Mark Ron: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4302. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (NZ First): What more can be said about this bill? It is a very short bill—a couple of pages but it certainly has generated some—[Interruption] Sorry?Simon O’Connor: You can do 10 minutes.RON MARK: You think I can? We will give it a lash shall we? It is a very short bill and its intent is very clear. For those who might have missed it and going straight to the core which really is at the guts of this bill what this bill does is pretty much contained in Part 2. Clause 5 as has previously been said validates the payment dates for the rates. Clause 6 validates penalties added to those rates. Clause 7 declares all money received by the council in payment of the rates and any penalties paid in respect of those rates to be and to always have been lawfully paid to and received by the council. Those are the interesting words to me—“to be and to always have been lawfully paid”—because they were not were they? They were not lawfully paid and that is really what the nub of this bill is and why we have spent so much time in the House why people went down to Christchurch and put a lot of time and effort into drafting hearing and taking submissions and moving this bill through three stages in the House.The words “to be and to always have been” almost sounds a little bit Shakespearean does it not? “Lawfully paid”—“lawfully paid”. Would it not be nice if some of us could actually pop along to the supermarket and say: “Well you know I came in the other week and I picked up some groceries. I’d just like you to consider that they have been and always had been paid for.” It is a little bizarre maybe a little bit Shakespearean.Stuart Nash: It’s like amalgamation of Carterton’s.RON MARK: It is like amalgamation—something that boggles the mind as to how people could actually come up with these things or how people could make simple mistakes. I guess. I do take on board some of the cautionary comments by my colleague on my right Su’a William Sio. It is tempting for someone like me who has come from a small council Carterton District Council which is a council about which certain people out there on the hustings and some people in this House have advocated the view that it is too small to run itself it could not possibly manage its assets and it could not possibly comply with all the intricacies of the Local Government (Rating) Act. Therefore on those and numerous other spurious arguments they say that it needs to deserves to and should be swallowed up into and run by a larger council.Well we have never done this. We have never made mistakes like this. Masterton District Council has never made this mistake. If people really want to get their heads around what is happening out there in rural and provincial areas with small councils and how well they are managed and how they do not end up in situations where money you have sort of paid is deemed to be and always has been lawfully paid they should really pull out the latest Bell report and have a quick read. The Bell report is really quite staggering in its revelations that some of the top-performing councils in this country are actually some of the smaller ones. Small rural and provincial councils are being run well and do not require the time of this House to retrospectively pass legislation to correct their mistakes.I will acknowledge this: the current Mayor of Christchurch was not the Mayor of Christchurch when this happened. The current chief executive officer was not the chief executive officer or was not one of the chief executive officers who was in charge of the Christchurch City Council at the time that these mistakes were made. The credit for that lies with other people. But I have to make the point that people who are elected into council whether they be councillors community board members mayors or deputy mayors do notat the time of their election and appointment—and for some of them even a few years after that—actually come to grips totally and 100 percent with all the procedural requirements that go with the job particularly at the time of the annual planning and consultation phase particularly when you are taking submissions on an annual plan setting rates—sewerage rates targeted rates uniform rates. They are not 100 percent au fait with that procedure and it is up to the chief executive officer and his senior managers to guide and steer those councillors the mayor and the deputy mayor in the procedures and the protocols that they must follow to comply completely 100 percent with the Act.I will say that again: it is up to the chief executive officer the chief financial officer and the other entourage of senior managers who get paid hugely well particularly in Christchurch. I remember well the controversy over that particular chief executive officer who gave himself a pay rise because he thought he was doing so jolly well. Here we are in the House with all parties in the House putting all of their time into correcting something that the chief executive officer of the Christchurch City Council should not have allowed to happen. On top of that I remember the visits by the Audit Office and how my council would ramp itself up and get ready for that visiting team of auditors. We would have a preliminary interview with the chief auditor—the mayor the chief executive officer the deputy mayor and the chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. We are talking about little Carterton here; we are not talking about New York. We would do that and we would get a clear picture from the chief auditor of that team which might comprise a team coming in—and you know we are talking about a council of 8500 people—that might be three four or even five strong.That team would outline what it was that they were going to go through and what they would be looking for. Well clearly the audit team that went through Christchurch—for year after year after year—did not check the procedures by which Christchurch was implementing its rates charges. It did not audit those procedures. I know from talking to the Audit Office and we have had hearings and discussions at the select committee that people have got a different focus now. I know that in any one particular year the Audit Office will come in with a theme. It will come in and say: “These are the things we are going to be looking at.” But for this to have gone onyear after year after year and to be left undetected and for us in 2015 to be sitting here in the House this evening past my bedtime—I am joking—passing this legislation through the House is unbelievable really particularly with a council that size that employs that many people in senor manager appointments and pays them what $400000 or $300000? And it pays an audit office—what—what was that last bill? Well it certainly was not $90000 which is what Carterton pays. It was $200000 in one year for the audit to be completed and for the council to still miss this mistake. So here we sit.Like many of the other parties in the House and the other speakers before me New Zealand First has to put on record that it really struggles with retrospective legislation. We do not think that it is really ideal. I thank Paul Foster-Bell for his comment that 20 percent of the legislation that goes through this House—good homework there Paul—is retrospective. We do not like it. We particularly do not like it when highly paid senior managers of a council are not doing their job and are not advising their mayor their deputy mayor their chair of the Audit and Risk Committee and their council as appropriate and we end up in this situation.I would say—what can I say to finish off?Stuart Nash: It wouldn’t have happened when you were Mayor of Carterton.RON MARK: It would not have happened if I had been Mayor of Christchurch. I would say please when we are having this conversation and debate about bigger is better and bigger councils get things right and small councils struggle—when we are having this argument and this debate about economies of scale—I would like the House to remember this: the reason some small councils do not make mistakes like this is that the very small budgets that they have for them makes them very sensitive to expenditure and very sensitive to error particularly errors that cost money. The rule of thumb we used in Carterton was this: for every $80000 you spend over and above what was budgeted last year that will result in a 1 percent increase on your ratepayers. Can you honestly justify that 1 percent increase? When you are dealing with big councils like the one in Auckland’s super-city $80000 is postage money for 1 day. It does not mean anything. It does not make councillors blink it does not make their eyes water and therefore they can—I guess understandably—lose sight of the detail lose sight of the protocols and procedures they should be following and they can make mistakes. Let us hope it does not happen again.