Turei Metiria: Local Government (Rating Cap) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Local Government (Rating Cap) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4477] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is opposing the Local Government (Rating Cap) Amendment Bill. We have received a large number of letters and emails about it and have given the issue very serious thought because the matters raised by members of the community have been really serious. We understand that rates are increasing massively in some places. We know of areas where rates have increased by 300 percent and of cases where properties worth $22000 are being rated as if they were worth $800000. We certainly know and have known for a very long time that Maori have been increasingly forced off their land as a result of rates increases that make it simply impossible for them to continue living in their papakainga areas. They are being rated highly and the increases are happening very quickly. 
But we think we have to be very very careful if we are to restrict the power of local government to raise the income it needs to manage the local infrastructure it is fundamentally responsible for managing. With a lower rating base many crucial infrastructural projects such as public transport water and waste management simply would not be affordable. And if that were to happen the next step would be local government coming to central government to ask for more money to provide for those services thereby driving up the general tax demand by central government. It is not a mechanism for finding the solution to the problems. 
One really important issue for the Green Party is that the bill—and I think to some extent though not entirely the campaign behind it—is a diversion from the real causes of increasing land prices and the subsequent rates rises. I think if the ACT party were not so ideologically bound as it is to the whole mantra of economic growth above all else its members might consider dealing with some of these underlying causes. One of those significant causes a few steps back from local government is the uncontrolled increase in foreign investment in land in this country built on the relentless pursuit of unsustainable economic growth which is helping to drive up land prices particularly in coastal land and in Maori land. It is not even productive job-creating investment it is just investment in purchase of land. 
In 2004 the Overseas Investment Commission approved the sale of nearly 200000 hectares of rural land to foreign investors. Foreign-owned land now covers more than one million hectares of New Zealand. Even the  
Financial Stability Report 
 of May 2006 recognised that significant proportions of foreign capital are being invested and used for the banking sector in residential mortgage lending. So there are steps behind the rates rises that are helping to cause those increases and we need to be able to deal with those background issues rather than try to put band-aids on the problem. The fact is that there is no monitoring of this investment in New Zealand nor any real monitoring of its impacts on New Zealand communities such as those impacted by the issues that the ACT party is trying to resolve. 
I recently went to a showing of a New Zealand - made film in Mahia called  
The Last Resort 
 and it is currently on at the film festival. It describes these processes and the background to them in great detail. It uses the example of the sale of the Blue Bay camp ground in Opoutama in Mahia. The council sold that camp ground—it was 60 years old—to the lessee who then sold it on to a developer. The developer has turned it into 44 sections worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The local hapu held an occupation of the adjoining reserve to try to raise consciousness about the impacts of councils doing this with community-owned land in order to help drive up the rate base. This increases the rates for all the houses around the area that are not worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and are owned by people who have been living there for generations. 
These are significant issues for those people. I understand that ACT is trying to find a solution to these issues but the fact is that unless we curb unsustainable growth that then leads to increased land prices and therefore to the economic exclusion of ordinary New Zealanders as we are seeing. We simply will not be able to stop the subsequent effects of that exclusion—rates rises and councils taking advantage of increased land valuations being one of those effects. 
This bill distorts and distracts us from the real issues behind why these things are happening for local ratepayers and we consider that we simply cannot support a bill that really only provides a band-aid approach and does not deal with the real issues. We would welcome the support of ACT and other members of this House to deal with those background issues if they are prepared to set aside their absolute adherence to unsustainable economic growth as the only option for this country because that is in large part the problem. Kia ora.