Auckland Harbour Board and Takapuna Borough Council Empowering Amendment Bill

Members, the House is in committee on the Auckland Harbour Board and Takapuna Borough Council Empowering Amendment Bill. Members, we come first to clause 1.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I just congratulate the member for the North Shore on bringing this bill to the House as the local member of Parliament, with a local issue that is supported widely across the electorate.

I won’t speak for too long on this particular bill, but I will say that despite the fact that there might not be a lot of keen interest across all of Auckland and the rest of the country for this, it is important to note that these types of bills are very important for acknowledging local issues. This particular one, the Auckland Harbour Board and Takapuna Borough Council Empowering Amendment Bill, certainly does that. For those that are watching the discussion in the committee, it is important to note that this bill amends the Auckland Harbour Board and Takapuna Borough Council Empowering Act 1923 to enable certain land owned by the Takapuna Boating Club Inc to be used for commercial purposes, and the bill would allow the land and boat club building at 17 Sir Peter Blake Parade, Bayswater, Auckland—the Bayswater clubhouse—to be used for commercial purposes, while requiring that the principal use of the land remains for community purposes. The land and boat club building is owned by the Takapuna Boating Club Inc, and clearly there was a keen interest for this to come to the House.

There are other members of the House who are much more intimately involved with this particular issue. I also acknowledge my colleague Shanan Halbert, who is the list MP based in Northcote and the former MP for Northcote, who is over the detail of what is happening in that part of Auckland. So I’m sure he will give a much more detailed committee stage speech during this debate. But for now, can I just say that Labour will be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to be speaking on what I’ve dubbed the “Takapuna Ice Cream Bill”, because that’s a fundamental change that takes place here. I would like to ask the member for North Shore some questions.

I guess, for context, for those watching at home, this is about a facility that’s been in this part of Auckland for nigh on 100 years. We’ll get into the history, maybe, in the third reading; it’s quite fascinating, really. But, at the moment, the land exists, and it exists for the purposes of things like boat sheds, public swimming baths, a social hall, or other community purposes. At the moment, Auckland Council are not able to run a commercial activity on this land, because it’s been set aside for community activities. But, sadly, over time, this beautiful old tannery that was moved—literally by hand to Takapuna, in pieces, and done by volunteers over a weekend, it really shows the power of community, and it is a great story and one well worth celebrating. This building has come into a state of disrepair and there’s a lot of work that’s required.

Rightly, people are asking the question, I think, “What is the right way to fund that?” What is the right way for us to raise the funds necessary to restore this beautiful, grand, old, three-storey building, where we hear stories at the Governance and Administration Committee of community dances and balls and all sorts of activities like that—what is the right way to fund this?

What this bill does is it provides a mechanism so that there can be commercial activities conducted at the location—hence “Takapuna Ice Cream Bill”; selling ice creams is a great example that one might think of—so that there can be some revenue raised to contribute towards the cost of restoring this beautiful, old building.

Of course, in time, this bill allows for the fact that it may come that the work is done, that the building is restored, and, of course, there’s still commercial activities taking place—and how should those funds be used? This is the area that I’m going to drill into a little bit over the course of the evening with the member. How should that extra money be used? It was an area that attracted, I don’t want to say “controversy”, but some attention during the select committee stage. We heard from submitters, we particularly heard from Auckland Council, and we heard from members within the select committee—some of them, former mayors not of Auckland, but of Wellington—that wanted to ensure—and I just want to go through the wording—

Tom Rutherford: The committee’s made up of them!

TIM COSTLEY: Well, the committee, Mr Rutherford, is made up of quite a few former Mayors of Wellington. But when we look at clause 4, replacement section 5—in particular, I’m looking at replacement subsection 5(2)(a) and (b) here—the original intent stands. In new replacement section 5(1), it says, look, the site still needs to be used “for the principal purposes of, boat sheds, public swimming baths, a social hall, or similar community purpose.” So what this is saying, as I understand it—and I welcome the member’s views on this—is that we can’t transform this to be entirely used for commercial purposes. We can’t set up a three-storey mall, different layers of restaurants, and little outlets and eateries, and things. As much as that might be a great thing for the community, we can’t use that land because we have to adhere to the original purpose.

The money that is received from any commercial purposes that are done there, as a sort of a side act, a side show, a subpart of this—there’s a cafe run on the site of the boating club. This is a boating club that was the birthplace of many legendary New Zealand yachtsmen, like Sir Peter Blake and many others who have sailed for teams like Team New Zealand, Olympic classes; in fact, one was introduced through this boating club, but we’ll come to that later. But, if on the side of that, they want to run a cafe or an ice cream shop and sell the ice creams, we can retain some money, but it must be—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: What’s your favourite ice cream?

