Williams Andrew: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16101. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I had to pull out my handkerchief in the last couple of minutes of that particular speech to wipe away the tears of laughter. They were not crocodile tears; they were tears of absolute amazement from listening to the previous speaker Maggie Barry. It never fails to amaze me how some of the National Party MPs who sit on our Local Government and Environment Committee have so little knowledge of local government or indeed of their own electorates.It is unbelievable that the previous speaker said that because Tasman District Council is a unitary authority which is a combination of a regional authority and a territorial authority these sorts of mistakes could happen because it does not have the checks and balances because it is not a normal council. What an extraordinary statement when we have got unitary authorities around the country that have done a fantastic job over many years. So there is a total lack of understanding as to what a unitary authority does. And it is extraordinary for her to then say that all these councils like Tasman and other places are squandering money on all these things like the four well-beings.If you ask the average person in the street whether it is important that they have economic development whether it is important that they have a good environment in their town or their district whether it is important that they have social responsibility in their community and all these sorts of things the average person will say: “Actually we do want that. We choose to live here because this is the place where we want to live and these are the expectations that we have.” Otherwise as we have seen in the United States cities like Detroit end up absolute ghost towns because they do not provide the four well-beings. They do not provide that community spirit and they become literally wastelands. We have seen that in parts of New Zealand but fortunately local government is responding to the challenges.Despite this National Government trying to absolutely kneecap local government local government will persevere. Under a Government where New Zealand First has involvement and where you will have the likes of Tracey Martin with her local body experience me with my local body experience and Denis O’Rourke with his extensive local body experience we will get on and I can tell all of local government out there that we will properly support local government.I can recall that when National first became the Government back in 2008 it took it close to 12 months to have its first meeting with the mayoral forum and the Local Government Forum around New Zealand—close to 12 months before it even met with local government. It was appalling. Under the previous Government—the Labour Government supported by New Zealand First—they met every 6 months at least. But this Government—no it has no regard. But anyway back to the Tasman District Council.I would challenge the member Jacqui Dean who is having a good chat with Maggie Barry at the present time to really understand what a unitary authority is. She said these councils are small and have probably got only one staff member doing a particular function and so when they go away on maternity leave it does not get done. Well I would just inform that learned National Party member that according to the Tasman District Council website it has in excess of 200 staff. At the moment recent vacancies have been advertised for a revenue accountant a management accountant a senior management accountant a coordinator of land use consents and a water resources officer. Those are just some of the some recent appointments that it has been making.Tasman District Council is a significant council that covers a wide area. It is far from being some little council where there are a half a dozen people sitting at the top of a flight of stairs doing something and then putting an “Out to lunch” sign up when they leave. It is doing a good job and doing a very very responsible job in that part of the South Island. Having said that it has made some errors and they were very simple errors in terms of what it did with setting the rates in that period.As Maggie Barry mentioned the letter from the mayor explained it very well. He mentioned that in that particular period 2006-07 it overlooked including a map when it was setting the rates and it did not properly describe the area in theTata Beach andLigar Bay area in terms of this. The mayor went on to say: “If we had included the required map the rate would have been lawfully made and the rates would have been payable. Therefore passing the bill in its current form would validate a rate that would have been made lawfully if the map had been included.” So it is quite simple. It was a simple administrative error that needs to be rectified.The mayor went on to say—this was to the select committee: “We have explained to you that theTata Beach andLigar Bay ratepayers receive a service from the stormwater infrastructure provided in their communities and they pay for this through our club approach. In our view not only is there no legislative power to remit the rates but it would also be not equitable to remit the rates to theTata Beach and theLigar Bay ratepayers. A reason for this is that it would mean other ratepayers in the district would then have to pay for stormwater services including those atTata Beach andLigar Bay while the ratepayers inTata Beach andLigar Bay do not pay for any.”So quite obviously it was not going to be fair to do that and in the end Damien O’Connor brought this to the House and fair enough. But in so doing it is very interesting in that this opens a bigger can of worms in terms of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) which is going through our select committee at the moment as well where again the National Government is wanting to do away with development contributions.We heard from the learned Maggie Barry—who is having a good chat with Jacqui Dean at the present time again—that the Government is wanting to do away with things like development contributions and all this sort of thing but she said at the same time: “But we don’t want councils to put up their rates. We don’t want them increasing their rates.” Well I have got news for that member which is that basically development contributions were brought in by the likes of North Shore City Council—which was the lead council virtually in this whole area in the last 10 years—to ensure that the growth of a city or a community or a district was funded by those who came into the club. It is like joining a golf club or a tennis club. If you are the last one in and you have already got all the facilities you pay a joining fee. You pay a joining fee to join the club.It is the same in local government. If developers want to come in and set up a whole new subdivision and they are coming into a city and they have not contributed anything at that point in time they pay a development contribution as their contribution to join the club to then provide all the services across the city. It is a total nonsense on the part of this National Government to say that things like swimming pools libraries and other community facilities of that nature should not be paid for from development contributions but from the existing ratepayer base. That is absolutely nonsense. When we on the North Shore were planning for the new Albany library to be built for a growing population we had to start taking development contributions 7 8 and 9 years ahead of when the new library was going to be required from the new subdivisions from the new sections from the infill housing and from the people cutting off their back lawns so that when the population got to that point we could build the library with the funding. You know you do not wait until everybody is there and then say:“Oh we’ve got an extra 40000 people in our city and they cannot read a book because the nearest library is 14 kilometres away.” That is not what you do.So it is interesting to hear the comments from the National Government—but we get that from them. When we went through other local government legislation last year and the year before it was astonishing how ignorant the National Party members were of most of the facts in relation to local government—totally ignorant. Even Paul Goldsmith over there who wrote John Banks’ biography seemed to have a lack of understanding of how local government operated.So basically I would suggest that many of the National members on the Local Government and Environment Committee should maybe take the next adjournment to go off and learn “Local Government 101” and find out what local authorities actually do around New Zealand. They should go and spend some time with Local Government New Zealand. They should go and speak to some local bodies. They do not like to come down off their high horses and speak to mayors and councillors but they should go and find out how local government operates in this country. We have only two tiers of government in New Zealand: central government and local government. As a result they might actually realise that central government and local government are mutually supportive of each other and that it is not central government trying to kneecap local government all the time.