Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill, Riccarton Racecourse Bill

I move, That the Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill and the Riccarton Racecourse Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bills. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bills be reported to the House by 7 March 2016.

The Christchurch housing market has been experiencing significant pressure from the time of the major earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Rebuild activity is well under way, particularly in the residential sector. There is a parallel between this bill in the housing space and the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Bill that has just been introduced by my colleague Gerry Brownlee, who has been leading the huge recovery work in that city. Good progress has been made on the residential recovery. If we look at the building consent figures, we saw them soar to four times their normal historical levels. New supply, though, has been disproportionately in the higher price brackets, and this bill is aimed at not just increasing supply but also ensuring that we grow supply in the range that is more affordable.

Although I am happy with the overall progress of the residential rebuild, which has involved hundreds of millions of dollars of investment by Housing New Zealand, which has involved the use of temporary housing on reserves, and which has involved massive repair work and programmes, I am concerned that we need to do more to produce more houses at the affordable end of the market. The majority of the homes that were, in that classic Canterbury phrase, “munted” were actually homes that were older and in the more affordable range. It is typically the more affordable stock that actually provides an entry point for people looking to purchase their first home. We have worked with the Christchurch City Council on the Christchurch Housing Accord to help bring on stream new housing developments. Just last week in the central city I was with Mayor Lianne Dalziel turning the sod on some of the residential development in the central business district, between the four avenues. There remains a further need, though, to increase the supply of housing at the affordable end, and also housing that is in reasonably close proximity to the city.

The board of trustees that governs the Riccarton Racecourse contacted me with a proposal to convert part of the racecourse into housing development. Its proposal involves building at least 600 new homes on the site, and in discussions with the Government it agreed that a minimum 30 percent, or 180, of these homes will be targeted at the more affordable end of the market. It also allows the land to generate additional income for the Riccarton Racecourse board. This income can be used to not only reinvest in the facilities of the racecourse but provide infrastructure assets that are important to the broader part of Christchurch and provide greater support for racing activities. This housing development will provide a significant number of new homes for Christchurch, and the Government’s position is quite consistent that supply is actually at the core of addressing affordability issues. This is especially true, as I have said, for houses that are at the more affordable end of the market. The Government has its very successful HomeStart scheme that has had a very high level of pick-up in Christchurch, but we want to make sure that there are homes for those people who are eligible for those grants.

The Riccarton Racecourse is a reserve governed by both the Christchurch Racecourse Reserve Act 1878 and the Reserves Act 1977. These Acts pose a barrier to the board’s housing proposal, and the best way to address that is through legislative change. Combined with the current pressure on the Christchurch housing market, this creates a unique situation, and we believe legislation is the best way in which to allow this housing development to proceed. It is worth reflecting on the fact that at the time that the Riccarton Racecourse was established and the legislation was passed by this Parliament, in 1878, the racecourse was a long way from the city. It was 20 years before the first car came to New Zealand, and nobody would ever have envisaged that the city would grow so much that the racecourse would now be well within the city limits. It is now only a short drive to the city. It is nestled within a vibrant suburb with good access to schools, to local shops, and to other communities and facilities. It is exactly the kind of location where new housing is needed, and I put to the House that to have this land underutilised, sitting vacant, is actually not the best use of this country’s resources.

It is a long-established rule of this Parliament that any amendment to an Act that has been passed as a local bill must be promoted by the relevant local authority. I want to inform the House that the Christchurch City Council has agreed to support the development and to promote the local bill—the Riccarton Racecourse Bill—to make the necessary changes to the local Act. The Riccarton Racecourse is also subject to a right of first refusal under Ngāi Tahu’s settlement legislation, and we have gone to some care with these bills to ensure that that right of first refusal is recognised and protected.

Finally, I do want to acknowledge the Business Committee for agreeing to consider these bills being developed as cognate bills. In fact, as an older member of the House for some time, the way in which the Business Committee is able to make pragmatic decisions of that sort to enable a single debate and process through the House and select committee just makes common sense. Given neither bill can achieve its aims without the other, it is appropriate that they are considered as a single legislative package by this House and by the select committee. This is pragmatic legislation that is designed in such a way that it will support racing in Canterbury. It supports the earthquake recovery and it results in more sensible use of this area of land, and I commend both bills to the House.

I am happy to take a call on this, as the member of Parliament in whose electorate the Riccarton Racecourse sits—an important part of the Wigram electorate. Labour will be supporting this legislation, and I am pleased to see that both of these bills have been put together into one package. I echo the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery’s sentiments that it was a sensible decision of the Business Committee to package these together.