Tom Rutherford: Oh, it’s Gold Rush.

TIM COSTLEY: Well, Gold Rush is good; Orange Choc Chip. I’m interested to hear the member’s favourite ice cream, if that’s where the member wants to go. I didn’t hear any questions from that member, actually, when she spoke; it’s a bit of a shame.

The point is here, as replacement subsection (2)(b) states that the money received from commercial purposes should be used for the maintenance of the land, the maintenance of any buildings or any other improvements on the land—so looking after the land that sits right on the side of the inlet there, the building itself, and we know that’s where a significant amount of money needs to go as we look to rebuild and rejuvenate that old, grand building.

Then replacement subparagraph (iii), “community purposes”, that’s the area I’d like to ask the Minister about, because it is of particular note, and that’s where the select committee landed. [Time expired] Mr Chair?

The Hon Simon Watts—you didn’t have enough ice cream in your—

Look, I just want to acknowledge the member, and I do apologise for standing up and answering it, but I thought it was useful because I think the points you’re raising were very important, and I will cover that.

Firstly, I just want to make some brief remarks in the context of what I hope to be an uncontroversial committee stage to the bill. This bill has enjoyed unanimous support of the House, and I do hope that that continues. I think, more importantly, the people of the North Shore certainly appreciate all of the members in this House and the support that they are providing for this.

While this bill is tiny—it’s got one part and one associated schedule; all in, about 2½ pages—for reference, the Hansard on the first and second readings of this bill were about 24 pages. So as you can see, many times longer than the bill. But not in itself, it is quality not quantity, and we’re going to work our way through those clauses.

The bill makes a number of changes to Part 5 of the 1923 Act, and replaces Schedule 1. It amends the use of the Takapuna Boating Club—which I think was the question that the member was referring to—located on Sir Peter Blake Parade. I think that just acknowledges some of the history—which we may get into a little bit later on—but it allows it to be, in effect, used for a much broader purpose, and that’s obviously really, really important. I guess, if you get to the fundamental point of the bill, the changes in the building is governed by very restrictive legislation, which means it can’t generate income to, in effect, maintain and wash its own face. That is an issue, and this bill will change that. That will give the boating club more flexibility to run the premises in a way that can be sustained.

Look, I do want to acknowledge that there is, I believe, quite a large crowd watching online live at the moment from the North Shore. So I want to do a call out to Commodore Wendy Baker, who I know is watching; I know Ray Welson is there. I know a number of the club are sitting in the club rooms down the road watching this, and they’re very busy but they did make time to do that, obviously.

I just want to say—now they don’t want to jump ahead of the proceedings of the House, but I can tell you that if the committee does support this bill, then I know teams are literally going to be on the ground tomorrow starting to look at plans in regards to how to make this thing a reality. I think that’s pretty exciting.

Look, local bill, and I’m really proud to be able to shepherd this through the House. I want to acknowledge the Auckland Council and the members and the councillors involved, and the broader Auckland Council entity—they are the ones who have obviously drafted this bill. They strongly support this bill, they undertook a wide range of consultation on it, and, also, it’s been heavily consulted with our local community as well.

In regards to the question that was asked around clause 5(2) by the member, in terms of original purpose—and I think it is worth going into, because there’s been quite a lot of speculation around what type of activities you could actually do under clause 5(2) of the bill. But it is important, and I know that the select committee—and I want to acknowledge the Governance and Administration Committee. I want to acknowledge the members of that, particularly Rachel Boyack, who chaired that committee very ably, and I know that Cameron Brewer, Tim Costley, Andy Foster, Celia Wade-Brown—I acknowledge your contribution. And many others—many, many others—were part of this.

But going back to clause 5(2), a wide range of activities, and primarily, what I envisage the club are looking to do is to create a cafe-style environment to be able to—

Shanan Halbert: Ha, ha!

Hon SIMON WATTS: There’s some laughs coming from the other side of the House, coming from Northcote. And I know there’s a little bit of tension between North Shore and Northcote, but I’ll just close this out and then I’ll let the member for Northcote come in, because I know that he is equally a big supporter of this bill.

The purpose is primarily going to be the cafe format. There was a swimming pool there; it was a saltwater pool—obviously tidal—and my understanding is that the club have assessed that they probably will not be able to reopen that. But you never say never—do you?—in these contexts. They used to be quite good, and that’ll be a big thing. So, primarily, a cafe—that’s going to be the original purpose, and that’s what’s going to be done under clause 5(2).

Clauses 1 to 5 and the Schedule