Bennett David: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
Bennett David: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
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DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I will follow on from the speech by the member who spoke before Lynne Pillay when she talked about the local councils—in plural—supporting the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill. It raised the point that Dail Jones brought up about Rodney District Council not actually supporting this bill. I wonder whether Lynne Pillay is aware of the concerns the other member raised about one of the councils not actually supporting the bill in the sense of extending the heritage area into its boundaries. When we look at boundaries in relation to this legislation we see that the issue is about boundaries. It is about Labour trying to put boundaries on people. It is about Labour saying it knows best about what people should do with their own land. It is about Labour telling people how to live their lives. Again it is about Labour knowing what is right. It thinks it knows what is right. Labour thinks it has a God-given right to tell the people in this country what is right. 
Well that is not the way it is. People have their own ability to build their own lives. People invest in their houses and properties. People put major contributions from their life savings into their properties. Do they expect the Government to come along and tell them what to do with them? No they do not. They go hard. They work hard. People save money even though they are taxed to the death. They buy their own properties and build their own assets only to have the Government come along and tell them that it knows better than they do. This Government thinks it knows better than the individuals do who have worked saved and scraped along in order to build something they wanted for their futures and lifestyles. 
This legislation is not about an environmental issue. It is not a case of Labour coming in and saving one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent environmental treasures. This is a case of Labour dictating to people what should be done in their backyards. This is a case where the Labour Party members see the hand of the Government as being more important than the ability of humans and individuals to build their own futures. That is what the Labour Party stands for. It is a party that sees the Government as being the answer. It is a party that believes that the Government knows best. Well that is not the case. The reality is that the Government serves the people. The people know what they want; the people can dictate their own futures. Why do we not give the people the chance to do that? Why do we not let the people make that choice about how they use their land? Why do we not let the people decide through their councils what should be done on their properties? 
But no these guys in the Labour Government say they know best. They know that they can pass another piece of legislation and put another tax on New Zealanders—and this is another tax. This bill will create more costs for the ratepayers in that area. They will have to fund people to go along and comply with the legislation. There will be more compliance costs more taxes and more rates. This bill is Labour through and through. It is classic Labour legislation. It tells people what to do it puts a cost on them it makes them pay for it again and then they have to give up all their rights to go against it. The Labour members say people cannot complain because the Government is greater than the people and the legislation has come in and told people what is right. That is what those members are about. That is what the Labour Government has been about for 8 years and that is why it will go out of office at the end of this year. Labour members have not listened to the people. They have not got out there and been on the streets unlike our good MPs of the west. The Labour members do not know what the people want. They know what they think they want to see happen in this country but what they think they want to see happen is not what the people want. 
We are here to represent the people. We are not here to represent one political party’s agenda and we are not here to represent Labour’s haloed vision of what this country should look like. The Government should let the people decide. It is their country and their properties. Let them have a choice.