Smith Nick: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSmith Nick: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17072. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation):It is a pleasure to be giving this speech on the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. I have had a significant number of meetings with constituents about the bill and this issue. The Tasman District Council is part of the Nelson constituency. About half of the people who actually live in the Tasman District are constituents of mine and I have taken a strong interest in this bill over the last 5 or 6 years. There has been a group of quite aggrieved ratepayers who do not agree with the way in which the Tasman District Council chose to levy them for stormwater rates in the area of both Tata Beach and Ligar Bay—a truly beautiful part of Golden Bay an area where there are a number of baches and holiday-type homes a place where I have often gone with my family and holidayed. At the core of the issue for that Ligar Bay community is that there are different levels of stormwater risk. There are some of those property owners who are at some elevation and overlook Ligar Bay and there are those who are right down by the estuary and beach and who are subject to quite a lot more stormwater risk. At the core of some of the local argument has been whether everybody should pay equally relative to the value of their property or they should be paying a different amount depending on what level of stormwater and flood risk they have.A number of homeowners have raised concern with the council. They think the rate was levied unfairly. The view that we on this side of the House have taken is that we do not want to usurp the job of the Tasman District Council and its community board in Golden Bay to resolve those tensions and those inevitable arguments about where the money should be spent. The real question for us relates to the administrative anomalies in the way that these rates were struck and I would note that these were years when we were not the Government. During the period all the way through from 2003 to 2008 the Tasman District Council did not follow the right procedural routine for striking those rates. I think there is a legitimate question and that is whether when the previous Government passed the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 it invested sufficiently in communicating to councils at both an administrative and an elected-officer level and whether it put in the necessary resources so there were no mistakes of this sort made. The fact there were mistakes made not just in 2003-04 but in frankly every single year following that suggests that there was an under-investment in communication and around the new requirements of that 2002 Local Government (Rating) Act.Hon Trevor Mallard: Why did every other council get it right?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well there is a question for Parliament having had the Tasman District Council members at the Local Government and Environment Committee which my colleague noted. They were embarrassed by the mistake and they apologised for the mistake and Mr Trevor Mallard from the other side of the House would be the last one to be standing up in this House and say he has never made any mistakes.Maggie Barry: Tens of thousands of mistakes. He’s an expert on mistakes.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: My colleague quite rightly refers to Trevor Mallard as an expert on mistakes. We are a forgiving Government a kind Government and in the case of Tasman District Council there is no question that it was an honest mistake. There is no question from the evidence the select committee heard as to what the intent of the elected council was when it struck each of these rates in the period from 2003 through to 2008. That is why Government members are saying that yes we acknowledge that there are some grumpy ratepayers we acknowledge that it is pretty arbitrary in terms of how you allocate the stormwater costs for that Ligar Bay and Tata Beach community but to be pragmatic we need to pass this bill. We need to look at what the counter would be.If we did not pass this bill what would be the consequence? There would be a huge administrative burden on the Tasman District Council to go back to each of those ratepayers over each of those 5 years and to then give them a rates refund. Some of those properties have changed hands since and it would be necessary to try to find where those owners are and then of course the council has got the difficulty that it needs to fill that financial hole. That would be a cost that would sit on a good number of my constituents in the Nelson electorate who are ratepayers to the Tasman District Council and that would be a very unsatisfactory outcome.So it makes sound sense for Parliament to do the generous thing to accept the apology from the Tasman District Council to ensure that it has got its system sorted so that mistakes of this sort are not repeated but taking that pragmatic view to allow those rates in that community to stand. I would note that although the focus of the submissions and the angst have been around the issues of rates for the Ligar Bay community there are actually other communities who are also affected by this bill. We are dealing with river works around the community of Māpua. We are dealing with the ASB Aquatic and Fitness Centre in Richmond and the way in which rates were struck in the 2008-09 year. We are dealing with rates not just in 1 year at Tata Beach and Ligar Bay but actually over 5 consecutive years.One of the things that the Government does take a sympathetic view of in respect of ratepayers is that if we look over this period not just in Tasman District but across New Zealand we see that there were excessive rate rises. Over that period we had rate rises going up by 8 to 9 percent every single year year on year. We would say on this side of the House that the previous Government was far too cavalier about the cost on ratepayers of that Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 and that is why this Government is making changes to that Act to get a greater degree of financial discipline so that we have councils not contributing to the cost pressures. I was quite pleased to see the latest rates data which has shown that rate increases over both the last 2 years since this Government has advanced local government reforms have come down quite significantly and I think that is a positive in terms of the underlying tensions from those ratepayers who were concerned about these illegal rates and the ongoing increase that has occurred.In conclusion this is an unfortunate bill. It is not the sort of bill that Parliament likes to advance but it is pragmatic legislation that recognises that there were mistakes made that there was no question as to what the intent of the council was and that there would be a very significant cost to the ratepayers not just in Golden Bay or in Ligar Bay but throughout Tasman District if this bill was not passed. My view is that Mayor Richard Kempthorne and his council have taken a pretty conciliatory view. They have apologised to their ratepayers they have apologised to Parliament and that means that the passage of this bill puts right that administrative error in the way that incurs the least ongoing cost to the collective ratepayers of Tasman District. I think there is a challenge for the Tasman District Council to rebuild the confidence particularly of the people in Ligar Bay and Tata Beach. I do think they need to go back to that community and having raised these rates work through in the longer term to ensure that the rates are spent appropriately—that the money is invested in proper stormwater systems for that Ligar Bay and Tata Beach community particularly—so that those ratepayers who inevitably had to pay these charges albeit unlawfully and now to be made lawful actually see some of the infrastructure that they would have expected from those rates contributions that they made between 2003 and 2008.This is a bill that Parliament should pass in the interests of pragmatism so that the Tasman District Council can get on with the business of trying to provide efficient services for the communities it serves without these sorts of errors being repeated. Thank you.