Goldsmith Paul: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16622. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National):It is my pleasure to speak on Part 1 of this Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. The Tasman district is a wonderful part of the country. I have not spent a hang of a lot of time there being based in Auckland—Kris Faafoi: Whereabouts?PAUL GOLDSMITH: —based in Epsom—but I have had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time there and it is a wonderful part of the country.I just want to go through some of the preliminary provisions and the purposes of this bill particularly: “to—(a) validate specified rates set and assessed by the Council and the penalties added to those rates; and (b) treat all money received by the Council in payment of the specified rates or penalties added to those rates” in order to fix what was a mistake made when certain rates were incorrectly set during the 2003-04 period through to 2008-09. As you would have heard Mr Chair in previous speeches without validation the council does remain vulnerable to legal challenges from ratepayers over the incorrectly set rates. This part is focused on trying to fix that problem.Certainly my experience in Epsom as in most areas is that rates are a subject that a lot of people get very concerned about because they are not linked necessarily to an ability to pay. They are based on capital value and older people on a fixed income in particular find it very difficult to cope with that. People have a very keen interest in making sure that the rates are as low as possible but they also obviously have a very keen interest in the fact that they are set lawfully and properly. Unfortunately in this instance in the Tasman District Council under the oversight of Damien O’Connor as the local MP things did not quite go right. This bill is aimed at trying to sort that out. National wants to give affected residents the opportunity to engage and is therefore supporting the bill and we have made good progress.I just want to go through the interpretation clause because this really drills down to the meat and drink of this bill. We are talking about clause 4 “Interpretation” which states that in this bill unless otherwise required—we are coming up with a definition for the 2003 rates. Let us look at 2003. Of course that was really the start of the second term of the former Labour Government when it was basically maintaining a reasonably disciplined approach to spending but was about to start increasing Government spending which was to lead to the very significant increase in Government spending overall. I accept I am moving a bit away from this bill but it was a period I think when New Zealand was doing extremely well. We did not really make the most of that opportunity because the Government just expanded its own spending rather than leaving money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders in order to grow their own businesses and make jobs.If we move through to the 2004 rates which is on the next line here it means “the rates set out in the funding impact statement adopted by the Council for the 2004/2005 financial year”. Again if we look at 2004 that definitely was one of the years that the locusts consumed because New Zealand was doing very well but in Auckland in particular we saw house prices really start to rocket based on—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!PAUL GOLDSMITH: Sorry I will move back to 2004. If we go on to—[Interruption] Sorry did you want me to start again?If we go on to 2005 we will be looking at “the rates as set out in the funding impact statement adopted by the Council for the 2005/2006 financial year”. Again 2005 was when the Tasman District Council started to get into serious problems because the rating information that it laid down was incorrect.Further on if we look at the 2006 rates it means “the rates as set out in the funding impact statement adopted by the Council for the 2006/2007 financial year;”. The problem with that was it was in this particular period that the technical mistakes were made which are being fixed by clause 9 which we dealt with previously. But it was there that the technical mistakes were made and the rates were levied incorrectly and that led to this legislation really which is all about trying to get the right form of words and get it done officially so that the people of Tasman can move on and have some certainty around this area.There are no particular winners out of this legislation because nobody is happy about having to do retrospective legislation in this way. But in the end if the council is tied up in endless litigation then that costs everybody. If for some reason the people whose rates were levied incorrectly do not pay their rates that just means that everybody else in the district has to pay those rates and that is unfair to them. And so the correct thing is to ask whether if it were not for the technical mistakes that were made those rates would have been properly levied and therefore this legislation really just recreates that situation.I will just move on to 2007 and 2008. Those two years were also in error and this bill is trying to correct those problems. It is interesting that this piece of legislation interprets the term “Council” to mean the Tasman District Council. That is a reminder of specifically which council we are dealing with in this legislation. The funding impact statement has the meaning given by section 5 of the Local Government (Rating) Act. These two places are Ligar Bay and Tata Beach neither of which sadly I have ever been to. I have been to Golden Bay if that is in the same district. I think it is. But those two bays Ligar Bay and Tata Beach are the two particular areas that we are talking about and that is what this part relates to.Overall I just want to say finally that National’s Better Local Government reforms are aimed at helping make local government more efficient responsive and well focused. This legislation and this part are not what you would describe as a critical part of that overall framework but it is a bill that highlights to other councils the importance of proper scrutiny when setting rates. On that basis I think I have said enough so thank you very much.Part 1 agreed to.