Barry Maggie: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16098. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Yes indeed Mr Deputy Speaker—still and always. Thank you very much. I rise to speak to the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. It is at its second reading and it is a local bill sponsored by Damien O’Connor.As other speakers have noted this is yet another validation bill. We endured Kaipara and the horrors the torture the intense discussion and the pain of the taxpayers—the ratepayers I should say. Although of course—as Maryan Street who has just resumed her seat pointed out—because this bill has to be validated through Parliament it becomes an expense that the taxpayers have to deal with. One would caution all councils as the member sponsoring this bill did in the opening call in this debate to learn from this and to listen to their ratepayers. If things are not going well and there are grumbles and complaints then for goodness’ sake address the issues before they become a problem.Damien O’Connor pointed out at the outset that one of the issues around this is that the Tasman District Council is a unitary authority so it does not have perhaps the same checks and balances as are provided by regional councils or other closer councils working alongside it. Perhaps had that occurred then this silly mistake really of not including a map with the rates and therefore invalidating them would never have occurred. I find that when I look at some of the correspondence—looking back over itnow because it was last winter when we heard many of the submissions on this bill. We heard 14 submissions in all. One of them from the Tasman District Council Mayor RichardKempthorne really does get to the heart of the matter. The council he wrote in his letter in part of his submission to us “… fully acknowledges that we made an error in setting the 2006-07 rate for theTata Beach andLigar Bay stormwater urban drainage area. We regret that the error was made.” And so say all of us and the ratepayers of the area.The mayor went on to say that “We also note that if we had included the required map the rate would have been lawfully made and the rates would have been payable.” So when you peel aside all of the other things that have been a problem in this it comes down to a basic fundamental error. It has cost ratepayers tens of thousands of dollars and endless countless hours and you cannot measure the cost of the misery that many of the ratepayers have been through in that area over this.As others have before me I would like to acknowledge BobSchmucke. Without his energy and without his determination and effort this case would not have got as far as it has. When I call it a case it almost is that because there have been so many warring parties that initially tried to say “Not my fault. Can’t do anything about this.” There has been a lot of obfuscation around the issue and a lot of other issues have come into play.I know that there are aspects of this that the Local Government and Environment Committee agonised over but we were not ultimately able to help some of the people who had issues around whether or not the stormwater pipes should have been laid in the areas that some of the ratepayers wanted them to be in. I will not go into all of the detail of that because I think others have tracked that over before me. But it is very much a warning to other councils. It is a warning to take heed of what you do to be very careful about your procedures and processes to listen to your ratepayers—as I said a moment ago—and also I think to embrace the Better Local Government reforms that this Government is putting through. Part of those reforms is that we want local bodies local councils to be really careful around their monitoring and improving of their own performances for their ratepayers. Perhaps the publicity around this bill will show other councils that their own processes may and will come under greater scrutiny. So the silver lining to this cloud that is hanging over the Tasman District ratepayers is the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) which we have started to put through.I look back at some of the calls that were taken at that time as someone who sat on the Local Government and Environment Committee throughout the Kaipara hearings and now on this bill and there are a number of issues that continue to come up. Maurice Williamson the Minister for Building and Construction took a call on behalf of the then Minister of Local Government Chris Tremain who I must say has done an excellent job of putting this through to this point. He made the point in his call that although the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) that we are talking about is not specifically aimed at these worst-case scenarios—Kaipara and Tasman District—it is really going to help out in those kinds of situations and prevent them from happening again. That is my absolute belief in this.We do not propose really to discuss the details of the particular cases but they do provide salutary lessons for us all and that informs us as legislators. The bill and the legislation that we are passing around local government will address the lessons and the changes enacted will allow Ministers to identify potential problems before they get too bad and before they get too expensive and almost insurmountable for the local people to deal with which is why they have had to come back to Parliament to be validated by us today.Our local government legislation does introduce requirements for greater transparency in the management of infrastructure and also a lot more discipline in the documentation of agreements for infrastructure that have to be provided not just by the council employees themselves and their elected representatives but also by third parties that may be contracting and may be part of the problem. So all of these things are vitally important and perhaps if the Tasman District Council had had the benefit of this legislation and the scrutiny and the requirements that come with it it might have made a better job of what it needed to do.One of the Green members took a call and said that on this side of the House there were crocodile tears being shed for ratepayers. That is absolutely incorrect. We have a genuine concern for ratepayers and for the rise in rates as Jacqui Dean pointed out in her call. She is no stranger to putting through very good local bills as a member because she represents her community and cares about what they say and that is really the purpose of local bills. So she is no stranger to that. And as she pointed out members of her own family who are on fixed incomes struggle in a big way with these kinds of rates hikes and irresponsible spending let alone problems that blow out as a result of absolute errors and incompetence in the case of Kaipara. I think the Auditor-General’s office in that case involving Kaipara as we discussed exhaustively at the select committee does have a case to answer in its very large bill which the Auditor-General said was one of the most complicated she had ever been involved with in her 20 years. The office spent a phenomenal amount of time trying to deal with the inefficiencies of a local council that kept no paperwork that did not follow due process and that did not do what its ratepayers elected it to do which is to be a good steward and a prudent manager of the funds that it was paid. So all of these sorts of things are important to keep in mind.In my own electorate on the North Shore I am very mindful that a lot of older people on fixed incomes have properties that have very expensive rates. That is the nature of the way we do the ratings—based on the land value and the improvements of course. But people are finding that they are living in places for which they are struggling to find the rates money that they need and that is why local authorities and in particular councils need to be very very careful about what they spend their money on. Spraying it around and squandering it on the four well-beings is not going to get people where they need to be. Those are the kinds of things that actually need to be addressed in legislation.This Government has the courage of its convictions and the knowledge as opposed to the wittering that is going on at the moment from the opposing benches. We have the knowledge the competence and the ability to put through decent legislation that is aimed at helping the ratepayers.Tracey Martin: How terribly sad for the people of North Shore that they got landed with that.MAGGIE BARRY: It is not aimed at puffing up local body people as that member who is interjecting at the moment very much is. She is an individual who tends to think she does a much better job than her own ratepayers allow. In fact I do not think her own mother got elected on the basis of the legacy that was left for her by her daughter. It is a sad state of affairs. I know that the member has a very high opinion of herself as a list MP but I know that that is not at all reflected by people in her own community. But there you go. We will withdraw from the petty politics and the yapping.Let us say it is suffice to say that the Local Government Act 2002 and the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) are going to work very very well to make sure that the problems that occurred at Kaipara and occur in the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill will not occur again and that isa very important part of why we as a Government will continue to put through reforms despite the braying of the opposing forces. That is why I support this local bill. I support Damien O’Connor in what he has done. I acknowledge as many have said that we are making the best of a difficult situation. We are making it better but we are not making it perfect. But we are doing our best. Thank you.