already done. Typical Mr Banks—we know where that ended up, do we not?

I was not on the Primary Production Committee. I was not in Parliament when this came forward. But I look at the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board land. There is a proposal by the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board—the member Nick Smith may have comments on this—to remove specific hospital-related purposes and other constraints on five titles to land held by the board.

When I read something like this, without knowing the full details, alarm bells go off because what that says to me is that this is the district health board wanting to sell down land. It cannot sell the land because it was either gifted, or something else, to the district health board or the health board way back when, and it was designated “hospital land” and as a consequence it could not be used for anything but health purposes. It wants that designation removed, I suspect, to sell it.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is the member opposed?

I am just saying that red flags go up whenever I see this sort of stuff. That is all I am saying—that is all I am saying. The other thing that I must admit did make me smile was when Minister Upston stood up and said she had great pleasure in bringing this bill to the House. I do not know whether she had great pleasure because it has taken 7 years to get the bill here or whether she had great pleasure in the fact that this is the first bill she has actually brought to the House. At this point in time the Minister for Land Information should be one of the busiest members in that Government, and the reason for this is that there is a whole lot of concern right across the country that overseas investors are having a free ride into this country.

Every single overseas investor who wants to buy a piece of sensitive investment land, which is usually defined as over 5 hectares, must get consent through the Overseas Investment Office. It is a reasonably rigorous piece of legislation and the consent process takes a little bit of time. But, again, what concerns me about this is that in the last 3 years not one consent has been turned down, and part of this might have been the case law, actually, that came out of the sale of the Crafar farms. Under the Overseas Investment Act, in terms of buying land—talking about the Minister for Land Information and her portfolios, which she discussed in her opening speech—there are three tests, and one of them was relevant experience and core competencies.

The case law in respect of the Crafar farmlands gave that such a wide definition that I think it opened the way for any single overseas investor who wanted to buy sensitive land in this country to just go ahead. There are very, very few restrictions on that at all—and Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard, if I had known you were going to be in the Chair, I would have talked about that first as opposed to last. But, anyway, Labour does support this bill. But as the Minister mentioned, and I think it is worth coming back to this, there is sort of an unwritten rule with these sorts of omnibus bills. They are supposed to be non-controversial. This is information brought to Parliament, everyone agrees on it, it goes through the House, it goes through a process, and there are usually very few submissions because there is no contention here whatsoever. The Minister herself has outlined two areas that were contentious, and I think that is against the spirit of this bill.

Let me, if I may, just quote what the select committee mentioned with regard to the Albert Park change: “A majority of the submissions we received concerned the Auckland Art Gallery development in Albert Park. Almost without exception, submitters were opposed to the development and the way the Auckland City Council has proceeded with the development under the assumption that a non-controversial bill would be ‘rubber stamped’ by Parliament. Many submitters would have liked the clauses relating to the gallery’s development to be deleted from the bill.”

I must admit that if I had been on that select committee in 2008 I would have shared their concerns, because the Albert Park case contravenes the spirit of this bill, I believe, in the sense that it was hugely controversial. In fact, I can remember when I moved from Auckland back to Hawke’s Bay—and what a fantastic move that was, believe me. I love being in the regions. It was wonderful to get out of a city where it takes me an hour to get to work and go back to Hawke’s Bay where it takes me 8 minutes to get to the airport, and I do not even live on the flight path.

But, anyway, I remember when this was going ahead and I was approached by some of the submitters because I had worked with them on a couple of other issues, and they asked me to advocate on their behalf. At the time I was involved in Labour Party politics. I was not a member of Parliament. I looked at this and I thought this was very, very poor legislation. It is not the way that legislation is supposed to be done. By that I mean that you go and do something and then you beg for forgiveness through a piece of legislation—it is not the way that councils should operate.

I would just like to sum up by saying that I think what we need to do, as a whole Parliament, is send a message to these district councils, to the health broads, and to the Department of Conservation. We need to tell them that whenever they put up a bill of this nature they need to ensure that they have undertaken a reasonable amount of consultation and that their residents and their ratepayers, or their constituents, have had a say. When I read through the notes and the select committee deliberations, it became very apparent to me that this was not the case in a number of instances. Thank you very much.

It is somewhat ironic, I guess, getting to speak on a bill that went through the Primary Production Committee some time ago. There were some members on that select committee whom I do not know and there are some whom I have never heard of. There is one in the House today who is dead lucky to be here still, and he is the last remaining one—the member for the West Coast. So it is quite an unusual situation to find oneself in. I remember, of course, 3 years ago, coming here for the first time, getting to speak on a lot of bills I knew nothing about, so to come here 4 years later and get to speak on another one I know nothing about is quite an irony.

But, none the less, I now know a lot about the bill and I am going to make a few comments on it, because although the previous speaker from Napier made the point that this bill is not meant to be controversial, and I am sure that by the time it gets to Parliament it is not controversial, most of the issues that are dealt with by bills like this, including this one, have gone through at times some quite controversial local consultation. In other words, they go through local councils. Almost invariably they are to do with local councils—their ability to use, to swap, to transfer land, or to even sell land—and often these are quite controversial issues in small local communities. By the time they get to the House, no doubt, they are no longer controversial.

As a person who formerly dealt with—or lived in—the local government precinct for quite some time, I had a lot to do with these sorts of things. They concern all sorts of things—things such as houses that are across boundaries of reserves and have been there for generations. In fact, I have got one in my electorate right now of a very similar nature where there is a house across a piece of land that was swapped under a Treaty of Waitangi settlement and the house is occupying a piece of that land. So councils need to move to try to rationalise these issues, and they need to come before Parliament, and the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill deals with these issues on an infrequent basis.

These issues accumulate over time. It is not unusual for cowsheds to be across road reserve boundaries. It is not unusual—in fact, it is very common for road reserves or roads to be on reserve land where, at the time they were put there, of course, there was no cognisance taken of where the boundary was, but none the less they became part of a reserve. That is a frequent thing that councils come across. In the 2004 floods in the Manawatū-Rangitīkei, for example, there were numerous roads that needed major repairs made to them, often going across private property, going across reserve land and in all sorts of places, and these necessitated land swaps and all sorts of issues like that. They would come before the council and, often, because the roads were on reserve land, they needed to come back to the Government for a decision.

So there is a lot of consultation going on around this sort of stuff in councils. Often, as I said, in small local communities there is quite a bit of interest in the small piece of reserve land that gets dealt with. This particular bill, of course, is dealing with some larger issues than that and some of them are quite old. As the Minister said, there will be some significant changes made to this bill, as we move along, through Supplementary Order Papers. That is necessary as well, as things change pretty quickly, really, in this type of process and decisions are made and we move on.

