Cunliffe David: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11674. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I rise to take a brief call in support of the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill. I am doing so as Labour’s land information spokesperson. It is a role that I am relatively new to and therefore I was not in attendance during the select committee hearings on the bill. However we are in possession of a very useful committee report so I acknowledge the chair and all members of the Local Government and Environment Committee who have contributed to that.Like the member who has just resumed his seat Stuart Smith I have a connection with Canterbury. In my case I grew up in South Canterbury in the beautiful little town of Pleasant Point. For a teenager growing up in the Point Timaru was the sort of big smoke and Christchurch was the really big smoke. That road has been travelled many times. I have a particular affection for Christchurch and still do.Like all New Zealanders I was gutted to see the horrific earthquakes of 5 years or so ago and like the people of Christchurch I have been watching and waiting and doing what I can to support the rebuild of our second-largest city and something that is a jewel in New Zealand’s array of urban living. Canterbury people whom I speak to say they just want to move on. It has been so long. They want the remaining hurdles to being able to get on and settle down and live a normal life to be behind them. They cannot understand why it has taken as long as it has to rebuild the central business district to get the infrastructure in place and to get final agreement on things like the conference centre. They have witnessed the argy-bargy between local and central government.But this is not a time for party politics; this is a time for focusing on this particular aspect of being able to move forward. So to drop down to the content of the bill the issue is of course as others have noted that some 11000 properties have had their boundaries moved because the land has moved by 20 centimetres or more. That is significant. If the boundary peg was in one place on a GPS then it will be in a different place after that movement. This bill therefore sorts out an argument about whether the true boundary is where it was on a GPS basis or on a peg or marker basis. It basically says that the legal boundary of the property will move with the peg or the marker as a result of the earth movement in the earthquake. That is a sensible practical way to deal with this.However there is no one-size-fits-all rule in a disaster of this magnitude. You can contemplate for example properties in the Sumner area some of which ended up over a cliff because the ground fell away. So there is a case where this bill deals with things like landslips and provides now I am pleased to say a dispute resolution mechanism whereby if there is an unintended consequence people can get around a table and sort it out so that we actually get a reasonable result for the people of Canterbury.This is I think an example of Parliament working cooperatively. There are no partisan politics in this bill. Members have worked assiduously around the select committee table and they have addressed themselves to a number of technical issues which we will deal with in more detail at the Committee stage. But to just briefly note the definition of the Canterbury earthquakes has been broadened to include significant aftershocks. That is important because boundary movements continue to occur. There are mechanisms to address title conflicts and dispute resolution and ways in which liability for earlier surveys and boundary definition can be sorted out including cases of negligence and bad faith. It clarifies that guidelines issued by the Surveyor-General will have no legal status and deals with landslip situations.I would like to acknowledge Scott Simpson the chair and other members of the select committee on the Labour side—my colleagues Megan Woods David Parker and the team. Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to this bill. We look forward to further discussion at the Committee stage and send the message to the people of Canterbury that we stand with them. We hope that this bill will enable them to get on with their lives as one remaining uncertainty is removed.