Williams Andrew: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8066. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill and also we congratulate the Hon Damien O’Connor on bringing this to the House to rectify an administrative error by the Tasman District Council in the way it sets its rates and in particular the legal clauses that were required for its rating structure to be legal. 
This is very much an administrative matter and just puts right things that are required which were brought to the attention of the council by a particular ratepayer or ratepayers and quite rightly it does have to be rectified in law. However it does raise the issue of local government and it is quite a pertinent topic at the present time particularly under this Government which has such a low regard for local government and treats local government like a third-class citizen basically. 
Really this Government would love to do away with local government in its entirety. It has done its best to do that in Auckland by putting 75 percent of local government under council-controlled organisations of non-elected people who are basically invisible and non-accountable to the ratepayers and residents of Auckland. Also the Auckland councillors can no longer get information from any of those council-controlled organisations. Despite requests for information from those organisations the councillors of Auckland are denied information in many cases from those very organisations that report to them. 
So it is very interesting that the Tasman District Council has been caught out in this manner but it also highlights the difference between many of our local councils. There are certainly different levels of expertise within local government. Across the approximately 78 local authorities in New Zealand you go from very large councils—certainly Auckland now with 1.4 million people—down to very very small councils for only 3000 or 4000 people. Therefore the level of expertise within each of those councils can vary and of course their ability to provide expertise can because of their financial resources also vary greatly. 
In that respect I would just like to pay tribute to Local Government New Zealand the body that pulls local government together. It has a great team of people under Lawrence Yule and Malcolm Alexander—the president and the chief executive—and they certainly do a good job in terms of supporting the local authorities in New Zealand and all those who provide services to local government in New Zealand to help them through their various requirements. 
Certainly in this area it would be very helpful for some of the more senior councils perhaps to play a more leading role in overseeing some of the other smaller councils in their daily business. Certainly it was our experience from a North Shore perspective that we had some very senior staff who used to enjoy spending time with other councils passing on some valuable insights valuable experience and expertise to some of the other smaller councils around New Zealand. We were delighted that as the fourth-largest council in New Zealand we were able to impart some of our knowledge and experience to some of the smaller ones that could not necessarily afford the same level of resource. 
In this particular case the Tasman district is a wonderful district that is well-known to all New Zealanders. It is one of the jewels in the crown of the New Zealand environment with beautiful areas. I have greatly enjoyed visiting Golden Bay and all through that area tramping the Heaphy Track and all through the whole of that part and going into the Takaka caves. If anyone has not been to the Takaka caves I can assure you it is an experience that you should have. 
So certainly it is a necessary thing for a very important area of New Zealand—a provincial effectively rural area of New Zealand that is very important to this country—to have all its ducks in a line and have everything ticked off; its i’s dotted and its t’s crossed. This is also something that probably will be picked up by other councils through New Zealand. No doubt if this has occurred with Tasman District Council there may well be other councils that will learn from this experience and be a little bit more mindful in the future to just make sure that their officers and their people who are drawing up their various documents are 100 percent correct in the manner in which they put them out to the public to meet all the legal requirements. So New Zealand First will be supporting this local bill.