I want to talk also about a reserve in the Manawatū district, for example, that was transferred to the regional council’s governance. The transfer needed to come through Parliament, or become an Act of Parliament, in order for it to take place because it transferred between one local authority and another. You would not imagine for a minute that that would be necessary, but that is one of the complications that happen in the course of our law around land over hundreds of years, in fact. I notice in this bill that there is an item around the Winton racecourse. Racecourses are often governed under the Racing Act. Many of them are in reserve or put in reserve and held in perpetuity for community use. Whether they are racecourses or not in the long term, of course, is a matter of conjecture, but none the less when they go to have their use changed, they often have to become the topic of an Act of Parliament to get the land use changed.

Agricultural and Pastoral Society showgrounds throughout New Zealand are in a similar situation. The 1908 Agricultural and Pastoral Societies Act controls a large number of Agricultural and Pastoral showgrounds right throughout New Zealand, and often these also have to become part of an Act, or a local bill or a private bill is needed to change the land use of those pieces of land. The Palmerston North Showgrounds in Palmerston North is a classic example of that. It required an Act of Parliament in order for the city council to be able to take it out of the Manawatū and West Coast Agricultural and Pastoral Society’s ownership. Of course, the showgrounds have moved over to Feilding now.

As the Minister referred to, there are two substantive changes referred to in the select committee report on this bill. Interestingly, I think it will be the intention to withdraw both of those or cancel both of those as a result of consultation that has taken place since this bill came to Parliament in, I think it was, 2008. It is not surprising, I guess, that there are some changes needed to be made as a result of that. I am quite sure that we can see a number of further changes made to it during the course of the Committee stage as a result of the same debate, because, as I said earlier, these types of issues are constantly before local government and they constantly need to be reviewed. So, although this is a very slow process—I think the previous bill came to the House in 2003; scarcely in memory—we now have got to 2015 and we are just about to pass the next bill. Fortunately, most organisations that are dealing with these kinds of things are not frustrated by the time factor, because they have been here for ever and they are going to be here for ever in the future. It is often just a pedantic issue of who has control of the land, and who is able to make decisions on it.

Interestingly, as a result of the sale of reserve land, the Government pockets half of the money anyway. So it is not of great interest to local communities to sell reserve land, because they give half the value of that land to the Government. The other half the councils get their hands on. So who knows whether the local community is going to get a great deal of benefit out of this anyway? It is really a rationalisation process. In the case of councils, they often have quite large tracts of land—not in one place, of course; many, many small pieces of land—that are in these types of situations. They are expensive to administer and they are a little bit of a nuisance, but they are very hard to deal with, as well, so it is really in councils’ interest that we get bills like this before Parliament every now and again and make sure we get them, I guess, passed in a form that enables the community to move on to the next step, really.

I am very pleased to see that at least the Labour Party is supporting this bill. I am sure New Zealand First will support this bill. I cannot guarantee that my colleague down there in the Greens will support it, though. He is not here today, Steffan—oh, I am sorry. Apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Your apology is noted on the record.

He is here in spirit. I am not sure whether he will support it or not. But it is an interesting topic and it is one, as I said, that is very complicated in the background but relatively simple when it gets to Parliament to be passed. I am also very pleased to see that a few members of the Manawatū district have come to listen to this debate, as enlightening and as exciting as it will be.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And I will just remind the member that referring to people in the gallery is a breach.

Apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): That is now on the record, as well.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: They don’t want to be associated with you.

No. The member for West Coast - Tasman is probably quite right. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to support this bill as it moves to the next stage in Parliament. I am sure that the Committee stage of the debate and the Committee stage of this bill will be highly enlightening, and I look forward to listening to that debate with interest and even participating in it. I notice that the member for West Coast - Tasman just cannot wait to get up, so thank you.

I acknowledge the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie. I think he did a very good job, given the fact that he was not on the Primary Production Committee at the time, and he has been around for some time. The best way to summarise this bill is that it is the best non - non-controversial legislation that I have seen in this House. The Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill is traditionally supposed to be non-controversial. Well, there was not much about this bill that was non-controversial, I would have to say.

I can run through some of the things, to be fair, that there was not huge debate around. One of them is the Winton Racecourse Reserve Management Ordinance of 1873. Trustees were to be on there for a lifetime. We have, in fact, provided for them to be there for 3 years. There are some sensible amendments through the bill—some land to go into roading in Paparoa National Park and Taieri Airport land to be changed. But there were, as was raised in earlier speeches, a few controversial issues that I do recall. I have read through a few things and, in fact, I was reminded of them when I met with a group in Ōpua about 3 weeks ago. I had hoped that the issue would have been resolved, but, alas, it has not been. It is the issue of the esplanade reserve at Ōpua in the Bay of Islands. I do not want to—in fact, I do not have the time—to go into the whole history of this, but this bill was an attempt to resolve an issue that has been around since 1966 when this boatyard was built and reserve land was utilised. When the new owner came into this and purchased it in 1994, he needed to utilise some reserve land to run his boat operation. There has been a lot of to-ing and a lot of fro-ing and a lot of arguments over the years to try to get some certainty for the boatyard owner. We had some sympathy for that. The select committee, in an attempt to offer some security and certainty, did insert some clauses that now the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper is going to remove. The question of why has to be asked.

There is quite a lot of litigation. The fact is that there is an informal agreement to allow the boatyard owner to utilise reserve land, and he was uncertain about his future, and he wanted to get it tidied up. We thought that it was a reasonably non-controversial issue, so we inserted it. It is controversial, and I would say that it did push the boundaries of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill’s intention. However, since the bill was introduced and since being processed, in fact, there have been legal rulings on this, the most recent one being from Judge Heath on 10 March 2015. The judge decided to quash a 2013 decision and ruled that “the decision whether to consent to such easements be remitted back to the Minister for reconsideration,”.

The issue here is whether the district council or the Minister of Conservation has the rightful authority to offer the gentleman some certainty. Unfortunately, I suspect that the Government’s removing these clauses from the bill would have given parliamentary certainty, but that easement right would have ended with the sale from this gentleman to someone else, as was the intent of the select committee. The attempt to hand the right back to the district council means that, potentially, the district council just writes out a right or issues a right, I guess it thinks in perpetuity, over what is rightfully Crown land under the jurisdiction of the Department of Conservation and thereby the Minister. So, in fact, all the debate and all the consideration of the select committee amount to nothing—to nought. I feel a little sad about that because I think the select committee genuinely tried to reach a solution that was a fair one—that is, issuing easements for current use but not perpetuating the property rights and handing them over to the person, because it is quite a complex issue.

In the meantime, the letter that I have received—it is a copy of a letter sent to the Minister of Conservation, the Hon Maggie Barry—points out that, actually, because of the controversy, there was potentially going to be a gift of significant waterfront land to the community of Paihia, but that gift has been withdrawn. So this issue has not gone away, in spite of the attempts of the select committee to deal with it in the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. The Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister actually hands back to the council and to the Minister a dilemma that they will have to work through and that, ultimately, I believe, will come back to the select committee.

I will just deal with a few other issues in the bill. As was pointed out by a couple of speakers, Auckland Council had an interest in this. It was, in fact, the development to set up the Auckland Art Gallery at Albert Park. There would be many around the country who would probably say “Who cares?”, but, indeed, it was an emotional issue for many people in and around Auckland who were tied up with heritage and with the art gallery. I think the issue was to do with the process by Auckland Council—I think the mayor at the time might have been Mr Banks, so it is little wonder, perhaps. Anyway, that issue is, hopefully, resolved here.

