Hayes Joanne: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHayes Joanne: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2855. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JOANNE HAYES (National): I am pleased to stand to reluctantly support this retrospective bill the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill. I do want to thank the Christchurch City Council for acknowledging its errors and doing something about them but to have Government coming in to support it—well if that is how it had to be then that is how it had to be.I want to thank the Hon Nicky Wagner for sponsoring this bill in the House and I also want to thank the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee ably chaired by Scott Simpson for the work that they have done around this and the council for coming to do its presentation to the select committee when we visited about a month ago. This is not just a South Island thing as one my colleagues said. It has happened with the Kaipara District Council and again we intervened there as the Government to just move it along a bit.I just want to talk a little bit about some of the things that occurred with the council. Each June the council resolves to set the rates payable beginning 1 July annually. Perhaps it might have done that but there were a few things that it missed. Since 2004 the wording has been the same or similar to that of the past and there were a few minor things like dates of payments etc. that were missed out. It was not until 2014 when the Department of Internal Affairs was advised of the issues and intervened telling the council that the resolutions that it had passed—well it had not actually passed them. It might have actually told some of its ratepayers through other means but the rates had not been formally passed by council resolution.So there were no due dates for payment of rates or for authorising of the imposition of penalties for unpaid rates. That was the biggest issue facing this council. Section 24 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 requires that local authorities are to include in the resolution in each year setting the rates the date on which rate payments and/or penalties that are due as well on top of the ratesare due and also the dates by which each instalment is due for payment. That is what the council needed to do and it did not do that.The information had been included as I said in a rating policy and funding impact statement but it was not included in resolutions as I said passed since 2004. Section 57 of the Local Government (Rating) Act enables resolutions to be passed that authorise the addition of penalties—I have started down that road—to rates not paid on or by the due dates. This resolution must be made no later than the date on which the local authority sets its rates for the financial year. It must also state how penalties are calculated and the dates that the penalties are added to the amount of the unpaid rates. So those were technical things that were missed out of the resolutions.It was also recognised by the council itself when it presented to us—one of the councillors came to us and talked about these technical errors. Although the information was made available to the ratepayers it was not included in the resolutions. The council realised the errors and meant to remove them.I want to read out some of the irregularities. Details of each irregularity around the target rates to be validated by year were pointed out by my colleague Mr Paul Foster-Bell. He talked about the Church Bay sewer loan rate and the Church Bay water loan rate. These are the dates—the years that were impacted on—that were missed out in that particular piece of information. For the Church Bay sewer loan rate the years impacted were 2006-07 to 2008-09 and these are key dates for those people. For the Church Bay water loan rate the years impacted on were 2006-07 to 2008-09. For the Governors Bay sewer loan rate which was mentioned by my colleague the years impacted on were 2006-07 to 2012-13 and for the Governors Bay water loan rate the years impacted on were also 2006-07 to 2012-13. For the restricted water targeted rate the years impacted on were 2009-10 to 2012-13 and for the water minimisation rate—sorry waste minimisation rate; I need new glasses—the years impacted on were 2008-09 and 2009-10 to 2012-13. The Fire Service water connection rate was impacted on for the years 2003-04 to 2005-06 and 2007-08 to 2012-13. The uniform annual general charge was impacted on from 2003 to 2012-13. These are the dates I needed to place here in this House to finish off that particular area around targeted rates to be validated.The retrospective valuation is not expected to have an adverse impact as mentioned by the Hon Nicky Wagner on the Christchurch ratepayers. It is an anomaly because they already had the information; we just needed to get it into those resolutions.I just want to talk a little bit more about what we do for local government. The Government our Government assists councils with financial management in a number of ways. We do it through our local government reforms. We have better defined the appropriate scope of their activities and have encouraged local government to focus on getting better value for money for their ratepayers which as a ratepayer myself I think is very good. We need to make sure that we get better value for money through our rates. We have also established financial prudence benchmarks which are required by councils in order to produce their 30-year infrastructure strategies. This is really key for all councils around infrastructure and the strategies on that. I think the Christchurch earthquakes have shown up where the faults have been and that infrastructure plans and strategies are key to making sure that cities will keep on going through adversity. That is where we had a few issues in Christchurch over infrastructure issues arising from the earthquakes.Councils also now have to provide information to their ratepayers so that their ratepayers can judge how their council is performing. I just want to say that in the district where our farm is we have just received a letter from the council inviting us to participate in a panel measuring the performance of our local council. I think that is a really great way of the ratepayers participating in rates within their cities or towns and making sure that they are getting value for the money they pay as well as seeing what else is happening within their councils in terms of infrastructure and other things.There has been a big improvement in the past 7 years with rates rises. There has been a big improvement. The average rates rise since 2013 has been 1.4 percent. That is good—good news for everybody.I realise that I am running out of time so I just want to conclude by saying that the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill is a short bill a short focused bill. Clause 5 validates the payment dates for the rates. Clause 6 validates the penalties added to the rates. Clause 7 declares that all moneys received by the council in payment of rates and any penalties paid in respect of those rates are to be treated and to have always been treated as having been lawfully paid to and received by the council. As I said I reluctantly support this bill.