Williams Andrew: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16612. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First):I take a call on the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. For those of you who suffer from insomnia which I do at times I recommend that you get a copy of the Hansard of Phil Heatley’s speech and take it. I am certainly going to take it home tonight. [Interruption] No it was an interesting speech but I say to the Hon Phil Heatley my goodness it was full of all sorts of facts and information that probably we did not need. At the end of the day this council made a simple—Hon Phil Heatley: That just hurts.ANDREW WILLIAMS: —mistake Phil. It made a simple mistake. It omitted basically to include a map with the information that was sent out with its annual plan. That map would have had it been included designated where these particular rates were going to apply. Therefore the people in this particular area of Tata Beach and Ligar Bay were not fully aware that it applied to them. As a result this all blew up.The mayor of Tasman District Council Richard Kempthorne sent a letter on 27 August to the Hon Damien O’Connor who is sponsoring this bill—and congratulations to that member of Parliament on bringing this through. The mayor summarised it very well. He said that the council “fully acknowledges that we made an error in setting the 2006-7 rate for the Tata Beach and Ligar Bay stormwater urban drainage area. We regret that the error was made.” He went on to say: “We also note that if we had included the required map the rate would have been lawfully made and the rates would have payable. Therefore passing the bill in its current form would validate a rate that would have been made lawfully if the map had been included.” He said: “We are not asking to validate something that council could not have done lawfully if we hadn’t made that mistake. The extent of and amounts of the rate was clear in the 2006 long-term community plan (LTCCP). When we discovered the error we undertook a review of the inclusion of Tata Beach in the stormwater urban drainage areas (UDA) and consulted the ratepayers in Tata Beach on the options of being included in or excluded from the stormwater UDA. More people preferred the option of staying in the UDA otherwise the status quo than any of the other options.”He said: We’ve explained to you”—this was to the MPs and to the select committee—“that Tata Beach and Ligar Bay ratepayers receive a service from the stormwater infrastructure provided in their communities and they pay for this through our club approach. In our view not only is there no legislative power to remit the rates but it would also be not equitable to remit the rates to the Tata Beach and Ligar Bay ratepayers. A reason for this is that it would mean other ratepayers in the district would then have to pay for stormwater services including those in Tata Beach and Ligar Bay while the ratepayers in Tata Beach and Ligar Bay do no pay for any.There is a heavy demand for stormwater infrastructure across the district following recent flooding events. This is particularly prevalent in Ligar Bay following the devastating flood flow in December 2011. In the end council came to the clear view that remitting rates over 1 or more years with these ratepayers was not a lawful or practical solution.”So in terms of that the Local Government and Environment Committee had no alternative but to accept this information and acknowledge the fact that if there was going to be any form of remittance of rates it would have been a burden on the rest of the ratepayers in the Tasman district which would have been unfair. Secondly if you then have to go and try to find ratepayers over a period of several years—and properties change ownership; they change in terms of their titles and all that sort of thing—it would be a nightmare trying to refund rates or return rates or pay out rates to whoever owned the properties at the time and all that sort of thing. It becomes a nightmare simply because of the fact that a map was not included. It was an administrative error.Mistakes happen. Mistakes happen in central government and mistakes happen in local government. This is a very minor mistake a very small one. Again as some other speakers have said we would hope that this National Government does not again use this as an example of local government in terms of wanting to try to highlight inadequacies in local government when in actual fact like any organisation there will always be human error. This was a case of human error and we would hope that we do not for the next 6 months while we are going through the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) hear these sorts of excuses as justification for the National Party and the National Government kneecapping and undermining local government in this country.We have two tiers of government. We have central government and we have local government. We do not have three like they have in Australia or the United States or many other countries; we have only two. Our local government is very much the grassroots delivery agent for what the Government needs to roll out around this country. If this Government continues to undermine local government as it is doing in the latest local government amendment bill then all we will see is simply a breakdown of much of the infrastructure of New Zealand and the support infrastructure of New Zealand which is so vital to making New Zealand a success.In terms of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) which is very much in line with what we are seeing in this situation we have to support local government to do its very best because at the end of the day there is $100 billion of assets out there in local government and the assets in the Tasman district are just part of that. They are vital to ensuring the future success of this country and we cannot have central government undermining the efficient delivery of service by local government throughout New Zealand.We are hearing more and more feedback from around the provinces around the rural areas—and these are in National Party electorates—that mayors who you would think were National Party mayors are saying enough is enough. They are getting tired of the National Party and the National Government undermining the good work that local authorities are doing throughout the country. I think it is time the National Government looked at itself seriously and asked whether it wants to bring local government to its knees and whether it wants to end up in a situation where New Zealand communities are broken up where communities of interest are destroyed and where it is all about the dollar and about making money out of local government rather than making good communities and good communities of interest.It seems to be that at the present time this National Government is wanting to drive down the council-controlled organisations route to have decisions made behind closed doors to have decisions made by unelected people and to have decisions made that are in the interests of its mates big business and people with interests in commercialising local government rather than ensuring that local government is there to deliver on behalf of the people.So New Zealand First supports this bill for the Tasman District Council. This is a very very minor blip in terms of the significant work the Tasman District Council does. It is in an area that has suffered significant storms and significant flooding. There have been all sorts of significant events in the Tasman district in the last decade and this is a very minor aberration in terms of the council’s overall work. We commend the Tasman District Council for its ongoing good work and we support this bill.