Harawira Hone: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionHarawira Hone: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15280. Text is subject to correction.]HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana): I would actually like to start with a little bit of a history lesson here. The Native Land Purchase and Acquisition Act is an Act that was passed in 1893. It was called “An Act to authorise the Acquisition of Landowned by Natives for the purpose of Land-settlement.” On 6 October 1893 “whereas at least seven million acres of land principally situated”—I am not going to read the whole Act of course—“in the North Island of the colony owned by Natives are lying waste and unproductive and in the interests of the Natives and of Her Majesty’s other subjects in the colony and more especially for the extension of settlement it is necessary that such land should be made available for disposal under the land laws of the colony: And whereas the existing law for extinguishing by purchase the Native title over a large proportion of such land fails to afford adequate means for supplying the rapidly increasing demand for land for settlement purposes and great injury is thereby occasioned and the progress of colonisation is retarded and it is therefore necessary to provide further and other means by which lands owned by Natives may be acquired for the purpose of disposal under the land laws of the colony:”. Then it goes on over pages and pages in a legal language that I would struggle to cope with today. I doubt that any of mytūpunawould have understood it back in 1893. This Act later became known as the Validation of Invalid Land Sales Act.I refer to that because it seems that what we are doing here is the same sort of thing. This bill is called the Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill but in fact it is the “Kaipara District Council (Validation of Crooked Activities by the Council its Senior Officers and Other Independent Contractors and Consultants) Bill”. This bill is not just about validating rates; this is about far more than that. I think that we need to see it in that light. This issue has been the subject of much concern and comment from across Kaipara and indeed Northland. And here we are looking to retrospectively address the significant failures of the council to follow proper process and meet the requirements of the Local Government Act.Since 2006 the council has continually and consistently breached the Local Government Act and the Local Government (Rating) Act in a whole range of areas such as the setting of rates in a series of failures to comply with various provisions of the Local Government Act. If you do not mind I would like to read some of these because they are ongoing. The council in relation to the water supply rate forMaungatūroto Station Village did not comply with section 19 of the Local Government (Rating) Act of 2002. In relation to the waste-water disposal rate the council did not comply with section 18 of the Local Government (Rating) Act of 2002. These two I have just mentioned came from the 2006-07 financial year.It goes on to point out the failure to comply with section 23 of the Local Government (Rating) Act also in that year of 2006-07. It then points out again that in the 2007-08 financial year the council did not comply with further sections of the Local Government (Rating) Act. It did not comply with sections 18 and 23 of the Local Government (Rating) Act. It failed to comply with section 45 of the Local Government (Rating) Act. If you do not mind me pointing this out I then turn to 2008-09. We see that again the council failed to comply with section 19—I can shorten this—with sections 18 and 23 with section 17 and again with section 23.I am pointing this out because these are ongoing failures. They are ongoing not just up until this became an issue. It continued in the 2009-10 financial year. The council did not comply with sections 19 18 and 23 etc. It simply continues into the 2010-11 financial year. The council failed to comply—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman I have got quite a bit that I would like to get on the record here and this is the only time that I have spoken on this. If you do not mind I would like to continue to debate this please.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Hone Harawira.HONE HARAWIRA: Thank you very much. I point this out because this failure to comply continued on in the 2009-10 the 2010-11 the 2011-12 and the 2012-13financial years. This is not what you would call just a one-off case of somebody making a mistake. This bill covers years of criminally poor governance a massive debt blowout allegations of fraud and a very public and acrimonious rates strike. This bill seeks to validate a series of what are clearly unlawful actions. I say “unlawful” because if they were wrong in the first year you can excuse it. In the second year they get a smack on the hand. In the third year you have to say that something is wrong. In the fourth year you have to say: “You are going to jail mate.” and in the fifth year the sixth year and seventh year this continues. The bill seeks to validate a series of what are clearly unlawful actions by the council in setting rates to legalise illegal rates demands and to end the rates strike. Rates strikers rightly oppose this bill because once their strike ends they will no longer have the leverage to negotiate a solution that they deem to be fair.There are outstanding issues about the role of Audit New Zealand in failing to identify financial issues. There is a case to be considered against the bank for failing to do due diligence in its lending to the council. The case was made to the Government to provide assistance to Kaipara ratepayers to pay back their debt but that was rejected because the Government did not want to set a precedent for other local authorities. The commissioners tell us that not supporting the bill would significantly increase the cost to the Kaipara community because the council’s deficit would increase and services would be cut if the council did not get its hands on the withheld rates. It rankles that the burden of debt repayment will fall on the Kaipara community which was not responsible for incurring the debt but the bill seems the only way forward.People councillors senior managers advisers and independent consultants and contractors seem to have all acted in an appalling manner. There would seem to be in my view a clear case of continual and consistent fraud in respect of the multiple and ongoing breaches of local government legislation. The bill supposedly does not validate the overspend associated with the Mangawhai sewage treatment plant but I wonder whether this bill is in fact the first step to another bill coming before the House for exactly such a bailout.I am told that this is the best solution in a difficult and challenging situation but I challenge that. I challenge that on the grounds that the iwi have not been consulted on this. I spoke to the chairman of TeRōroa who are the local iwi in and around Dargaville who was most upset that this bill had actually got to the House. The iwi sit on the mana whenua committee of the Kaipara District Council and have not been engaged in this process at all. I would like to also point out the fact that although TeRūnanga oNgātiWhātua seem to have given their support for this bill there is another member of the mana whenua committee who has also been ignored.Accordingly I think we should not be just passing this bill without taking some serious action against some of these senior leaders. I know for example Donna Awatere who was a member of this House ended up in jail over a bill of about $200000. I know that Doug Graham who was a member of this House got off a case for about $170 million. I know that here we have got a council all of whose councillors are looking to not go to jail over this and this is going to be a $50 million to $60 million blowout. I think that at some point—and I understand there is another bill coming up the Tasman validation bill—sooner or later this House has to say: “If you continue to do this sort of activity you’re going to end up going to jail.” because unless this House sends that kind of a signal then I think we are going to find ourselves in dire straits as we continue to move forward on these issues. These bills are coming thick and fast and yet nobody is being made to pay. I think it is entirely within the rights and expectations of all of the members of this House—