Carter John: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
Carter John: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:14439] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 I want to focus the Committee’s attention on the actual wording of the purpose clause but first I want to look at the clause that was struck out and compare it with its replacement. Those who have the bill in front of them will see that the wording has changed because it was considered that the original wording might well take the clause outside the scope of and put it above the Resource Management Act. Therefore officials went away and worked on changing the purpose clause to bring it back within the scope of the Resource Management Act. Clause 3 states: “The purpose of this Act is to recognise the national regional and local significance of the Waitakere Ranges heritage area”. No one would disagree about that. It is to promote the protection and enhancement of the area and so on. The clause further states that to this end the Act establishes the Waitakere Ranges heritage area states its national significance defines its heritage features specifies the objectives of establishing and maintaining the area and provides additional matters for the various local authorities. 
The point is though that I think two issues are really important to consider when we are debating this and they are as follows: if it brings it back within the scope of the Resource Management Act then why in their district schemes cannot the various councils then put a chapter in that provides the significance required within their district schemes? Surely that happens in other places and rather than our having to go through wasting the time of Parliament costing a huge amount of money—goodness knows how much money has been spent by the various local authorities on this but I bet it is— 
Dail Jones 
: A couple of a million. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Well it certainly will be significant. 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Value for money. Protect the environment. 
JOHN CARTER 
: I know that the guy who aspires to be the Labour Prime Minister at some stage Mr Jones probably does not worry about $2 million but the fact is that some people do actually. It is important to them. The ratepayers worry about that sort of money and so do taxpayers. That is not a thing that Labour actually considers much. 
But the point is that it could well have been put in as a chapter within the plans of the various local authorities or the regional council could even have written a chapter. It also brings focus on this: if it is so special we have to go back and ask ourselves how it got to be so special. And if people like to go back and have a look at the history of the Waitakere Ranges over the last 100 or 150 years and even before—but certainly 40 50 and 60 years ago—they would find that a heck of a lot of an area was burnt out cleared clean felled and had all sorts of things happen there that were far worse than what there is now. Now we have an area that people care for. 
The reason why it is in such a state that causes people to want to protect it is that those inhabitants who are there and who have a history of being there have made it like it is. They actually care for it; they worry about it. We had hundreds of submissions from people who said: “We have planted this.” and “We have made all sorts of things on the place so that it can’t be developed further because we want it to be like that; that is why we are out there.” So the fact is that already the inhabitants of the area are achieving the purposes of this bill—they already have. So for some officials local authorities and now Parliament to come along belatedly and say “Oh bless my soul! We should do something about this.” I say “Too late mates. It’s already been done by the good people out there.” So now we have this silly nonsense of someone saying “Oh but all of a sudden someone might have a blood-rush to the head and want to start hacking things around.” But I say “Not on your nelly!”. They are not interested out there. We can go and talk to each and every one of them— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: We’re not like that. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Well some people get rid of their hair early! But the fact is that the people out there nevertheless are seriously interested and do look after their place. So when we look at these purposes we can see that the people out there have already achieved them.