There were some submissions about the Auckland volcanic cones. People were concerned about handing back to the Minister of Conservation the right to take control of it. The Primary Production Committee was comfortable with that, having heard those submissions. Then, of course, we had the Sugar Loaf Islands Marine Protected Area—again, an area that the select committee decided there had not been enough consultation on, so it deleted the intentions and the provisions in the bill for that.

The insertions to deal with the Ōpua situation—which, as I say, was an unusual step for a select committee—have now been taken out. The Minister could possibly claim that they should be taken out because nothing in this bill should be controversial. Controversy around the other issues is relatively minor, and it is still relatively major over Ōpua. I just ask of the Government, in taking these provisions out, that it considers very fairly the situation up there, because there is a lot of feeling on the matter. There is a view and a suspicion that the district council might just override conservation land intentions and hand the rights to the gentleman. I think the gentleman might have to be aware—and I am not going to use his name—that if the council does that it will offer no certainty into the future because there is likely to be litigation. In fact, a group is taking a challenge to the courts on that ruling. In the end, hours and hours of select committee work have not resolved something that does need to be resolved.

I will just go back and make reference to a couple of other things; I am not going to drag this out, other than to say that I acknowledge my colleague the Hon David Parker. He was introducing a bill to try to resolve and tidy up a whole lot of these issues. I think that the select committee way back then—I am the only remaining member—did its very best. I think there probably will be a few other issues brought to the table in the passage of this bill through the House in the weeks going forward—the Ōpua one being among them, I guess.

The other issue I must mention very briefly is that of the Waitaki District Council, and Lookout Point land. There was a view within the community that the transfer of land to what it deemed as reserve land into the hands of, effectively, developers and the council, in fact, to develop—

💬 Jacqui Dean: Nonsense! It went to the council.

Oh, there is the member Jacqui Dean down there. I would say she should be very careful about advocacy in this area. It was a very tricky issue, with a number of people involved in it. The money is supposed to be used in Ōāmaru for the purposes of heritage, and I acknowledge that. But there was a lot of emotion and a lot of feeling. The select committee did what it hoped was the best thing with this, and that land is indeed going to be transferred, and will be developed with some risks.

This was an attempt by Parliament to deal with non-controversial legislation. In my view, it is non - non-controversial. I guess we will have a few debates on it over the next couple of weeks.

That is quite a mouthful—“non - non-controversial”—but I take the point of the honourable member Damien O’Connor.

The Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill—otherwise known as the “ROLD Bill”—is quite an interesting bill when you look at some of the history. It is sort of a journey through history, really, and through the interaction of local government with central government, and some of the errors that need to be dealt with in this bill. The bill makes a number of non-controversial changes—and I guess I am in a different camp from the honourable member Damien O’Connor about those—to land statuses resulting from applications from local authorities and Government departments. There are nine changes proposed by the Department of Conservation, six by local authorities, and one each by the Ministry of Transport and the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, which is, of course, in the Kaikōura electorate.

Matters included in a Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill are identified as being non-controversial, which is a point of some debate at the moment, and they have the consent of all the parties involved. So it is right that we deal with these things through the House today in a bill like this. It is absolutely essential that we get these things sorted out so that the land concerned is actually now used for the purposes that are needed by the people who really should have control of it. The bill corrects historical oversights and removes restrictions on land that are no longer relevant. Time does move on, and I will touch on that a little bit later, but the bill updates legislation and makes it fit for purpose. It provides for better community use of the land, and I think a lot of these particular changes go back to community uses of land that have long since ceased to exist, particularly one around the district health board, which I will touch on later.

It is in line with current Government policy about dealing with rules and regulation, and trying to cut through red tape and rules that are no longer fit for purpose or duplicative, and, in this case, that are not even hitting the mark at all. Currently, we are running through with the Rules Reduction Taskforce and focusing right on these particular matters. I have had the pleasure of holding two Rules Reduction Taskforce meetings where we have engaged with the councils and with various industry sector groups, identifying issues that might be dealt with. My understanding is that there is an interim report going to the relevant Minister, who will be able to come up with some really good changes that will get rid of some of those duplicative rules, so we avoid having to wait as long as we have in this case, with some of these rules and mistakes going right back to the 1800s. That is really a long time ago and they should have been dealt with many years ago, I would suggest.

Touching on the points made earlier, that it really should not get to this stage, and that councils and district health boards should not be seeking law changes just to suit their purposes with the land that they own after they have carried out some sort of change, it really is not apparent that it is a problem until you are part-way through the process and the relevant authorities get to a position where they were—in the case of the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, at Wairau Hospital—already in the process of upgrading or rebuilding the hospital. I can report that the Wairau Hospital rebuild is actually complete now, but none the less it still needs to be brought up to date with these relevant changes.

Clauses 24 to 27 relate to the land that the Marlborough District Council’s Picton office is on. The council wishes to validate a previous dealing with the land and remove the interest in relation to the Picton Institute Act 1864 from the title of the land. So, as I said, it goes back quite some time—in fact, in 1864, in Picton, they had their own council. They no longer do; they come under the Marlborough District Council. In 1864 there was somewhat of a boom going on in oil—whale oil, not mineral oil—and, in fact, the whole area and landscape has changed. This demonstrates, I think, how these bills and things have got completely out of whack. Interestingly, I had Ron Perano in my office the other day. The Perano family are a very famous whaling family who go right back to the beginning of whaling in the Marlborough Sounds. He had some really interesting stories to tell about how they coped in those days, whaling and using their whaleboats around the Sounds. Yes, I am coming back to the bill, Mr Speaker.

The Picton Institute Act of 1864 authorised a superintendent of the province of Marlborough to convey the Picton office land to trustees as a site for the Picton Institute. The transfer took place in 1903. Land was unlawfully transferred to the representatives of the borough for Picton. Accordingly, clause 26 validates the transfer of the land in 1903, and clause 27 repeals the Picton Institute Act of 1864. The reason this all happened back in 1903 was that the last of the trustees died and replacements could not be found for them. Then the institute unlawfully transferred the land. So that mistake goes right back, really, to the unfortunate demise of the trustees and nobody stepping up to take their places. Had they done so, things could have been dealt with in a lawful manner. We would not be dealing with this today. However, that is history. As I said, the building itself is no longer used. It is used by the Marlborough District Council, but there is no Picton Institute any longer—there is no Picton Council. So it is quite right that this bill deals with that.

