Goudie Sandra: Walking Access Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goudie Sandra: Walking Access Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19092. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 National is supporting this bill but it is interesting that there is no provision for any funding for any walkways that might actually be established. If we look at the definitions around “authority” we see that councils will be required to make some decisions and maybe even to take on the responsibility of being an authority for the establishment of a walkway. And quite patently not everybody wants to have people traipsing over his or her property as part of a walkway even if it is round the coast for example. If a council is going to go down that path and set itself up as an authority it then has to consider how it will meet those costs.  
That raises the question of whether such a council will put its hand up to become an authority in the first instance manage a walkway and have responsibility for any of the costs associated with that walkway. There is also the associated cost of enforcement in terms of the number of police who will be required to act as enforcement officers if someone is stepping outside the codes—they will be developing codes as well.  
When people go for a walk along a walkway they will not necessarily be aware that there is a code of conduct they will have to adhere to so the enforcement officer will have quite a job to make sure that people comply with a code they know nothing about but that does exist on a shelf somewhere. Those people may be happily walking over the walkway and may not necessarily be acting in accordance with that code. I can see that there will be one or two issues along the way.  
There are costs to these walkways as well. There is the cost perhaps of fencing. There is the cost of enforcement and there is the cost of some associated requirements that adjacent landowners may require in negotiating a walkway across their property or on public land through their property because it may encompass paper roads. It was quite good to see that the wider issue around paper roads was taken out of this legislation and I think that is in large part due to the excellent work done by Eric Roy and the National members of the Local Government and Environment Committee. Some very good work was done there.  
What happens in essence is that if a person has some private property is in the middle of two parts of a walkway and does not want to negotiate fortunately there is nothing within this legislation that compels that person. It would have to be done under negotiation and a person cannot be compelled to even enter into negotiation if that person decides he or she does not want to. I think that is a good aspect of this bill.  
Right now any council any regional council any conservation department or any conservation board can get around the table and negotiate. There is nothing to stop that. There is nothing to stop any party from participating in the negotiation process to establish a walkway. But that is OK—we will still develop and support this bill which puts lots of words and bureaucracy around all that just to make it a little bit more problematic rather than just leaving it up to the free negotiation processes that already exist.  
One of the other things that I found interesting is the definition of “controlling authority”. In actual fact a controlling authority can be anybody; it can be a council and it can be an individual. I thought it was quite interesting that if a walkway is negotiated a controlling authority could be an individual but I could not see why an individual would want to be one because he or she would then incur the responsibilities and the costs that accrue to that. Maybe the Minister would like to take a call and outline some of the matters I have raised. It would be very interesting to hear what the Minister has to say with regard to those sorts of things.  
One of the other issues that came up was the naming of walkways where priority is given to one sector of the community without the rest of the community having any input into the naming. Priority was given to Maori naming of walkways without any reference to any other member of the community which I thought was unacceptable frankly. I am not sure whether there have been any amendments to change that so that everybody has an opportunity to participate equally.