Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:17096] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Clause 4 of the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill is the purpose clause. It is probably one of the two most substantive clauses of the bill so I expect to hear some very good contributions on it. I know that the Labour team is certainly very keen to make contributions on this important bill. The Labour members really have rallied to the call. I am very impressed with the caucus because its members certainly have rallied to my call to see Hamilton as being a really important feature of New Zealand. That is evidenced by the Labour team’s contribution to the debate so far which will continue. 
The bill states that “The purpose of this Act”—presuming it becomes an Act—“is to … repeal the Hamilton City (Parana Park) Empowering Act 1958;”. Why is that? It is because the Hamilton City Council has determined that that particular Act of 1958 does not have the sort of flexibility that the council needs in order to administer the park under today’s conditions. We have heard that today’s conditions include the interesting concept of passive recreation which we still have not really quite got to the bottom of. We are surprised that it was not in the interpretation clause. But never mind; that has gone by the by. We have missed the opportunity to have clarification and a definition of the actual meaning of “passive recreation”. 
The bill is about enabling Parana Park to be not only vested in the Hamilton City Council—and we will debate that more fully when we get to clause 6—but used for passive recreation. I move around those areas quite frequently and I would like to know what passive recreation is so I can make sure that I do not have recreation that is not passive enough or that is too passive. I would like to know exactly what is required these days when one is in Parana Park. In fact I will be there on Anzac Day this year because as we have heard the memorial park adjacent to it is a really important part of the ceremony on that day in Hamilton. 
I too am concerned about the point that my colleague David Shearer just raised about the 0.4 hectares that seem to have gone missing in terms of the way the land has been described. I ask the member in charge of the bill David Bennett what he has done with the 0.4 hectares. Where has that gone? All joking aside I really want to make sure that we have the description right. We are describing for the first time in legislation now quite specifically that this land will be known as Parana Park and then we are saying what the land is. I want to make sure that we have the right description of the land. My colleague told us that there was a very full explanation in three different parts when this bill went before the Local Government and Environment Committee and that it set out exactly the legal description of this land. In that legal description the land added up to 0.4 hectares more than the resulting replacement clause that has come out of the select committee. 
I know that the Labour team will want to know the answer to that before we support the clauses further along in the debate. We will want to make sure there is not an inadvertent further confiscation of land going on. I am sure that would be an unintended consequence from the Government benches. It would absolutely be an unintended consequence from the Opposition benches. We are supporting this bill so I sincerely ask the member in charge of the bill to respond to that issue in order that we can all be assured in supporting the further clauses of this bill that we are not supporting something that has an unintended consequence. As I understand it the purpose is to make sure that the Hamilton City Council has certainty that the legislation fits its needs. I congratulate the city council on bringing this bill forward. I should have said: “drafting the bill for the member to bring forward”. David Bennett was quite right to frown at me.