Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): ACT supports this bill. The Palmerston North council have every right to use their land and their assets as they see fit. After all they are community assets which the community has purchased and the council has a responsibility to manage them for the best outcome for the community. That's quite different from the way the Government sees three waters assets which also are owned by communities but the Government has seen fit in that case to propose to take them from communities and install them in some remote corporation with an arcane and inefficient governance system. The benefits of that are not well understood.The core issue that this bill addresses is that local government really really struggles to repurpose re-allocate and recycle land that was originally dedicated to one purpose like a reserve—in this case a bowling club—and forgive me because I've never been bowling and I've certainly never been bowling at this club. I understand that for decades people enjoyed going bowling but what the Palmerston North council's identified is that this land would be better used for housing and so because they are the local council and they are best placed to understand local issues it's good that Parliament is trusting them to know what to do with their land and assets. And again it's a huge contrast with the way the Government has persecuted and prosecuted its three waters agenda against local government and their water assets. So I'll just let that one sink in for a moment for the members in the Government over there.The reason that Palmerston North council wants to repurpose this land is because it has a higher value. They want to potentially re-zone it for housing and we've heard that up to 80 high-quality housing units may be developed on this site. The council has undergone a process. They've undertaken a process of consultation with their community and while there were many different proposals for how this land might be used it's quite likely given its location and its suitability that a high-density housing subdivision and development is the best use for it.ACT supports this bill because it is a locally elected council deciding what to do with its assets. We think that's a good idea and that the Government should leave councils alone to use their assets as long as they're using them wisely and support them. But we must ask: is it actually the role of councils having repurposed the land through zoning to then develop and build houses own them and maintain them? The ACT Party would contend that councils don't necessarily have the skills to own and operate and maintain property and to act as landlords to manage tenants and to manage the maintenance of housing developments. That is well outside their remit and their core skillset.So the ACT Party wants to raise the issue of risk. Despite the fact that we support this bill we would be very very concerned if councils like Palmerston North council then took it upon themselves to begin to act as property developers to compete with the private sector for the provision of homes and as property managers and to engage in activities which really they have no business engaging in. They don't have the skills they don't have the capacity and while they might like to think they can it's clear they can't. Community housing associations and community housing providers don't believe this Government can either which is why they've been asking Kāinga Ora and Housing New Zealand to hand over their assets to community housing providers to deliver housing in regions like the Manawatū. So we would ask that the Government consider that in far more detail and listen to those people in communities who know what their communities need because they're local and they're close to those communities. ACT will support this bill.