We know that in Canterbury post-earthquake we have had to open up more land for housing—that there is a need for us to develop new areas. What we have seen is the westward shift of the city—the southward and the westward shift—as well as some movement to the north, and with this comes great complexities.

What I would like to acknowledge in the course of this speech is the proactivity of the local residents who live around the Riccarton Racecourse, who, even before this legislation was introduced, had already held a number of meetings around this. I have been involved in a number of meetings with the local residents, the likely developer of the land, and the board and members of the Riccarton Racecourse itself to talk through some of the issues and some of the reservations that may be held by the present residents around what having a new development on their doorstep means. I think this is something that any community feels when there is a likelihood of a new development, and I would like to talk through some of those very local concerns that come through, but I would also like to acknowledge the site that we are talking about today.

It is the site of the Riccarton Racecourse, which, of course, is the home ground, if you like, of the Canterbury Jockey Club. It is the oldest and, for a long time, the most pre-eminent, of jockey clubs and racing institutions in New Zealand. It is a very important part of Christchurch’s and Canterbury’s history. If you look through the members of the club, they certainly were some of the power-wielders of Canterbury, in terms of its establishment and its set-up. What we do know is that very early on in its history the decision was made, on 4 November 1854, that a club was needed. I will note that that date is my birthday, although the year is not the same, so I would just like to establish a connection there—although I can assure everyone I was not born in 1854.

The club was taken to its present site in Riccarton, which was then very much on the outskirts of the city. It was very much removed from the city, as it stood in the 1850s. It was probably hard for many of the people who made the decision to place a racecourse that far from what was then Christchurch City to imagine that this would ever grow—for the city to meet it. But it has, and the earthquakes have very much hastened that process, as we have seen development spring up all over the western suburbs of Christchurch.

Hornby, Riccarton, Yaldhurst—these are all suburbs that are teeming and heaving with new subdivisions, and my concern is that the infrastructural needs of these suburbs, these neighbourhoods, and these communities are not being kept up with. When this development was first mooted, there was a lot of talk about it being put through, under what was a really good idea between the Crown and Christchurch City at the time, as an exemplar development. Christchurch, and Canterbury more generally, was going to be rehoused through what were going to be known as exemplar developments, where the highest standards of urban design were going to be employed, where there was going to be a good proportion of affordable housing, and where there were going to be well-defined transport links that would see these neighbourhoods and these communities be fit for the 21st century, and we would see that these would be neighbourhoods that would survive the test of time.

But, unfortunately, we in Christchurch have seen only one of these exemplar developments take shape and take form, in Halswell. I would have liked to see this Riccarton development take shape under that, because the residents do have real concerns about what putting another 600 houses into this part of Christchurch with no consummate transport planning is going to mean for their neighbourhood. We know that many of the main roads around this area—Yaldhurst Road and other roads—are already at capacity. They are barely coping with the amount of traffic that they are having to carry post-earthquake, let alone putting another 600 homes into this area, which could see another 1,200 cars, feasibly, come on to this site. This is something that is of concern to the residents, and I would like to see that this is something that is considered through the select committee process as we hear those submissions.

One of the other considerations that the residents had was around what it would mean for them. They have bought their homes relatively near the edge of the city, by a racecourse. Some of them did that because they liked racing, but many of them did that because they would be next to a beautiful reserve, and they would have the use of that reserve and there were all the things that they could do in this space. The racecourse, over a period of time, has been very welcoming in terms of letting local people in to use the amenity that the racecourse provides to that community. So there were some concerns from residents that they were going to lose the capacity for dog-walking there, for walking themselves, and for all kinds of recreational use that the Riccarton Racecourse is used for. But I am happy to say that is something, through the proactivity of the residents of this area, that we have been able to talk through with the intending developer and with the management and boards of the racecourse itself, and residents have been able to see that allowing this development to go ahead is not going to impinge on their recreational enjoyment of the land that remains.

I know that there are number of people who are going to be very excited about buying a house that will literally look over the starting line of a racecourse, because some of the homes will actually have a view out to where the long races at Riccarton start. Grant Robertson might like to buy a home there. He tells me that Riccarton has never been a lucky course for him. On one of my very rare visits to the races I put a dollar each way on a nag from Burnham, and it paid four to one, Grant, so I might need to take you—

💬 Grant Robertson: Four to one?

Four to one. I might need to take you to Riccarton one day and show you what a lucky course that can be, Mr Robertson.

