Sage Eugenie: Greater Christchurch Regeneration Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Greater Christchurch Regeneration Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9937. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. The Green Party is pleased to be supporting the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Bill. Acknowledgments to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery for the process that he put in place after the Local Government and Environment Committee had considered the billto make these changes. Of course it would have been desirable if it had been while the bill was at the select committee. Supplementary Order Paper 159 the Supplementary Order Paper with all the changes amalgamating them with the bill itself is hot off the press—it is still warm—but we are very pleased with a number of the changes in it particularly to Part 1.In the purpose of the bill it talks about supporting the regeneration of Greater Christchurch and recognising the local leadership of the Christchurch councils—the Christchurch City Council Selwyn District Council Waimakariri District Council Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and Canterbury Regional Council—but in the original bill before the Supplementary Order Paper there was no mention of enabling and recognising the local leadership of Regenerate Christchurch. So Supplementary Order Paper 159 in putting Regenerate Christchurch there at the heart of the purpose has been a major change and a good change.That is in line with a lot of the submissions from the city council and others who highlighted that the bill as it was originally introduced was modelled far too closely on the powers that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority had in the emergency legislation and that too great a power resided still with Ministers to override local views and to both initiate regeneration plans—initiate them through their chief executive officers—and sign them off. So it gave Ministers far too great a say in what the proposals for those regeneration plans would be the whole process for developing them and then the sign-off. But now with this Supplementary Order Paper Regenerate Christchurch is mentioned there in clause 3(1)(d) and there is the change too to the definition of “regeneration”.As I noted in the second reading the Government has stripped out the promotion of environmental social cultural and economic well-being from the purpose of local government but improving the environmental economic social and cultural well-being and the resilience of communities is part of the definition of “regeneration” in clause 3 of the bill. So this billcould potentially be a model for urban regeneration elsewhere in New Zealand with the partnership that it has between both the Crown and local authorities particularly Christchurch City Council as expressed through this new entity Regenerate Christchurch which will be the proponent of plans and when it is not the proponent it will have a major role in providing advice to the Minister both on the outlined proposal document and on the plan itself.We have not seen before in New Zealand entities such as this involved in plan making and the bill is really breaking new ground on this. There is quite a lot of trust involved here Minister Brownlee because the Supplementary Order Paper that incorporates the bill and melds the draft Supplementary Order Paper that Opposition members had seen previously has just been tabled in the House today. So if there are any major differences between the draft and this one we would appreciate the Minister outlining those but we will be going through it quite carefully.The Green Party still has some reservations about the bill particularly the powers that remain with the Minister in Part 2 and we will talk about those later on. But we wanted to make sure that when the Government changes after the elections next year there is a clear commitment to the people of Christchurch that there is an agreed process going forward for planning particularly for the residential red zone which as Poto Williams noted a lot of people have a very strong connection with even though they may no longer be living there and will want a say in what happens to that land.In the purpose of the bill set out in clause 3(e) it talks about “enabling the Crown to efficiently and effectively manage hold and dispose of land acquired by the Crown under the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011 or [under this current bill]”. “Efficiently” may mean that the Crown makes a large return from disposal but those decisions must be in consultation with the people of Christchurch because of the connections that people have with the land in the residential red zone. I would also note that in Part 1 clause 7 provides for the continued application of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act which means of course that if the Crown is going to dispose of any land that it has acquired it must offer that first to Ngāi Tahu in accordance with that Act.So the Supplementary Order Paper process and the discussion with Opposition parties around that has been very useful and as others have said we hope that this is a template for other critical decisions going forward—for decisions on the anchor projects where there has been very little information provided by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority; things like the convention centre where there has been no formal business case that has been made public. This bill has been substantially improved through the input of other parties and through changes to the purpose and the process for preparing regeneration plans. Decisions around the anchor projects and the way in which the substantial Crown and ratepayer funding that is going into those is spent would benefit from a much greater involvement not just of Opposition parties but of public discussion.So Minister this bill does make major changes that we thank you for in being prepared to listen to the Opposition parties but we think that that same ethos of engaging with the Opposition and with the public needs to be taken over to the anchor projects. But the Green Party will be pleased to support this bill despite some of our reservations about the significant powers that the Minister retains and clause 9 in Part 1 which provides in subclause (1) that a person exercising a power under the legislation “need not consider any Recovery Plan or Regeneration Plan” and we would be interested in some comments from the Minister about why that power is necessary. Given the major changes to the processes for developing regeneration plans what is the point of having those plans going through the consultation with other councils with the public if a Minister or chief executive when exercising powers under the legislation does not then have to have regard to a recovery plan or a regeneration plan? But we will be supporting the bill with reservations. Thank you.