Foster-Bell Paul: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFoster-Bell Paul: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 06 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3289. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National):I take great pleasure in rising to make a brief contribution in the Committee stage of the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill. I have a couple of comments to make but I do actually have a question for the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner which I hope at some point she may be able to address. My specific point that I want to make actually references comments that have been made in this debate already by the honourable member Major Ron Mark from the New Zealand First Party. In response to some of the things Ron Mark said I have to say that I share his view that the Local Government and Environment Committee works together very well and in a collegial way under the able and eminent chairmanship of the honourable member Scott Simpson the member for Coromandel.Although none of us want to have to deal with such an issue this has been a bill that we have worked our way through in a calm considered and consistent manner listening to the views of the only submitter on this bill which was the Christchurch City Council. We have come up with a pragmatic solution to the issues that were faced due to the incorrect charging of rates over a period of years. I would like to refer to the preamble to the bill recitals (2)(a) through to (2)(i)(ii) which refer specifically to the period over which rates were incorrectly charged.This is an issue that has come up before in the course of discussion around this bill but one of the key elements that distinguishes this bill from many of the others we see is that it contains a large degree of retrospectivity—that is it has a retroactive effect. We have previously discussed the pros and cons of such a state of affairs. In fact I believe that last time I referred to the great British legal theoretician A V Dicey who was an Oxford Vinerian Professor of English Law and debated the different benefits and consequences of having retrospective clauses in legislation. This however I think would fit Dicey’s definition of a curative provision in this bill because it sets right a wrong. It is not entirely a victimless crime which I think is a term used by the Green Party member Eugenie Sage. In fact the Minister herself might have used that term. It is not entirely victimless as there are some affected parties but it certainly is not by righting this technical failure made by council staff and advisers and councils themselves in the resolutions they passed over a very long period of time—in righting this wrong—it is restoring the state of affairs that should have existed had everything been properly done. There are no real victims to this change that is being proposed in this piece of legislation.I want to single out in particular the sponsoring member as it is a local bill a bill local to Christchurch but also it is a bill brought forward by the local member the Hon Nicky Wagner. I think she is an excellent very hard-working very assiduous member who has brought us a simple clear and concise but very well-formed piece of legislation which does exactly what needs to be done.The question I suppose I have for the sponsoring member in the chair goes to the specific detail around what we are actually retrospectively validating. The question that I have is about the uniform annual general charge—if the member has any information on this—that is being retrospectively validated. What kind of proportion is that amount compared with the seven other targeted rates that are being retrospectively validated? It is certainly something we went through in the select committee but I am still not entirely clear about the scale of retrospective validation of the uniform annual general charge as compared and contrasted with the seven other targeted rates which I think encompass issues such as water and drainage board rates. If there was an opportunity to hear from the sponsoring member on that I would certainly welcome that.The other question that we had in the select committee that we asked the council—which was the only submitter on this bill—when we were going through line by line and analysing each clause of this bill. It did not exactly have the tone I think of response in my perception that the honourable Ron Mark detected in that I did not quite see arrogance but I certainly saw a slight dismissiveness in the reaction in terms of taking accountability and responsibility for these mistakes that were made in the past as referenced in the preamble to this piece of legislation. The question I have is around whether this can happen again and whether the validating legislation was absolutely necessary given the council has corrected this in its own internal processes to make sure that in its own case anyway in its locality we are not going to see such an issue arise again in the future.What we heard from the council did contain elements of dismissiveness and elements of perhaps pushing the blame on to staff who were no longer in their offices within the city council today. I acknowledge that this has been an ongoing problem for many many years in fact going back to 2003 throughout the periods of tenure of two different Governments of the Realm of New Zealand and certainly different councillors and council officials have cycled through that organisation over that time period. I was somewhat taken aback that there was not an entire degree of acceptance that the fault was with the council for not having followed what are clear provisions in the basic legislation that councils are required to enforce and to carry out under section 119 of the Local Government (Rating) Act.Although it is pleasing to see that this is being remedied I think there were a number of members on the committee—including clearly Mr Mark from his comments but I think others particularly on this side of the House—who were not entirely pleased to see a council not taking full responsibility for its past conduct.Although it is absolutely imperative that we do pass this legislation to correct the situation that exists and to make sure that those $600000 or so worth of retrospectively unpaid rates that currently cannot be legally collected because they were not correctly levied in the first place—to make sure that those $600000 worth can be collected—I would be very interested to hear from the Minister in the chair the sponsoring member of this bill whether there was any information that she might be able to provide the Committee around the breakdown of the annual uniform general charge versus the seven other targeted rates just so we can get an idea of their relative scale.Other than that small question I think this is an excellent well-drafted piece of legislation. Although it is retrospective it does not have any of the monstrous effects of retrospective legislation such as the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1794 which I think is held up by many as the gravest example of an evil piece of retrospective legislation. For that reason I take enormous pleasure in commending the bill to the Committee and hope to hear contributions from others on the other side of the Chamber who so seldom allow a bandwagon to pass them without jumping on board. Rather than having a curtailed debate rather than having democracy crushed in this Chamber by an Opposition who wants to silence debate on an issue that I think we all agree on let us hear a meaningful useful and decent contribution from Opposition members. Mr Mark did a very good job and I just wish the Labour members could do the same.