Barry Maggie: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17078. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore):I rise with great pleasure to speak—Hon Maryan Street: At length.MAGGIE BARRY: —to the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. If I choose to speak at length I say to the member Maryan Street who has just resumed her seat then I shall do so. I would have to say that the flawed logic and manipulative nonsense that we have just heard from that member is entirely inaccurate as is much of the nonsense that she peddles.But staying with the point which is what I would like to do unlike that member who just resumed her seat I do respect the need for a local community to have their voice heard and to have their message put through Parliament in the way that it needs to be done. I must say I am a little bit surprised that someone from the party of the member who is actually putting this bill through would take such a jaundiced and really quite a cynical view. But I suppose given that member’s stand on a number of issues that is not surprising.Tim Macindoe: Particularly cynical from the cynical.MAGGIE BARRY: Particularly cynical from the cynical. [Interruption] Oh they filibuster about everything. This is not such a silly exercise as all that.I return to the subject in question. As someone who has recently had a member’s bill drawn from the ballot and who has also been sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee for a couple of years now I am very well aware of how important it is for local bills and for members’ bills to reflect what their community wants and needs. That is a very important issue. When we look at the validation and recovery of certain rates which is what this bill of Damien O’Connor’s is seeking for us to do I am reminded of Kaipara and I am reminded again of the need for local government reforms.The New Zealand First individual whose name escapes me for the moment—it has been got wrong a few times in this House this afternoon. He is not a very memorable individual and what he says is not particularly memorable either. That is probably why he was the lowest-polling candidate and did not get his deposit back at the last election nor was he voted back as the mayor or as—[Interruption] The Life of Brian. That is very good. It is very good. I think that was something like his name.When we look at what is the substance of this piece of legislation one of the submissions that really brought home to me how important it was that we do this thing thoroughly was from the Mayor of Tasman District Richard Kempthorne who had spoken at length to the Labour member who was somewhat jaundiced just a few moments ago Maryan Street and as well as that to Damien O’Connor. He talked about the problems that the council has had and the various solutions that it put forward. I would like to go through those because I think they are vitally important. Unless we learn from the mistakes that have been made in places like Tasman and Kaipara and unless the local government laws are changed to make the processes more rigorous then there will indeed be a need for more validation bills of the nature of this one and the Kaipara one.Nobody in this House—with the possible exception of that member whatever his name is from New Zealand First—would want that to happen because it does waste the time of the House and that does cost a lot of money for taxpayers. When you add up all the advisers who have worked on these things all of the plane fares bringing people up from the West Coast and all of the expense that individuals have gone to then you can see that there is a real need to listen and to pay proper attention to what goes on with these bills so that they do not ever happen again. Nobody—with a couple of exceptions—in this House wants to see people go to this sort of trouble.When I heard Richard Kempthorne talking about the idea of remitting rates which was one of the things that was put forward as a potential solution I wondered just how much rigour the council had put into that progress. As it turned out it had deliberated over it for more than a couple of years and it had worked out that remitting rates over more than 2 years with the ratepayers was not going to be a lawful let alone a practicable solution—plus it would cost a great deal of extra money. That is what the mayor said in his submission to the Local Government and Environment Committee which I must say was very ably chaired by Nicky Wagner as is everything that she chairs.In the discussions the council canvassed a lot of different ways of compensating people—in particular Bob Schmuke. For those of you who are not familiar with Bob Schmuke he is something of a local hero but he has gone beyond that really. He was an individual who was told no—that it was not possible. He was an individual who stuck it out and stood by his convictions and principles which is something that New Zealand First particularly the member who was speaking earlier could take note of. Bob Schmuke—unlike the lily-livered spineless people—was somebody who would not take no for an answer. The council and the mayor actually apologised to him. They wrote to the committee and through Nicky Wagner our chair enclosed an apology to Mr Schmuke and to the community for their failings in the whole matter. When we look at accountability and transparency and really I guess stepping up to the plate and acknowledging when wrong has occurred this is a very good example of what could and should happen.When we last debated this bill in the House some weeks ago I asked Damien O’Connor the sponsoring member whether he felt that the residue of bitterness had gone. He talked a little bit about that and said that he felt that some of those old wounds had been healed. I guess over an issue like this that ratepayers really have their opportunity at the time of the local government elections. They did take action and they did vote out many of the people.I suppose it is fair to say that as a result of this piece of legislation coming through there has been a healing of the community and there has been a sense that the wrongs have been put right. I think that as a select committee we comforted ourselves with the thought that at least that community was going through a proper process. Mr Schmuke’s costs in coming up to Wellington to the select committee hearings—which he did I think twice at least if not more—and the expense he went to in getting laminated photographs done such was the courage of his convictions were met by the council. I think in the words of Alan Martin it is the putting right that counts. That is what Richard Kempthorne and the others on the Tasman District Council tried to do with the guidance of Parliament.When we look at the wrongs they were really simple actually. It was about not giving a map at the right time. It was a sort of basic mistake. It was not about the sort of worrying levels of incompetence and difficulties that we saw in Kaipara in some detail. It was more that just genuine mistakes were made and it was a blunder. It became more and more difficult to see how people on the council could work their way out of it and work their way through it. I know that Damien O’Connor spent a lot of time talking to them and had several meetings. These are not easy exchanges. They were I think probably quite tense judging from some of the discussion that we had at the select committee. The implications for ratepayers generally are horrific and I think it is really important that ratepayers understand that when things have really gone awry when they have been let down by their council as in this case and when things do need to be set straight it can and will happen. This is a bill that does highlight to other councils the importance of proper scrutiny when you are setting rates. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt for underperforming councils in this and one is pretty much “Be warned.”When we looked at this bill and the changes that came through at the select committee some of the provisions that we really needed to address were clauses 5(a) 6 and 9. Their language needed to be tidied up. These sorts of technical amendments may seem boring to the members of the Opposition who are not really paying attention but they are certainly very much an important part of what went wrong and then how it was to be put right. We as a committee were very sympathetic to the proposals to debate clause 9 but ultimately found that that course of action was really outside the scope of Damien’s bill and it did not appear a good idea to go back and revisit it after all the hard work that had gone on.The committee also noted that there were going to be a lot of practical implications of deleting clause 9 in particular because that really I suppose set us on a different course and a different path of things that might need correcting. So we erred on the side of caution and we determined that what the ratepayers had paid in the rates for 2006-07 was all right. They ascertained throughout our committee discussions that the current ratepayers were the same ratepayers as those in 2006 and 2007. So we went through the detail of it in some detail I would have to say and really arrived I think at a bill that does satisfy all parties.This piece of legislation is absolutely essential to validate those certain rates that were set incorrectly. Without that validation the council remained very vulnerable to further legal challenges from ratepayers over incorrectly setting rates. Those legal challenges of course would have had to be paid for by the ratepayers who would be again penalised for that initial blunder.Some residents objected to the details of the stormwater rate as I indicated. Mr Schmuke and others addressed those concerns very well. The committee also noted that aspects of the council’s consultations were not ideal but that the council was to be commended on the steps that were taken to improve the way that rates are set so that similar rates are not made in the future. That is why I commend this piece of legislation to the House. Thank you.