Jones Shane: Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Jones Shane: Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9600] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to support this member’s bill the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill. As background I remind members of this House that this particular provision—that is a designation—is actually etched in the history of Maori land. In 1975 the former Ministry of Works decided to designate the coastal land around the northern peninsula and dedicate it to a public esplanade purpose overriding the existing property rights of the Maori landowners. Funnily enough although it will be unknown to members on the other side of the House that led to the existence of the Ngati Wai Retention Committee which then fed into the 1975 Matakite march. So those members who are sneering at this bill should not for a moment think that they can easily ride roughly over property rights. 
This evening we are seeing from a supposedly pro-property right party a level of distain and a level of neglect. Those members do not care about the existence of the property rights enjoyed at the moment by owners. They are willing to oppose this legislation even though all it does is to act as a check on the powers of the State to be handed out to a variety of organisations. Let me say that a host of those organisations are no longer New Zealand - owned entities. I point to Telecom for example. Underlying the foolish opposition that speakers on the Government side of the House are serving up this evening is a negation of property rights a willingness to see that organisations that are not accountable to New Zealanders have this privileged status offered to them in a very loose and potentially dangerous fashion. 
My senior colleague has isolated an example in the South Island where very very simple but concerned New Zealanders looked to the law to have their property rights upheld. This is an opportunity for the Government to strengthen the process so that when that privileged status is allocated in the future to any other entity it has to go through a higher test. 
What the previous speaker Chris Auchinvole did not say was that Dr Nick Smith’s reforms of 2009 attempted to look at this issue but the Government found that it was steamrollered by Transit by Telecom by utility companies and by a host of other interests that are no longer owned by are totally accountable to or owe any kind of obligation to New Zealanders. The Government was steamrollered. 
A number of us sought to moderate the appetite of the State in handing out that privileged status because when that status is handed out ordinary landowners are unable to go about their legal business unless those shadowy organisations are prepared to indulge those existing landowners in carrying out their activities. That is a matter of fact—that is a matter of fact. For those reasons this legislation modest though it may be serves a prodigious public purpose. It upholds the primacy of landowner property rights which is something that that party over there is prepared to usher in and usher out when it suits its short-term political imperatives. That is why this legislation ought to be supported. 
This legislation ought to be upheld because it is not fair for privileged organisations to wander away with this high level of status which is not available to a host of other organisations that go through the statutory process. When organisations acquire that privileged status they are able to use excessively the power of the State to squash the rights of current landowners. Shame on members on that side of the House!