Sage Eugenie; Tisch LindsayEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to stand and explain the Green Party's position on the Point England Development Enabling Bill. It is another Nick Smith shambles. This is because it is taking public reserve land for subdivision and housing development and then using Auckland's housing crisis and a future Treaty settlement to justify it. Rather than taking all of the reserve and returning it to Ngāti Paoa as we understand they originally requested as cultural redress the Minister is using this bill to actually override the normal legislative processes and require Ngāti Paoa to buy a portion of the reserve and require them to use it for housing. It is not a good Treaty settlement but we are not opposing it because we recognise and support Ngāti Paoa's right to regain ownership of their ancestral land and their rights to development.The reason we are not voting against the bill and are abstaining is that we understand that the Government has made it very clear that this is the only way Ngāti Paoa is going to get its ancestral land back. But we are not supporting the bill because it has got many many flaws. There is the whole issue of the way in which it overrides the usual process for removing reserve status and it overrides the Resource Management Act (RMA) and the fact that there is no guarantee that Ngāti Paoa will actually even get the land because they have to buy it. If they do not choose to buy it and exercise that option and if the Tāmaki Collective does not choose to buy it then the bill allows a panel of private developers to use the land for development.So there is no certainty—there is nothing in the bill—that actually ensures that Ngāti Paoa will get the land. That is why there is a Supplementary Order Paper that ensures that if the land is not taken by Ngāti Paoa or the Tāmaki Collective it remains in Crown ownership to be used for Treaty settlement purposes and to be managed as a reserve. At the moment this bill if it goes through and Ngāti Paoa does not exercise its rights is just a way that the Government is moving to allow private developers to take reserve land. That is the Government's real agenda here.This area at Point England is the largest area of open space on the Tāmaki foreshore. It has got sweeping views over the river and back to Maungarei—Mount Wellington. We are expecting an estimated 20000 to 40000 more people in the Tāmaki area over the next 15 to 20 years. People need open space—green space—for amenity values and as places to recreate particularly where we are getting increased density of subdivision.This bill overrides the normal legal processes in the Reserves Act. There are tests in the Reserves Act for changing reserve status. The regulatory impact statement made it very clear that this change in status would fail because there has been no evidence provided that the reserve is no longer required for its present purpose or any other reserve purpose. The Department of Conservation's advice was that it was very unlikely that the test for revocation of reserve status would be satisfied.We certainly did not hear any information at the select committee that the land was no longer required for a reserve. In fact we heard an awful lot of evidence from submitters to the contrary about how it is used for kilikiti for sports for passive recreation like walking and for kids' triathlons. Under the normal processes the public would have had an opportunity to comment on that revocation. Under this bill they do not get that opportunity.As well the bill overrides the normal processes under the RMA. There should be a plan change process which would enable the public and the council to assess the costs and benefits of rezoning what is now open space as high-density mixed-use residential. It would look at those whole processes of democratic decisions around planning. Yet we have seen Auckland lawyers pointing out recently in an article that this bill highlights a disturbing trend towards ad hoc decision-making at the expense of access to environmental justice and quality outcomes. So that is another reason that we cannot support the bill.We hope that Ngāti Paoa will get some advice from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment on the geotechnical issues because this area of land is very boggy very wet it is potentially at risk of natural hazards and is not suited to housing. We will not be supporting the bill or opposing it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.