Wagner Nicky: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wagner Nicky: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8036. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) 
 on behalf of Jacqui Dean (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 I move  
That the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill be now read a third time 
. This bill is a local bill sponsored by Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean. Jacqui is very disappointed that she cannot be here today and wants to thank the submitters the officials and the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee for all their hard work. She is very pleased that we have got here to the third reading. It has been a very interesting and complex bill and everyone has worked pretty diligently to get it right. 
The purpose of this bill is to revoke the reservation of two pieces of land within the Waitaki District and to clarify the status of the third piece of land. The first two pieces the Palmerston Showgrounds and Lot 1 DP 345820 are sections and they are straightforward revocations of the Reserves Act status. In the case of the Palmerston Showgrounds section it will allow the Waitaki District Council to sell the land to the current lessees. 
In the case of the lot 1 section it will allow Waitaki District Council to regularise the sale of the section to the current registered proprietors and allow title to their property to be unencumbered by any notation relating to the Reserves Act. 
But it is the third piece of land that is much more controversial and that is what the committee spent its time on. This piece of land is known as Lookout Point or Forrester Heights and the bill is made to correct a historical error. This error was caused by a combination of factors but was mostly to do with semantics. The committee received and considered 27 submissions and it heard seven submissions orally and by a majority it recommended that the bill be passed. 
I would just like to talk a little bit about Lookout Point. The land was originally purchased by the Government from Ngai Tahu in 1848 as part of the Kemp purchase and this land was included in the original subdivision of the town of Oamaru. In 1885 the land was set aside as an endowment in aid of funds for the benefit of the then Oamaru Borough Council—now the Waitaki District Council—in accordance with section 38 of the Land Act 1877 Amendment Act of 1884. So it went back a while. 
There was an administrative oversight in 1937 and at that stage this piece of land was mistakenly vested to the now Waitaki District Council as a reserve. Reserve status and endowment status are two completely separate concepts and this might not have been fully appreciated in 1937. So originally it was an endowment and was reserved as an endowment and then it transferred to become reserve land. This bill will simply address the clerical error made in 1937 by clarifying the status of the land as an endowment. 
This background sounds reasonably straightforward now that we have sorted it out but it actually took a lot of time energy and research to make sure that we got it right. I would really like to thank the officials for their painstaking work. I really appreciated the fact that as new information came we requested them to go back and check double-check and even triple-check the documents because we wanted to be absolutely sure that we got it right. This confusion has gone back to 1937 it goes right back to 1884 and we wanted to clarify it completely. 
It gives us great confidence that everyone—Land Information New Zealand or LINZ the Department of Conservation Ngai Tahu the Commissioner of Crown Lands and the Parliamentary Counsel Office—agrees that our conclusion about the status of the land is correct. That is ticks all round—everybody agrees. 
Over the years the issue has divided the community and there has been a lot of historical study and research undertaken by locals. We really appreciate the work that they have done to get all the facts on the table. However there was also some confusion by locals about the role of the select committee. Our job was to clarify the existing land status not to recommend how the council should use the land. That of course is the decision of councillors and of the community. We were there to establish the facts. Others must decide what to do with the land which many hoped would remain a reserve despite the endowment status. So we were very pleased to hear from the Waitaki District Mayor Alex Familton that once the status is clarified he will go back to the community to make any decisions about its future. Thank you.