Barry Maggie: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11097. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore):I rise with pleasure to speak to the Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill. Let me start with an understatement: the Kaipara District Council has had a very troubled few years. It is an area that comes through into my area. It is from Mangawhai in the north and many of my people—I think around 3000 of them—who live on the North Shore actually own properties in that area in the Mangawhai area. There are about 14000 ratepayers in the district and many of them are very very unhappy at the way things have turned out so far. Accountability as many speakers who have talked on this bill before me have said is vitally important. This bill does not let anybody off the hook. Audit New Zealand standards need scrutiny. As others have said it passed year after year after year with a clean audit a piece of work that really did not deserve to be passed. What was it thinking? There are questions on this that need answering. The sewerage scheme was originally costed at $11 million in 1999 by October 2006 it was up to $58 million and $62 million with limited consultation was the ultimate outcome. It is the reason why we have Resource Management Act reforms. Kaipara District Council remains the absolute bottom standard of what councils that run amok without proper consultation with their ratepayers can achieve and can drag their ratepayers into.This is a piece of legislation that is absolutely necessary in the same way as the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill is as well. Our colleagues on the other side of the House have referred to that already. Damien O’Connor—as Mike Sabin has done—has taken the responsible view of a local member and has been forced to take that further. The Local Government and Environment Committee is where people who have done wrong by their ratepayers will be held to account. Let us look at what would happen if this particular piece of legislation were not passed. What are the options? Without validating legislation the council would need to refund all of the rates that were set incorrectly and set new rates to recover the money—what would that cost and who would have to pay—work itsway through a complex process of resetting rates for each year since 2006 which again would be a ridiculous exercise and enormously expensive or leave the status of the rates uncertain and open to legal challenge. Those are the three options without this bill. Sensible people would acknowledge that this piece of legislation needs to go through.This bill will be heard by the Local Government and Environment Committee as our chair Nicky Wagner indicated earlier—the same select committee that has had to hear the Tasman District Council issues. As a person who just sat down on the other side of the House indicated two in as many months is a ridiculous situation and it should not happen. It should not be allowed to happen. Once again the broader picture that this Government takes is that the Resource Management Act reforms are absolutely essential because of these kinds of problems that emerge. This bill will be heard in the select committee that I sit on. We will go to the Kaipara to make it as easy as possible for people to make their views known. I can assure you that submitters will be heard and questions will be asked and people will be very thoroughly questioned as to what the options are.The Kaipara District Council has created an ugly mess. There are many words that have been used around this: we have got “mismanagement” we have got “incompetence” we have got “dysfunctional” and even from members on the other side we heard “corrupt” which is rich coming from them. When we look at what is happening with this piece of legislation which needs to be examined we need to hold people accountable for this mismanagement and incompetence. We need to find a way through this dysfunctional mess for the sake of the ratepayers. There are some 12000 law-abiding citizens in Kaipara and they need to know with some certainty that this is going to be resolved. We need to help them through that process and the select committee the engine room will make sure that that happens. I commend my colleague Mike Sabin who has had to put in a lot of hard work to find a solution that just might be workable through this absolute muddle. It is complex. This is a problem not of his making. I commend the local member Mike Sabin and I commend this bill to the House.