But one of the things that we really do have to consider in this is that the Government is talking about this housing development being part of the plan for affordable housing in Christchurch and in Canterbury. But this really comes back to not just Canterbury but to what it is that this Government thinks is affordable housing. The benchmark that is being set here is $450,000. For many, many, many Cantabrians $450,000 to get into your first home is simply unaffordable. This is a Government that is setting its definitions of what “affordable” is outside the reach of ordinary New Zealanders, and this is being encompassed in this bill. So when this Government talks the big talk about affordable housing being available on this site, let us bear in mind what that is and think about what the mortgage repayments would be for someone on an average wage, and whether that is affordable. For most people that will simply be out of their reach.

I am eager, as the local member of Parliament for this area, to keep the strong engagement that we have already begun before this legislation has even reached the floor of this House, with the local residents, with the racecourse, and with the probable developer around what it is that we can do to make this part of an already established and strong community. Because my part of Christchurch has had the opposite problems of many parts of Christchurch: it is not about people moving out; in my electorate, it is about people moving in. My challenge as a local member has been around how we can retain community, how we can retain strong neighbourhoods, and how it is that we can make sure that as the need for development caused by the earthquakes occurs we do not lose the good that we have got.

I am really looking forward to the select committee process, where local people do get to come and have their say on this. We might even like to go and hold our hearings at the Riccarton Racecourse, in an area and a facility that would—

💬 Grant Robertson: On race day?

Not on race day, Mr Robertson. But it was a facility where, actually, court proceedings were held in in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. As an undamaged facility in our city, over the last 5 years it has been very important. On a more sombre note, it was also the site where a number of the funerals of people who died in the February quakes were held, because it was one of the few large facilities that were standing in the immediate days after the February quakes. So it is an important part of the history of our last 5 years, it is an important part of the history of Christchurch more generally, and I want to see it be the best possible development it can be for the existing community. I am happy to commend the bill to the House.

We have been concentrating this afternoon on quite a bit of Christchurch legislation, and this is another piece of legislation—in fact, two pieces of legislation—that is going to further assist the regeneration of Christchurch after the dreadful earthquakes some 5 years ago. As chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee, I am very much looking forward to going to Riccarton to hear submissions on these composite bills, because I think the Minister for Building and Housing, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, really set out in his introductory speech in these first readings what an elegant and sophisticated solution this particular series of bills is, in terms of finding a nice answer to achieve several things.

Firstly, the position of the land at the Riccarton racing club that the board now administers, when it was first established back in the 1800s, was, of course, right out in the countryside, and it was a long way from what is now urban Christchurch. So the club has, in fact, a very large area of land there, and these bills will enable some 40 hectares of that Riccarton Racecourse area to be developed for housing—much-needed housing. Notwithstanding the comments of Dr Megan Woods, housing is needed, and I am sure that she acknowledges that. There will be other infrastructural issues that will result, but I am sure it is not beyond the wit of Cantabrians and Christchurch people in this House, and the Christchurch City Council, to actually work their way around them in order to take advantage of the opportunity presented by these two composite bills being passed by this House.

So we have the potential to make use of 40 hectares of what is now prime land that can be developed for residential housing in what is an urban environment within the city bounds of Christchurch. It will provide an opportunity for some 600 new homes to be constructed on land that is currently locked up due to legislative provisions made more than 100 years ago in this House. The Canterbury Jockey Club, that venerable institution that Megan Woods made mention of in her speech, will be able to free up some funds in order for money to be reinvested in infrastructure for the racing club, and the board, I am sure, will oversee that in due course. So that is a nice finessing of a situation that could not be provided for unless this legislation passes its way through the House.

When we go to Riccarton—and, as chairman of the committee, I do not have any objection at all to having hearings at the jockey club, at the Riccarton racing club; I think that that is probably very appropriate, and we may be able to align that with a tour of the site, maybe. The select committee is well-known for travelling to Christchurch, and we will look forward to doing so once again. If that means that our thorough and diligent scrutiny of this bill involves a trip to the racing club, then so be it. Far be it from us to prevent that occurring.

So these bills will revoke the reserve status that is currently in place over the land at the Riccarton Racecourse. The Government has been committed for a long time—in fact, since the earthquakes—to ensuring that every possible avenue for imaginative, innovative thinking and solutions can be applied to ease and provide for the future of Canterbury and Canterbury people, and this is another step along that way. So when the racing club board came to the Minister with this suggested option, I am pleased that he was quick to pick up on it. He took advice and has brought these composite bills to the House.

And, too, I want to just acknowledge the role of the Business Committee and the common-sense approach that it has taken in order to facilitate that these two bills be treated, effectively, as one piece of legislation, involving one series of debates, one session of select committee hearings, and one process. I think that is a common-sense approach, and it is a credit to the members of the Business Committee that they have enabled that to occur.

