Robertson Grant: Wellington Town Belt Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Wellington Town Belt Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10294. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I want to thank all my colleagues who have made a contribution and I will endeavour to respond briefly to the questions that have been raised and then return as I said I would to clause 23.Firstly in terms of the principles clause the important factor to note here is at the beginning of the principles clause which needs to be seen as an umbrella and which also links to other elements of the bill. Clause 4(1) says “In performing its role as trustee of the Wellington Town Belt the Council must—” and then it outlines the things it must do. It must “recognise and provide for the protection” and it must “have particular regard to” the principles. So it does not have wiggle room in that sense. What the council—and bear in mind this is a bill put forward by the Wellington City Council—was clear about was that the principles could not be so tight as to enable it not to actually run the city or to be able to do the things that it needs to do within the city. It is an absolute obligation to have regard to those principles but then to have them worded in such a way that they can be operable principles in terms of how the town belt is managed.In terms of the relationship with mana whenua—to pick up the comment of my colleague Rino Tirikatene—this is where the management plan becomes the critical element because the management plan is what governs on a decade-by-decade basis how the town belt works in that there is a relationship with mana whenua over the management of the town belt. The principles are high level. They have enough flexibility in them to allow the operation of the town belt to occur but it is through the management plan that that finds itself in operation. We are making legislation here for perpetuity and the management plan is what guides us in between times. I think it is important that we do not try to invest everything about the town belt’s operations and running in this legislation. The management plan is a critical element.To the other question that Mr Nash raised: this is not a charitable trust; this is a statutory trust—and actually the word “trust” is used in the deed which has in itself led to the concept of a trustee. But it does not suffer from the limitations that other types of charitable trusts do.To Mr O’Rourke’s concern around why it is 8 hectares: I think that is because it is 20 acres and I think that is a number that the council has used to define what it would deem to be an acceptably small percentage of the 400 hectares that we have and the 520 to 540 hectares that we will have. I do not think it is a number divined by anything more than being an acceptably small number relative to the size of the town belt.In terms of the question around whether or not it is foreseen as a prohibition: that will be a matter for the council. What it was trying to get across in this was that it did not want people to believe there were 20 years followed by another 20 years followed by another 20 years without any recourse to pausing and stopping and thinking about whether or not a lease should be granted over and over again. Whether or not that would amount to a prohibition will be a decision for the council and not I am sorry to say something that I can shed any light on for the member.I want to use my remaining time to talk about clause 23. Clause 23 as introduced in this bill did create some exceptions to the way in which the Public Works Act would apply to the Wellington town belt. It has never been the intention of the Wellington City Council to exempt the town belt from the Public Works Act. What originally came into this House did add in a couple of extra provisions. After consultation between the Wellington City Council and the Government we now have an amended clause 23. That amended clause 23 is the status quo. It means that the Public Works Act operates alongside the town belt as it has done up until this point. There are rights of objection for the city council and there is a process for compensation. We have not added to that and in the Labour Party’s minority report I made it very clear that we would rather have stuck with the original clause 23 but ultimately this is a local bill and the Wellington City Council has made the decision that it believes the status quo should be where we are now. I do think that is a bit of a lost opportunity to show just how special and unique the town belt is but I do respect the fact that this is as Mr Foster-Bell has mentioned about the particular way in which the town belt sits in the city and the purposes for which it may be used from time to time.Can I say this: I would hope that Governments looking at the town belt would be very judicious in their use of the Public Works Act and would actually attempt to avoid its use where at all possible and find alternatives that do not require the town belt to be taken. But it was never the intention of the Wellington City Council to not have the Public Works Act apply to the town belt.Just very briefly I do accept that the change that was desired in the original clause 23 around compensation was complicated and I think would have been quite difficult to implement but there are still provisions for compensation in this. I want to make it absolutely clear to those who are listening in to this that in no way does the clause 23 that we will be passing tonight diminish the protection that the Wellington town belt has. It simply enshrines the status quo. As this will be my last call in the Committee stage—Hon Member: Say it’s not so!GRANT ROBERTSON: —I do want to thank all my colleagues—well I could go on—from all sides of the Chamber for their strong support of this piece of legislation. We are doing a very good thing for Wellington here and we will—Phil Twyford: Can we build houses on it?GRANT ROBERTSON: We cannot build houses on it Mr Twyford. That is the point. So we as a Parliament should be proud that we have made our contribution to keeping the Wellington town belt protected for the future generations of this city.