Power Simon: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Power Simon: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8376] 
SIMON POWER (NZ National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 Although I am not resident in Auckland I have a few comments to make on this bill. It is not my intention to take the full 5 minutes. I am aware of the fact that the Committee wants to shift this matter along and that it is important to the construction programme and various time-frames that have no doubt been laid down. I listened with interest to the comments of my colleague Judith Collins about the significance of the site as a memorial. Many of us will know that Anzac Day is one of the very few days in New Zealand when politicians put aside their partisan views on matters of policy and gather at various sites throughout New Zealand to pay their respects to those who went before us and died to give us the right to stand in this Parliament and make comments and policy and to speak freely about issues that concern us. I think we are in danger if we do not treat this bill with a bit of the respect it deserves on that point of making the whole process into one that perhaps does not accord sufficient significance to the site and to what it represents. 
I have a couple of comments following on from my colleague Dail Jones who made some interesting remarks concerning the area to be leased. I notice in Part 1 that one of the purposes of the bill—I am referring to clause 3(c)—is to set out the correct legal description. I always think that that is a bit of a plus. I always think it is helpful if the correct legal description is included in bills such as this. I found that the Government Administration Committee’s commentary on the issue of description of land subject to lease—and I will be interested in the comments that my colleague Judith Collins may make on this issue as she was on the committee—seems to be going slightly around in a circle in the sense that what we have to say is that there is an area of land that was occupied; there is an area of land that we want to be included in the lease; this legislation is a pretty blunt instrument to take care of that discrepancy. Really that is probably all the commentary needed to say—or words to that effect—once as my colleague Dail Jones points out those areas had been defined clearly and quickly. 
 I have to pass one further comment and that is on the retrospective effect of this bill. Whilst I understand the significance of the retrospectivity in this case it is becoming an unhappy habit of this Government to legislate in a way that is retrospective. I have to say that I am not altogether in favour of that. The committee rightly points out in the commentary in a very blunt way that the bill will have a retrospective effect. I am not that keen on legislation that is backward looking. I understand the reason for it in this case in the sense that as it states in the commentary the discrepancy between the lease area and the 1918 Act and the actual location of the museum building may have remained undetected but for a survey done latterly. In fact it became apparent when that survey was done that the museum occupies a site that differs from that one that was defined in 1918. There are other instruments available to deal with these types of discrepancies. Judith Collins and Richard Worth will know of these avenues far better than I. They practised law for a lot longer than I did. But to legislate for this type of thing although entirely appropriate in this case is not something that as a Parliament we want to encourage. 
Legislation of this sort is an extremely blunt instrument and it is an instrument that should be used sparingly. This is one of the few times that I would stand in this Chamber and be happy to support such a blunt use of statute on such an important issue as that that relates to a site that many of us consider to be extremely important to remembering those who have gone before us and those in particular who have allowed us to be in this Parliament making statements of the nature that we have heard over the course of the last 20 to 30 minutes. I encourage Mr Bernie Ogilvy to take another call on Part 1 or Part 2 only because I would like to hear him do it without the notes from the website. I would like him to give us a bit of view as to what he believes are the rights and wrongs of this bill and why his party United Future supports it.