Wagner Nicky: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
Wagner Nicky: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:14435] 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 Coming from the South Island—the home of eight beautiful national parks—I fully appreciate what it is to be able to live amongst beautiful scenery wonderful heritage areas and special and significant landscapes. Like most New Zealanders I have become a bit green over the years and the quality of the New Zealand natural landscape is very important to me. The thought that the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill might protect the beautiful Waitakere Ranges is very attractive but it is not as simple as all that. This bill is not what it first seems and in many ways the Labour members of Parliament have misrepresented its intentions and misled the public. 
From listening to the Labour speakers it might be concluded that everyone in the Waitakeres supports this bill. But when one looks at the submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee—all 221 of them—the support and the opposition were about even. Earlier this evening Minister Cunliffe also quoted an 83 percent support by locals which he had ascertained by survey but when we dig a little bit deeper his unscientific survey merely asked locals: “Do you want to protect the Waitakeres?”. Well of course they did. Why not? All Kiwis want to protect their local environment. 
I would like to refer to more robust research which was done by the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board in 2003. What this told us was that 87 percent of all New Zealanders surveyed felt that the quality of the natural environment was “important” or “very important” to them. That was beaten only by the argument about the quality of life. Ninety-three percent of people felt quality of life was “important” and “very important” to them. But when one considers that the quality of the natural environment in New Zealand absolutely underpins our quality of life one can see that New Zealanders really do want to look after their natural environment. So that makes me quite surprised that only 83 percent supported the Minister’s survey. I wonder whether they were a little suspicious about what that survey would be used for and what the Minister was going to use it to support. 
Submitters on the bill were concerned that the bill was unnecessary. They considered that the bill’s purpose and objectives could be achieved through existing legislation. There was real argument by the submitters and in the select committee about whether the bill would do anything more than the Resource Management Act. This issue was further clouded as we heard from John Carter earlier tonight by the Waitakere City Council officials who seemed to be confused themselves and that is a charitable explanation of it. They were confused about what the legislation would do. At one stage they said it would do nothing more than what the Resource Management Act did. But then they had to revise their opinion when they were asked the obvious question: “If it will do nothing more than the Resource Management Act why would you bother to have it at all?”. 
Many submitters were also concerned that the bill constrains existing private property rights without addressing compensation and well may they be concerned. We have heard this discussion from Dail Jones tonight who talked about the erosion of property rights as socialist stealth. I would like to contrast Labour’s position on this bill with the rhetoric we have been hearing in the House for the last week or so about homeownership. Labour has been talking about the value of homeownership; the importance of families being able to own their homes because that gives families more control over their lives and builds community. But this bill does exactly the opposite. It undermines property rights. It adds more rules more regulations and more bureaucracy to homeowners who live in the Waitakere area. 
There was also some debate over the national significance of the whole area. There was no debate over the Waitakere Ranges but there were some parts of the 27720 hectares that were not considered significant.