Tirikatene Rino: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4307. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): As much as I would like to move an extension of time I think that member deserves a drink. We all do—absolutely.Tim Macindoe: We’ll all need one by the end of this.RINO TIRIKATENE: Well we will wait and see. I am pleased to speak in support of the third reading. I looked back at my earlier contributions on this bill and I was quite critical of the Christchurch City Council and the officials in the 9 successive years where they basically broke the law and did not comply with the Local Government (Rating) Act. But I think I have said my piece. I know that the Christchurch City Council has got the message loud and clear. Can I acknowledge the council though for fronting up to Parliament acknowledging its mistakes and going through this process to correct the errors and the illegality of its actions.I want to make just a short contribution and rather than being critical of the Christchurch City Council I will just say that the errors that were made are there for everyone to see. The council has come to Parliament to correct them and through retrospective legislation we are doing so. But I would hope that this piece of legislation is a message I guess to all local government in New Zealand the 78 local authorities that we have up and down the length and breadth of our great country—the regional councils the territorial authorities and all the different types of councils that we have such as district councils city councils and unitary councils. Hopefully this is a lesson for all of them—please make sure you comply with the law. It is not hard. When you are setting your rates just follow the requirements in the legislation and make sure that you are doing everything by the book. When you are passing your resolutions make sure you are actually including everything that is required to be put in the resolution. It is not hard.I know that this is an area where Local Government New Zealand is wanting to improve the performance of local authorities around the country. This is one area where they can definitely improve on their performance. I ask them to please take the time. I ask them to do what Mr Ron Mark did when he was the Mayor of Carterton—they made sure they complied with the law they passed their resolutions and they included all of the correct information to ensure that it was compliant with the law. That is really my message to local authorities around the country. Please make sure you follow the requirements the compliance checklists. It is not hard. Make sure that you put everything in the resolutions because otherwise we may be forced to sit through more contributions like we have had tonight.We have heard about Shakespeare we have heard about neoclassical architecture we have heard about all sorts of stuff in this debate. Unless the good people of New Zealand want to sit through more corrective patch-up legislation please local government across New Zealand make sure you follow the law pass your resolutions make sure they are all complete cross the t’s and dot the i’s and then we will not be wasting our Parliament’s time on putting through unnecessary legislation to correct something that should not have happened in the first place. Regrettably there are times when Parliament has to step in.Let us hope there is not a concerned citizen or ratepayer going through their local government official information wanting to get copies of all the resolutions that were passed and trying to marry them up. We know that some people out there might do that. Certain ratepayers are quite pedantic. Let us hope that more of these errors do not come to light because if it has happened with one of our major councils the Christchurch City Council let us hope that the 78 other local authorities around the country have all been compliant in passing their resolutions. Thank you.