Clauses 28 to 34 relate to the five pieces of land owned by the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board. One of those pieces of land is a bit of land out at French Pass for a public health nurse. That is no longer used. There is no public health nurse stationed out there. Back in those days, of course, when this was dealt with, all of the Marlborough Sounds was being farmed. It was cleared of trees. There was some logging done initially. It was cleared of trees and being farmed. We had a large population living in that area in the Sounds. If you have ever been out there, or if anyone else has been out that way, it is a very long, winding drive on a modern road. You can fly in, and perhaps that is the best way to get in, or go by boat, but in those days communications were very difficult and it was quite right and proper that the district health board had a station out there for public health. That is no longer required, hence this bill. In fact, today much of that land is reverting back to native, as it should do, and it is very beautiful. Accordingly, clauses 30 to 34 remove the relevant trusts from the titles and revoke any reservations of the land as reserves.

I would like to turn now to what the member from the Opposition mentioned earlier—the Overseas Investment Office, relevant to the Land Information office. I think it really should not go unchallenged. He talked about some of the approvals that have gone through and mentioned the Crafar farms, which has been bought by Shanghai Pengxin. I had the pleasure, with other members of the relevant committee for this bill, the Primary Production Committee, of travelling around and looking at the Shanghai Pengxin operation, which is run by Landcorp now. I think it has demonstrated that, actually, the Act does work and the Land Information office and the Minister are doing their job. Shanghai Pengxin had, as part of its conditions, undertaken to spend $18 million upgrading that farm, and actually it had spent $22 million. I think that brings back the importance of the Land Information office and the Minister responsible for this bill.

One other thing I will just touch on before I finish is the Ōāmaru and Waitaki District Council land, which is Lookout Point or Forrester Heights. That goes back to the 1885, 1937, and 1947 Orders in Council, all one after the other, putting error on top of error. So it is appropriate that this bill deals with that. It is with pleasure that I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a call on the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. I think the fact that we are debating this bill shows the emptiness of the Government’s legislative programme. The bill was developed by the former Labour Government, and the former land Minister, the Hon David Parker, introduced it in July 2008. It was reported back from the Primary Production Committee in September 2009, and it has languished on the Order Paper ever since.

I would much rather be debating a new reserves bill to improve the protection of our marine environment. The National Government has been promising a new marine reserves bill for several elections but it has yet to deliver. New Zealand was once a world leader in marine protection—in 1977 we established the first no-take marine reserve at Leigh, off Cape Rodney—but we now lag well behind. We have got less than half a percent of our sea space protected as marine reserve, and most of that is around the Subantarctic Islands and the Kermadec Islands. But we are debating this bill instead of a new marine reserves bill. I am pleased, though, that we are not debating the changes to the Resource Management Act, which was another piece of legislation that the Government promised but has stalled.

The Green Party is supporting this bill. We opposed it at its first reading, and that was largely because of the changes associated with the Auckland Art Gallery and the extension to the art gallery taking over some land in Albert Park. The bill enables some of the land in Albert Park to be alienated so that it can be amalgamated with the title of the Auckland Art Gallery. That has now happened. It is a fait accompli. The legislation is retrospective in legalising that, so we will be supporting this bill.

I would like to pick up a few comments made by the previous speaker, Stuart Smith. He seemed to associate the bill with the Rules Reduction Taskforce. I would be very concerned if that is where the Rules Reduction Taskforce is going, because this bill and the Reserves Act are about proper legal process when it comes to decisions about land status. Certainly, this bill is making some small changes to the status of particular parcels of land where roads have been widened—for example, in Westland Tai Poutini National Park, Kahurangi National Park, and Paparoa National Park—but it is not seeking to change fundamentally the content of legislation, which I think was where the member was heading with the Government’s efforts to undermine good regulation that actually protects the wider community interests.

Although I am grateful to the Hon Damien O’Connor for his detailed explanation of what the select committee did in relation to the esplanade reserve at Ōpua and the additional clauses that the select committee recommended be included, they were very controversial, because those clauses were, effectively, overriding the Reserves Act and the processes under the Reserves Act, and were enabling the Far North District Council to grant easements over the esplanade reserve, which would be contrary to the provisions of the Reserves Act. That is why we strongly support Supplementary Order Paper 206, in the Minister’s name, which takes out clauses 34A, 34B, and 34C, because they are controversial. I think that had they been in the bill as originally introduced, then, potentially, it would have attracted a lot more submissions because of the precedent nature of those changes to the Reserves Act to make it much easier for councils to accommodate commercial activities on public land that have no place to be there. We are very pleased that the Supplementary Order Paper is going through to take those changes to the Reserves Act out of the bill, because they are controversial.

I think that some of the other changes—particularly the ones where there are changes to land status in three national parks to accommodate road widening—highlight the need for really good process when development activities that will affect reserve land and the value of that land are going to occur. The road widening at Punakaiki, for example, resulted in the clearance of some vegetation in the national park—some of the magnificent Nīkau palms there. It occurred right opposite the entrance to the Pancake Rocks walk, and it certainly allowed a lot more parking for buses and cars, but it has meant that there is quite a transition in what was quite a narrow corridor through the park, which made people appreciate the park more—its landscapes—and which made traffic slow down. It is now a very wide tarsealed road. It has happened. It is appropriate that it be authorised through the bill, but it does demonstrate that perhaps the process that the Transport Agency and its predecessors went through was not that robust—the fact that it has now come to Parliament seeking retrospective provision for that. We are supporting the bill and we are very pleased with the Supplementary Order Paper that removes those provisions around Ōpua. Thank you.

I am pleased to rise to take a fairly brief call in the second reading of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. It is quite a long time since the first reading of this bill—6 years in fact. New Zealand First will support this bill going to the Committee of the whole House, but only because it is at that stage that we intend to recommend that the bill be returned to the Primary Production Committee for reconsideration. Either that or it be thrown out, because it is difficult to envisage how anything that is contained in it can be so desperately urgent as to warrant the expenditure of further time in the House when it has languished for so long on the backburners of Government priority. Irrespective of what other members have said about it being non-controversial and irrespective of the fact that some matters take 5 or 6 years to come back to the House, life goes on.

We do not seek a return to the select committee because I, as a member of the present incarnation of the select committee, have any particular desire to undertake a rather soporific delving into the technical detail of a somewhat elderly omnibus bill. Rather, it is that in the 6 years that have passed between the first reading and now the second reading of this vitally important piece of legislation, a number of other enactments have, it would appear, superseded or otherwise overwritten—overwritten, overridden—parts of the bill as it stands, as other members have made mention of.

Looking back at the Hansard from 5 March 2009, when this bill received its first reading and was sent to the Primary Production Committee, is a wee bit like looking back in time. The list of names of honourable members who have now long since departed these halls for what we can only hope are better and greener pastures for them, is testament to the present irrelevancy or otherwise of the bill.

I am referring to Shane Ardern, the chairperson, with whom I had the pleasure of serving as an observing member on the Primary Production Committee in the last term of Parliament; the Hon Jim Anderton, a name known to everybody; Brendon Burns; the Hon John Carter, a predecessor of yourself in the Chair, Mr Assistant Speaker; Dr Ashraf Choudhary; Sandra Goudie; the Hon George Hawkins; Colin King, who was previously my member of Parliament and was replaced by Stuart Smith, a current member of the select committee, and also my current member of Parliament because I live in the Kaikōra electorate—not for long, however, as I am about to cross the border of the Ashleigh River and actually become a resident of the Waimakariri electorate, so Mr Matt Doocey, who is my colleague, will become my new member of Parliament—and Sue Bradford.

