Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am happy to take a call on the title and commencement of the Point England Development Enabling Bill. It has been an interesting debate to be part of and I want to reflect on the title that this bill has been given and possibly some more appropriate titles that could apply to it. I would suggest that it could be called quite appropriately the Point England (Sir Robert Muldoon Memorial) Bill because this area of course is in the former Tamaki electorate and contained within the bill are some of the kinds of centralising tendencies that we saw from that National Party Prime Minister such as a willingness to override democratic norms to override community voices and to override due process.In the debate that we have heard in this Committee stage on this bill it has been raised time and time and time again that there could have been a better way through this bill and that with a willingness on behalf of the Government to sit down and negotiate and look at all of the options we could have achieved something really good for Point England here. We could have achieved something really good for Point England that met the objective that all of us share to have a sustainable enduring and just Treaty settlement for Ngāti Paoa—and I do not think there is a member in this Committee who does not support that—and that could meet the objectives of supporting the Point England Reserve which is right here in the title and that is what we should be focused on. That is what we should be focused on.That reserve has protections under legislation that this Parliament passed in the Reserves Act and one of the key features of this bill is that it fundamentally changes Point England Reserve. It strips away the existing protections that that reserve has under the Reserves Act and the core protection in the Reserves Act that the reserve has is the right for the benefits of that reserve to the local community to be paramount. Instead of going through a process to determine that as we would usually have done under the Reserves Act this bill the Point England Development Enabling Bill enables development on that reserve—development that may very well be contrary to the interests of that reserve and the community that it serves. So it runs entirely contrary to the treatment of reserves in this country under the Reserves Act. Enabling residential development on a precious piece of public open space—as this bill does and as is reflected in the title of this bill—is simply unacceptable and inappropriate.Let us return again to those first couple of words in the title Point England". We have heard from the Minister in the chair Nick Smith time and time again through this debate that supposedly this is a reserve that is not particularly valuable and whose amenity is limited and we have had the canard about the cows supposedly. Well actually we have heard from submitters and we have heard from members of the community that this is actually an incredibly valued reserve. They have submitted and they have emailed and sent us some pictures. These photos show the land supposedly that the Minister does not think is of value to the community but here we have kids in the triathlon and we have people playing kilikiti and of course we had submission after submission talking about the ecological value of Point England Reserve.We had senior ecologists from the Auckland Council saying that at the very least before we go down this track of revoking the reserve status of a piece of reserve land that has significant ecological value and in particular—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the member but I am doing it to warn the Minister in the chair that by both hand gestures and comments he is reflecting on my chairing and that he is to cease.MICHAEL WOOD: We heard from Auckland Council that because of the ecological value that is inherent in the reserve—and it is also of course one of the things that is protected in the Reserves Act and is stripped away by this bill—there should at the very least have been an ecological assessment to determine whether the development that is enabled on this site by this bill is appropriate given the flora and particularly the fauna that is on that site but through the course of this debate we have not heard any substantive response from the Minister on that point.So I very proudly stand here with the Labour Party to say that the title of this bill is entirely inappropriate that this bill itself is not something that we should be supporting and that Point England Reserve is a valued reserve and it is not a site that is appropriate for development. What we know of course is that there is ample opportunity for development in that community. It is currently slated for 20000 additional homes under the Auckland Unitary Plan. The way that we do good quality development is to plan it have democratic input and then support it with high-quality public open space. We do not do it by ram-raiding the high-quality public open space in the first instance. In fact contrary to the principles of good development this bill which carves up a valued reserve compromises good quality development in the future in Point England. Thank you."