Coddington Deborah: Historic Places Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Historic Places Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15568] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 The State has enormous powers and when the State abuses those powers it can ride roughshod over the lives and the property of citizens who are minding their own business who are not hurting anybody else and who have their property rights stripped away from them. This bill is all about enabling the State to abuse its powers even further. There is no need for this bill as Jim Peters has already pointed out. I can remember when people used to be proud to belong to the Historic Places Trust. I was proud to belong to the trust and I used to go on trust tours around the Wairarapa. People used to hold their little card and they used to be involved in saving buildings. It was a community effort and it was something to do with the people of New Zealand. Over the years successive Governments and not just this Government have taken that power away from people and put it into the hands of the State and the State under legislation like this is very very easily able to abuse other people and push them around. 
Jill Pettis talked about adequate funding now under this Government. When has the Historic Places Trust ever gone to any Government and said it has enough money and should not be given any more? That was an absolute nonsense and that member knows that that is a nonsense. There will never be enough funding if the trust is totally reliant on Government funding. Do members know why the trust is more and more reliant on Government funding? Because this sort of legislation excludes people. Why has membership dropped off year after year from the trust? It will drop off even further when people see what is being done under this legislation where six out of nine members on the board of the trust are to be Crown appointees. The reason for that is so that the Government—the State—can have more power over what happens to people’s private property. This legislation will not affect people who live in nice villas in Ponsonby Grey Lynn Kelburn Khandallah or Fendalton. But farmers should be very very afraid because the power that the Government—the State—will have to ride over people’s land and to do what it wants with that land will be huge. 
The Minister talked about the need to preserve our culture in our old buildings. Where was she when the Gummer and Ford building was being demolished or is still being demolished just about 100 metres from this place—the P and O building? Did she care about that building? Where was she when His Majesty’s Theatre was destroyed? I have been involved in putting my personal money where my mouth is in terms of saving old buildings. That is what we should encourage people to do rather than take their money off them and give it to the State. 
I want to tell the House the story of how the Historic Places Act enabled the State to abuse the private property rights of a farmer in Northland. That is a travesty and it has never ever been resolved. It was under the old Act—it was pre-1993—and it demonstrates exactly why Mr Peters was right when he said that this bill is not necessary. It concerned a man called Mr John White who bought 586 hectares of farming land in Northland. The land had been running sheep and cattle for 132 years without destroying any of the archaeological sites on the land. Mr White was proud of the fact that the land would be named as one of the world heritage sites listed in the World Heritage List by the World Heritage Committee alongside such sites as the pyramids. Under the district plan Mr White was allowed to subdivide the land into separate lots. In the subdivision he made provision for public walkways and boards that would guide the public as to where the archaeological sites were that had been identified by an archaeologist from Auckland University. 
The trust was not at all interested in cooperating with Mr White. Under the Act the trust had the power to destroy his rights on that land. The matter went on and on. Mr White gave the Crown an option to purchase the land—if it wanted to buy it it could have it and do what it liked with it. The Crown stuffed around with that right to purchase the land. The matter went on and on. Mr White consulted with local iwi. He was aware of the wahi tapu on the land. There was a mountain that was considered to be a wahi tapu. He gave that mountain to the Tai Tokerau Maori Trust Board but that was not enough. The issue went on and on. In the end Mr White had to sell that land. He sold it—it cost him a million dollars—and he took what he could get for it. The land had so much history and so many notifications on it that anyone who was interested in buying it was scared off. When Mr White sold the land it was developed and all the things that he was not allowed to do went ahead and were done. That is why we oppose this legislation. 
The ACT party does believe in preserving our culture and our heritage. However we believe that we should do it and that the process should not be State controlled. Money should not be taken off people and given to the State so that the State can decide what people can do with their own land. The greatest measure of conservation is to protect people’s private property rights. All we have to do if we want a blatant example of that is to go to the Eastern bloc countries where there are no property rights and to see what happened to their culture and heritage. They were totally obliterated. The more that this Government or any Government passes legislation like this appointing six out of nine members on a board as Crown appointees the more we go down that path. 
We have the nebulous concept of wahi tapu which is not defined and can be anything that anyone thinks it is. If someone wants to stuff up a development he or she should mention wahi tapu and see people’s property rights be taken off them. People still own the land—they still pay the rates and pay for gorse control pest control and all the other things. In fact under a wahi tapu notification if landowners want to plant native trees and preserve the land by turning it into bush they still have to get permission to do that. They still have to consult with local iwi. Even though people own the land nominally it is taken away from them in terms of what they can do with it. There is a word for that: it is national socialism. It is something that all the names around the walls of the Chamber signify we do not want to have in this country. 
We vehemently oppose this bill. I say to all landowners out there who are listening to this debate especially if they are in rural areas that they should make a submission to the select committee and oppose this bill with all their might.