Dean Jacqui: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17069. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki):It is a huge pleasure to rise and speak to the third reading of the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill—Iain Lees-Galloway: You didn’t rise; you sauntered in.JACQUI DEAN: —yeah—and with due respect to the previous speaker Su’a William Sio although this is the third reading of this bill I do think that it requires a decent scrutiny by this House. I am never one to rush things. I do not think that we as members should be rushing particularly on local bills. If I reflect on some of the local bills that I personally have been associated with—and I do hope that the House will indulge me just to—Moana Mackey: Oh no! It’s going to be like a Wikipedia entry.JACQUI DEAN: Yes. I can give chapter and verse. Moana Mackey over the other side wants chapter and verse of some of the local bills. I do not think we should make light of the importance of local bills coming to this House because it is a privilege for a local member to host a bill through the House. The reason it is a privilege is that a local bill will deal with matters that might not be of great moment—[Interruption] Local—thank you Minister Tolley. A local bill deals with matters that may not be of great moment to the nation but certainly are to the local community. The Minister is absolutely right.I can think about some other local bills that have been before this House. I brought one on behalf of the Waitaki District Council to do with the designation of a piece of land. That sounds as dry as an old chip and on first blush yes it would be as dry as an old chip except that it did mean an awful lot to that particular local community. In fact I venture to say that for a number of years it proved to be hugely divisive amongst that community. Some members of the community wished to see development on that land and others wanted to see the land staying the way it was and always has been and each of them went to the council to try to clarify that designation.That is what we want our local authorities to do. Goodness me! We stand up in this House all the time calling on our local authorities to be precise in their deliberations and make good decisions on behalf of their communities. Sometimes making good decisions on behalf of their communities is not helped by some little flaw in the legislation or in fact as with the Tasman District Council by some slightly suboptimal decision-making processes. Going back to the Waitaki District Council example it was not a suboptimal decision—Hon Trevor Mallard: Speak to the bill.JACQUI DEAN: Thank you. That is Trevor Mallard over the other side who is another member who is intolerant of local issues. I am kind of interested in local issues because I have got a pretty cool electorate and I do want to talk about the importance of a local bill to a local community. In the Waitaki with the local bill it was not a matter of poor decision-making on behalf of the local authority. It was a mistake made way back in 1938 in the land registry. I know that Trevor Mallard does not have patience with this kind of detail of legislation. I think a lot of it just goes over his head and so he puts on this big buffoonery front—[Interruption] I will yield. There is a point of order.Eugenie Sage: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I understood we were discussing the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. The Waitaki bill which the member for Waitaki is talking about this House passed some time ago.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you for drawing that to the House’s attention. I think the member makes a very valid point. I would ask the member to come to the bill.JACQUI DEAN: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I do appreciate the guidance. The connection that I am making here is that this is a local bill and it is of great matter but not perhaps to the whole Parliament.Hon Annette King: Very good.JACQUI DEAN: It is a good local bill—a very good local bill. It is not of great moment to the Parliament but certainly to the local community. So now I come naturally to talk about the Tasman District Council and the issues that have beset that council.The Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill is about validating rates. If I were to expand the conversation just a little bit the validation of rates by means of a local bill in Parliament is not ideal. It is suboptimal but sometimes it is necessary to do that. This is one of those cases. On behalf of the local community—and I do regret that members across the House do not find value in talking about other local communities and the troubles they have had with their local bills. I do regret that people like Eugenie Sage and the member for—I do not know; Wellington somewhere.Hon Trevor Mallard: Hutt South.JACQUI DEAN: Oh Hutt South. I do regret that they do not see value in talking around the wider issues that beset local communities.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I know you are not allowed to draw attention to members reading their speeches but I think you are allowed to draw attention to people reading speeches on the wrong bills. Maybe she should read the speech for the right bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just thank the member and tell him it is for the Speaker to recognise whether a member is reading from the bill.JACQUI DEAN: Thank you so much Mr Assistant Speaker. The Assistant Speaker is quite right and of course he himself is shepherding a local bill through the House. At least the Assistant Speaker unlike the member for Hutt South—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member cannot bring me into the debate.JACQUI DEAN: Of course. I do thank the Assistant Speaker for allowing me to continue with this speech. The Tasman District Council has brought in a bill to validate rates that were incorrectly set in the past. The reason Parliament is taking so much time and the reason I have tried to give some context around this—which I suspect will be appreciated more through the wireless than in the House because the mainly list members on the other side of the House are not as well connected with their communities—is that when a rates validation bill is brought to the House we are not quite having to paper over the cracks perhaps but we are being asked as parliamentarians to put right by means of a local bill mistakes that were made at local authority level.It is an important function of our Parliament and speaker after speaker—those who understand the issues; the Hutt South member excepted—know that Parliament is uncomfortable picking up the pieces from local government. It is our desire to have strong local government that is efficient on behalf of its ratepayers. Why do we want that? Quite simply because it is ratepayers’ money. Ratepayers deserve good decent decision-making from their local authorities because it is their money it is their rating and it is their services that we are dealing with.Although Parliament is sympathetic to the Tasman District Council bringing the bill to us we certainly do not want as a Parliament to see—and I think for once I speak for most of us—too many bad decisions being made at local authority level that Parliament is then required to redress as is the case here. What we are dealing with here is the validation of rates. I pay rates. I pay lots of rates. I would like to know that the money that goes to my local authority quarterly—and I sure notice it going out of our bank account and into the district council’s—is being spent well. I want to know that the money that is going out of my bank account and into the council’s account is being wisely spent based on good decision-making.If the members across the House think that the context around that which I have spoken about today is irrelevant or outside the scope of this bill well I disagree. I think we must never forget the functions of local government and when we have a case like this having to deal with some mistakes we should always remember that this is not Parliament’s money that we are dealing with. This is not the Government’s money we are dealing with. This is the money of the people of New Zealand. This is ratepayers’ money including people like me and no doubt Louise Upston. This is our money that is being spent by our local authorities and we want that money spent well.Hon Trevor Mallard: Argh!JACQUI DEAN: Again poor old Trevor Mallard just cannot cope. It is because he is not in touch with his community. I think that that is the basic problem with a lot of the Labour members of Parliament actually. Most of them are list MPs but those who are constituency members just are not in touch with their communities and do not understand the importance. I have great pleasure in supporting this bill to the House.