Hauiti Claudette: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHauiti Claudette: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16619. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National):Kia ora Mr Chairperson. I stand to take a call on the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. Like my colleagues here I would like to reiterate that the bill will validate rates set by the Tasman District Council for the period from 2003-04 to 2008-09. I think that it is really important to reiterate that because it is just for that one period of time. As we heard this is retrospective legislation. The member Damien O’Connor brought it here. He was supportive of the legislation but not overly enthusiastic and I think that we have got a sense of that here from the debate this evening.The council did not follow correct process in setting the rates and we have also heard that this was a mistake. However we would hope that being retrospective it will not happen again. Therefore we are going to ensure that with this legislation going forward these kinds of things will be put in place. In respect of the local councils National’s Better Local Government reforms will help make local government more efficient responsive and well focused which is another reason why we have given support to this bill and it deserves to be given its due diligence. Better Local Government reforms include a work stream to monitor and improve council performance to help prevent future procedural errors. Again this is not the only council where this has happened so we are hoping that the council going forward will ensure that these types of mistakes do not occur again.This bill will highlight to other councils as I have said the importance of proper scrutiny when setting rates. For the sake of consistency a technical amendment will be made to clauses 5(a) 6 and 9 to replace the words “declared to have been” with “declared to be and to always have been”. The Local Government and Environment Committee was sympathetic to proposals to delete clause 9 but found that this course of action would be outside the scope of the bill. As such the committee recommended only the technical amendments discussed in its report. Clause 9 seeks to validate targeted rates set by the council for the 2006-07 financial year for the purposes of stormwater works in the Ligar Bay and Tata Beach urban drainage areas.The committee noted that there would be many practical implications of deleting clause 9. That time has passed since the rates were set compounds this issue. Without validation the council would be required to determine which ratepayers had paid their rates in 2006-07 and the amounts that they had paid; to ascertain whether the current ratepayers were the same ratepayers as those in 2006-07—and I think some of my colleagues have already talked about that too—to apportion rates if there are or were multiple owners; and to write to each ratepayer advising them of the amount of their refund and requesting bank details for those repayments. The merits of setting the stormwater rate were found to be outside the scope of this bill as well.In 2003-04 and in 2008-09 the council passed rates attached to the annual plan rather than ratifying each rate individually and it set rates before the council had adopted the annual plan. This was in breach of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002. That Act provides avenues for councils to amend incorrectly set rates but the window of time has now passed. So this bill is needed in order to validate certain rates set incorrectly during that period and without validation the council remains vulnerable to legal challenge from ratepayers over incorrectly set rates. Validation is also required to allow the council to recover unpaid rates and penalties and I think again that my colleagues across the Committee have already talked about that.Some residents objected to details of the stormwater rate and they said that they were not properly consulted on the urban drainage area—that was a really big concern for the select committee—and that they were being charged for stormwater services that they were not using. The committee has noted that aspects of the council’s consultation were not ideal but steps have been taken by the council to improve the way the rates are set so that similar errors are not made in the future. A key part of National’s Better Local Government reforms is monitoring and improving council performance. Publicity about the bill will show other councils that their own processes may come under greater scrutiny.I just want to reflect on the whakapapa of that area and to put it into some kind of context historically in terms of its whakapapa. In respect of Tata Beach that is also part of an area next to Pōhara. The area of Golden Bay that we know now as Golden Bay was identified as the area where first Pākehā-Māori contact was had by crew members of the ship of the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. Unfortunately for those crew members the local Māori there killed them. So I think that was just something that was very much an aside so that there might be some kind of historical context regarding Pōhara in that area. I commend the bill to the Committee.Preamble agreed to.