Hudson Brett: Wellington Town Belt Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHudson Brett: Wellington Town Belt Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9840. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to rise in support of this the Wellington Town Belt Bill. I think this is going to be a speech of two halves as I watch the clock tick over another notch. I would like to start by acknowledging the diligence and efforts of the local MP Grant Robertson—a man who as has been noted mentioned this town belt in his maiden speech and has been working for some time to get to this point. I am sure we are all going to support him in seeing this bill successfully enacted.I did state some criticism of the state of the bill as it was originally introduced to the House. I do note that Mr Robertson was not thrilled with that criticism at the time of the first reading but I am very pleased to see the state of the bill as it has come back from the Local Government and Environment Committee particularly around the area of clause 23 and the Public Works Act and I will come to that I suspect probably when speaking on Part 2.I first note that the Wellington town belt is important to all Wellingtonians. It stretches about 400 hectares and stretches in a bit of a horseshoe.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.BRETT HUDSON: Time for part two of the thrilling instalment in the Wellington Town Belt Bill. Before we went to satiate our hunger I was talking about the nature of the Wellington town belt and its shape extending in a bit of a horseshoe from Mount Victoria around to its greatest point at the northern edge of Te Ahumairangi Hill—Simon O’Connor: Where sorry?BRETT HUDSON: —which is the border with the greatest electorate in all of New Zealand Ōhariu. That is a fact that bears repeating time and time again—so almost 400 hectares of town belt. Actually there are no Ginsu steak knives but we are going to get an extra 130-odd hectares in this deal because there is about that much that the town council treats as town belt as if it is actually parks and reserves. In the end we will end up with about 520 hectares of town belt under this bill once it is enacted.Something that I was saying is that the town belt is something that all Wellingtonians can appreciate. I think we come together in a consensus in the House that this is a very good measure to protect that land into the future particularly to make it easy for the council to manage under a single piece of legislation. But there was one area that I had concerns about when the bill was introduced into the House and that was around clause 23 or the potential carve-outs to the Public Works Act which I felt were both unnecessary and unwise. In a sense if they had progressed forward it would have created almost two tiers of acquisition under the notional auspices of public works—the actual Public Works Act itself which will be used for everything else and then this Wellington Town Belt Bill which would give a special provision to the Wellington town belt and the Wellington town belt only.One would ask oneself: why on earth would you do that? I looked into it. I could not see any real reason why the Public Works Act would not apply as well to the Wellington town belt particularly the road reserve that exists along part of it today. I could not see that it would apply any less well to that environment than it applies in any other. In my own personal circumstances in the past I have had a property that was looking to be subject to compulsory acquisition under the Public Works Act. So having a personal interest I took some effort to look into what that actually meant. I discovered that it meant that there are several valuations taken and that the valuation of the land is made on the basis that the works are not going ahead or in other words were assured under that Act the provisions of the Public Works Act to get a very fair and reasonable compensation for the land that is acquired. So I could not see any reason why you would say there would be a need to have a carve-out from a perfectly good Act and provisions in the Wellington Town Belt Bill.So I am very pleased that the Wellington City Council agreed to amending clause 23 and that the carve-out has been removed. I think that with that change what we are left with is precisely the sort of bill we want to see—one that will provide protection for the town belt that will make it a much easier thing to manage and that does not create multiple tiers as I said in the area of compulsory acquisition of land. So on that note I would simply like to say that I commend this bill to the House.