Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well the House is pretty uniform in its agreement tonight on the bill. However it does raise some issues though around when councils change the dimensions of a property. For example if you had a property that was in a gully at the moment and there's nothing on your land information memorandum (LIM) report and then suddenly this comes along and it said that this is a flood prone area. Is that person going to have some recourse to the council? We're seeing the Government talking about wanting to buy-out people from a certain area. Well you know the issue when you do change these LIM reports is that there is a financial consequence on somebody.Hon Andrew Little: If it's not now it's 50 years' time when they get flooded out of it.Hon DAVID BENNETT: So what's that? So Mr Little says their answer is: in a few years' time they'll be flooded out of it. Well that's really helpful for the person that bought that house in good faith. Now they bought that house in good faith on the ability of what the council said.Hon Andrew Little: They want to kick the can down the road.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Kick the can down the road."Hon Andrew Little: Kick the can down the road; it's somebody else's problem.Hon DAVID BENNETT: "Somebody else's problem." Well those are all good lines—Hon Andrew Little: Failure of leadership.Hon DAVID BENNETT: —but I want to—maybe this member—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Little short and sharp and preferably witty.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes I was hoping you were going to add the "preferably witty" because we weren't getting any wit coming from there.But I want to draw that member's attention to the thing called "leaky homes" and what happened there with councils and how they stood behind people that actually had leaky homes—didn't they? They were right there the councils of New Zealand helping those people out. They were the people that stood behind you if you had a leaky home. Are the councils going to stand behind you if your LIM report now says that you've got a flood-prone area? No way—no way—are they going to do that. This Minister of Local Government's given no money for that. If he was genuine about looking after people in the future and protecting their interests where's the dollars to protect people? Because there's going to be a financial implication for this.Anybody that owns a block of land that now is going to have this on their land report has just lost money. They have just lost money. And it's alright saying "Oh we're going to stop you getting flooded out." They're actually stuck there now. They can't sell that property—nobody in their right mind's going to buy it. They are really in trouble. So what does the Minister say about that? What's his great one-line witty answer for that for those people that have actually lost money tonight because of this bill? Because they have. And the reality is: not only losing money but then are councils actually going to get it right?So just say a council doesn't actually identify an area that is flood prone and then you are flooded—because some of the areas that we've seen flooded this year nobody necessarily expected. Nobody thought the Esk Valley was going to be flood prone did they Minister? Otherwise you would have done something about it. But the reality is that not every council is going to put down every flood prone area. And therefore if you are flooded can you go back to that council for not actually doing their job—not actually doing their job. Not actually putting on the LIM report when you bought that bit of land that it was flood prone. Are you going to be able to sue the council for that?It's very quiet on the Government side now isn't it? You know very quiet over there. They hadn't thought that anyone would lose any money. They hadn't thought the councils could get it wrong. They hadn't thought about the legal liability. They hadn't thought it through. They thought "Oh we'll just do a change to somebody's LIM report. We're the big hand of Government we can do whatever we want. We don't have to care about individual property rights. We don't have to care about actually getting it right. We don't have to care about actually having the right information." That's what that Government does all the time.Hon Andrew Little: The member should get out of fantasyland.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Fantasyland now—fantasyland. Well I just ask that Minister to remember the words about leaky homes. Was that fantasyland Minister? The fantasyland leaky homes. I tell you you go to anybody that had a leaky home and tell them they're in fantasyland and they'll tell you what land you're in. And it won't be a good space.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm not in any land Mr Bennett.Hon DAVID BENNETT: No you're not you're higher than us—I know that. On a higher plane coming from a good Catholic family. It's all good.Now the Minister over there hasn't thought about those issues. And I really think we need to be very careful in this House every time we put a blanket thing over people's property rights and say "Hey we've got it right. We know best. It doesn't matter if you had that house we can just put a sign on top of it now for anybody that wants to come purchase it and say that it could be flood prone. Don't worry about your economic loss."What are we going to do if the councils don't get it right? What are we going to do then Minister? If they don't get it right are they going to then be excessively going out there and doing every flood prone area to make sure they don't get it wrong and then hurting more people? Because I don't think anybody can tell where the next natural disaster in New Zealand will be. I don't think anybody can tell which the next valley that will flood is. They don't know—they don't know. Nobody thought Christchurch would have an earthquake. Nobody in here. Nobody knew that that was going to happen you know. And the reality is that these things happen in situations in that people don't understand or don't know. To have blanket legislation like this can have a detrimental impact on people.So the practical realities of it are that it sounds good and it's all great legislation and all that but the reality is: every time we do this somebody's going to lose some money.Todd Muller: We are supporting it.Hon DAVID BENNETT: And the middle New Zealanders are going to lose some money. And that member Todd Muller says that we are supporting it and we are. And that's why I said it—because it was a practical thing. But the reality is that there are some detrimental issues in it.Hon Member: Benno's crossing the floor.Hon DAVID BENNETT: He's not crossing the floor. It's a bit late to do that I think. But no I just think that there's some elements of this bill that probably haven't been thought through 100 percent. The reality is that blanket attempts from local government on landowners' rights do have an impact. There will be an impact on many people and sometimes that can be detrimental."