McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak on the Palmerston North Reserves Empowering Amendment Bill and to follow the member Tangi Utikere for the second time on a bill he's introduced to the House in the last few weeks. He's outlined it extremely well and I was wondering why it hadn't come to the Governance and Administration Committee until he claimed the fact that last time it went to the Governance and Administration Committee they sent it back. So he won't be sending it there this time and probably for very good reason. It is an interesting piece of legislation because one of the great frustrations for councils right around the country is the fact that they have these reserves that they've been accumulating in some cases over hundreds of years which when they sell them the Government either confiscates half the money and uses it somewhere else or otherwise they just hold them because they don't want to give the Government half the money which is very unfortunate. It's interesting in this case. It's a little bit different because Palmerston North has a couple of Acts of its own which enable it through this mechanism actually to get to the point where they can if they wish to sell that piece of land and reinvest it in further I guess green space or parks and reserves for the use of the city. Palmerston North's quite an interesting place. It's had a lot of names in my time. It was called the Rose City" for a while and actually it's got 5000 roses in its rose garden—imagine trying to prune them. The most famous of them is named after another name that it was called for a while—and actually I think it's been rejuvenated now—which is the name of "Palmy" and that's the Pride of Palmy which is a bright yellow rose. It's very pretty actually and that's just been released I think last year and planted in the Palmerston North rose garden. It's also called the "Student City" and it's had a lot of names but the most famous name of all was John Cleese's name that he gave it which I won't repeat in here. But he then had the rubbish dump named after him so you can imagine it was quite an appropriate name they gave him. He won't be invited back to Palmerston North I'm quite sure. But as Tangi Utikere explained there is an enormous number of reserves and very attractive public areas in Palmerston North and particularly in this part of town because as he explained this reserve is adjacent to the Palmerston North Girls' High School which is in turn adjacent to the Esplanade and Ongley Park which are massively big pieces of reserve land. That of course is then adjacent to the Manawatū River which aside from in 2004 usually behaves itself and you can get from Ashhurst all the way to Longburn down the Manawatū River which is most attractive and has been beautifully tracked by the Palmerston North City Council. So there are plenty of opportunities in my view for alternative reserve facilities in Palmerston North. Whilst there's always opposition to city councils or to councils of any sort selling off public reserves and you can understand why to some extent I think the Palmerston North City Council is particularly cognisant of its reserves. It makes a great effort to make sure that those are available to the public and there's plenty of space available for that. So I think it's a very good use of this land for it to be redesignated and if in fact the council want to sell it in the future they can and if in fact they want to redevelop it themselves they could. They may well do that I imagine because it is an ideal place for housing. It's on a main traffic thoroughfare it's very close to the CBD and it's ideal for the kind of development that they clearly have in mind for it. It's an interesting process bringing Acts through this Parliament. I in fact myself was the mayor of a council that brought an Act through here called the Manfeild Park Act in 2006 which enabled Manfeild Park to be converted. The reason for that was it was taken from being a racecourse and effectively transferred into a reserve in the Manawatū District and that's a very big reserve just adjacent to Feilding. So I think the member for Palmerston North has framed the process very well. I think it's worthy of support this kind of legislation going through the House. I think in a funny way it's unfortunate that we have the legislation in the manner it is because it does as I said earlier inhibit councils and communities from doing what they want to do with land. But at the same time we have to have a balance and a safeguard from that type of activity so it is a fine balancing act. But I won't say any more today. As I've said it's worthy of support and I wish them all the best as they get this through the select committee process. Thank you Madam Speaker."