Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very happy to take a call on this part of the bill Part 2. I am reminded of a situation I have on the domestic front at the moment. We have debated Part 1 which is the entrée to the bill. The domestic situation I have at home is that upstairs there has been a bit of a stink. I had not quite been able to work out what it is. I did a bit of investigation on Sunday morning and found out we have got a blocked drain downstairs full of putrid fetid water. We found the source of the contamination and Part 2 is the source of the contamination in this bill because it is the odious part of this bill that does the business of stripping away precious public reserve land from a community that treasures and needs that land. I just want to work through some of the key sections of Part 2 particularly clause 6 with a bit of reflection on some of the very good submissions that were produced and then summarily ignored by the Government as this piece of legislation has made its way through the process.If we read through Part 2 particularly clause 6—and clause 8 as well which I will come to—it is all there in pretty sort of technical and bureaucratic language. But fundamentally what it does is stomp all over community interests and the due process that we normally expect people to be given in this country when major changes are made to their community. It stomps all over provisions that we would usually see enacted through the Resource Management Act (RMA) and the Reserves Act. I want to turn to some of the very good submissions we received that spoke to these points.The first one was from the Auckland Council. I have got to say that I think it is pretty significant that we have got Auckland Council—the largest local authority in our country and the unitary authority set up by this Government—speaking in extremely forceful language about the way in which this bill cuts across what are quite frankly pretty close to constitutional arrangements in our country in terms of the relationship between local and central government. Here is what it says first up. It says Use of special legislation to lift reserve status and provide for housing development outside normal statutory processes sets a concerning precedent" and in other points it is called a "dangerous precedent". For a formal council submission that is extremely strong language from a council that needs and wants to have a good relationship to use with the Government. I think that shows the level of alarm in local government about these steps from the Government and we have seen plenty of them over the course of this year but in this bill there is indeed a very concerning precedent that we see coming through.Further on in Auckland Council's submission it goes on to talk about the way in which the bill and in particular clause 6 of the bill really cuts across the Reserves Act provisions that usually govern any changes to our precious public reserves. In the Reserves Act we set a high bar. We deliberately set a high bar for changes to public reserves because they are so important. They are really important because generally speaking once public reserve land is gone it is gone. So it is extremely important that it is protected and that the community that benefits from it is able to have a real say over those changes and that the interests of the reserves are protected.What the Auckland Council says in respect of this is "The Reserves Act sets out stringent steps that the Minister of Conservation must follow before revoking the reserve status of part or all of the reserve."—and of course it is clause 6 here which by fiat revokes that reserve status of part of Point England Reserve. "If that process had been followed in this instance the Minister would have been required to set out the reasons for the proposed revocation and invite comment from Auckland Council. Public notification of the proposed revocation would have been required. Affected members of the public would have had a right of objection. The Minister of Conservation would have been obliged to take any such objections into account and would also have been subject to the principles of administrative law—the decision could have been reviewed by the courts."I wonder where is the party of people like Jim McLay who once would have stood up for those kinds of principles—the principle of the rule of law and due process and people being able to have a say about these kinds of things? Instead we have a bill that is going through and cutting across all of those sorts of rights that people in our community can reasonably expect.The Maungakiekie Tāmaki Local Board in its submission talked on this further alongside I think five other local boards including a number of local boards primarily dominated by National Party members. It has expressed its concern about what it terms the "dangerous precedent" in line with Auckland Council's comments. It has noticed that this is a fast-track development and that it avoids a robust public consultation process including a right of appeal. These are extremely serious concerns from a local board that is the most local form of democracy in this community and those concerns have been completely ignored. The local board did a patch-up job by trying to have some local consultation of the kind that the Government did not have when it tried to slip this bill through its early stages over the summer period. It is actually interesting to read in the submissions and in the notes of that public meeting the serious concerns of the community not just about the loss of their reserve but their concerns that in the future the public reserves of other communities may be taken away by this kind of approach as well.Continuing through the submissions that point to these very serious process concerns there is another excellent one from Forest & Bird. Forest & Bird is a serious organisation that for 70 or 80 years has fought for our ecology has fought for public open spaces. It is not politically partisan; it is interested in the common good and it is interested in fair and due process as well. Here is what Forest & Bird says: "Of significant concern to Forest & Bird is the removal of the [RMA] statutory requirements around consultation public engagement and environmental assessment for subdivisions." Again I would ask the Minister actually about this because it has come through in submission after submission: where actually are the environmental assessments that we would expect to see on a piece of public reserve land that has notable environmental and ecological values that have been assessed by a number of experts? We have seen absolutely none of that.Another submission by Julie Chambers who has led the Save Point England group and is a person who is very well known in the community for serving the community over many many years—Phil Twyford: A long-time National Party member.MICHAEL WOOD: A long-time National Party member—not any more. But she makes the point that "The inclusion of Section 8"—we turn to clause 8 now—"forces Auckland Council to carry out a major Plan Change" and this is the bit that imposes a particular kind of zoning mixed urban housing on the land that will have reserve status revoked "that will convert the use of treasured public open space into residential housing". So not only are we taking away the reserve status but then through an Act of Parliament rather than public consultation we are also dictating exactly the kind of urban form that will go on to that public land whereas across all of the rest of Auckland we have had a thorough consultative process through the unitary plan to determine what form of housing should go on what site. There has been none of that in the case of Point England.I want to touch on a couple of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that go to these points as well. Eugenie Sage's SOP 317 which we fully support tries to backfill some of the deficiencies of process that are embedded in this bill. It does that by asking whether after all of these egregious breaches of process we can at least ensure we have a basic RMA process in terms of the development that will occur on what everyone acknowledges is a sensitive site in many ways. I think that is the least that the people of the community could expect after having all of their other rights trampled over in this process.I always like contrast and in contrast to that good SOP well we have got Dr Smith's SOP 321. It is less an SOP and more a doodle on the back of an envelope done over at Bellamy's one night I think. It is absolutely pathetic. It is about the Minister trying to get an extra 500 votes for Denise Lee in the coming election in that seat—trying to save a few votes for her by banging an extra playing field on the reserve with absolutely no background work done on that whatsoever.What has the Minister done—this is a question for the Minister in the chair Scott Simpson actually—to understand Auckland Council's sports field development capacity project which has actually worked out on an evidential basis where sports fields should go and what kinds of sports fields there should be? Should it be a grass turf or an artificial turf or a hybrid turf? Has any of that work been done as Nick Smith put forward this SOP? What engagement has there been with Auckland Council around its open space development strategy which actually determines the kinds of open spaces that we want in different places? There is absolutely nothing in this SOP. It is simply not worth the paper it is written on and from a public policy point of view I think that even that Minister Minister Smith who is responsible for so many cack-handed pieces of legislation should be ashamed of that particular SOP.In finishing my comments at this stage—and I would like to come back and take another call on some of the environmental aspects later on—I do have a couple of questions for the Minister in the chair in addition to those ones that I have already offered. The first one that I would like to ask is in respect of clause 8 of the bill can the Minister explain why once reserve status is revoked we would not simply have a plan-change process that would be open to public consultation to determine the appropriate form of density and urban form on that site? I think the people of the community of Point England would like to know that. Thank you."