Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — First Reading 
Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — First Reading 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise to support the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill 2010 at its first reading. I want to say at the outset that Labour will be supporting this bill through to select committee because Labour members will be very interested to hear whether there are any issues with this bill. Currently it is Labour’s perspective that this bill is not controversial. However we do not know if there are any descendants—it appears that there may not be. I think the previous speaker David Bennett who is sponsoring this bill let us know that the original owner of the land was not married. However that is not to say we do not know that there are descendants lurking about somewhere in Hamilton who may want to have something to say about this. 
I thank the member David Bennett for bringing forward this bill on behalf of the Hamilton City Council. My only wish is that the member would also agree with the Hamilton City Council over pursuing a train service between Hamilton and Auckland. It would be great to see him support that initiative from the Hamilton City Council as well as this one. Although this is a useful bill I do not think it is quite as important to the local population of Hamilton today as the initiative to establish a passenger train service between Hamilton and Auckland. I take this opportunity to ask him to consider that initiative from the Hamilton City Council. 
The member is quite right about the history of Parana Park but I would have liked to hear a bit more passion about the beauty of Parana Park. It is a stunning part of our city. It is on the east side of the river right up against the river. I think the important thing about the history of this piece of land is that it is now back in public ownership. Now everyone in Hamilton and visitors to Hamilton can make use of that very beautiful piece of land. That was not always the case as it was in private hands during the course of its history. It is really wonderful to see that the Hamilton City Council has the ownership of that land and that it makes the land available to the good people of Hamilton because it is such a special part of our city. It is alongside and adjoins Memorial Park where so many special occasions such as the Anzac dawn parade and a civic ceremony on Anzac Day occur every year in our city. It hosts two major Anzac ceremonies on Anzac Day every year. It is also a place where many other activities take place. A lot of weddings take place there many picnics take place there and I have attended even union protests at Parana Park. So it is a very very important part of our city. It is open to the public for a whole range of activities which very important. 
The bill that we are addressing ensures that the Hamilton City Council can use the park for all of the many diverse ways in which it is currently used. The original intention of George Parr in his will when he gifted the park to Hamilton in 1929 was for it to be used as a playground for children and it is but with the plan that the house on that land was to be used as a children’s convalescent home for patients from Waikato Hospital. Clearly George Parr was a man who loved children because this was at the forefront of his mind when he gifted this land; he was gifting it to the children of Hamilton. I think that is such a fantastic thing to do. I wonder what he would think if he were alive today about the way the current Government is taking away rights from children cutting the funding to early childhood education and doing those sorts of things. I know that this playground is a place where many local early childhood education services take children along to for a bit of a day trip. Those are the very sorts of things that will be under threat because of the cuts to funding that this Government has put in place. It is the field trips and the excursions that many of those centres are looking at cutting out. I think that that would be a great shame because the playground at Parana Park is a wonderful site for people and young children to visit. 
Earlier this year there was a very significant event that took place on that very bank of the Waikato River. Local members of Parliament local city councillors and people involved with restoring and keeping Hamilton’s history came together to celebrate the restoration of a gunboat that is pretty important to Hamilton’s history: the  
PS Rangiriri. 
 It was a very interesting event because we gathered on the opposite bank of the Waikato River to get on board what I would describe as a barge—that is probably even overstating what we were getting on to. It was like a floating platform. We got on on one side of the river and motored across the other side of the river to land right by Parana Park. The fascinating thing that happened was we were having rotten peaches thrown at us while we were doing that. Members may ask why that was—and this is a very important part a very interesting part of New Zealand history. It was apparently what happened when the PS  
Rangiriri  
first trawled up the mighty Waikato River. Local Maori were so concerned—members must remember that this was the period just following the Land Wars—and worried about the presence of that boat on their river that they threw rotten peaches at it because it was the time of the year when peaches were abundant. 
So there we were earlier this year in 2010 recreating that moment but without as much grandeur. We were celebrating the restoration of the PS  
Rangiriri 
 which now resides in its restored state under cover and not at risk of having the flood plains of the Waikato River causing any more damage to it. Much money from the New Zealand Government and from the Hamilton City Council has been put towards the restoration but the PS  
Rangiriri 
 also has all the stories associated with it around it. I think that another important part of Parana Park and its associated Memorial Park is that it contains the stories of Hamilton. There are now stories there which have been written for everyone to go and see about the people who were involved with the PS  
Rangiriri 
 and its arrival. I was particularly fascinated by a story of a woman who arrived on the PS  
Rangiriri 
 when it first came up the Waikato River. She was a particularly gutsy woman for those days and she decided she was not going to wait for the captain of the boat to have the opportunity to make land first. She wanted to be the first one so she threw off her shoes—and goodness’ knows what else—to leap into the waters of the mighty Waikato run up on to the bank and be the first person from that boat to land. She would have stepped on to land not too far away from Parana Park. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: Was David Bennett there? 
SUE MORONEY 
: No I do not believe that David Bennett was there at the time; this was many many years ago. That woman claimed her place in history and I think that is a jolly fine story to read when visiting Parana Park. 
I will not talk too much more about the importance of this piece of land to our city and my support for this bill but before I came down to speak on the bill I had a quick google of Parana Park. I found a really interesting site with a lovely photo a beautiful photo of Parana Park. Unfortunately the person who had put that up on the Internet had misspelt it as “Pirana” Park so many of the contributions and comments about that beautiful photo are telling the person to get the spelling right—Parana Park. However there are many interesting stories that people have added with their very fond memories of Parana Park. I have to say that supporting this bill has been so popular among Labour members that I had to fight off some of my colleagues to take a call on this bill. So many Labour MPs have very fond memories of this particular piece of land and they will enjoy putting those forward in this debate as well. I look forward to the select committee process on this bill and to see whether any descendents of George Parr might want to come forward. I wish the select committee all the best in its deliberations.