Foster-Bell Paul: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFoster-Bell Paul: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4299. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Might I say that it is a pleasure to speak on the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill under the Speakership of such a distinguished and illustrious member of this House. I am taking this call in this debate on the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill because as previous colleagues have rehearsed the argument several times I think it is necessary given some of the comments made by members opposite just to repeat them one more time. This is something that we do reluctantly: passing retrospective legislation in this House. I think it was in the second reading debate that I expressed my personal reluctance to consider retrospective legislation unless there is a very good reason to do so. If I may once again refer to the pre-eminent legal theoretician Professor Dicey the former Vinerian Professor of Law at Oxford who talked about retrospective legislation he—Simon O’Connor: Who sorry?PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Professor Dicey Mr O’Connor. He was a very highly respected Oxford legal theoretician of the 19th century—a Vinerian Professor of Law. He made the point that retrospective legislation can either be very very bad or it can be something that is necessary and tolerable. Of the examples of monstrous retrospective legislationthat he used to cite one of the key examples of evil retrospective legislation was the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1794 which was a very unworthy piece of legislation and was most unjust. However he did also believe that it was possible to have curative retrospective legislation to set right something that was done wrong. I genuinely believe that this bill falls into the curative category. It does amend a technical deficiency and as my learned colleague Scott Simpson the chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee referred to previously in his own contribution on this debate there are no people who will be required to pay additional rates or levies because of this curative piece of retrospective rates validation. In fact the technical deficiency was simply in the wording of the ratings motions which were passed by successive city councils in Christchurch over a period of as many as 10 years.I think it is very important that we do set this wrong right and this bill does so. And to other critics of retrospective legislation I would also refer to recent research that has demonstrated that in the Commonwealth of Australia—a very comparable jurisdictionto our own I suppose—up to 20 percent of legislation carries some form of retrospectivity in it. So this bill is not entirely unusual. We have been here before but one of my main concerns when sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee was to ensure that we do not end up here again having to validate rates retrospectively for another council in New Zealand. Although we were not able to receive an ironclad watertight guarantee from officials that such an issue could not crop up again in the future I think thatwe can have some confidence our being a competent and very efficient Government on this side of the House—as opposed to the members opposite—that this is one of the last rates validation bills that this House will hopefully have to address particularly in terms of dealing with such an issue in the manner that we are today.There have also been comments made about the competence of the officials who tendered advice to the council over the course of the 10-year period during which the rates were incorrectly set. I am actually prepared to stand by the comments of my colleagues on this side of the House and by the criticisms and concerns that they have. Firstly when the Christchurch City Council appeared before us at the select committee there was a complete lack of contrition. We did not have from the highly paid officials any sense of regret or any sort of apology to the ratepayers of Christchurch or to the taxpayers of New Zealand who are faced with a bill that is probably many hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in order to pass this piece of legislation. There was no real apology for the incompetence that has led us to this position. That was in my view regrettable. I do appreciate the arguments advanced by some that the people whom we saw at the select committee the people who were advocating—the only submitters in fact whom we heard on this bill—were not those responsible for the initial error. They were the officials who are the current incumbents and they made the point that the councillors and officials involved with the initial incorrect settings and incorrect motions including the chief executive at the time were no longer employed by the council or no longer served on the council. That is a point that is not entirely lost on me.We do have a situation where taxpayers and ratepayers have been put to some considerable expense and inconvenience in order to remedy the situation so I think that we do need to send a very strong message to officials and councils up and down New Zealand that it is paramount that they understand what is required in the law. It is not actually a huge piece of legislation that they have to come to grips with in terms of understanding the framework within which we set local government ratings in New Zealand. It is very important that they understand it that they understand the technical detail and that they apply it correctly so that we do not end up once again in a situation where we are expending significant amounts of ratepayer and taxpayer money to remedy retrospectively a situation like we have here.There was a question that came up in the second reading debate and I put the question to the Minister and we actually had a very clear answer from the Minister. That question was about what is actually covered by this retrospective validation bill. Not only does it cover the incorrectly levied rates which were levied over a 10-year period from 2003-04 to 2012-13 inclusive but it also covers a number of subsidiary rates and charges that were levied incorrectly as well. These were the Church Bay sewer loan rate the Church Bay water loan rate the restricted water targeted rate the waste minimisation rate and the water fire service connection rate for those financial years; the same as for the uniform annual general charge which was incorrectly levied. I think that the Minister did give us a full explanation and description of that. There is something in the order of $600000 worth of unpaid back rates that should have been paid. The citizens and ratepayers in question did not behave properly in not paying the $600000 worth of back rates which does require this retrospective validation to be enacted in order for the council to be able legally to collect that $600000 worth of back rates. That is another reason why this validation bill is required. I come back to the point that the bill does not prejudice the interests of otherwise law-abiding Christchurch residents who have paid their ratesover those years thinking that they had been correctly levied when as we have now discovered they had not.Just to make things really clear I do want to reiterate some details of the original failure. It was a breach of section 24 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 which is the principal Act that determines how local government ratings are levied in New Zealand. The Act talks about how rates are levied and the fact that they are available to be paid in instalments and it sets the payment dates for those instalments. I think that it is a credit to the people of Christchurch and to New Zealanders in general that there are so few uncollected rates. There is only $600000 worth in a great city the size of Christchurch which is home to many hundreds of thousands of souls and is arguably the second city of New Zealand after Auckland—and obviously the capital Wellington. But I think it is a credit to the taxpayers and the ratepayers in Christchurch that such a small portion has not been paid and there will always be cases I suppose where some people do not feel that they are obliged to meet their full obligations and make their contribution to the running of their city and the infrastructure and services that the council provides.The failure we need to resolve was a breach of section 57 of the Act and was around how penalties are added and calculated to those unpaid rates that were incorrectly levied in the first place. Those two errors are being remedied in this piece of legislation. It is a necessary thing. It is something that we are doing reluctantly. We need to send a strong message to councils that they must get it right to prevent such a waste of parliamentary time in the future. I just make the final point that the retrospective element although best avoided is something that in this case is necessary and curative. For all those reasons I commend this bill to the House.