All were very fine members, and I have no doubt that their individual and collective contributions to this bill were of great merit. Perhaps the one surviving member of the select committee, the Hon Damien O’Connor, may be in a better position to comment on the relative merits of the contributions.

New Zealand First has no institutional memory of this bill. Mr McKelvie remarked that the bill came about before he was in Parliament, and in actual fact this bill came through in the 49th Parliament when New Zealand First was on sabbatical, as it were. I have to say that it is now generally accepted, of course, that Parliament was the poorer for our absence, and the nation now rejoices in our triumphant, glorious, and long overdue return. But I digress, somewhat—I will come back to the bill. I apologise for that. I just pre-empted your wise judgment, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The bill itself deals with a number of issues, 17 in total listed, with some 58 clauses pertaining to them. A number of those, as the Minister alluded to, have been addressed by the passage of time or at least altered by other, separate legislation in the interim. Some matters, it would seem, could not wait long enough for this bill to work its way up the priority ladder—up the popularity ladder—and come back to the front of the House on the Order Paper. Just as an example, and this has been mentioned before, Lookout Point in the Waitaki was dealt with in 2013 in the form of a member’s bill in the name of Jacqui Dean. A splendid bill it was; I am sure I voted for it. The Auckland volcanic cones land, which is now under a completely different and separate piece of legislation, has different legal ownership, different status, and different management under a deal that was settled with iwi in 2012. And any number of pieces of road on the West Coast to which this bill pertains, which my colleague from the Greens made mention of, are now probably made very largely irrelevant because of one of the more onerous clauses in the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Act, which was kind of bulldozed through this House in the face of all reasonable questioning just last year and made changes to the ways, in fact, in which roads can be created on the West Coast under the ordinances of that bill.

Mr McKelvie also made mention of road reserves and the boundaries of those road reserves, and the issues that local councils have to deal with when things occurred in the past and where boundaries were perhaps not given the due regard that they would be given today. Things just happened and although there was a road reserve on paper, rights of way were established across it. When problems cropped up the councils had to go back and revisit those particular issues, the boundaries had to be redrawn, there were land swaps, and, of course, these types of titles that are placed in a road reserve are altered by councils from time to time anyway—under due process and in consultation with the people who elect those councils.

In actual fact I have been dealing with one such issue in my local rohe, I will call it. I cannot call it my electorate, obviously; I am not the electorate MP. But in the area in which I am based one such issue is happening at this very time. There is a controversy between some residents of a particular area and some other residents as to the nature and status of an old-formed legal road reserve that is now subject to some altered use. It is a bit of a headache for the council, but one which hopefully it will resolve to everybody’s satisfaction.

Dr Richard Worth, back in 2009, remarked: “This legislation deals with some very iconic areas of New Zealand. I am sure that not too many pieces of legislation can lay claim to resolving issues with three of our national parks, Kahurangi, Paparoa, and Westland; one of the most iconic features of Dunedin city, the Octagon; all of the volcanic cones dotted around Auckland city; and an offshore island marine sanctuary. The benefits of this legislation are considerable. There will be real benefits for people throughout this country, from the community in Port Chalmers, whose residents will see their local bowling club’s lease formalised, to the Otago Aero Club, which will have its future secured, and to the art aficionados in Auckland, who will appreciate the extension of the Auckland Art Gallery.”

So the benefits of this legislation are considerable. That is what the good Dr Worth stated, and indeed they might well be—or perhaps they might well have been, had something been done about it at the time. But I do not know what has happened over the last 6 years with regard to the issues pertaining to this bill as far as the Dunedin Octagon is concerned. Perhaps Mr Woodhouse could inform us of that—never mind the Port Chalmers bowling club, the Otago Aero Club, or indeed the Auckland Art Gallery. I have no idea, and I would hazard a guess that I am not alone, and that many members of this House probably have not followed those issues through in detail.

So that being the case, in closing I reiterate that New Zealand First will support this bill reaching the Committee of the whole House, where these matters might be addressed. And because we recognise that it could, the way things are going, be another 6 years before that Committee stage comes about, I do not intend to take up any more of the time of the House in delaying that prospect any further. Thank you.

It is a great pleasure to take a call in the second reading of the Reserves and Others Lands Disposal Bill. I do so not only as the previous Minister for Land Information but also as the National member of Parliament based in Dunedin, for whom the three issues that this bill relates to in the Dunedin area are very important. I want to take issue with both Mr Prosser and Ms Sage over the inference that this bill is somehow before us because the Government is running out of work to do. I suggest that quite the opposite is the case. As the Minister, I was working very hard with the Leader of the House, in what was a very crowded legislative programme in the lead up to the 2014 election, to bring this bill back and to have it passed into law.

There are some very important things in this bill, and Mr Prosser and his party seek to have the bill dismissed. Well, that will make him welcome at the Port Chalmers Bowling Club, I am sure. They will be buying drinks for him; as will, certainly, the members of the Taieri airfield, who are very keen to ensure that the changes being made through this bill are passaged in a timely manner. And indeed, they have been lobbying me—

💬 Hon David Parker: Come on—a timely manner?

Well, in a more timely manner. And I think Mr O’Connor did articulate the problem that has been faced by successive Ministers of Land Information, insofar as the bill is intended to be non-controversial, and there were a couple of matters that were quite the opposite. Mr Parker is the architect of the bill, and I would make no criticism about that because those matters did become apparent after the bill’s introduction.

I want to acknowledge and congratulate my friend and colleague the very smart Jacqui Dean, member for Waitaki. Mr Prosser has mentioned—but others may not be aware—that the issues concerning Lookout Point have been dealt with through a local bill, brought to this House by that hard-working member for Waitaki because of the importance that the Waitaki District Council and the people of Ōāmaru placed on those issues. I presume that Minister Upston will be bringing a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage to have the relevant clauses—18 to 20—removed, because, indeed, the effects of those clauses have already been made, thanks to that local bill.

I do want to turn to the issues related to matters in the greater Dunedin area and, in particular, the Octagon. I think the matter is important to the Port Chalmers Bowling Club, in respect of the recreation reserve and its ability to be able to formalise the leasing arrangements with the Dunedin City Council. I daresay they will not be building statues of Louise Upston down the main street of Port Chalmers any time soon—or of any National MP, for that matter—but they may be building statues in the Octagon.

💬 Hon David Parker: Was the Star fountain an illegal structure?

