Sage Eugenie: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11093. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Eighteen pages of this 26-page local bill the Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill recite the numerous things that the Kaipara District Council did wrong in setting and assessing rates in 6 years from 2006-07 to 2011-12. The bill describes the errors as irregularities. Kaipara residents and in particular those in Mangawhai would describe the succession of decisions that the district council made since 2006—decisions that breached the Local Government Act 2002 and breached the rating legislation—in far stronger terms as illegalities rather than irregularities.It is the Mangawhai waste-water scheme that is the source of much of the problems that this bill seeks to fix and that scheme has a very bad smell indeed. It cost more than $62 million far more than the council had originally proposed to spend and far more than ratepayers were consulted on in terms of the size of the loans that the council raised to help pay for the scheme. So it is certainly an understatement to say that there are very many serious questions around how the whole waste-water scheme was managed. As other speakers have noted the Office of the Auditor-General has been inquiring into the council’s management—or should it be mismanagement—of that scheme since March 2012 and has yet to report. That report will be read with a great deal of interest and as the bill’s promoter Mike Sabin has noted there are also a number of questions aroundthe role of the Office of the Auditor-General and its oversight of the Kaipara District Council.I have been very pleased to receive a lot of correspondence and emails from Kaipara residents including members of the Mangawhai Residents and Ratepayers Association explaining why they have filed judicial review proceedings in the High Court to seek a declaration that the Kaipara District Council entered into the loans illegally and without adequate consultation and therefore that the rates demands that it made were invalid because of this. My understanding is that the association and Mangawhai ratepayers are not opposed to validating legislation per se but they want it to be part of a much wider package where the lender banks and not just ratepayers are asked to help repay the council’s debts.Nicky Wagner: It’s not part of the bill.EUGENIE SAGE: It may not be part of the bill as Nicky Wagner has noted but it is also about what Phil Twyford was talking about—a fair and reasonable solution.I also want to acknowledge the fact that there were many Kaipara residents who sought to raise a red flag and challenge what the council was doing more than 6 years ago. They thought to alert the appropriate authorities to engage and to act on what residents believed was poor and potentially illegal decision-making and mismanagement by the council. So it is hugely frustrating for them that we now have this validating bill acting retrospectively and that they also have the cost of that flawed decision-making in terms of the very large increase in rates that they are now faced with.The Green Party has very carefully considered its position on this bill particularly because it is retrospective legislation and we have looked at it partly in terms of where the balance of fairness is. On the one hand we have got the Kaipara ratepayers especially those in Mangawhai who are being asked to repay the loans which were improperly entered into and were much larger than were consulted on and are being asked to pay substantially increased rates because of that. Then on the other hand we have the many ratepayers in Kaipara who continue to pay their rates to the council and we have the fact that the council continues to deliver the services that one would normally expect of a council.So the Green Party will support this bill being referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee so that Parliament can hear directly from Kaipara residents. We think that this is particularly important because the Minister of Local Government Chris Tremain has declined an invitation to meet with residents to discuss this whole issue. As theNorthern Advocate noted in March this year the Minister has sidestepped the ratepayers’ stoush. It is really disappointing that the Minister is doing this sidestep when in so many other instances the Government has sought to intervene and override councils’ decision-making authority.We think that the legislation is needed to put the council’s finances on a viable footing but we have a number of questions and we look forward to hearing at the select committee from residents as to whether this bill should be supported further. Thank you.