It is no secret that the Christchurch housing market has been under pressure for some time. The construction of a further 600 residential homes on this 40 hectares of land will go some considerable way to easing that pressure and in a timely manner. Although there has been an awful lot of progress made over the last few years and building consent figures have been at record highs in Christchurch, there is still much new housing required. So the board of trustees that governs the Riccarton Racecourse Reserve has been seeking opportunities to better utilise the land that they have stewardship over for some time. This neat little use of legislative finessing provides an opportunity for the racing club board to free up that land and then, at the same time, have up to 600 new homes built. Most of those—many of them—will be in that affordable bracket, that price range that has been so elusive to so many people for so long.

I am conscious that the racecourse is subject to Ngāi Tahu’s right of first refusal, and this right of first refusal will be acknowledged and established in Part 9 of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998. Acknowledgment of that is made under that legislation, and we will be considering those matters. My colleague Nuk Korako will be vigorously paying attention to matters that relate to Ngāi Tahu. He is a staunch and vocal advocate for the iwi, and I am sure that he will not be any less forceful in the keen scrutinising of this legislation as he is with every other piece of legislation.

This, on the face of it, appears to be what I think is a very good piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that has the ring of common sense around it, and I think that with the support of members across the House we should be able to find that a good result is achievable. The Government actually welcomes this proposal. It is an initiative that has actually come from the Riccarton Racecourse board itself, and it wants to use just part of its 123-hectare land bank in order to free up residential homes or the facility to build residential homes. The racecourse is going to benefit financially, Christchurch City will benefit via the creation of new residential homes, Cantabrians will benefit by having access to new residential properties, and it will be part of that regeneration of Christchurch that we have been talking about so much this afternoon. This is a bill that has all the hallmarks of good legislation about it. I am confident that as we go through the select committee process the committee will pay very careful and diligent attention to the detail of the bills, and we will, if fine tweaking and finessing are required of the legislation in any way, be giving very careful attention to those matters. I commend this bill to the House.

As I have commented before on Thursday afternoons, it is an increasingly good habit of this Government—and it has not got very many—to have bills talked about where there is common agreement. It is a very nice way to finish the parliamentary week in my view, so I am delighted to be standing in support of the Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill and the Riccarton Racecourse Bill. I am also really impressed with the number of members of the public who have come along to hear these two Christchurch bills. I am sure that they suddenly heard on the news—breaking news—that these bills were going to be debated and have come into Parliament to support the progress.

So these two bills, which—as the member who has just resumed his seat, Scott Simpson, correctly acknowledged—have been sensibly brought in tandem, propose to develop 38 hectares of the Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch for housing. About 600 homes are proposed to be developed under the process set out under the bill. Can I acknowledge, first of all, the Canterbury Jockey Club. My colleague Dr Megan Woods is a historian and has outlined the history of this great club extraordinarily well, so I will not go into further detail on that other than to just acknowledge them. I also want to acknowledge Megan Woods as the local MP responsible for this area. She, clearly, has better luck in the racing business than her colleague Grant Robertson, and certainly better than me. My horse is still racing, I think, actually; since the last time I put a bet on, it has not quite completed the race yet.

But, also, I want to acknowledge the way that Dr Woods has led and supported the community discussion around this. This is not an easy thing for people to have just imposed on them, so she has ensured that local people have had their voices heard in the establishment of the plan that drove the need for this legislation. I am sure she will also be encouraging people to make submissions so that if there are changes that can be made, particularly in terms of people’s access in and out of their own homes and the amenities that have operated within that area and in the future, that any of those issues can be resolved during the select committee process. I want to also acknowledge the Minister Dr Nick Smith for bringing this legislation to the House.

So the bill revokes the reserve status of this part of the Riccarton Racecourse. It enables the board to develop residential properties. It requires a portion of the residential development to be affordable, and I just want to correct Mr Simpson’s maths. It is proposed that 30 percent of the houses are affordable, which is around $450,000. I am not sure that “affordable” and “$450,000” work for everyone—they certainly do not work for me. But, actually, Mr Simpson said that most of the houses will be affordable—30 percent is less than 50 percent, which is half, so it is not most. Most is more than half; 30 percent is less than half. So a third of the proposed 600 houses will be “affordable”. I do not think that $450,000 is affordable, and I would really be supportive of a larger percentage of this development being in the genuinely affordable area. And, as Mr Simpson again correctly pointed out, there is a process for the Ngāi Tahu first right of refusal provisions under the Treaty settlement to be dealt with as part of this move to have residential property allowed.