Well, Mr Parker raises a very good question about the Star fountain. It was built before I was born and when that member was in nappies—I think it was about 1963. But, actually, in order to tell that story, one needs to go back to the very early stages of the establishment of Dunedin City. In 1854, in fact, the Dunedin Public Lands Ordinance proclaimed that “it shall not be lawful to erect any building whatever within or upon the centre area of the square called Moray Place”. Of course, Moray Place shrouds what we now know as the Octagon, and it was a barren piece of land for about 10 years. Even after the gold money came rushing into the city in 1861, Bell Hill was a barrier between the Exchange and the Octagon, which really prevented the Octagon from being the true spiritual centre of the city that Charles Kettle envisaged. So when, with hammer and sickle, Bell Hill was cut through, not only creating a passage through the Octagon but also joining, effectively, the city together with one main street, the Octagon then became the centre of the city.

Despite that ordinance, it appears to have been completely ignored for over 100 years. In fact, Cargill’s monument was first erected, and then, when the central carriageway was erected, the monument itself was moved south to the Exchange. Of course, the Burn’s statue then fast followed, and other structures, in complete breach of, first, the Dunedin Public Lands Ordinance and then the reserves legislation that was passed in 1957, which confirmed the prohibition on the erection of buildings or other structures—they did not have to be buildings. Thanks to an endowment, I think from The Star, the Star fountain was erected in 1963. It cost about £5,000 in old money. I am sure Mr Parker and other MPs who grew up in Dunedin have fond memories of heading there on a Friday night and watching the display of the fountain and the magnificent colours to the tune of the Waltz of the Flowers, I think it was. I am trying to remember when it was. It was probably in the early 1990s. When the last big renovation of the Octagon was done, the Star fountain was taken away and a stage was erected. It was intended to be a permanent structure, but the 1957 legislation that this bill intends to remedy prevented that structure from becoming permanent. Years after it was built and it had become the centre of plenty of events—I think the Christmas lights were switched on from that stage, and so on—the council was required, or took it upon itself, to de-erect that structure because it was in breach of the present 1957 legislation. This bill changes that. That is actually very important.

I have been approached by those city leaders who are in charge of the commemorations for the First World War—the WW100 committee down there—and they have a plan, which is as yet not funded, but I am hoping that they will be able to raise some funds, to create a statue of a soldier and his mother looking down lower Stuart Street towards the Dunedin Railway Station. They have got a very elaborate structure planned but it will be unlawful to erect that structure in 2017 or 2018, as they hope to do, unless this legislation is passed. So I challenge Mr Prosser and his New Zealand First committee to come back to this House during the Committee stage and say why this is so trivial and unimportant to the people who are affected by it, including in Dunedin, that it should be dismissed. Certainly the Taieri Airport stakeholders have been on at me, and probably to many other Dunedin-based MPs, to have those changes made, and, indeed, I was talked out of following the clever thinking of Ms Dean in creating a local bill because of the undertaking that we had that this bill would be passed now that the controversial features of it have been removed.

I want to acknowledge John Bezett, probably the longest-serving Dunedin city councillor, his advocacy to get this thing through, and his colleagues. I also think that the stakeholders in the Winton Racecourse, the Braemar Hospital, and the Wairau Hospital will appreciate the many other benefits that will come out of this bill when it is passed. We have probably stacked up a few other reserves issues around the country in the time since this one was last fashioned, and I do hope that we can get back to the cycle of passing one of these bills, in a reasonably more timely matter, every Parliament or two. These are important matters for local communities. I support this bill. I am pleased to see it up. I am looking forward to its passage, and I commend it.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. It is an honour to take this brief call on this important bill, the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill, in its second reading. Labour supports it. I have heard previous speakers talk about it being a non-controversial bill, but looking at the process by which this bill has come to the House, it is anything but non-controversial.

Let us look at when the bill was first introduced. I note that it was introduced on 15 August 2008 by a fine colleague of ours, the Hon David Parker, who I understand did an enormous amount of work to bring the bill to the House at that point in time, so I want to acknowledge Mr Parker for that. We had the first reading on 10 March 2009 and the Primary Production Committee reported back on 29 September 2009. We are now in 2015.

Previous speakers have made comments around the delay taken to get this piece of legislation in front of the House. I acknowledge the previous speaker, Mr Woodhouse, saying there are competing interests when it comes to determining what is on the legislative programme. But, seriously, one of the risks that we run in delaying such important legislation, from my perspective, is that things change in our communities. I want to particularly point out the change in iwi Treaty settlements and ensuring that those parcels of land that are protected and reserved for Māori interests are protected through this piece of legislation.

Like I said, the Hon David Parker introduced the bill in 2008 to change the status of some selected parcels of land. We continue to support it though we have a few reservations, which we rightfully raised at the select committee. The select committee reported back in September 2009. This illustrates how desperate National is and how lacking it is in ideas.

It is so lacking, I guess, it probably pays to acknowledge the Ministers in charge of this bill. Firstly, we had Dr Richard Worth, who was the Minister in charge of the bill from that side of the House at the first reading. Since the end of his career, in scandal, it was taken over by Maurice Williamson, whose time as the Minister ended, again, in scandal. So it is probably the intention of the current Minister, the Hon Louise Upston, to make sure we get the passage of this legislation through as quickly as possible.

I want to touch on two parts of the legislation, which were raised at the select committee, namely by the number of submitters who presented, who overwhelmingly were not happy with the process. Labour joins with those submitters in saying that the process followed by the Auckland Council probably could have been done a wee bit better. Just to highlight what I mean by that, the Auckland Council under the then mayor, John Banks, thought that it could make some decisions and then bring to Parliament some legislation that retrospectively approved some of the decisions at council level—and we all know that legislation passed in retrospect throws its own risks and challenges.

I earlier mentioned how things change in our environment, given that we are now 6 years on since the select committee reported back, and I did mention briefly the importance of iwi, Treaty settlements, and the controversial land. I want, in my closing remarks, to make the point that in the Supplementary Order Papers that were introduced on this bill there are two particular parcels of land that I want to acknowledge: the Māhinepua Bay reserve land and the esplanade of Ōpua. I want to make sure that the Government of the day can assure the House that no individual, particularly of Māori interest, will be disadvantaged by the passing of this legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to be taking a call on this bill this afternoon, the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. The progression of this bill will be welcomed by the community groups wanting recognition of their right to use the land specified within this bill, and it will give community groups certainty. This bill actually passed through a previous Primary Production Committee, of which I am now a member. Like others referred to in the House this afternoon, I did not meet or know many of the people on that committee, and many of them are not here as parliamentary colleagues now. One of those members who was on the committee was my predecessor Shane Ardern, who was the chair, and I note that he has spoken on this bill before.

For me, this bill really deals with getting outcomes for communities, and I want to reinforce what Minister Woodhouse talked about before—about the importance of what we are trying to do here for the local communities. It does not give me any pleasure to sit here and listen to members of Parliament on the opposite side of the House talking about this bill having come back to the House because we are lacking in ideas. I am sure the members of those communities that are waiting on the outcomes of this bill are not sitting there thinking that there is a lack of ideas in anything that we are trying to do here.

