Mackey Moana: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionMackey Moana: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:50. Text is subject to correction.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I think that speech by Winston Peters probably highlights the fact that the Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill is actually a very difficult bill. Despite the fact that peace had pretty much broken out across the House in terms of accepting that we had to do something we should not be under any illusion that this is a pleasant bill to pass that the issues that we are dealing with are not serious or that the issues we are dealing with are not very concerning. A number of members have said that it is the right thing to do. I think I would probably describe it more as the least bad thing to do. Of a number of very unpalatable options it is the least unpalatable of all of them.Retrospective legislation is not good practice especially not when dealing with the kind of situation we have seen up in Kaipara—the complete mismanagement and mishandling of the implementation of a waste-water scheme and the loans and debt that went alongside that. I think it is fair to say that when the Local Government and Environment Committee travelled up to Maungatūroto and heard submissions we were deeply deeply concerned. There was a bit of pressure on the select committee to report back promptly to try to get this issue sorted. But we spent a lot of time working on this bill trying to ensure as much as we could that what we were doing was in the best interests of the ratepayers of Kaipara and that we could find a pathway forward.Our big concern was that the Auditor-General was looking into this issue. Clearly there had been audit failures. The fact that it took ratepayers throughout the Kaipara District and particularly in Mangawhai many many years to get any action on what was happening there and to shine a light on what was happening within their councilwas deeply concerning. The Auditor-General is looking into that. That process has dragged on and on and on. There are serious natural justice implications in terms of the Auditor-General’s report.We had hoped that the select committee would get to see that report before we deliberated. We held the bill back at the select committee on the understanding that the report would be coming out at the beginning of November because there is a difference between retrospectively legalising or validating a simple mistake versus validating gross incompetence versus validating corruption. So there could have been a number of reasons why we got into this situation. Those are kind of the reasons we could have got there and obviously the select committee was very keen to get some confirmation from the Auditor-General through that report that we were not going to be retrospectively validating corruption. I want to thank the Office of the Auditor-General officials actually for coming into a closed session and providing us with information. They were not able to tell us what was in the report but they provided some peace of mind that nothing in the report that they were going to produce ran up against this piece of legislation because that was a major issue for all members of the committee.The other interesting thing about when we went up to Maungatūroto and heard the submissions was that it is not clear-cut who is opposed to this and who supports it. There were ratepayers in Mangawhai who supported the bill. There were ratepayers in the rest of the Kaipara District who did not support the bill. Then of course there were obviously the ratepayers in Mangawhai who were very much opposed to it just as there were ratepayers in the Kaipara District who were very much in favour of it. You know the ratepayers in Mangawhai have often been typified as being just wealthy people who do not live there. Actually that is no reason to say that they should have fewer legal rights or any less protection of their legal rights. It does not matter whether they are wealthy or whether they might live on the North Shore; the fact is that if they have been wronged then that needs to be rectified. In fact what we also learnt was that there are a number of people living in Mangawhai who are now faced with massive rates increases who are actually on very low incomes.This is not a black and white issue. This is not a rich versus poor issue. This is not even a Mangawhai versus the rest of the Kaipara District issue. It is far more complex than that and the select committee worked incredibly hard to try to find a way through this. None of us thinks that this is great legislation. None of us thinks that this is a perfect solution. But the reality is that there is significant impost being put on the rest of the ratepayers in Kaipara in terms of the services that can be provided and in terms of their access to New Zealand Transport Agency funding for their regional roads which they cannot get until this is fixed. We did manage to negotiate an agreement to have an amnesty on the penalties which I think is really important to recognise that if they were illegally struck then to penalise people for not paying them—it is a goodwill gesture of the commissioners to say: “OK well we will have an amnesty on that and we will not put those penalties in place.”I look forward to New Zealand First’s Supplementary Order Papers in the Committee stage in terms of its solutions as to what would be a better way through than this bill. We will seriously look at those Supplementary Order Papers to see if it can come up with a better way through that is fairer for everyone. This legislation was the one solution that was of the least cost to the Kaipara District ratepayers.