Mathers Mojo: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7591. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): It is my pleasure to take a call on the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill. As a Christchurch list MP I have seen firsthand the need for this bill and I am very pleased to be supporting it. We regard it to be a sensible and pragmatic response to what is a very serious issue in Christchurch.We are concerned that it took 4 long years for this bill to come to the House. It was apparent immediately after the quakes that there had been significant land movement and a significant impact. At the property that I was staying in at the time you could walk out the door and see there was this massive shift of the land towards the river. It was very clear that because of lateral spreading because of liquefaction and because of the slumping of the land generally in many areas this had affected the state and nature of the boundaries. So there are literally thousands of properties affected some of them very significantly with land movement of over half a metre—50 centimetres. That is quite profound in terms of the nature of determining the title to the land.What this has meant is that some people’s lives have actually been put on hold. Their plans for their properties’ development or rebuild have been put on hold. Some have found that they have inadvertently built a property that is now technically on the adjoining title of land and so on because of how the boundary appears to have moved. It is really important that we provide clarity to all of these hundreds of people affected because otherwise it is very clear that they are going to clog up the courts with endless disputes. We need a way forward to resolve that so that the rebuild can go forward on firm foundations as it were.It is really important that during the select committee stage we do hear from the people who have been affected. The last thing that we want to see is unintended consequences of this bill. We know that there is a problem and we hope that this will be a straightforward resolution to that problem but it is such a complex issue. The last thing we want to see is sort of unintended consequences and the way to identify that is to have a robust consultation process where affected people can have the time to have their say to process the contents of this bill to consider how that will affect them and their property and then to have the opportunity to provide their viewpoint back to the select committee and for the select committee to consider that properly and get the appropriate advice. So I will be hoping that the select committee will do all of that in really good faith because this is the foundation for much of New Zealand property law and it is incredibly important that we have this result for Christchurch.Previous speakers have already mentioned this but there is some concern about the sheer number of bills that are affecting people in Christchurch and Canterbury that are out for consultation at the moment whether it be the Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill or the Riccarton Racecourse Bill or any of the different bills that are out for consultation. It is really concerning that so many are suddenly rushed in put out and sought feedback on at the end of the year when it is an incredibly busy time of the year for many people. I hope that that could have been avoided with better planning and it is disappointing to have this situation in front of us now. Thank you.