Perry Edwin: Masterton Trust Lands Bill — Second Reading Third Reading 
Perry Edwin: Masterton Trust Lands Bill — Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5199] 
EDWIN PERRY (NZ First) 
: 
 I will take a short call on the Masterton Trust Lands Bill because it will pass through the House quite quickly. I want to thank the member for Wairarapa Georgina Beyer for her explanation of the purpose of the bill. Historically this trust has performed well from its inception on April 24 1872 and it has always worked for the advantage of the Wairarapa and the Masterton district. When changes have been needed it has made them. One of the current changes is the extension of the boundaries and that was discussed in the Local Government and Environment Committee. 
My fellow MP Jim Peters who sits on that committee asked me to speak on the bill because of my involvement in the Wairarapa. The trust members are well qualified and have been around a long long time. They include Dr Owen Prior who was elected in 1974. He is very well known throughout the Masterton district and is involved in a lot of other community activities. Mr Gary Daniels and Mr Sadler are another two members. They are only three out of the 10 board members all of whom are well qualified to be on the board of the trust. 
I want to mention how well the trust performs. It performs very well for the community considering it is not part of the local district council. It is probably one of the few trusts throughout Aotearoa New Zealand that performs well for its local people. Currently it owns the Gull Petroleum building and the Woolworths building in Chapel Street. Cafe Char Char and 403 Queen Street are also owned by the trust. The trust is very well heeled and its financial and asset backing has proved to be a substantial provider of grants in the Masterton district. It also has involvement in the Repco NZ building which has just been completed and the Universal College of Learning. It has purchased the building that belonged to Artel Industries which closed down. It has been involved in Wakefield Radiology which is an exciting development for the district and it also owns the Radio House retail building. The most significant building it has involvement in and that has just completed is Aratoi. The trust’s contribution to the museum building was $1.3 million which is a huge amount of money for a local trust to supply. I will touch on some of the grants. The Wairarapa Cultural Trust received $280000; the building bursary $13500; and post-graduate study awards—a key thing for our young people today—$12600. 
The Masterton District Library and Wairarapa Archive which is another resource for local people got $10000. Hiona Intermediate School which has been struggling with regard to education was also awarded $10000. Makoura College received $20000 for its Teen Parent Unit—a unit that provides real community activity taking on young teenagers who have difficulty with the life skills they need to enable them to get on. 
The select committee touched on the auditor’s responsibility. The Auditor-General has appointed L H Desborough of Audit New Zealand to undertake the audit. He was to assess the judgments made by the board of trustees in the preparation of financial statements and whether the accounting policies were appropriate to the circumstances of the Masterton Trust Lands Trust and whether they were consistently applied and adequately disclosed which is important for an organisation as big as this one in terms of its assets. 
I want to talk briefly about the grants. Eighty grants have been handed out to the local community. The trust provides a lot for the Maori community. 
I just want to touch on a few of these: Hadlow Preparatory School te Kura Kaupapa Maori O Wairarapa Makoura College which I have already mentioned the Masterton District Brass Band the Masterton fire service Masterton schools Te Kohanga Reo O Ngati Hamua Solway College Sport Wairarapa te reo language programmes—and Maori members should listen to what I said there: not television programmes—and teaching women to make tukutuku panels. I must say that it was a struggle to get money for that. I know that the whanau was involved and here it is this trust which has been going for 130 years has provided it with a grant of $500. But $500 is something that such an organisation would never be able to get from some other place. No doubt it has applied for funding from all around the place and it got it from this trust. There is the balloon festival the skating rink the Takitimu ki Wairarapa kapa haka festival and the Wairarapa Forest and Bird Society. In my short reply on this bill I wish it all the best and thank the member for Wairarapa for bringing it to the House. 
Bill read a second time.