Woods Megan: Wellington Town Belt Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Wellington Town Belt Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9833. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill and I mean that genuinely this time. I think that most members actually enjoy—one of the enjoyable moments of taking a call in this House is on local bills. Usually they are bills that local people have worked tirelessly for and are about what a community wants and you know that there is a great deal of individual and community effort behind a local bill actually making its way to the floor of the House. So I would like to commend the people who have worked tirelessly to bring this bill to the floor of this House the Wellington City Council for being the sponsor of this bill and I could not not commend my colleague Grant Robertson the MP for Wellington Central who has proved Rachel Hunter right—that it will not happen overnight but it will happen. As a candidate in 2008 he tirelessly campaigned on this issue and indeed mentioned it in his maiden speech that he gave to this House when he first became an MP. So I would like to commend Grant’s work and the fact that he has seen this through and that after 8 years of battling away we are actually seeing those protections given to what is an important piece of legislation.I think that what we are seeing here is the importance that people in cities place on areas such as the Wellington town belt within their city and what important spaces they are. We are also seeing the complexities because many of these spaces are in fact governed by their own trustees and indeed in some cases Acts of Parliament which do require this House to get involved—I can see you are enthralled Mr Deputy Speaker—in any changes. And there are some very technical changes that have needed to be made but fundamentally what the deeds and the legislation are all about is making sure that we ensure that these spaces endure for future generations that they do not get eroded as our cities spread and grow and intensify and that we do ensure that we keep these spaces dear.This is very much keeping to the spirit of how and why it was that throughout New Zealand we have a number of spaces like the Wellington town belt in those cities that were part of the New Zealand Company’s plan for settlement—and given Edward Wakefield’s dream of the utopia that he was going to create in New Zealand these spaces were very important. In the 1840s when Edward Gibbon Wakefield was drawing up his plans for the New Zealand settlement he was dreaming about a place where public space would be just that: public space where the park lands would not just be the preserve of the rich and the elite as they were in mid - 19th century Britain. In the colonies—in the new world—we would have these open to a number of people. This was driven by a lot of the health concerns that were rampant in 19th century Britain of course; that overcrowding was what was happening to populations in cities in Britain and that the new world would offer something different. They were called the “lungs of the city” by Edward Gibbon Wakefield who imagined that is what these reserves that would be established in the colonies would be.But you have to say he did have his eye on the main chance. It was not just health and the desire to open the lands for the people; he did also recognise that reserve lands were a good way of maintaining property values within a settlement and keeping prices up. I guess he saw externalities in providing good protections and good recreational space to people who were moving into the cities of the new lands. But I think in many ways the vision remains that lay behind why we have these reserves throughout New Zealand—in my own city Hagley Park is one of these reserves—and the protections that this bill gives to ensure and to modernise this reserve will maintain very much what is needed.If we go through these they are to “provide a transparent statutory basis for the Council’s trusteeship and management of the Wellington Town Belt” on behalf of the inhabitants of Wellington. I think we are seeing this emerge with the number of trust deeds—that there does need to be some clarification and some updating of exactly what that trusteeship and management looks like in the 21st century and to maintain those original 19th century ideals that lay behind why it was that these spaces were created. But it is also to “impose on the Council responsibilities and powers to protect manage and enhance the Wellington Town Belt.”I think one of the anomalies that other members have mentioned and I am sure that many others in their speeches after me will also mention is that in the desire to protect the town belt and to make sure that there was not an erosion of this space it was as Grant Robertson said “frozen in time”; the ability to add to this major asset for the city did not exist nor to increase the space. I think that is something that we all in this House can look on and sensibly see that if there is a desire to add to the town belt in Wellington that this is a positive thing and that we should not have a trust deed that stands in the way of doing it. That is something that needs to be tidied up.One of the other things if we look at clause 8 of the bill that provides a clear description of its legal status—the key element of this is: “The Council holds the Wellington Town Belt on behalf of the inhabitants of the city of Wellington as trustee of the trust created by the Town Belt Deed.” All this sounds incredibly dry and in many ways it is. But in many ways it is about the preservation for future generations. This is not dry; this is important. This is about our responsibility to ensure that it is not only people who have gone before us and ourselves who can enjoy these spaces but also that we do indeed ensure that they remain.For a local bill there were a number of submissions to the select committee. To have 30 submissions on a local bill I think probably shows the political engagement of this particular area of New Zealand and the fact that the chance to submit will never be lost on a Wellingtonian. I think that is probably one of the things that it shows—to receive 30 submissions on this and only two of them against the bill in its entirety. But it being a bill about central Wellington the submissions did offer some very useful suggestions along the way and some tidy-ups were made. Mr Simpson mentioned it in his speech—one of the things that struck me as a non-Wellington member of the select committee was the passion of the people who did come and speak to the committee; the people for whom this is a very special part of their city showed that this was something that they were more than willing to give up their time to make a submission on and come to the committee and have their voices heard in their desire to ensure that this space is preserved for future generations. So I would like to commend those people and to thank them for their work.Grant Robertson has talked about some of the changes that were made at select committee; he spoke specifically about clause 23 and about how some of the changes that were made to clause 23 now reflect the status quo rather than an improvement that could have been made. That was in many ways an opportunity lost. None the less because our member for Wellington Central says so Labour is very happy to commend this bill to the House.