Woods Megan: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2840. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I can see Mr Deputy Speaker that you are allowing a very broad-ranging debate on this second reading of what is a very narrow piece of legislation—a piece of legislation that is about validating rates in Christchurch. I see that you are wanting us to traverse the terrain in all its many corners and I will too Mr Deputy Speaker—I will oblige. And I am sure my colleagues will in their contributions to this bill feel free to frolic around the plains of Canterbury in how they address this. Because as the speaker before me the sponsor of this bill said—and I want to acknowledge the Hon Nicky Wagner—this is a very specific bill with a very specific task: it is about rectifying a mistake that happened with the way rates were struck in Christchurch over a period of time.The Minister did say that it was a mistake made “with the best of intentions”. Well I am not sure whether mistakes can be made “with the best of intentions”. I do believe it was probably a mistake made “without malevolence”. I do believe that it was probably a mistake “not made on purpose”. But I do not really think that we can make mistakes “with the best of intentions”. But none the less Christchurch City Council finds itself in the situation of having had a period of time when rates were not struck the way they should have been. And the way that it has asked for this to be rectified is by a piece ofvalidating legislation. That is what we are here at the second reading to debate and to kick around in a very broad-ranging way.What we have here though is something that this Parliament should not be making a habit of—that is fixing mistakes via legislation. When we considered this piece of legislation we on the Local Government and Environment Committee were very much of the united mind—if I could put it that way for our select committee—that actually—Hon Ruth Dyson: Was Peter Dunne on it?Dr MEGAN WOODS: No Peter Dunne was not on that committee and was not part of the united mind. What we had was a crossing of the ways in wanting to ensure that we as a Parliament are doing all that is in our power to ensure that we do not land back here having to fix up mistakes that have been made because we do not have adequate guidance or adequate oversight on how rates are struck by local body authorities. This is something that I know from my perspective on the committee I am very keen to get on the record.During the first reading speeches on this bill my colleague Su’a William Sio said that this legislation is between a rock and a hard place—that we know it has to be done that we need to fix this genuine error but that it is never something we like doing. And in the contribution he made on the bill he said that he wanted to hear what it was that the people of Christchurch had to say on the matter. The select committee even before this Parliament reconvened was busy at work—the hard-working committee that we on the Local Government and Environment Committee are. We were in Christchurch hearing the submission—the one submission that we heard on this bill.We did other work in Christchurch; I would not like to imply that we did not do a full day’s work. We also had the question of the legislation that we debated in the debate prior to this the Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust Bill to deal with on that day. We heard from Christchurch City Council and we heard how it was that it discovered this error. The speaker before me the Hon Nicky Wagner described this—it really was through the thorough order of their processes that it was discovered; that this transition to a simpler language was found. I think it was very insightful. It was actually a really good experience for the committee members to listen to that—and then to participate in the discussion that followed about what the responsibilities of this House are to ensure that we do not get into those situations again.Mr Deputy Speaker you will notice that I have been speaking very specifically on this very narrow piece of legislation but now since we are in the broad-ranging part of the debate I would like to venture out a little further as it were because what we did hear the Minister do after she dealt with the substance of why it is that we are here today was to put the legislation in the context of our recovery. Personally I do not think that this needs to be put in the context of our recovery; I think that actually to put it so can be somewhat patronising to the people of Christchurch—that what we have is something that other local authorities have gone through. But to use this debate to talk about what a wonderful job it has been and about how great things are in Christchurch is actually something I would rather not have seen. Yes there are contentions around how the recovery in Christchurch is going. I did not want to have to use this debate to debate those issues because that is not what this legislation is about—this is legislation about how it is that Christchurch City Council is asking us to fix a genuine mistake. But talking about organic food and nutraceuticals in the context of this legislation as we heard from the previous speaker is somewhat of a stretch.I would like to talk about housing in the context of this bill and if we are going to talk about the recovery I want to talk about the lack of housing that we have in Christchurch. I want to talk about the level of rates that people are paying in the city of Christchurch—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Thank you. I would not like the member to think that because the member promoting the bill made some magnanimous and inclusive comments around Christchurch and its recovery that she should stray from her first thoughts which were that she should keep the debate relatively tight. She made the comment that she would not like to think that she had to stray broader than the mandate of the bill and I would remind her that she does not. In actual fact the comments that were made by the member initiating this legislation were magnanimous in respect of Christchurch and were obviously well-meaning. I guess that what I am indicating to this speaker and to other speakers who will take calls is that they should bear in mind the particular strain in which those comments were made and bear in mind the scope of this bill. If I was recalcitrant in some way by not paying as close attention as I should have that does not necessarily give subsequent speakers licence to wander off around the paddock and cut their own track in respect of the scope of this bill which as the member has already conceded is very narrow.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I take your wise words on board. We are here tonight debating a ratings bill. Ratings are levelled on property as we all know—rates. And what we are validating here are mistakes that were made with how the rates were struck in Christchurch on individual properties. Many of those houses actually have now gone; some of the houses that this bill affects were actually some of those that were demolished as a consequence of the red zone. I think we would all acknowledge how sad that is and what Christchurch has been through in terms of that. But I would also note that perhaps we have not had the rebuilding of as many houses as we would like to see to replace those properties where rates could have been struck or otherwise had been struck. This is what we have to think about if we are going to be thinking about this piece of legislation in the context of the rebuild and recovery of Christchurch—what it means for our city; what it means for what we could be. Because this is about the ratings base of Christchurch this is about where people live and this is about the homes in which people enjoy their lives when we are talking about rates because this is the way that it has been chosen to be done. So I would like to raise that in the context of this legislation.I think one of the things that some of the speakers said when this bill was previously before this House did raise a question. I referred earlier to the contribution that my colleague Su’a William Sio made when he said that he invited members in Christchurch—and I quote from William Sio’s speech: “We support this bill through its first reading. I would invite all members and citizens of Christchurch to take the opportunity to submit on this bill and make their views known to this Government about the lack of action that they are seeing in the rebuild there. Thank you.” That is from a first reading speech on this bill.I myself think it is a shame that we did not hear from more people and that we did have only one submission on this bill. It would have been interesting to get feedback from the people of Christchurch on this but I guess one of the things that we know—and I can reach across the House to my colleague Nicky Wagner who is the sponsor of this bill—is what the people of Christchurch have been through and just how tired many of them are. There is a bit of fatigue actually among many people in Christchurch in terms of input into consultative processes—because there have been a number of them. There have many things for the people of Christchurch to have their say on and to input into and I think this is probably one of the reasons why we did not have as many contributions as perhaps my colleague Su’a William Sio was thinking when he made that comment in his first reading speech.I think that we do stand here with a very narrow piece of legislation that does a very specific task which is about correcting a mistake that was made without malevolence. It is a mistake that does need to be corrected because we need our ratings to be struck in a legal way and in accordance with the Local Government (Ratings) Act. Labour supports this bill in the House. In no way is this any slur on the Government but we do not want to be here again supporting more validating legislation as I am sure my colleagues across the House would concur. I think that we as a House need to turn our minds to how it is that we can avoid being in this place again whether that be through the audit process or whether that be through issuing good guidance to councils as they strike their rates to ensure that resolutions that confer either the legality or illegality of rates and how they are leviedare struck and are something that we can have in place. Labour supports this legislation. Thank you.