Nash Stuart: Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5014. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Kelvin Davis made some very interesting points in his speech and one of those was that we cannot accept that this is in fact non-controversial just because a member has said that it is non-controversial. He brought up some really good points and there is one that I would like to bring upalso and that is clause 32 which talks about the Braemar Hospital site. I alluded to this in my second reading speech but what it says is: “Braemar Hospital Site A freed of endowment and reservation”. Clause 32(1) says: “The endowment affecting the Braemar Hospital Site A is cancelled.” The concern that I have about this is first and foremost what led to the endowment of this parcel of land to the hospital and if it was actually endowed by a private citizen who wanted to ensure that that land was used for health purposesonly I wonder whether there is in fact any documentation at all that says—which is often the case—that if the hospital board sells off the land or if it uses it for anything other than health purposes then the land must return to the original owner or to the descendants of the original owner.When I see this sort of thing it does concern me slightly to wonder whether we have gone through the correct process because of course the last thing that we want to do is end up back in Parliament trying to compensate retrospectively some descendant of the original owner who endowed it to the hospital site. We go down to clause 33 where again it says “Braemar Hospital Site B freed of trust and reservation”. Again I ask the same question—and the answer may be completely innocuous—and that is: has the proper process been followed by the hospital board in terms of consulting those who put this land into reserve or endowed it at some point in time?The other thing that is also interesting is clause 39. This is one of those bills where you could look through every clause and say: “OK that sort of makes sense. We get the reason why they are doing it.” But again it is about proper process. As I mentioned the last thing that we want or the last thing that the Port Chalmers Recreation Reserve wants is to end up in a situation where there is a piece of legislation that has validated what they want to do and then they find the original deed of gift or something and say: “Oh goodness me we were supposed to offer this back.” and the only remedy to that is actually to bring it back to Parliament or to have a member’s bill or something that allows for compensation. That is a worst case scenario. I am not saying it is going to happen but I am just saying that it would be good to know whether the proper process has been followed.If we look at Port Chalmers Recreation Reserve what has actually happened here is that a parcel of land was granted as a reserve to the Port Chalmers Borough Corporation—which I am assuming does not exist anymore—as a domain in trust with the restriction that the land cannot be sold or leased. But what happened was that in 2001 despite that prohibition the Port Chalmers Borough Corporation actually leased the land out to a bowling club.Kris Faafoi: Lawbreakers.STUART NASH: Yes so a bowling club was put in place and this comes back to my whole point around the process. It would not have done this to be disingenuous and it was not trying to be devious in any way shape or form. I am assuming all that happened is—well I am making an assumption about what happened—that it did not understand or it did not know that this restriction was in place and so it granted a lease.Kris Faafoi: Just give them a hand.STUART NASH: Yes and what happened is that at some point in time someone was going through a whole lot of documentation and said “Oh goodness me we weren’t allowed to do this. We’re going to be in a little bit of trouble here. Let’s put this into a reserves and other lands disposal bill.” just to bring it in line with the legislation so that it is not doing anything illegal and so that an illegal activity is not still on the books. We get that. We are not saying that this is the wrong thing to do but what it does highlight is that it is very easy—well not very easy; what does happen at times is that local body authorities or hospital boards or even the Crown which are often acting in good faith are unaware without doing a little bit of research that these sorts of prohibitions exist. So what happens is they grant a lease or something along those lines; a bowling club is established at great expense; and technically what could happen is they could say “So we made a mistake. The lease is void because this was done under an Act of Parliament. Therefore the land has to be returned to the original owner.”—i.e. the Port Chalmers Borough Corporation at that point in time. We do not want to see that happen and that is why we have these bills but I am just saying how these sorts of things can actually occur here.So what we are doing now with this piece of legislation is we are saying that the lease was granted—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?