Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker for this opportunity to talk on the Palmerston North Reserves Empowering Amendment Bill. As we've heard it's a local bill and that means that it's the council that has to bring it to their member of Parliament which of course is the wonderful Tangi Utikere. He knows the council pretty well because he used to be the Deputy Mayor of Palmerston North so I'm sure he very much enjoyed working with council to make sure that all of the compliance checks that he discussed set out in the Standing Orders I believe—to bring this here. He was a member of the Environment Committee when this bill started its life with us as the select committee. Unfortunately he's left us now but he did come back and make sure that the bill was ushered through in the best way possible—so thank you for that Mr Utikere. Now we've heard a bit about how the select committee didn't visit the site. This was a time where it's been difficult to travel and the previous members talked about a lack of aeroplanes. When I Google-Mapped the site it did say that it was an hour 49-minute drive so perhaps the lack of aeroplane wasn't the reason that we did not manage a site visit; it may have had more to do with COVID restrictions during some of the time that we were considering the bill. However the member for Palmerston North has made sure that a lot of his colleagues have come to visit Palmerston North so I can assure anybody who's listening to this speech that I have had the privilege of visiting Palmerston North at least twice this term already—a wonderful place to visit. I'm sure I'll be there again. And when I was there I did drive past this site because it is an easy site to drive past in terms of it's on one of the main roads and I'll talk about that—Hon Scott Simpson: Didn't stop.RACHEL BROOKING: At the time I was busy—Hon Scott Simpson: It was a drive-by.RACHEL BROOKING: —there's an assertion being made that I didn't stop at the site. That is true I have not stopped at the site. But should I be back in Palmerston North I absolutely will make sure to do that. The site that we're talking about is 1.6 hectares and it's currently a recreation reserve and it is bounded by two fairly major roads: one in particular that you do drive down if you're visiting Palmerston North. If you don't know Palmerston North well you drive down it and it's a few blocks into town which is why you'd probably be driving past it. And then on the other side it is quite close to the river as well. We didn't have a site visit but we did get this amazing video that all of the select committee watched. It was drone footage from every possible angle that you could look at the site so I feel as if I have visited the site. I can tell you that on this corner site there are some tennis courts and you can see some car parking and things going on on the site. And there are indeed easements for parking and vehicle access to the area. There is some grass. Ian McKelvie said that it was a bit of an eyesore. I think that's unkind but there is grass and there are trees. There are some indigenous trees but also some exotic trees that we heard about in submissions. It's also close to a high school it's close to the parks that Tangi Utikere referred to. There's a playcentre and a scout hall nearby. So this is the piece of land. It's been part of a much bigger piece of land that's been subject to legislation since 1876. There's been various different pieces of legislation to deal with the reserves in the mighty Palmerston North. And I should say that I am a bit of a fan of Palmerston North because that is where my parents met. So thank you to Palmerston North.The land is currently held under the Palmerston North Reserves Act 1922 and that Act provides for leasing of the land that's at section 4 building and making streets at section 7 leasing for sports at section 8 and also some housing. That housing is supposed to be workers' housing. But what this 1922 Act doesn't have is an enablement to sell or divest this recreation reserve. And so the Reserves Act 1977 applies and that looks under Land Act 1948 and some quite complicated processes within those things. But there is more legislation about Palmerston North and the reserves. So there is the Palmerston North Reserves Empowering Act 1966 and under this Act land is able to be sold if the land is subject to the Act. Empowering" is an important word in that legislation because it does allow this enablement and obviously enablement is something that the Labour Government is very interested in. It was great to see the bipartisan support last year for the resource management enabling housing and other matters bill as it was. So we want to enable things where it's appropriate. The bill that is before us today amends this 1966 empowering Act to make it applicable to the 1.6032 hectare area that we've heard described in the past three speeches. How it does that is it amends section 3 of the 1966 Act. I'll just make sure I've got the right Act here—I do. So that Act at section 3 "Lands vested in the Council" says "The lands described in Schedule 1 and Schedule 4 are hereby vested in the Council" and it goes on to say that this Act applies to those lands. What the bill before us does is insert "and [Schedule] 5" and then Schedule 5 describes the land the 1.6 hectares. So it's a very short bill.Hon Scott Simpson: Read it out.RACHEL BROOKING: I've been asked to read out the bill but I'm sure somebody will take that opportunity soon. I've got some other things that I want to say about this very short but very important bill about the wonderful Palmerston North represented so well by its local MP. What this change means by incorporating the land in the 1966 Act is that it is possible for the council to decide to sell that land because that is what the 1966 Act does. There's a process set out in section 4A(3) of that 1966 Act that requires some public hearings. But also if the council is to decide to sell any land then of course the Local Government Act 2002 provisions Part 6 around consultation—and if it's a significant asset other processes apply as well. So we might ask: why would the council want to sell the land? And they might not. This gives them an opportunity. It gives them an opportunity to explore housing and potential housing development. We've heard that this is a good location for housing. There's lots of other green protected space near it. It's good proximity to town right next to a high school. So it's a great central location. But again that can't happen immediately—any housing on this site—because there's still resource management processes that would need to happen and amendments I think to the district plan to allow for that housing. So of course that would all be public processes that the community would be able to be involved in should the council decide that they do want to go ahead with some sort of housing and to be able to sell that housing. We've heard from the member from Palmerston North that in fact the council is going to go through some change at this election that will be happening next month—because it's September now. So it's totally up to the council about what they might want to do. But of course housing is very important to both local and national politicians.So I would like to briefly thank the staff from the Department of Conservation that we had working with us on this and of course all of the select committee staff as well. Really it's a great example of a local MP working with their council to provide for the needs of the local community. Thank you Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House."