Smith Nick: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Smith Nick: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6377. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 I want to begin by paying a tribute to the sponsor of this local bill the Maori Party MP for Waiariki Te Ururoa Flavell. It is very easy when you are dealing with natural resource issues and particularly some of the tensions and the history with Maori to play a game of divide and rule and to cause tensions. Te Ururoa Flavell is a member who not just on this bill the Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill but on others while being a very strong advocate for his Maori constituents is also one who is out to find solutions. I worked with him closely when dealing with the worst environmental tragedy of the  
Rena 
 and want to commend both him and the local iwi of the Bay of Plenty for the constructive way in which they worked on that issue that caused huge hurt. We see exactly the same approach with this member’s dealings in having this longstanding grievance over natural resource issues resolved with the repeal of the old Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act. 
The second point I wish to make is that this repeal reflects a change in attitude quite appropriately by New Zealand in the way in which it manages its estuaries and the more general foreshore areas on our coast. For a long part of our history we had very definitive land law that put great value on the land bits of New Zealand but took a view of estuaries and the coast that they were worthless and treated them as such. It is a crying shame when you travel around New Zealand and you see the number of tips or landfills that were created in coastal areas. The predominant culture was that those areas of estuaries were wasteland and were not to be valued. Equally so whenever we look at putting sewerage schemes in place where do we put them? We put them on the coast and we put them in estuaries. 
In the last 30 to 40 years there has been a significant revolution in our attitude towards our estuaries and coastal areas seeing them as highly valued areas for recreation for the environment for fishing kai moana and the like and this repeal reflects that change of putting a greater value on our coastal and estuarine areas. I particularly say that of all the areas in which you could put landfills for instance or rubbish dumps the coastal areas are actually some of the worst and cause the greatest environmental woes and that is why it is appropriate that this old Act be repealed. 
I want to commend the cooperative way this bill was dealt with at the select committee with Nicky Wagner as the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee and the submissions that we received from the local councils and local iwi. There was a consensus in the committee that Te Ururoa Flavell’s bill was the right thing to do. It repeals this Act. It will improve iwi relations in the Bay of Plenty around the management of that pretty magnificent coast. 
I note the only change the select committee made to the bill was to ensure that in the process we do not leave another stranded bill on the books. I also commend this bill for reducing the number of statutes. We spend a lot of time in this Parliament passing new laws. It is actually good that we review some of the old laws and repeal them when they are no longer appropriate. This is a good bill. I again commend the member. The House should pass it.