Pugh Maureen: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePugh Maureen: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11675. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is my pleasure too to stand in support of the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill in its second reading. Having been in this 51st Parliament for only a few months I have not been involved in this bill’s select committee process but I can see that it has been a very cordial agreement across the parties to reach this point in this legislative change.This bill aims to provide certainty regarding where the legal boundaries are. As we have heard the land shift in Canterbury during the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes has been significant. It has caused some problems in identifying those legal boundaries. This bill aims to give the surveyors and the property owners certainty about the correct location of those legal boundaries. We all know how severe the impacts of those events in Canterbury were for everyone and 5½ years after that first big shake we find ourselves at this point of regeneration. This bill aims very much to support that process.The problem or the generally held principle this bill sets out to address is that legal boundaries do not move. But given the extent of that movement in Canterbury we find ourselves in this position where we are looking at this legislation. It has created some difficulties given the extraordinary scale of that land movement. For instance some neighbours could find themselves now legally harvesting fruit and vegetables or picking the flowers out of their neighbours’ gardens simply because they now encroach on to their boundaries. We could find people arguing about parking cars in someone else’s garage because it legally is across their boundary. Potentially there are problems with set-back rules with the Christchurch City district plan. Encroaching on those set-back rules is through no fault of the property owners and it would be a nonsense for any correction to be forced upon those property owners.This bill as I said recognises that those boundaries have moved through the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and it also takes account of aftershocks. The bill applies a very common-sense approach to correcting the legal boundaries. It is going to put them where property owners would expect them to be. It is not going to be a definitive result; it is going to be a cordial result and people will reach common-sense outcomes. This bill is going to recognise that there have already been surveys and it is going to give validation to those surveys that have already been undertaken—that provision is also made in this bill.It is essential that the people of Canterbury whose property boundaries have been affected by the earthquakes and the aftershocks have certainty over their property rights. I believe this bill achieves that. It is another step in the regeneration of that region and it also complements the $17 billion that this Government has committed to the initial response in Canterbury. It is one of the most ambitious programmes in New Zealand’s history. It is for that reason that I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House.