Wagner Nicky: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWagner Nicky: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11091. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central):I rise to speak to the Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill as well. I would like to thank MP Mike Sabin for bringing this to the House. As we have heard from the member who has just sat down Su’a William Sio this is a mess. It is a really difficult situation. I think Mike has worked through this bill intelligently and professionally and I do appreciate the work that he has done.This is not the sort of bill that MPs like to work on but validation bills do on some occasions have a purpose. They do come to this House because sometimes they are the best way forward for councils and communities when irregularities of process have happened. I would just like to draw attention to the previous member’s speech which covered a lot of issues around this bill but a lot of those issues are out of scope. This bill deals only with the irregularities around ratepaying.The Kaipara District Council is in a difficult situation but it does need to continue to fulfil its local government roles. It needs to be able to deliver the services for the 12000 constituents who have continued to pay their rates and it needs to allow the commissioners to get on with the job of getting the council operating efficiently and effectively and getting it ready for democracy and voting in 2015. We have been told that this is about irregularities in rates that the council is seeking to validate and thatcould have been struck correctly. They could have been struck correctly under the Local Government (Rating) Act and at the same amount of money as invoiced. We have been told that these irregularities are more about poor attention to detail and poor process than about something that is illegal or unfair.Currently 9 percent of the ratepayers have not paid any rates in the current year and because of the past irregularities the commissioners are not able to enforce their payments. So that current level of arrears is having an adverse effect on the other 91 percent of people who have paid their rates. To minimise the financial impact of that high level of rate arrears the commissioners have instructed staff to operate within the current level of debt and to achieve that end services and capital works funds that normally would have been spent have been cut by $3 million which in the long term is detrimental to the community. These issues need to be resolved and they need to be resolved quickly because the longer the rates are not paid the more difficult it is to provide the services for those ratepayers who have paid. Further non-payment of rates will also result in higher interest costs directly adding unnecessary and unaffordable costs to all of the district ratepayers.In summary this bill will support the 12000 law-abiding citizens in Kaipara and bring certainty and closure to a number of irregularities over the past 7 years. The Kaipara District Council acknowledges that number of irregularities and that they occurred in the way that the council set rates and this bill is about fixing that. The bill will mean that ratepayers will be liable for the rates that they were invoiced for but no one will pay more rates than they were historically invoiced for.As well as the rating irregularities the council presided over the controversial Mangawhai sewerage scheme at an increased amount of debt and that is what the previous speaker has just been talking about. This bill does not stop proper scrutiny of these decisions nor does it absolve anybody of responsibility or culpability.The bill does not impinge on any of the several inquiries that are under way. There is one by the Office of the Auditor-General into the EcoCare sewerage scheme. It does not impinge on the independent inquiry into the auditor and it does not impinge on the commissioner’s inquiry into matters aside from the above including actions of the former chief executive officer. This bill is about the fixing of irregularities and does not affect the scope of other issues that can be dealt with. I commend this bill to the House.