Goldsmith Paul: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16103. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I have never listened to a speech from that member Andrew Williams that has not been twice as long as it needed to be. I was not sure whether we were debating a local government amendment bill or the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill because it sounded like he was more interested in talking about local government. I was not sure from the end of that speech which certainly went round and round the mulberry bush many many times whether he supported the bill or not. That is the complication with this kind of legislation.I would make one point on development contributions which are not related to this bill but which seem to be the topic of debate in most of the speeches. We are not doing away with development contributions. We are getting some discipline around that process. It does not necessarily follow that you have to put up the rates. You actually just have to get some discipline around Government spending and that is what this Government has shown very effectively around bringing Government spending under control in a disciplined fashion and getting back to surplus. That is why this Government enjoys the support that it has.Phil Twyford: Forcing councils to put rates up.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Only if they keep on spending more and what we need is some discipline around spending.Phil Twyford: Someone has to pay Paul.PAUL GOLDSMITH: You do not have to pay great sums if a council is efficient. That is what all our local government reforms have been about. They are about trying to get some efficiency into local government. But if we return to the bill the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill—Andrew Williams: Hasn’t worked in Auckland.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well it has not worked as well in Auckland as it could have primarily because we have had a raging leftie as a mayor who has been spending like a runaway train. It is time we got some discipline back into the council and then Aucklanders will be a lot better off.I come back to the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. It is worth going back to the details because nobody is comfortable with or enthusiastic about passing this sort of bill which validates procedural irregularitiesmade by the Tasman District Council. Let us go back and see just what happened here. What happened was that the council had identified a series of procedural irregularities under the Local Government (Rating) Act in the process used to set rates between 2003-04 and 2008-09. They were mainly in relation to failing to comply with sections 23 24 and 57 of that Act. In summary these sections required that the rates are to be set by a resolution of the council and that the resolution must specify certain details of the rates and of the penalties to be paid. But more important the resolution must be separate from resolutions to adopt annual plans and funding impact statements even when these documents contain details of the rates. It also must be that the resolution is made after resolutions to adopt annual plans and funding impact statements pertaining to that financial year.That is a reasonably clear legislative outlook and it has to be done in a certain way but unfortunately the Tasman District Council made a number of mistakes. It purported to set and assess the rates and rates penalties by way of a resolution to adopt an annual plan and funding impact statement rather than by way of a separate resolution. So it tried to get everything into the same resolution rather than by separate resolutions. It also resolved to adopt rates prior to the adoption of the annual plan and funding impact statement pertaining to that financial year. So it got things round the wrong way. It passed the resolution before the adoption of the annual plan rather than after the adoption of the annual plan.Secondly but worse than that in 2006 the council purported to set and assess a targeted stormwater rate for properties within theLigar Bay andTata Beach urban drainage areas. We listened to a number of submitters on this topic in the Local Government and Environment Committee which was very ably chaired I might say by Nicky Wagner. It enjoyed a good measure of bipartisanship as we dealt with and tried to get to the bottom of what was a tricky issue. I do want to pay tribute to the work of Damien O’Connor on this bill because no local member of Parliament particularly wants to have to shepherd a bill such as this through Parliament but he did it with good grace. We listened carefully to the submitters on each point.Getting back to 2006 the council purported to set and assess a targeted stormwater rate—[Interruption]—if you could just pay attention please—for properties within theLigar Bay andTata Beach drainage areas. However it failed to visually identify the geographical location of the rateable land to which the targeted stormwater rate applied in the 2006-07 funding impact statement as required under section 17 and schedule 2 of the Local Government (Rating) Act. So in essence it failed to produce the map. Those are the procedural irregularities made in regard to the resolutions.This is all very irritating but in essence when we were faced with the request to pass legislation to overturn some mistake that was made previously obviously the committee was not comfortable with it if there was some way in which the rates were not proper rates or they should not have been done or they were not part of the overall plan and that was never the allegation here. It was a procedural irregularity. The advice that we had from the Tasman District Council was that if the map had been included in 2006 and 2007 in the funding impact statement the rate would have been lawfully made and the rates would have been payable. So it was the absence of the map that made what were otherwise quite acceptable rates unacceptable. This piece of legislation is trying to fix the situation.What are the alternatives? The alternatives are that we could have just said: “Oh well maybe the council should just forgive or pay back those rates because they got it wrong.” But that is actually more complicated than it seems because paying back rates is not easy. There is actually no legislative power to remit the rates. The council would then have to run around and see whether it could find the people who owned the landback in 2006 and 2007 and then that would not be fair because those people who would be getting their rates back in effect would not have paid rates for that year. They would have had the stormwater coverage and the benefit of it all but not have paid for it. So that is hardly fair to the rest of the people of the Tasman District. It is an awkward juggling act that Parliament was set to deal with and on balance after a great deal of consideration we decided to come down in favour of this bill.When I come back to some of the broader issues that we are dealing with here—Phil Twyford: Talk about John Banks. We always enjoy that.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Certain members have raised the biography of John Banks. The only thing I would say in relation to that is that I do write about successful people and not failed local body politicians. Maybe there may be an opportunity for Mr Williams’ political career to take off in a very late trajectory and reach that sort of height but I am not necessarily confident that that is going to happen. As for Mr Twyford I am not sure either. But there may be an opportunity before too long with the fast rotation that we are seeing in the Labour leadership for Mr Twyford although I personally would favour Moana Mackey being a close cousin of mine. So there we have it. I think Labour does have issues but we do not want to get distracted from this bill which is very different.I suppose just in summing up the broader issues that I want to draw on are that National’s Better Local Government reforms will help make local government more efficient responsive and well focused. This bill deals with an example of when the Tasman District Council was not well focused and it was not particularly efficient and that is always going to happen. People do make mistakes. I suppose the overall lesson of having to deal with these sorts of bills is that we do not want to have a legislative set-up for local government that is so complex that people regularly make mistakes. On the other hand we do absolutely expect and require that local government does do things correctly so that ratepayers can have confidence that they are paying things legally and that all the boxes are ticked. The Better Local Government reforms include a work stream to monitor and improve council performance to help prevent future procedural errors. This bill will highlight to other councils I am sure the importance of proper scrutiny when setting rates. I have no doubt that when other councils consider this bill and others such as this one they will see it as a very powerful warning that when it comes to the time of setting and passing procedural law matters—