Williams Andrew: Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1176. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill; New Zealand First is certainly in support of this bill. Firstly I also endorse the comments of other members in terms of the condolences to the family whanau and friends of those lost in the  
Easy Rider 
 tragedy. Foveaux Strait as we all know is a very unforgiving piece of water and has had many tragedies in the past also and this latest tragedy is a great shame and a great loss to many in Bluff and Stewart Island. 
I also would like to comment and applaud the local MP Eric Roy for carrying this through over many years. Apparently this issue goes right back to the 1970s originally and the islanders have been asking for the last three or four decades for assistance. So it is good to see that this is finally coming to be. I also acknowledge the chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee Chris Auchinvole for helping to move this through. I notice that the chairman just arrived in the Chamber a short while ago obviously in time to hear the adulations that were going to be bestowed on him. I say well done to him also for pushing this through. 
Stewart Island is only a 1-hour ferry ride from the mainland from the South Island and 15 minutes by air but it is a community that is very unique in New Zealand in terms of being the third-largest island in the New Zealand nation. As a result with fewer than 500 people living on the island it has some unique demands and requirements that many other communities in New Zealand who are not out on an island limb out in isolation in a sense do not have to put up with. 
You can imagine what the impact must be when a large cruise ship arrives in port there and several thousand tourists invade what is a small community with fewer than 500 people where there are only 12.8 kilometres of sealed roads and 8.3 kilometres of gravel roads where many of the people literally have to walk down the middle of the road because there are no footpaths and where the infrastructure is not able to cope with the tourist numbers that arrive. Over the summer the New Zealand tourists and international tourists that arrive on ferries too put a huge amount of pressure on the likes of the public toilets on their infrastructure on their water—they have no reticulated water—and on the basic utilities on the island. 
Of course we have there the Rakiura National Park which was opened in 2002 covering some 157000 hectares of land. Eighty-five percent of Stewart Island is taken up by that wonderful national park and having such a wonderful national park brings with it its own pressures and brings with it tourists and all sorts of visitors who wish to see that wonderful piece of native and natural New Zealand bush. Therefore this is a good step forward to provide a levy so that visiting tourists and visitors to the island can help contribute in a relatively small but significant way to some of the costs to assist the locals. 
 I applaud the Stewart Island Community Board and also the Southland District Council for pushing this through and being behind this scheme. The local community board has played a pivotal role in bringing this forward and it is to be congratulated as well on the consultation that it undertook. The board put out something like 485 fliers a few years ago received 129 responses and of those 129 who responded 119 were in support of this levy being implemented. That is a very good result and it shows that there is strong support for this. 
New Zealand First does support local initiatives and local choice by local communities. We feel that it is up to a local community to determine how they can assist themselves with funding of this nature and we certainly feel this is very appropriate for an island in a situation like this where they have very limited ways of otherwise securing revenue and income to try to cover the costs of the necessary infrastructure. This is a wise move with cross-party support and it is very good that we all in this House are supporting this initiative; it will greatly assist. The $160000 on the face of it does not seem a lot of money but if you multiply that over a number of years and you expand that out it will incrementally provide a good amount of basic infrastructure that they do require. 
It is ironic that this bill is being put through this week in terms of what has happened in local government this week. There have been so many things happening in local government in New Zealand this week both good and bad and it is perhaps time that the members in this House reflect on what local government means to New Zealand. We are central government here but we must remember that much of the services and much of the infrastructure around New Zealand and much of the community facilities and the community amenity values that are provided are provided at local government level. Certainly it is often with support from Government and funding support from Government but at the end of the day it is our 70 or 80 local authorities around New Zealand that provide much of the local community infrastructure and we must be mindful of that. 
I am very concerned as a former mayor as a former councillor and as a former community board member about some aspects of the moves by the Government this week in terms of cutting into local government. Certainly there are savings to be made certainly there are savings to be had and certainly we can be more frugal as we can in all areas of life and I certainly support measures to save money but I certainly do not support measures that will affect local communities and where local communities could actually be very adversely affected as a result of some of the proposed cuts by Government in local government. Therefore this perhaps is a very timely reminder of local government being called on to try to put through something that will support their local communities and this has been done in this case on Stewart Island by the locals supporting themselves standing up for themselves and putting their best foot forward to try to improve their local amenities and their local community services. 
We strongly support the bill. In terms of New Zealand First we think this is a great initiative on behalf of the community—the community doing something for itself—and also the central government people working with local government to ensure there is a better outcome for all. It is a great shame if in this country we are going to start seeing increased conflict between local government and central government because at the end of the day we are only 4.5 million New Zealanders. We rely on working together to make this country a better place and I certainly would not like us to start moving down the track of central government becoming very adversarial towards local government because that will not see this country going forward in the future. Thank you.