Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Mr Speaker thank you for the opportunity to talk on the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill. I also just want to acknowledge Minister Mahuta for the way in which she did engage at the committee of the whole House stage and answered a lot of questions and we had a good engagement as we went through that and I really did appreciate that.National fundamentally opposes this bill and the reason for it is fairly straightforward. There's some merit in the bill when you actually go through the detail of it but frankly when you get into it not much. And that's what I really want to talk a bit about today because there's not a lot of added value or real incremental benefit to what we're doing here over what can already be done. And I think it is a little bit about how more comprehensively could we solve the problem of productivity of land—not just Māori but also general land across the whole country. And I do want to unpack that and put on record a little bit why we're opposing this bill. When you boil it down there's sort of two big component parts to it. One is really how do we get more utilisation occupation and also development of Māori land? And the second part is how do we adjust some rating legislation that affects Māori land specifically?If I just take the first one and we talk about Māori land and productivity that's actually a goal that we would support. But in the National Party we support improving productivity across the whole of the country. We know that that's a big problem for us. We know that productivity is the single biggest thing that we can do to improve our collective standard of living. And as a result we're very supportive of that. And so anything that improves Māori land benefits and productivity and utilisation is good but equally so is what can improve general land use as well. And I think that's the fundamental question we still don't understand after engaging with the Minister—is fundamentally why does this just look through a Māori-only lens if it could be looked at through a local government or a national lens? Why wouldn't we want to talk about the impacts that sit with general landowners as well? We want fundamentally all unproductive land to be available to be utilised and to be productive—it's important for everybody. It's not just Māori that have situations of unproductive land who own land collectively and who could benefit from rates remission.There are farmers across the country—we talked about it in the second reading and in the committee stage as well—who are fundamentally invested in indigenous biodiversity they've taken waterways land done riparian planting there's lots of general land use for trees there's large families with multiple dwellings on farms as well and so the question fundamentally is why aren't the benefits and incentives that we're talking about in this bill being extended to everybody across this country? And I just still don't fundamentally understand why the Government comes at it through a much narrower lens of just looking at this through Māori land rather than saying actually there's an opportunity to actually solve a problem across the whole of the country so why don't we go do that? Why don't we fundamentally look at doing something bigger bolder and braver as a consequence? So we don't fundamentally I guess understand why we can't move this across to all general land-owners. Why does it have to be specific to Māori land only?Second point is that when you look at the ratings legislative changes a lot of it fundamentally can be done today. There are some good minor little tweaks in here around sort of land block origins—certainly what the Minister just referenced around the sale of Māori land or inadvertent sale of Māori land to general land through the 1960s. There's rates remission at the beginning of a development and land being excluded if it's in an emissions trading scheme. But the two sort of major components are fundamentally the aggregation of multiple blocks into a single block so that there is lower uniform charges that can be applied to that land and the second piece to link to that is also the separation of a block into dwellings so that rates rebates can be applied for and that's a good thing because a lot of people aren't really accessing the rates rebates programmes across the country.And the other piece is that a CEO in a local council can actually write off those rates arrears. And they're the two big bits. But when you look into it it turns out that the aggregation and the separation of blocks of land the adjustment of uniform rates and also the write-offs can all be done under existing legislation as it exists today. And there are good examples of councils and mayors that are doing it today. We had Lawrence Yule talk about it in the first reading. He says I've been a mayor where I've remitted those rates so I know it can be done. I've been a mayor when we have put the uniform charges together on several properties so the rates per property have been reduced. It can be done." And likewise there was a quote from Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Ward in Auckland who just sort of said "Nearly all the changes proposed are already delivered by Auckland Council through its rating policy and Māori land rates remission and postponement policy." And so that's the kind of question that we've got as the second question: what is the fundamental added value or incremental benefit that we're getting from this piece of legislation? So that's kind of important because what's the point of going through all this process if at the end of it we're delivering very little marginal benefit to actually get the goal that we're trying to create which is greater productivity?The third thing I sort of wanted to say is that we're essentially coming at it through a very very narrow lens. We're looking at it just through the lens of rates write-offs and fundamentally aggregation or separation of blocks of land. Actually when you dial it back and say again what's the problem that we're trying to fundamentally solve which is about utilisation and productivity you get back to root cause and you discover that there are a lot more legislative constraints and impediments that are getting in the way of that land being unlocked and unblocked.And it was interesting when you go back through it—there's real issues—and you talk to a whole bunch of stakeholders about it. There are things like the definitions and meanings of owner and descent relationships issues around collective ownership in whānau trusts issues around sale gift exchange and mortgage of individual freehold interests within landownership and the authorities who do the governance arrangements and the court jurisdictions that exist. These are also things that are contributing to that land fundamentally not being utilised as it should. Different governance bodies and the administration of estates dispute resolutions Māori Land Court Māori Appellate Court—there's a whole bunch of other issues that could be addressed that are constraining the ability of land. It's not just in rates remission that's the only thing that's causing that land not to be used to be productive. And I guess our thinking is why wouldn't you want to come back and dial it a step back and actually go back and do a repeal and a replace of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act to deal comprehensively with that fuller set of legislative constraints and impediments that are sitting there?And I guess the final point for us is actually that we had a good exchange with the Minister about this but essentially there was no understanding or definition or work that had been done on what are the financial costs in an aggregate sense for the councils through this rates remission process. And that's important because you sort of want to understand how much potential costs can be transferred from one set of ratepayers to another because those costs are fixed in a council set-up and they have to be paid for by somebody and they get paid for by other ratepayers. So while excluding and remitting rates from one group we end up transferring that cost through to others. And there was no real comprehensive thinking around that or decent answers that we seemed to get.And I think most worrying of all we go through this whole process introduce a very incremental bill that does very little that's not much more than existing legislation and there is no measures or targets of what we're shooting for as success and there's no clarity on how we're actually going to measure whether this has been successful or not. And we had that question in conversation with the Minister and there was really no answer for us there.So fundamentally we look at it and you go yep it looked promising as a set of goals but actually there's very little incremental benefit here that we are looking at. And really when you look at it we're fundamentally unclear as to why can't we extend the provisions and the benefits and the incentives here that we're proposing for Māori land across general landowners and why wouldn't we want to do that? I think the second big thing as we talked about is the ratings that can be done today. So what's the point of going through all of this stuff for a piece of incremental very little added value legislation when if you were really bold we could do something quite fundamental to remove all that legislative impediment and constraints that are actually sitting there. And again on the cost side: why wasn't there any decision or any conversation about the costs? There was nothing in any of the regulatory impact statement the departmental statements or Cabinet papers—there was no reference to cost fundamentally and there was no understanding of how that cost burden will be shifted between people.So really I mean it seemed promising. We are very supportive of improving productivity in this party but when we look at this bill on balance it doesn't do anything over existing legislation. We know that councils and other mayors are doing it across the country. They can make it work—the existing legislation—to unlock those benefits. Why wouldn't we expand the brief and the remit of what we're doing here? So we continue to oppose this bill. Thank you very much."