Simpson Scott: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2843. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee it gives me no pleasure at all this evening to be standing in the Parliament of New Zealand supporting—reluctantly—retrospective validating legislation for an albeit sincere and non-malicious mistake but a mistake none the less made some 10 years ago by professional highly paid highly skilled competent-on-the-face-of-it people employed by the Christchurch City Council. This is a bill that is sponsored by my colleague the Christchurch Central MP the Hon Nicky Wagner. She has set out very clearly in her introductory comments to this second reading the reasons why we are debating in Parliament tonight this piece of retrospective validation legislation. The bill itself is promoted by the Christchurch City Council which was of course the author of the error. The bill validates specified rates set between the 2004-05 and the 2012-13 financial years and because of the rates irregularities that came to light in the council’s review the legislation is frankly the only method for putting right an error that occurred more than 10 years ago and well before the Canterbury earthquakes.Christchurch City Council failed to state in its rates resolution over those years that the rates themselves were payable by instalment. The excuse if you like or the rationale for the error was simply that it was to be a simple piece of internal local legislation within the city council something that councils do every year in terms of providing for their fiscal responsibilities and their rating responsibilities under the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002. But what happened in this case was that no resolution was moved and passed through the council through the elected officials that ensured the rates were to be payable by instalment. Furthermore there was no date set by which those instalments would be paid and further there were no penalties set and no penalty dates set for those instalments. Minister Wagner made the point in her comments—and she is right—that actually no ratepayer has been negatively impacted as a result of this error. But the simple matter is that had an alert ratepayer decided to challenge the city council on these matters over any one of those 10 years then court action would have ensued and almost certainly the council would have come out the loser from that litigation. So that is a completely unsatisfactory situation for the ratepayers of Christchurch it is a completely unsatisfactory situation for the elected councillors of Christchurch and it is a completely unsatisfactory situation for the highly paid and professionally skilled employees who are supposed to oversee these relatively simple matters.The failures actually put the Christchurch City Council in breach of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 and then as a result of the investigations in 2013 when the irregularities were actually discovered further irregularities were uncovered. They were in respect of the council’s uniform annual general charge and some of the targeted rates for the same period of time. Information about how the liability for targeted rates and the uniform annual general charge were to be calculated was simply not included in the rates resolutions that were put to the council in the council chambersfor its attention.My colleague the Hon Nicky Wagner—correctly I think—said that bad things sometimes happen when you are trying to do good but I would counter that by saying that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. Just because something is meant to be simple it does not mean that it needs to be incomplete it does not mean that it needs to be inaccurate and it does not mean that it needs to be incompetent. I doubt that many if any of the officers responsible at the time—and I hasten to point out that we are going back 10 years—would still be in the employ of the council although I am not 100 percent sure about that. Certainly it is several chief executive officers ago. So I am not necessarily going to pour scorn and derision upon current officers but council officers at the time failed the council they failed the ratepayers and they failed themselves in terms of their professional ability and capability. Rates were calculated correctly rates were collected correctly but the rates motion—the actual legal bit the piece that is important—was missed out and that is a fundamental flaw for council officers who actually are employed to ensure that the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.We had only one submission and indeed that was from the council itself. We travelled to Christchurch. As a select committee we were able to link our visit with some rather better legislative work and that was to do with the Christchurch Arts Centre and the bill that was discussed earlier this evening in Parliament. So when we came to consider the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill we received only one submission—one submission—from the council and this is it. It is a mere two pages. It is a relatively perfunctory submission. It contains a clinical analysis of what happened how it happened and what needs to be done to correct it. The simple matter is that what needs to be corrected is that this Parliament is required to pass retrospective validating legislation to dig Christchurch City Council out of a hole. That is not a process that this Parliament likes doing. It is not a process that I think any member of the House thinks we should be spending too much time on. It is something that we certainly do not expect from a council as large as well-resourced and as significant as the Christchurch City Council.What was immediately apparent to members of the select committee—and I think I speak on behalf of most committee members—was that the submitters on behalf of the council were relaxed almost to the point of being comatose in terms of their submission. They seemed to be just appearing before us in a perfunctory manner saying: “Oh well we made a mistake. All too bad best endeavours Parliament will put it right.” Well I am not sure that that is necessarily very good. In the 2-page submission from the council there was no comment about contrition. There was no concession as to liability. There was no attempt to identify those people who were responsible. There was no indication that any kind of employment disciplinary action had been taken. In fact there was no sense at all of any sense of personal responsibility for the situation that the council found itself in—which Parliament now finds itself having to remedy.So it is fair to say that I thought as chair that our committee was singularly underwhelmed by the submission of the Christchurch City Council and I for one did not come away from hearing its oral submission or indeed reading its written submission with any sense of renewed confidence in the future prospects for getting things right. That may be a little bit harsh but I think that as a Parliament we could reasonably and sensibly expect a higher level of professionalism from one of the country’s largest councils. To expect anything less is an abrogation of its role and responsibility as a significant and large council but also in terms of the roles of professionals and employees of the council.We all live and work in an environment of constant change. We are all only human and we all make mistakes but this was a mistake of quite significant proportions. The fact that it did not negatively impact on ratepayers is a matter more of good luck than good management. I very reluctantly commend the bill to the House.