King Annette: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4805. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak on the National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill and I begin by saying that my colleague Grant Robertson the Wellington Central member of Parliament is sorry that he could not be here to speak in the first reading but unfortunately family issues take priority today. But as another Wellington member of Parliament and a person involved in the original idea in the last Labour Government I am very pleased to be able to speak on this bill. We will support this bill and we will work with the Government to ensure its passage. We do have some amendments that we would like considered at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I will talk more about them in a moment. 
The National War Memorial Park will be situated adjacent to the site of the existing National War Memorial the Carillon and the Hall of Memories as has been defined in the National War Memorial Act 1992. The establishment of a National War Memorial Park is the policy of the previous Labour Government. I have to say that it was a very strong vision of the former Prime Minister Helen Clark. In 2004 Helen Clark after several years of negotiating and planning led the return of the Unknown Warrior to New Zealand and the formal burial of the remains at the memorial. It was her passion that New Zealand would have a resting place to represent the thousands of New Zealand soldiers seamen and aviators killed in action who have never returned to New Zealand and whose bodies are left many of them in unmarked graves on foreign shores. 
Like many of us she was driven by a deep understanding of the strength of feeling New Zealand has towards the sacrifice that young men and women made to ensure our freedom democracy and human rights and also by personal family experiences—from uncles great-uncles fathers and so on who had fought in the First World War and Second World War. 
I have to say that my regard for our old servicemen came from a very early age with the emphasis that my parents put on honouring those who had served in those wars. In June 2007 I represented the New Zealand Government at the 90th commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Belgium where 128 officers and soldiers are buried at the Messines Ridge cemetery thousands of kilometres from home. They died defending people they did not know. It was the battle where Lance Corporal Samuel Frickleton a South Island coal miner won his Victoria Cross. I was moved by the gratitude still felt by the people in that tiny village of Messines—a village twinned with Featherston in New Zealand. In the museum that you will find in that village I found the names of two young men killed in action from my home town of Murchison. When you consider what a tiny town that is and that two men had lost their lives in that battle that certainly moved me. 
On 24 April 2007 Helen Clark and I announced plans for a New Zealand memorial park at the National War Memorial precinct and $10.9 million of funding was allocated at that point. Wellington City Council also committed funding. We worked closely with the former mayor Kerry Prendergast on this matter. It was the accumulation of several years of work. From the time of the return of the Unknown Warrior work was started on the idea of a National War Memorial Park. It started by ensuring that we were able to acquire the land. Because the land actually was zoned semi-industrial we needed to be able to acquire that land for the park to proceed. We worked with the Wellington City Council on that proposal. 
I was disappointed when I heard on the radio at the time this bill was announced criticism from the Green Party about the delay by Labour for this park. In fact it was quite wrong. A lot of work had been done from the time that the Unknown Warrior was brought home to the time we went out of Government. You had to finish the inner-city bypass to ensure that you were able to preserve that land for a park. We also worked with the Wellington City Council because at that time it wanted the continuation of a tree-lined avenue up Taranaki Street that could then link in with the park. This is the sort of work that was going on when we were in Government. 
The key political point if there is one to be made is that it could have been done without legislation if the National Government had not mucked around with the proposal for the last 4 years. Chris Finlayson who has just introduced the bill made it very clear to the Wellington City Council just after the 2008 election that he was not going to continue with Helen Clark’s vision. I am pleased that he now talks of caring for the children and so on but he did not wish to continue with her vision. It always seemed to me to be rather petty because this was a vision as he said that we should embrace for all New Zealanders. 
So putting aside the petty politics that have been played with the memorial park we do want to see a National War Memorial Park that the nation will be proud of at the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli in 1915. It is a park opening that I would be very honoured to attend and hopefully will be attending as the sixth Labour Government. 
The passing of this empowering legislation should not be done lightly. This is empowering legislation and we always need to be careful when we give such power to this Parliament but there is strong support from the local community from the Wellington City Council and from our veteran organisations. So with the strong support and with the desire to have it finished by 2015 and the need to make sure that it will be finished we will support this empowering legislation. 
But there are some changes that we would like to see made at the select committee and I believe that the Minister of Transport at least is entertaining these amendments that we are putting up. We would like to see the role of the review panel that is established in the legislation widened to include oversight of the consents that are granted. Given the range of the consents and the overriding of the appeal rights we think that that would give the public confidence in the process if the review panel had this role. This is especially important in terms of environmental and heritage considerations. Secondly we would like to see the review panel report on its work on a regular basis—6 monthly—to a select committee such as say the Regulations Review Committee. Thirdly we would like to see prior consultation procedures with interested stakeholders before Orders in Council are proposed. The community forum that has been established in legislation could we believe fulfil this role. Fourthly we would also like to put into law a role for the community forum in being consulted on the final design of the park. Incidentally the local MP Grant Robertson does have some concerns with elements of the design of the park particularly around vehicle access but he has been working this through with members of the Government. 
We support the undergrounding of Buckle Street but we have to say that it is going to be rather a funny road. We have now just had announced by the New Zealand Transport Agency the flyover that is going to go round the Basin Reserve. This road is now going to look like a roller-coaster road where you go under you go up you go down you go up and you head to the tunnel at Mount Victoria. I do say to the Government that maybe Maurice Williamson can take this up as he is probably the only Minister here who has some knowledge of these things. When we underground the road at Buckle Street we might look at whether a flyover is actually appropriate unless we do really want a roller coaster. I have to say that it has been a roller-coaster ride for those of us in Wellington looking to see what the Government was finally going to do around the congestion in the city. We know now that it is going to be this roller-coaster ride up to the Mount Victoria tunnel. You will be able to get very fast to the Mount Victoria tunnel but then of course you will go through just a one-lane tunnel. Although you will get there quickly you will get through the tunnel more slowly. 
We do say to the Government that this in the wider sense is a great idea—the park. We will support it but look at what you are doing with the other roads round the Basin Reserve leading to Mount Victoria. We do not want it to look foolish when we finally open it in 2015. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill and we will be giving all assistance and advice we can to the Government to make sure it goes through in the timetable that has been set.