SpeechIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Well Madam Speaker—[Clears throat] Excuse me—it's a bit early in the morning for me. It's a pleasure to take a call on this local bill and interestingly local bills are historically usually—or generally I suppose—uncontentious in this Parliament. That hasn't necessarily been the case in recent years but this one certainly is and following my fellow Manawatū MP Tangi Utikere it really gives me the opportunity to talk about everything but the bill because he did such a good job of summing up what the bill was all about that I'll only damage what he's talked about. As he said this bill has been around for a long time. This piece of land has been sitting in Palmerston North for quite some years now for nearly 20 years doing absolutely nothing and it's actually a bit of an eyesore. It's in a very pretty part of Palmerston North but also a part of Palmerston North that's strongly recreational. Just as the previous speaker said there's a new bridge connecting the Rangitīkei to the Palmerston North electorate and it's amazingly well used as well. I would have thought at the time that it should be taking cars as well as feet but it only takes feet and bikes. But it is a great asset and it adds to the recreational assets in that part of Palmerston North and I think it reinforces the fact that this piece of land would never serve again as recreational—I think it's highly unlikely to ever serve again as a recreational reserve or even to be used for recreational purposes. It is in a part of Palmerston North that's well-connected and it would make an excellent housing reserve or any other use we or the city council want to put it to.As Tangi Utikere said the city council did a great job of bringing this to the Parliament and I did sit on the Environment Committee and I thought the select committee also did a pretty good job of reviewing it. Ironically the select committee didn't go to Palmerston North and I was thinking about that as the previous speaker was speaking. Of course Air New Zealand's canned their flights to Palmerston North so there's no way the select committee could get there unless it went by car. So maybe Air New Zealand might like to reinstate those flights to Palmerston North. It was a very useful service interestingly because it didn't actually go to Palmerston North; it went to Hamilton but it stopped in Palmerston North and it was really quite a good service for us and you'd have to hope that Air New Zealand might one day reinstate that.I want to go back in history a bit. I was once a mayor myself and now I'm getting out of this place I can safely say that I stood on the basis of getting rid of the Manawatū District and I was always quite keen to amalgamate the Manawatū District and Palmerston North City. The reason is that everything that surrounds Palmerston North relies on Palmerston North for almost everything it does and this is not an uncommon occurrence. It happens in provincial New Zealand often really where we've got separate territorial authorities but we've got one of them providing all the recreational assets all the entertainment assets and pretty much I guess all the essential services and yet the other authorities adjacent to them have great difficulty contributing to what goes on in those areas—and when I say that they have difficulty they have difficulty coming to an arrangement which is suitable for both the territorial authorities from a funding perspective.So it is an interesting challenge for a city like Palmerston North surrounded by particularly in this case the Manawatū District. But it also supplies services into Levin and even—although I could get in trouble with a Whanganui person—to some extent into Whanganui. So it really is the capital of our part of the world and as such it provides many many services and to have the opportunity to control their own destiny I suppose in many ways is important.The other thing that's interesting about this is it's often in local areas we find pieces of land like this that are controlled by Acts of Parliament. It's very common with racecourses and with A and P showgrounds—both of those are controlled by Acts of Parliament actually—and I've been in my time or for part of it at least involved with two or three different Acts that have come to the House wanting to deal to local issues. One of them was the Manawatū A and P showgrounds in Palmerston North. They were subject to an Act of Parliament. That Act had to come to Parliament to enable that to be disbanded and sold to the city council.So we have some very odd things in our little patches I suppose you'd say that for reasons of history become very complex and therefore have to be unwound. It takes a bit of the time of this Parliament to unwind those things. I guess it's a cost but none the less it's how it is and it's probably how it should be.The other thing of course about the control of reserves in New Zealand is that local areas or communities only get the benefit generally of about half of the asset if it's ever sold because of the various Acts of Parliament that control that so the State effectively takes 50 percent of most of our reserves when and if they're sold. So you consequently get the stalling of progress to some extent because local councils aren't particularly interested in winding up reserves and things like that that are no longer necessary—they're a part of history but they're no longer necessary—and then using them for other things because in the course of doing that they give the State 50 percent of the money which is generated locally. So I suppose I've always thought that that was unjust and an odd thing to have to do but none the less it's the way our laws are.I don't think I'm going to talk for ever because as I said Tangi Utikere did a great job of describing the bill and what it does. Like him I congratulate both the select committee and the Palmerston North City Council for the way they brought this to Parliament and got it through pretty slickly really. So that's probably my lot I think.