Roche Denise: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2853. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take just a short call on the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill. We support this bill and its intention to correct an error. I would like to acknowledge the work of Nicky Wagner as well as the Local Government and Environment Committee the Parliamentary Counsel Office and of course the Department of Internal Affairs for all the work they have done on preparing the information around this bill so that we can vote on it tonight.One of the values of the Green Party is to support ideas regardless of where they originate and we do need to ensure that Christchurch has a secure and stable revenue base. My colleague Eugenie Sage has already touched on how that revenue base should include the revenue from the assets that the council holds which should not be sold off. But currently that revenue base is all the more pressing for Christchurch so that Christchurch can recover.However the introduction of legislation that is retrospective should really be used as a means of last resort. We feel that it has been used too often. We have seen it used in the last term—quite recently really—in two similar situations for the Kaipara and the Tasman regions. It is obvious that there needs to be clearer guidance from central government about the responsibilities around rating for local government. I am pleased to see that according to the Department of Internal Affairs and its report to the Local Government and Environment Committee the Society of Local Government Managers updated its guidelines in November 2013. Hopefully those updated guidelines along with the recent audit work conducted by the Auditor-General mean that we do not repeat these mistakes in other cities across the nation.As my colleague Eugenie Sage said in her first reading speech and she mentioned it again tonight the Parliamentary Library research has shown that the average bill considered by Parliament costs us the taxpayer around about $1.43 million and every hour that Parliament sits costs about $20000—that is $20000 an hour to hear these bills. Although we can talk about the cost in money terms we should also talk about the opportunity costs and that is another area where this bill has created quite a bit of cost. When we talk about fixing things up from the past through mistakes in the ratings systems and we have to introduce legislation we are not talking about the other pressing social problems that we have to deal with. And boy do we have some to deal with. We have things like increasing poverty 25 percent of kids living in poverty median house prices having increased by 60 percent and New Zealand’s net carbon emissions having risen by 48 percent. Those are the sorts of issues that we could be spending $20000 an hour on debating. Every minute every hour that we talk about bills like these is some time that we do not spend addressing the critical issues for New Zealand.When our grandchildren ask us what our proudest achievements during our time in Parliament were I doubt very much that this bill even though it is well-intentioned will feature at the top of the list. We can and we must get things right so that we do not waste time passing retrospective legislation and so that we can spend more time doing the job that we were elected to do—addressing the real challenges that are facing our people and our country. Thank you.