O'Rourke Denis: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Rourke Denis: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2946. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 First of all the Palmerston Showgrounds are in fact reserve under the Reserves Act 1977 and hence Crown land. The Waitaki District Council has applied for the reserve status to be revoked so that it can sell the land. It has Department of Conservation and Ngai Tahu consent but there is insufficient information as far as I am concerned in the explanatory note of the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill. It appears that the land was sold to the current lessees in May 2000 even though it was a reserve. We are not told why the showgrounds are being sold in that way but the revocation as a reserve was publicly notified and there were in fact no objections. We presume that the land is no longer needed as showgrounds but you would not know that from the information that we are given.  
I think that perhaps Parliament is being regarded to some extent as a rubber stamp in this matter. It is unclear what is really happening. We are first of all told that there was a purported sale in May 2000 then we are told that the council resolved to sell to the lessees in April 2004 subject to the surrender of the lease. Yet we are also told that the land is to be vested in the Crown subject to the lease “so that the council may consider selling the property to the current lessees.” So I am not sure what has actually happened here and the explanatory note is as clear as mud. It is very confusing indeed. However it does appear that the bill will regularise the council’s errors in this matter and we must assume that this is appropriate. I hope that the committee will have a good look at the reasons behind it.  
Secondly the bill also deals with lot 1 on DP345820. Again the council sold a reserve—purportedly sold it—and it was in fact transferred and transferred again and again. The bill will vest the land legally in the current proprietors and the Department of Conservation and Ngai Tahu have consented. Again there is no real explanation why the reserve status is not needed and why the land was originally purportedly sold. There has been no public notification and we are left again to presume that the reasons for the revocation and sale are valid. Again I hope that the Local Government and Environment Committee will investigate this because there is nothing in the bill as presented or in the explanations I have heard that would justify it.  
Thirdly the Lookout Point land which was originally endowment land for the Oamaru borough—now the Waitaki District Council—was apparently erroneously made a reserve and a title was issued with a reserve memorial on it. Hence there is said to be confusion about whether the land is a reserve or not. But once again there is little or no explanation about the claim of confusion as to whether this land was genuinely to be a reserve or was to be just endowment land for the council. As a matter of fact however the Order in Council of 1937 did make the land a reserve. So it is indisputably in fact actually a reserve and therefore the council should in my view have to go through the usual process to revoke a reserve involving full public consultation and the full formal process for that to happen. There is no information again why this reserve status should be revoked in this case. There has in fact been absolutely no public notification no Department of Conservation consent and no Ngai Tahu consent. 
Jacqui Dean 
: Read the bill. 
DENIS O’ROURKE 
: So we are not told why the Waitaki District Council wants to sell. I have just heard opposite that there is information there. But I have read everything I can find on it and I say that there is not any information about that and that the full process should have been gone through. So overall New Zealand First objects to the introduction of this bill without adequate information without clear reasons for the revocation of reserve status without evidence of public notification and without the usual due process. But New Zealand First will support the bill going to the select committee so that a more comprehensive explanation of all the circumstances behind these three pieces of land can be given and so that we can have a good and proper look at whether the bill should in fact be passed.