Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. The Green Party is supporting the Palmerston North Reserves Empowering Amendment Bill. We're supporting it because it does implement the principles of appropriate decision-making by allowing the council to make a decision about the future ownership and management of the reserve and as others including the bill's promoter Tangi Utikere have explained because the legislation at the moment the 1922 Act doesn't allow the land to be sold but bringing it under the 1966 Palmerston North Reserves Empowering Act would allow the council to sell the land provided it does so pursuant to a resolution it provides public notice of the time and place of the meeting at which that resolution is to be submitted to the council and it gives 14 days' notice. So that is appropriate decision-making but I have been conscious that a number of members of the House are supporting the use of reserves for housing. And I think we do need to be careful here because we're here in 2022. Think out 200 years into the future: the population of Aotearoa New Zealand will have continued to increase significantly. We need green space in our urban centres to provide for the mental health and wellbeing of people through the recreation that Ian McKelvie discussed—taking grandchildren and watching them at sport. We need these green spaces to cope with a change in climate to reduce the urban heat island effect and to help with ensuring that stormwater which is discharged into the Manawatū River potentially can go through a rain garden. So it is quite short-sighted to just see public reserves as a convenient way of providing much-needed housing when the other option is of course to encourage medium- and high-density housing on the bulk of private land which exists in the city. Certainly this site at the Huia Street Reserve the 1.6 hectares is very close to the city centre. Palmerston North Girls' High School is located to the south of the reserve. It's close to main traffic routes. So it may well be suitable for housing but I was disappointed to see that one of the reasons the Palmerston North City Council is promoting this bill was because—as the Mayor Grant Smith said in his submission—The proposal has the potential to provide the council with an alternative revenue source." Councils should not be about selling off public space reserve land in order to generate revenue. This space once gone is not generally retrieved. It has a multitude of uses so I hope the Palmerston North City Council does consult widely and is careful in its decision making about whether to sell the reserve or it adopts a proposal—as other councils have done—and works to provide a different form of housing typology on the land in a joint venture with a private developer community housing trust or others so that the land ownership remains with the council and remains in public ownership to preserve the options for the future. So we're supporting it because it does allow the council to make that decision. The select committee in terms of the scope of the bill—the bill itself is not about those decisions about the future use of the land. I hope that the council also works closely with Palmerston North Girls' High School and their board because although the board did not appear before the select committee they have raised some concerns about increased density of housing on this site—because of the traffic movements where you've got 1200 students and 140 staff going in and out of the site and there's quite a narrow access way. So however the site is determined to be used by the council in the future it's got to take into account the needs of others in the community—particularly the girls' high school—and ensure that it's not just being used as a revenue-raising venture in order to reduce the demand on rates. But the Green Party is supporting the bill. Thank you."