This bill is designed to deal with non-controversial matters. It is largely administrative and technical, and it is actually the administrative and technical things that frustrate people in the community when they are trying to achieve something in their community—when they just want to get up and running, when they just want to get started, and when they just want clarity about how they are able to use land in certain situations. Certainly, our community groups do not need any more red tape than necessary, any more legal costs, or anything of such a nature put in their way when dealing with the administrative and technical matters that we are covering off in this piece of legislation.

Others who have spoken today have referred to the Rules Reduction Taskforce, and I know from the meetings that I have attended that nothing frustrates people in the communities more than having things standing in their way when they can see a need in their community to have something that is better and more exciting. It is frustrating enough for individuals, and it does become extremely frustrating for people who are working in the community. So it is important to deal with these issues so that communities know where they stand.

Communities can be parochial. I know that because I come from Taranaki, and people often tell us that Taranaki people are parochial. That is because they are proud and they actually see practical solutions. I would suggest Taranaki is no different from the communities in Dunedin and in Winton that are being referred to today, which are really proud of where they live and of where they are placed, and which want these issues sorted out so that they can get on with their projects.

I really would like to take issue with the question of relevancy in the New Zealand First member’s presentation, when he asked how relevant this legislation is. This is really relevant for the people who live in those communities and who need this legislation to happen. The member also referred to the fact that life has gone on. Life does not go on for the communities that are involved. We might be busy every day taking care of the things that we need to do, looking at other bills and looking at other pieces of legislation, but for the people in those communities who are working hard to try to get these things done, life does not go on.

When I look at the places and the needs of these communities for getting this piece of legislation passed, we are looking at things like art galleries. We are looking at things like reserve land. We are looking at things like bowling clubs and racecourses—obviously, the Taieri Airport is part of this. We are looking at things like health boards that are looking to better utilise land for health and disability services. A lot of people in those communities are actually volunteers and they are actually working in the interests of the whole community. From my experience in my electorate, when I go around, it is the volunteers of these communities who actually keep those communities up and running, and we should not make things any more difficult for them than we need to. It is all about keeping the communities running. They do it for the love of it. Those people in that bowling club are actually doing that particular activity because they know it is going to make something better and special for their community. So I think it is an absolute no-brainer that we move forward with this bill.

The controversial sections have been removed, as we have heard about this afternoon. This seems to be a piece of non-controversial legislation. I have not been privy to any of the submissions, in terms of being present, but it seems as if we have come out with a piece of legislation here that is very, very sensible moving forward. I think Government has an important role in dealing with authorisations, transfers, and validations of matters relating to Crown land, reserves, and other land held for private and public purposes. This Government takes the role very seriously, and it is now moving this bill forward following a lengthy select committee process. It has been a lengthy process, but it does not make it any less important for those people who are working to get this done.

When we look at things like the Winton Racecourse in Southland—clauses 56 to 58—this will provide wider community and independent input into management of the racecourse. Under these clauses, the Minister of Conservation will be able to appoint, at any one time, up to five trustees for the racecourse, and will be able to limit each appointment to a 3-year period. Currently, three trustees are appointed for life, and responsibility for their replacement lies with the Minister of Conservation. To me, it is not productive for a community to have people appointed to a board for life and to have somebody else outside that community having to take that responsibility when those people either come to the end of their life or when they come to the point where they are just unable to do the job any more. So it is just common-sense, non-controversial legislation that we are trying to take care of here.

Reserves and other lands disposal legislation is enacted from time to time, as matters arise, in order to effect non-controversial changes, and when a land issue cannot be dealt with in any other legislation. For that reason alone, it is very, very important that we keep moving with this piece of legislation. It deals only with authorisations, transfers, and validations of matters relating to Crown land reserves or other land that is held for public and private purpose, and I just think that the people in those communities would be very, very grateful if we kept this bill moving forward. It is my pleasure to speak this afternoon and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

The last speaker said that life does not go on for communities. I hope that they were not holding their breath during the 7-year delay that we have had so far with this bill, otherwise those members would have turned cold and blue like the members of the National Government. [Interruption] I have got to liven this debate up. It is getting a bit quiet in here, is it not?

You know, it is somewhat sad. As other members have noted, I was actually the Minister—I was considerably younger—when I introduced this bill in the House on 15 August 2008, I am told. A Reserves and Other Lands Disposal bill is meant to be a mechanism whereby Parliament tidies up things that have gone wrong in the status of pieces of land, most of which are generally reserves. Occasionally those pieces of land have been wrongly described as to reserve status, and so they cannot be used for the purposes for which they were intended. Pieces of land to which this applies crop up periodically throughout the country, and there is generally a piece of legislation like this that tidies up a lot at the same time. It does not mean to say that no one disagrees with the outcome in respect of any one piece of land, because there are always a few naysayers—not always, but often—who say that the opposite to that which the Crown thinks is the case is, in fact, correct.

Indeed, there are a number of bits of land that have had their status changed or clarified pursuant to this legislation where there was discontent. One example was in respect of the Auckland Art Gallery development, where there was controversy as to whether a relatively small encroachment on to the adjacent Albert Park by the extension or the renovation of the Auckland Art Gallery was to be permitted. The Auckland City Council thought it was legitimate. The Labour Government of the day, with the agreement of other parties, agreed, and that is why it found its way into this bill—to clarify that uncertainty.

Another one that has hung around for a long, long time—and shows why this bill ought to have been progressed earlier—relates to what is described in this bill as Lookout Point land, but what is colloquially known in the Ōāmaru region as Forrester Heights. Because this bill was so delayed in Parliament, a lot of the agreements for sale that the Waitaki District Council had in respect of selling that land fell over. It had a clause that said that the subdivision had to be completed by a certain date and that it was subject to the title being granted, which effectively meant that the status of the land as being endowment land held for whatever purposes the council wanted to put it to—including its sale and turning it into money for purchasing other assets—needed to be made clear before that subdivision could proceed.

Because there was such delay on the part of this Parliament, occasioned by the National Government not giving this bill a reading, those agreements for sale and purchase passed their critical date and they were voided, and those lands cannot now be resold at the same price. As a consequence, the Waitaki District Council has quite a hole in its budget, with the money already having been spent, mainly on the restoration of the Ōāmaru Opera House. That particular saga dragged on for so long that a local bill had to be presented by Jacqui Dean, covering exactly the same clauses and putting an additional cost on the parliamentary system, because it had to be done again separately, and this also caused a fee that had to be paid to the Parliament, as is the case with every local bill. So the Waitaki District Council suffered the double blow of both having its land sales fall over because of delay and then having to pay a fee in respect of a local bill to do what this bill was designed to do.

Another example—and I may bring forward a Supplementary Order Paper in respect of this—is that for some historical reason that I do not think anyone quite understands, the Otago Aero Club land status is unclear, and this bill makes it clear that the land does belong to the Otago Aero Club rather than anyone else. But then the Crown has got its hand out at the side and says: “Oh, if in the future the Otago Aero Club decides to sell its land, half the proceeds of sale have got to be paid back to the Crown.” I would hope that we could get the agreement on both sides of the House, Mr Woodhouse, to have an amendment to that particular clause in the bill—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Come and lobby me.

Sorry?

