King Annette: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7166. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 Seldom do I disagree with the work and comments of Eugenie Sage—she is a thorough member and is very knowledgable—but on this particular clause clause 5 I believe that she is wrong. I understand the issue of principle and I absolutely agree that the consultation process by the Waitaki District Council was poor. In fact we told its representatives when they came to the Local Government and Environment Committee that their consultation process had been poor. I do not think anybody on the select committee would disagree with that. But at the end of the day that is not a good enough reason to not support this bill because it has been 2 years in the making. Well probably longer than 2 years but 2 years before coming to this House at least so I think it is time that it was resolved and finished. 
I understand the member in the chair Jacqui Dean wanting the opportunity to act as a Minister because this will probably be her only opportunity to be sitting there in the Committee chair and I understand her wanting to drag it out. What I do not really understand is why she would want to do that in that there is agreement with her on this bill. We support the work that she has done. We congratulate her on bringing a bill to this House. 
I do believe that the select committee did a lot of thorough work to ascertain the status of the piece of land that was in dispute Lookout Point. There is no doubt that there was confusion in the evidence and confusion over what had happened there and there were a number of submissions put to us that raised doubt about the status of this land whether it was endowment land or whether it was reserve land. At the end of the day I had to believe what was told to us by officials who went away who did the legal checks who went through the historic records and who came back and assured us that the decisions we were making were the correct decisions. You might not agree at times with everything officials say but we did send them away not once but several times to get us more information about this piece of land. We wanted to make the best possible decision and I think that we have made the right decision about the only controversial part of this bill and that is the status of Lookout Point. 
The last thing I would like to say is that I want to commend two people who made submissions to the select committee Warren Crawford and Barry Monks. I know that some on the Government side were a little scornful of Barry Monks because he was a Labour Party— 
Maggie Barry 
: The failed Labour candidate. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Thank you Maggie. I was going to say it myself—I did not actually need your help—because I am not ashamed of the fact that Barry Monks was a Labour Party candidate. I do not know whether that means that anything he says is wrong but if Maggie Barry had read his submission she would have seen he did an incredible amount of work. He went into the records he went to Dunedin and he searched to try to get the right information about this bill. I want to commend Barry Monks for his submission. I am sorry that at the end of it it did not stack up because there was one fundamental mistake in what the whole argument was premised on. That was that he believed a bill had been passed that in fact changed the status of the land or secured the status of the land. In fact the bill never came to the Parliament it was never passed and therefore the premise on which he was basing his argument did not stack up. That does not mean that it was not a very good submission and I thank him— 
Maggie Barry 
: It wasted a lot of time. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Goodness me! For the people who are listening—Maggie Barry who has not stopped interjecting through the whole of my speech is saying that democracy is a waste of time. Well we do not believe that it is. We believe that democracy is a very important part of our system here in this Parliament. Barry Monks and Warren Crawford took the opportunity to go to the select committee present a submission and appear before the committee. In fact they appeared through telecommunications rather than in person—we are so modern in our committee. Maggie Barry—that is democracy and they have the right to do that. We should be applauding them. 
Maggie Barry 
: He was wrong. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: It is not as she is interjecting a waste of time. It was a very important submission. We would like to see this bill passed. There are only seven clauses. The member has had the chance to stand up and be a Minister. Let us get it over and done with.