Copeland Gordon: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
Copeland Gordon: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:645;Page:14867] 
GORDON COPELAND (Independent) 
: 
 I rise to speak to Part 3 but before I do Madam Chairperson I offer my congratulations to you on assuming the position of Assistant Speaker. I know that you will do a great job and I must say it is very nice to have a Wellingtonian in the Chair for the first time since I came into Parliament in 2002. I offer my congratulations. 
Let me say at the outset that I am pleased to be able to make a speech on this part of the bill because my parliamentary duties prevented me from speaking when the Committee stage of this bill was last debated in Parliament a few weeks ago. I have taken a deep interest in this bill including accepting an invitation to address a public meeting in Waitakere City on the issues it raises. I strongly oppose the bill. I have voted against it and will continue to vote against it at every stage. 
Clause 29 “Preservation of existing rights” in Part 3 refers to “any title or right to ownership of any land or natural resources within the heritage area whether conferred by enactment [of Parliament or] at common law …”. If I were to ask the proponents of this bill why it is necessary to include such a clause they would tell me that it is to protect private property rights. Their answer however is wrong. The provisions of this bill as set out extensively and in the lofty words in Parts 1 and 2 apply equally and without distinction to both public and private land within the heritage area. As Dail Jones has outlined 58 percent of the land in this area which is now the Waitakere Ranges heritage area is private land. The majority of it is private land. 
That central issue is the major defect in this entire bill—the fact that it applies not just to public land which would be perfectly acceptable but also to private land. All of the lofty sounding words contained in the bill refer not just to public land but as clause 29 reveals they also refer to private land and that is entirely inappropriate. The preservation of heritage areas for the common good of all people is great. If this bill referred just to public land as I mentioned it would have my support. As it is clause 29 does not strip title and ownership entirely from the people who now own the land but it is still entirely inappropriate to have private land of this sort in the bill because Kiwis in Waitakere will now be subject to the public land impositions in the bill even on their private land. Private homes gardens lawns backyards or front paddocks should not be included in a heritage area unless we are prepared to fully and justly compensate those private owners. Instead in this bill we strip their rights to the use and enjoyment of their homes and then tell them not to worry because they will retain ownership. That misses the point and it is wrong. That is unjust. 
To treat private and public lands as if they are one and the same thing simply will not do. This bill creates a wedge in the door. If it applies to private land in Waitakere today then why not to my private land in Wellington tomorrow to another person’s land in Christchurch the day after or to somebody’s private land on the West Coast the day after that? This bill sets a very very unfortunate precedent in terms of New Zealand law. By all means we should protect the Waitakere Ranges. That will be great for the people of Waitakere of Auckland of the nation and internationally. But let us decide as a principle that this measure should be limited to publicly owned land or we must decide to do the decent thing and pay compensation to protect and safeguard the rights of the private landowners involved.