I just want to speak on a slightly tangential topic, but I would really encourage the Local Government and Environment Committee, which is where this bill is proposed to be referred, to consider the point that is also being discussed at the Government Administration Committee at the moment in relation to another bill in the name of Dr Nick Smith. It has exactly the same provision in this bill. So Dr Smith has brought two bills to the House that change or amend the status of a very old trust that has been established under a single Act of Parliament. That is how things were done in those days, and my proposal is that they need not be done in a continuing way by a single Act of Parliament in the future. I do not think that it is any longer necessary to have Acts of Parliament to proceed with these issues.

So that is the challenge that I would put to the chairperson of the Local Government and Environment Committee, and we could have joint meetings with our select committee to discuss this point, because we are going to try and progress it. It raises the question of the legal status of boards of trustees. In these bills the board has been established under the 1878 Act, and it is simply continued under this legislation. There are minimal requirements for that board under clauses 5, 6, 11, and 12 of the Riccarton Racecourse Bill. In my view there is potential for the board of trustees to become an incorporated society. That way its actions would be within the established body of public law, rather than by a single Act of Parliament. In 1878, when this board was established, that was the way things were done, but my challenge to the Local Government and Environment Committee and to the whole of Parliament is to ask: is this still the best way to do things in 2015?

My research shows that there are about a dozen Acts of Parliament that have provisions in relation to racecourses. Most of them are in the South Island—heaven only knows why that is the case. But I consider that this bill should trigger a review of the status of their governance arrangements. With those concerns about the definition of affordability, about the low percentage of houses within this 600 house development that are required to be affordable, and with my challenge about the status of individual bills in Parliament, I commend and support the progress of this bill.

I rise to take a short call on the Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill and the Riccarton Racecourse Bill. It is great to be able to speak to these two companion bills this afternoon. And what an afternoon we have had, an afternoon of Canterbury rejuvenation and recovery, and it has been great to hear the discussions from both sides of the House about the economic recovery that is occurring down in Canterbury, the rebuilding that is occurring at pace, and what that means for the people of Canterbury. It was a huge list of economic activity. We heard a lot about the positive attitude that is emanating from the region of Canterbury, and it deserves to be celebrated.

Before we acknowledge somebody else shortly, I would like to acknowledge Gerry Brownlee, because these bills are part of his vision for the future of Canterbury. I see him very much as a statesman of the South Island, and he should be seen as such—a man of huge vision, a man who understands that enabling frameworks are critical for the success of a view of the future to come to pass. He understands the value of that, the value of talented people, goodwill, and he has an inexhaustible energy for working for the people of Canterbury.

And it is in that context that these two bills are to be discussed. We have heard already today how they fit with part of our vision for delivering more housing for the people of Canterbury and working in an effective way to get a solution that works, not only from a Government perspective but also from the organisations in Canterbury—in this case, the critical organisation of Ngāi Tahu, of course, and the Canterbury Jockey Club working together to get a sensible outcome for the land that is on the table for development.

We do need more housing in Canterbury. We have a fantastic track record as a Government in terms of responding to the challenges that befell that community a number of years ago—4,400 homes built in 2014, three times more than the long-term average and, of course, up 73 percent on the previous year. But it needs to be done because 13,000 homes were destroyed in those two earthquakes. It is a long and focused campaign to be able to get those rebuilt, and this bill is part of our ongoing strategy in that regard.

So the specific purpose of the Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill and the Riccarton Racecourse Bill companion bills—together they will provide the necessary authorisations to enable close to 40 hectares of the 123 hectare Riccarton Racecourse Reserve in Christchurch to be developed for housing. It has huge interest in the communities around Riccarton. Based on the numbers here this afternoon it has huge interest in the House, in Parliament, as well! These bills will revoke the reserve status of the land at Riccarton Racecourse and enable the residential development to take place on the site. But from what we have heard already from the two or three speakers who have spoken to these joint bills, it still enables the amenity value of the Riccarton Racecourse to be maintained and, arguably, enhanced, because wrapped around that racecourse will be modern new housing at both ends of the spectrum, including a third set aside for housing at a lower end, which is good.

It is very important when you look at the array of messages that you could impart on a bill such as this to know exactly the one that you want to draw out, but the one that I do want to highlight, just to conclude, is that I am delighted that we have acknowledged here the right of first refusal and first option for Ngāi Tahu. I think that, working in development with the Canterbury Jockey Club, they will come up with a vision that will work for the people of Canterbury. They know how to build houses for the people of Canterbury. I have been to Wigram. I have seen that vision, and it just reinforces that it is not only Housing New Zealand that has a view of how houses can be built; there are others out there from the community who know how to build for the people and build for the people in a way that will endure over time. I am sure that that vision will deliver something fantastic for Canterbury. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.