Carter John: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
Carter John: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:645;Page:14888] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 I appreciate having the opportunity to comment on this part of the bill. I wanted to take a call— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: How’s your mum? 
JOHN CARTER 
: Mum is fine. She has been listening to this debate intently. The thing that worries me with the fact that my mum is listening to this debate on the radio—and she listens intently to all the speakers in the House—is that she is absolutely confused by the message that has come from the Labour speakers. She is one of those people who think that Waitakere is important and should be looked after. She is absolutely confused as is just about anyone else who has been listening to this debate and to the explanation for the bill. 
You know if there is one disappointment—and there are a number—above all else that we have found in this debate it is that we have not had a lucid explanation from the proponent of this bill and from the members opposite who support it as to why we should have it. There has not been one good lucid reason. If those members could say to us that the Resource Management Act does not work properly and therefore they will allow this this and this to happen then we would have to listen to that debate—because one would. Everybody agrees that the Waitakere Ranges are important and should be looked after but not one lucid reason has been put forward by members opposite to say that we need to have this bill. 
Indeed when we asked why we needed this bill in the first place and whether its purpose was to allow something else to happen that the Resource Management Act the Local Government Act or the Conservation Act could not do—all those questions were asked—we were told that no this bill did nothing absolutely nothing outside what was already in legislation. So I kept asking that question until finally it was confessed that the proponents of the bill the officers from the local council wanted it to be broader and that they had misled the Local Government and Environment Committee. I find that to be seriously worrying. 
Then of course we had to go through various sections in the bill and with the agreement of the proponents of the bill and the Labour members we all had to say—and we made sure—that the section does not override the Local Government Act for example. That is now written in the bill. It is also stated that it does not supersede the Resource Management Act. That is written in the bill. It is so clear that everywhere we went we had to put in a clause to say that it was not outside the scope of the existing Acts. 
Therefore I come back to the question I started with: if this bill does not do anything special if it does not do anything more and if it does not allow anything to happen then why do we have it? I know that my mother is sitting at home asking exactly the same question. She will be sitting there wondering why we are spending taxpayers’ dollars—her money—having this debate. She will be wondering why we are spending her money on a bill that does nothing. You know the one thing my mum has always done is make sure listening to her crystal set at home—[ 
Interruption 
] Absolutely—she will be tuning it in. There will be a bit of static but she will have it going. She will know how to fine-tune it. [ 
Interruption 
] The point is that she will be seriously wondering why Lynne Pillay and other members of the Labour Party have bothered to waste the time of the House her taxpayer’s money and the money of her friends. Why on earth would we pass a bill that at the end of the day does nothing? 
Let me tell my mum the reason. This bill is all about politics. It has absolutely nothing to do with achieving anything. It is all about Lynne Pillay and the other Labour members from west Auckland trying to get re-elected. They will be able to go out there and say: “Look what we did! Look at this!”. That is entirely what this bill is about. Actually one of the things we should do—[ 
Interruption 
] Of course those members are worried about our very good colleague Paula Bennett. They know she is a real challenge to them. One of the things we should do is to refer this bill to the Electoral Commission to see whether it fits in with the Electoral Finance Act. If we think about it we will see that it probably does breach that Act because it is all about politicking. 
As my colleague Tau Henare said this bill is all about mana-munching. It is all about members trying to get their names in lights so they can go and say to the people of west Auckland: “Look at me! I’ve got my name on a bill!”. Well it will not work and they ain’t going to get re-elected. This bill will not save them. This bill will not help the people out in west Auckland. My good friend and colleague Nick Smith made a very good point when we said we would expect a local bill to have a very very huge degree of support within the community. We would imagine that it would have at least 80 percent to 90 percent support. Sadly this bill probably has the support of less than—but certainly not much more than—50 percent of the community. 
Certainly the weight of the submissions told us that this bill is not supported. More people submitted against the bill than for it. We sat in the select committee day after day listening to all the good people. Every submitter came along and said they supported the Waitakere Ranges. They want the ranges to be there; the ranges are their home. They said the ranges are in the pristine state they are in because they live there and they protect them. They said they are the guardians of the ranges and that they did not need the Labour Party members coming along on their big white horses and saying— 
Judith Collins 
: Their big silver BMWs. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Well maybe—whatever the Labour Party members run around in out in west Auckland. 
Judith Collins 
: It’s true. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Is it? OK. That is something we do not have in the far north. Anyway the point is that unfortunately the people in west Auckland said they do not need to have this Government—Lynne Pillay and the other Labour members out there—writing law to protect them from themselves. That is because they are already protecting the ranges. They are very proud of that fact. Indeed some of them showed us photos of the Waitakere Ranges 20 50 and 100 years ago. The photos were of burnt-out fields of scrub where trees had been chopped down burnt out or milled. Today the ranges are replanted with native trees. The investment that must have been put into that place by the locals is something they are all proud of. We can all be proud of that. 
Paula Bennett 
: Your mum would be proud. 
JOHN CARTER 
: I know my mother is seriously proud of that. She knows how proud the people are; that is the sort of thing my mum grew up with. The point is that she does not need to have this bill to fulfil her need to have the ranges protected. The fact is that unfortunately people will now be more and more sceptical as to what this is all about. 
Simon Power 
: Does the member’s mother have an amendment? 
JOHN CARTER 
: If my mum was here she would want to put an amendment forward. It would be an amendment to do away with the bill. My mum reflects what a good number of the community out there are thinking. We would expect a local bill to have overwhelming support in the community but one of the sad things is that that is not the case here. Mayor Bob Harvey knows that. The officers who supported this bill know that. The member in the chair knows that. She will answer this by saying that they did a survey across Auckland— 
David Bennett 
: Who paid? 
JOHN CARTER 
: It is not a matter of who paid for it. The question in the survey was: “Do you want to preserve the Waitakere Ranges?”. 
Paula Bennett 
: I said yes. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Who would not say yes? Who would say: “No let’s mow them down and bulldoze them.” You’ve got to be kidding! Of course people will say they want to preserve the ranges. The fact is that the survey should have also asked: “Do you want a bill that interferes with people’s rights?”. If that had been asked we may well have had a totally different answer. In fact I know we would have. That is what this bill does—it interferes with people’s rights. 
I remind the Committee that the member in the chair when asked about the scope of this bill by my colleague Nick Smith said that it sits over the Resource Management Act and the Local Government Act. We said: “Over? Does that mean it is bigger than the Resource Management Act—that is has more authority?”. She said she did not mean over it; she meant under it. We got to the stage where we did not know whether it was over it or under it. We could have been upside down. In fact as I said before I started to wonder whether I had to stand on my head to look at this bill to see whether I was over or under it because I was not sure. 
The sad fact is that this muddle reflects what this member thinks of the bill. It reflects the confusion and it reflects the reason why my mother will be sitting beside her crystal set listening through the static and wondering why we are passing a bill when the member in the chair—who supports the bill and whose name it is in—does not even know whether it is over the Resource Management Act or under it. We seriously have to ask ourselves whether this Committee on this bill knows whether it is over it or under it.