Robertson Grant: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5572. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 It indeed was a pleasure to attend the first community meeting in the Mt Cook School hall the other night with the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage. He was paying one of his royal visits to the electorate so it was good to see him there and should he choose to grace us— 
Hon Annette King 
: He’s moved out of the Labour electorate. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Oh he has given up on Rongotai—he could not beat Annette King—and has decided that he will come into Wellington Central. Well we welcome him with open arms into Wellington Central to be able to oversee this project. 
The Labour Party is supporting this bill the National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill and first at the outset I want to thank not only the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee but also the officials who worked alongside the committee. It was a process done at speed and there was a lot of technical detail that needed to be dealt with. The officials were able to meet extremely quick turn-round times and we are very grateful for the work that they did working across the New Zealand Transport Agency the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and the Parliamentary Counsel Office so we are very grateful for the work that they did. 
The Minister has run through the substantive changes that the committee made but I do want to highlight just three or four of them because they are areas that the Labour Party was particularly keen to see included in this bill to give us the confidence that this legislation will meet the purpose that it has been put forward for. The Minister has made clear that this is a very limited scope for this bill. It is all about the creation of the war memorial park by April 2015 to meet the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. The committee was anxious to make sure and it is in the commentary on the bill that everybody was aware that those were the limits around this—the fact that this was a nationally significant project and that it had to be completed by 2015. Those two elements were vital to the conclusion of the committee that this was the only way in which we could ensure this project happened. 
I do want to put on the record again from the Labour side of the House that we know this is not ideal legislation. It would be much better if we were able to go through the normal processes. But the truth is that since 2009 the Government has dragged its heels around getting this project going and we are very pleased it has finally decided that it will back it but by deciding only now at the last minute the only option available to this Parliament to facilitate that is to pass empowering legislation of this sort. It is not ideal it should not become the regular practice of this House but there are going to be situations where it is necessary and we believe that this is one of those situations. 
The Minister mentioned the changes the committee made around Orders in Council and again this is important to make sure that all the checks and balances that need to be in place are in place when we are giving such wide powers under a bill as we are in this one. The committee felt that the process around the granting of Orders in Council was not sufficiently robust as it had been proposed and we made three main changes to that. The first of them is what I would call the “last resort clause”. This is new subclause (4) in clause 24 which makes absolutely clear that the use of Orders in Council is a last resort. The processes that the bill sets up should allow for all that needs to be done to be done in the construction of this part. But if it does not the Order in Council process is there to be used only in the last resort. The wording that we have come up with there was to say that when making an Order in Council the Minister must have considered all other reasonably practicable ways relevant to the particular circumstances to achieve the purpose of this legislation. 
So that notion of “all other reasonably practicable ways” is vital to our agreement to having this Order in Council process. It is a last resort. We also included a new clause to require the review panel that is set up under this legislation to look at Orders in Council to report to this Parliament every 6 months. It is important that Parliament stays in touch with this project. We have given significant power to the New Zealand Transport Agency and to the developers of this project. We need to know what is going on in the project—whether Orders in Council have been granted—and the new clause 27A in the bill allows us to have that ability. 
We have also recommended amending clause 31 and deleting clause 32. These are around what are called the disallowance provisions. Essentially this is to make sure that there is time for members of this House to review the Orders in Council and exercise their rights around whether or not they think those Orders in Council should be able to go ahead. The way that this works is that normally it would have meant a very short turn-round time so we have extended it out to 12 sitting days after the day on which an Order in Council is presented to the House. So with those three changes the Labour Party has a higher degree of comfort around the exercise of the Orders in Council process noting as we do that it is a last resort. 
The other area that I just want to mention in terms of the changes made in the committee is around the community forum. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that he thinks the community forum is going to be an important part of this process because the wider Wellington community and in particular the Mount Cook community are strongly supportive of this park being built. They have long wanted Buckle Street to go underground and allow there to be the kind of place that all New Zealanders would want to be part of but particularly the people who live in this community who would like to use it enjoy it and have it as a place to reflect. But as a community they obviously also want to be involved in the decision-making process. The community forum will now meet at least three times a year and I strongly encourage the Government to see that forum meet more often than that because it will be an opportunity for the local Mount Cook community to have their say. 
I should also note that the membership of the community forum has been increased and it has been increased to include two particular groups whom I want to mention. The first is the owners of the former Mount Cook Police Barracks and any members of the House who come into Wellington via the motorway will know the police barracks. They sit on the corner of Tasman Street and Buckle Street. They are a historic building. They have level 1 classification. The owners have tenants in the building and clearly the park will be built around them and it is very important that they have a say. The people on the opposite side of that intersection are those people who live in the Tasman Garden Apartments and we have also included the Tasman Garden Apartments body corporate in the list of people to be part of that forum. 
We are asking a lot of people who live in this area. There is going to be enormous disruption to their lives. The diversions on the road assuming this bill passes will start very soon. There has already been geotechnical work that has been causing some disruption. It is only fair to those people that they have the opportunity to have their say and be part of this process so I am pleased that the committee has agreed to extend the membership of the community forum. 
The final matter on the community forum that I want to mention is a very important change made by the committee and this is to somewhat contradict what the Minister said in his speech. The community forum does have a role now under this legislation in the final design of the park. The committee feels it is an important part of this process that the community forum can have its say. The park has been designed and well designed but it will not meet every single need as time goes on. We want to make sure that members of the Mount Cook community and the wider Wellington community do have a say in how the park is designed. So I am pleased that we have been able to amend clause 36 in relation to the community forum to make that happen. 
More generally to conclude my speech I want to make the point that this memorial park has been a long time coming. Helen Clark talked about it in 2004 and it is good that we now have some agreement—and I accept the reservations of the Green Party—across the House that it should happen. What it is going to create for New Zealand and New Zealanders is a place where we can reflect on those who have sacrificed themselves for us in war and we can reflect on all those who have served in war. 
I would just note in closing that Mr Finlayson said at the public meeting we were at the other night that he also favoured making sure that we have some recognition of those conscientious objectors in wars past—people like Archibald Baxter. I welcome that notion from the Minister that actually this will be a park where we can reflect on the war the nature of war the cost of it to us and the sacrifice that people have made. We need to get it developed in time for the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli commemorations. On this side of the House we recognise that this legislation is the only way now that we will achieve that the Government having lost the time over the last 3 years and therefore we will be supporting the bill.