Mooney Joseph; Luxon Christopher; Mahuta NanaiaJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to expand on the question around other unusable land and the consideration to include that in this bill. I point to two specific examples. David Parker's new freshwater regulations have rules requiring greater setback from rivers. We considered that that land should be non-rateable and ask if the Government has considered that issue and whether that could be included in this bill as well. The second is that a lot of farmers presently plant large parts of their properties in trees and they don't necessarily come under the carbon trading regime because of the size of it but it's still substantial and it's for the purpose of improving the environment. I would ask if the Government has also considered rates relief for those farmers to recognise the good work they are doing planting trees to improve the environment—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member is getting very close to being out of scope of the bill. If he can bring his questions to the Minister back to within the scope of the whenua—rating of Māori land.JOSEPH MOONEY: Thank you Madam Chair. My question is whether these other unused areas of land can be incorporated into this bill. You know I would ask for the benefit of these other communities whether there is scope to bring it into this bill.CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Just in the spirit of again trying to get clear on a problem definition and what we're trying to solve you know I guess the Minister's alluded to it a little bit but I'd like to unpack it a little bit more. Having talked to former and current mayors across the country a lot of them would say that they as mayors—and councils—feel that they can actually do a lot of this today. They can actually partition land into one block into many blocks in order to help ratepayers access rates rebates. Likewise they can take multiple blocks and amalgamate them together today. Others would also say that they do write-offs. I spoke to mayors that actually have said there'll be six years of arrears that have been accumulated on Māori land and they go to that owner and they actually sit down and say Hey listen we will actually write those rates off if you reset and actually pay those rates for the next six years. And at the end of that term we will actually write those off." And you've got a going concern and you've got productivity happening.So I guess I just sort of you know—we've got a lot of former mayors on our side and in our caucus as you'd appreciate and some of them said "I can do all of this today and have been able to do this under existing legislation." Whether it's been you know Maungakiekie ward out of Auckland or whether it was you know a former mayor of Napier—even you know when I look at what John Carter's been doing in Northland—there's been some creativity that councils are able to do today. So my question is: what's the marginal net benefit of creating this piece of legislation that is not being solved by today but with existing legislation?Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I acknowledge that there are a few councils that have best practice in regard to the treatment of whenua Māori and writing off rates for unused land. However it's not extensive enough. Interestingly when we made this announcement in Northland John Carter came up to me and said "Well you know effectively these debts are sitting on our books as non-recoverable and it equates to"—at the time he said—"around about $29 million." But he said "The potential of having a different conversation in our region with Māori land owners with Treaty settlements coming online and with the Provincial Growth Fund"—at the time—"opportunities has an exponential effect." That's just one area. What I would say without I guess sounding too smart about it is we just want to see the benefits of best practice extended to all councils. Some regions will benefit more than others because of the profile and characteristic of the Māori landholding in their area; Northland and the East Coast are very kind of easy to point to. But the other substantial challenge which is an impediment to the development of Māori land is landlocked land. And that will be the next big challenge for regions like the Manawatū who really would want to again break down the barriers of unused Māori land so that they could get greater economic and social benefit from you know again breaking down the barriers and assuring access to whānau to their whenua."