Upston Louise: Public Works (Offer Back of and Compensation for Acquired Land) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Upston Louise: Public Works (Offer Back of and Compensation for Acquired Land) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12565. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand to speak on the Public Works (Offer Back of and Compensation for Acquired Land) Amendment Bill in the name of Te Ururoa Flavell. As other speakers have said this afternoon the motive for this bill is worthy but in practice the further the Local Government and Environment Committee looked into this bill the more troubling it became. A number of submitters were in support of the intent behind the bill but they raised serious concerns from a wide range of quarters whether they were the Manukau City Council the Wellington City Council groups such as Federated Farmers and Vector or airports such as Auckland Airport. 
I will talk about some of the challenges that have arisen as a result of the submissions to explain in a little bit more detail why this legislation will not work why National will not be supporting it in the second reading debate and why the select committee as a whole reported back that it recommended that the bill not be passed. There are a couple of issues or challenges such as the retrospective nature of the legislation the definition of “original use” the unintended consequences that arise and also the impact on future land use. 
We will look first at unintended consequences. I will use an example that Vector which opposes the bill brought forward. It is not just Maori land that is affected by this bill it is all land. There could be a situation where a piece of land was subject to discussions under the Public Works Act and was then acquired voluntarily through a sale and purchase agreement. That land would then be subject to this legislation. So no matter how the land was acquired it would be subject to the offer-back requirements. One of the issues is that even if the land is not required for the original purpose for which it was purchased it may be required for other public works. I will give a couple of examples of that. One of the problems with this bill arises in a situation where there is a piece of land that is currently used for a public work. There could be more than one public work utilising that site. Co-location is more prevalent these days so the problem becomes compounded. 
In terms of the retrospective nature of this legislation the bill would create significant expense both for central government and local government. It would be incredibly inefficient to have to offer back land to the original owner assuming we could track them down. If the land were still being used for a current public work even if not the original public work that organisation whether central or local government would have to go through the process of repurchasing that land which is very bureaucratic and cumbersome and of course not at all what this current Government is interested in; we are about getting rid of red tape and getting rid of bureaucracy. 
Then there is the issue of original use. Again this Government is spending billions of dollars on infrastructure unclogging the arteries of our country. I will not go into the matters of unclogging arteries like the Hon Tau Henare has already described earlier in the House today. But I do want to give a simple example of how original use can change over time. If we think back there may have been some land that was purchased let us say for a post office or a manual telephone exchange. Over time the land went from a post office to a telephone exchange to a cabinet on a side of the road and now to a fibre optic cable under the ground. The argument that submitters raised was in respect to whether that fibre optic cable was the original purpose for which that land was acquired. If we were looking at it from a pure perspective we would argue that it was not. If we look at it from a pragmatic perspective we would have to argue that it does and that is why the original use definition creates significant problems. 
If we take that argument forward we can then look at the impact on future land use. I will use the example of an airport. An airport clearly needs room to expand in the future if it is planning for a 50-year horizon not a 5-year horizon. One of the airports that came to submit to us said that it had significant blocks of land that were for the purpose of an airport. Currently it did not need that land but it would need it in the future. All of a sudden there would be a problem if this bill were to pass whereby that airport would have to offer back the land that it was not currently using for an airport but would need in the future. It would then have to hope that in the future when it needed the land it would be able to purchase it back which is fairly unlikely. That is a bit ridiculous. Those are some of the complicating factors with this bill. 
Another unintended consequence of the bill was raised by Wellington City Council. It gave another example of a difficulty around a public work and the use of the land. The Wellington City Council gave the example of a paper road that is not used as a road but is used for the very important purpose of flood control. Under this legislation I ask whether we would expect the Wellington City Council to have to offer back the land that it so desperately needs for flood control because the land is not being used as a road. Those are numerous examples of how difficult this legislation was the deeper we delved into it. 
I must say again that the intention of the bill was great. I commend Te Ururoa Flavell on bringing the bill to the House and on getting it through the select committee process. He and the select committee members recognise the difficulty with progressing it further. I recognise that there are some difficulties and some problems that need to be solved and some of the submitters also said that the public works legislation needs further attention. This Government will look at aspects of the Public Works Act when it does its phase two reform of the Resource Management Act. The first phase was incredibly successful. It is great to look towards the next round of reform part of which will incorporate the Public Works Act. 
We do recognise on this side of the House that there are some issues but unfortunately this bill does not fix them. I look forward to being part of the committee working on the second phase of the Resource Management Act to pick up some of the issues with the Public Works Act. Thank you.