Goudie Sandra: New Zealand Geographic Board  (Nga Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa) Bill — Second Reading 
Goudie Sandra: New Zealand Geographic Board  (Nga Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15462] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I think it is appropriate that I follow the previous speaker so that I can outline some of the process issues around introducing bills into Parliament. A party will go through the first part of whether it will support a bill going to a select committee for the simple reason that it needs to scrutinise the bill in the first instance to see exactly why there was a bill in the first place—what is the problem to be fixed—and in the second place to find out any other untoward features of the legislation proposed so that it can determine whether it wants to support it going any further than the select committee. 
Clearly this New Zealand Geographic Board (Nga Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa) Bill seemed innocuous at first glance but on closer inspection as it came under the scrutiny of the Government Administration Committee it was quite clear that it was not as open and transparent as it could have been. National has major concerns with the two key parts to this bill and our concerns have been totally ignored. In the first instance there is no real definition of a problem. There is nothing wrong with the previous Act; no problems have been identified. That is the first point. 
The second point is that there is a new provision in the bill that gives the New Zealand Geographic Board the discretion about whether to publicly notify name changes. That discretion is quite extensive and National feels that that is wrong particularly when even the Minister has said that place names are important to people. Whether it is Diggers Gulch Mount Taranaki or whatever place names are important to people. 
I give the example of Simpsons Beach in my neck of the woods where a group of people came in and said they wanted to call it Wharekaho. Well there was a huge bunfight over that. It is now called Wharekaho and underneath in brackets is Simpsons Beach. What does everybody still call it? They call it Simpsons Beach. If there are to be name changes even if they are dual names or whatever and there is no opportunity for public consultation then that just embeds antipathy in a community where people with opposing points of view argue ad infinitum about a place name and nothing is settled. 
This bill which I am very proud to say National is opposing has a provision that allows the board not to consult the public on a range of matters if the board so deems. Those matters are the alteration of a name of a district or region the assignment of names to geographic features outside territorial limits the adoption of existing names for undersea features the process for review and the validation of certain names. National has concerns about those sorts of issues. The board now has the discretion not to notify the public or to go through a public consultation process. National is not happy about that. 
Another issue relates to clause 32 “Official geographic names must be used” which my most excellent colleague Shane Ardern referred to earlier. The official geographic name for a geographic feature or area if one exists must be used in all official documents. One description in the definition of “official document” is a publication intended for travellers or tourists. That clearly affects every single tourism operation in the country because generally they include place names in all their brochures. 
The tourism industry is based on offering opportunities for tourists to see our places and spaces. Place names are a big part of that and if there is an official geographic name then tourism operators must use it in all their documents. They cannot use a colloquial name like Simpsons Beach; they have to use Wharekaho. But if they already have Simpsons Beach on all their paperwork then they have to state that Simpsons Beach is not the official geographic name. If they want to retain the colloquial name of Simpsons Beach on their paperwork then they have to change all their brochures to state that it is not the official geographic name. 
I do not think that anybody gave any thought to the cost involved for all the tourism ventures up and down this country. They either have to state the official geographic name or a make a statement saying that it is not the official geographic name. I have never heard of anything more stupid and ignorant. It ignores the effect on and cost to all the tourism venture operations throughout this country. I really do not see how this issue was conveyed to the tourism sector. National opposes this bill for those two very fundamental reasons.