Tirikatene Rino: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18427. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to speak at this first reading of the Christchurch City Council (Rates Validation) Bill particularly as I am the only Māori MP to cover the great city of Christchurch and the district of the Christchurch City Council. I support this bill but it is regrettable that this legislation is coming through the House. I acknowledge my parliamentary colleague Nicky Wagner for her work in sponsoring this bill but it is regrettable that yet again we are having to tidy up the blunders and all the faux pas that are going on with certain councils around the country. How hard can it be? How hard can it be for a council when it actually goes through the procedural aspects of approving the rates to not do this? And not just on one occasion—it actually goes back 9 years. For 9 years it failed to follow the proper procedure or proper resolutions that were passed which has led us to this situation where we are now having to tidy up these messes.I think this is a real wake-up call for councils around the country to get their act together. These are not small organisations. The Christchurch City Council is the council of our second-biggest city metropolitan area in the country. It is not a very small rural provincial-type local authority. We would expect that this council would have some smart people on board who would be there to make sure that the council at least ticks the appropriate procedural boxes when it is passing resolutions to approve the rates. It is regrettable that we have to resort to tidy-up legislation. We should also think of the people whom it has impacted on and the fact that this has caused people to pay rates or pay arrears or whatever they have had to do—meet their obligations and meet their financial commitments in terms of paying rates to the council—when for 9 years the council failed to properly approve the levying of those rates or those arrears and penalties. So we would hope that this would be a wake-up call for the council.I know that the solicitor who is now involved in crafting this legislation is from a very good firm SimpsonGrierson which I used to work for many years ago and I am pleased. That firm is an expert in local government. I would hope that councils around the country would get good advice or get people who know what they are doing when councils are holding these meetings in order to make sure that they get things procedurally right. As you know for everything that happens in this place of Parliament there is a tikanga there are rules and there are procedures that we must follow. So if it is good enough for our Parliament it is good enough for our local authorities around the country to ensure they get it right. We are not talking about lay people. I would expect that the chief financial officers the chief legal counsel and the chief executive—we are talking about highly paid public servants—would have the skills the ability and the wherewithal to actually get the procedures right when the councillors meet to approve these rates.What I fear is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I fear this is the tip of the iceberg because we do not want to be using more of Parliament’s precious time to be fixing up the faux pas that have been conducted by incompetent staff from councils around the country. Having said that I do support this bill because we need to get this matter fixed. Kia ora.