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Come and lobby me.

Come and lobby you. This is in clauses 45 and 46 of the bill. New section 9(2A), to be inserted into the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Act 1973 by clause 46, says that “if the Taieri Airport Trust sells the land, it must pay half the net proceeds of the sale into a Crown Bank Account.”, and the only reason that is in there is that the Crown said that it would not do it otherwise. So there is no principle lying under it. It is some sort of unlikely future eventuality that in the end the Taieri Airport Trust agreed to, but I am sure that the member Mr Woodhouse would understand that it is an issue that vexes Mr Julian Smith, amongst others, and that it is quite unjust. So I hope that we can agree to an amendment to remove the words “However, if the Taieri Airport Trust sells the land, it must pay half the net proceeds of the sale into a Crown Bank Account.” It would be a better bill for that.

The other mistake that was made in respect of this bill actually occurred in the Primary Production Committee, and that was to insert into the bill at that late stage provisions relating to Ōpua esplanade reserve land, which was inserted in the select committee through proposed clauses 34A, 34B, and 34C. The bill that went to the select committee did not have that in it. The select committee was somehow convinced that it should go in there, but it was quite controversial. It changed legal rights in respect of that piece of land in a way that plenty of people up north thought was wrong. So it should not have been put in this bill, particularly because all of the people who were of a different view never got the opportunity at the select committee to put the opposite point of view. So I am pleased that the Government has now agreed to bring forward a Supplementary Order Paper to take out those clauses 34A, 34B, and 34C, which were inserted at the select committee.

This is not particularly controversial or significant legislation, but it is the sort of machinery of government legislation that should be passed promptly. I have already given you the instance of the losses, which would go to many hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, that have been occasioned to the Waitaki District Council because of the lack of alacrity in passing this bill. I am sure that there have been other losses in other parts of the country caused by the uncertainty that has occurred in the period from 2008 until now. From 2008 until now is 7 years—7 years of delay. It should have been cleaned up by 2009 at the latest. Indeed, had the Government come to the Labour Opposition and to the other Opposition parties and said “Look, we want to get this piece of legislation through. It’s not controversial. You’ve all agreed to it at earlier readings of the bill, or just about all of you have agreed to it. Let’s not muck about. Let’s actually get this through. Let’s not have the full length of speeches taken in the debate. Let’s just do our duty and get certainty.”, we would have agreed. We would have agreed. This would have been done years ago, but this feckless Government did not have the wit to come and say: “Look, you guys, you actually introduced this bill. Can we get it through?”. We would have cooperated.

After those sage words of advice from David Parker I will gladly take my 10 minutes to talk about some aspects of this bill. The previous speaker, I guess bright-eyed and bushy-tailed back in 2008, introduced the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. Here we are today, and thank goodness we are not debating Power New Zealand policy or any of those other ideas that the member was proposing.

As I read through this bill, as the member for New Plymouth, I note that there is a section in this bill entitled “Sugar Loaf Islands Marine Protected Area”—clauses 42, 43, and 44—that has been deleted by the Primary Production Committee in its consideration of the bill. I bring out this point because this bill is being promoted to bring contentment around land issues that individuals or councils need to have straightened out and sorted. But the reason why these three clauses were deleted by the committee is that they created discontent. Perhaps it was done in all good faith, and maybe not understood why at that particular time when the bill was introduced, but certainly as time progressed it became very clear. As I read through the commentary of the committee under that heading “Sugar Loaf Islands Marine Protection Area”—which for those who do not know where that is, it is just off Port Taranaki, 1.5 kilometres offshore from the fantastic city of New Plymouth, or Ngāmotu, as these islands are also referred to. The committee—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Is there a polling booth there?

Actually, prior to European arrival in the area, iwi did live on that great island, offshore from that great city. There was also a whaling station. In fact, when James Cook came around New Zealand he looked there, in 1770, at the guano deposits. They reminded him of the way that sugar in Europe was stored in heaps or loaves. He named the islands the Sugar Loaf Islands. I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would like to know the reason why. This issue around the Sugar Loaf Islands is very important. The committee said, regarding the Sugar Loaf Islands: “We recommend the deletion of clauses 42, 43, and 44 from the bill. Removing these clauses has the support of all the parties who made submissions on these clauses of the bill. This would allow further consultation with all affected parties, and enable the Government response to the report of the Ministerial Review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 to be incorporated in any future resolution of this matter.”

So we go back to the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004—the legacy of the caring and sharing party opposite. Peter Moeahu, a colourful and well-liked leader in our community, who comes from Te Ātiawa, noted that the Foreshore and Seabed Act has had no bearing on the already good relationship that he has established with the Department of Conservation and the New Plymouth District Council over the Sugar Loaf Islands. This relationship has protected interests and ensured involvement in the management of the islands. That has been taking place through all these years, and then the Foreshore and Seabed Act just overrode all of that. This is what the bill says, in clause 43—“Transfer of land to the Crown”—that is the heading of clause 43—“The fee simple estate in the following land is transferred from the Taranaki Regional Council and vested in the Crown:”. Further down, in subclause (2) it says: “The fee simple estate”—and it names a number of the islands—“is transferred from the New Plymouth District Council and vested in the Crown.” The reason why these clauses were deleted from this bill is that these islands were incredibly important and significant to local iwi, to Te Ātiawa, and to Taranaki. Members on the other side, when considering the Foreshore and Seabed Act, missed that. Then it was included in this bill, to vest the ownership of those islands in the Crown. I am sure Peter Moeahu and others of Taranaki and Te Ātiawa would have come and presented to the committee to say: “We want those islands to be vested back to us.”

It is this Government—this Government, this National Government—that has done more for Māori than the previous Government. I have to tell the story that back in 2009 the Hon Chris Finlayson, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, came to meet the iwi of North Taranaki. He heard from their lips and from their hearts the story of the Land Wars that started 150 years prior, on 17 March. He said to them: “We want to sign the head of agreement on the 150th commemoration date of the commencement of those Land Wars, in order to start to redress and peel back the issues and the harm that happened.” In August 2014—and, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will know and see how relevant this is to my speech—it was reported that the Crown had signed a deed of settlement for the historical Treaty claims of Te Ātiawa at the Rangiātea complex in New Plymouth. The Crown was represented by the Hon Chris Finlayson, who is held in the highest of regard by iwi in Taranaki. The deed signing was witnessed by the New Plymouth member of Parliament, Jonathan Young. The settlement provides—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Name-dropper.

Name-dropper? I drop the name of the Hon Chris Finlayson any time I can. He is such an excellent member of Parliament and excellent Minister. The settlement provides for the joint vesting of Ngāmotu Sugar Loaf Islands in Te Ātiawa and Taranaki iwi. The joint vesting of Ngāmotu was supported and approved by the New Plymouth District Council and the Taranaki Regional Council after consultation with the public. So here we see a redressing. The best thing I can say is that in this bill there are three deleted clauses, because they return to the iwi of Taranaki and the iwi of Te Ātiawa those historic lands that they hold so precious. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.