Nash Stuart: Wellington Town Belt Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Wellington Town Belt Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10292. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): There are some points that I would like to clarify. Obviously we are for this. The one thing that has surprised me about this debate is everyone standing up and saying what a wonderful place Wellington is. Well coming from Napier—I suppose everything is relative is it not?Mr O’Rourke brought up a very good point and I was going to allude to this. I will not go through it in the level of detail I had originally planned to but it is quite interesting that the principles all talk about “should” whereas most of the other things in the bill are a requirement. I am not too sure whether that is deliberate or why it is or whether some of these things might be more difficult to deliver on than others and therefore they are not prescribed in case they create a burden for the Wellington City Council. The other thing in here that I would be quite interested to know is: if in fact this does create a burden for ratepayers i.e. by creating the sort of deed—this trust—does it mean that the council is going to have to put aside another $3 million or $5 million or $4 million or $10 million of ratepayers’ money to actually be able to carry out the statutory requirements that are now legislatively forced upon it?There are a couple of serious questions that I do have. I am assuming though on a less serious nature that in the principles clause clause 4(b)(iii): “the Wellington Town Belt should support healthy indigenous ecosystems”—is that the Gareth Morgan clause? On a serious note though in clause 4(b)(vi) what it says here is “community participation in the management of the Wellington Town Belt should be encouraged and supported” but then I note that when you go to clause 10 the management plan it is very prescriptive in the sense that the city council “must” seek public input for the development of the management plan. It seems as if one is saying the public should be involved in this whereas clause 10 says the council must liaise with Wellington inhabitants. It just seems that there is a little bit of a dichotomy. It is not a big one; I think we know what it means.But there is a serious question here and I do not have the answer to it—maybe the member does. I am looking at the legal status of this. Clause 8 says “The Council holds the Wellington Town Belt on behalf of the inhabitants of the city of Wellington as trustee of the trust created by the Town Belt Deed.” The thing I do not quite get here is that there is something called the rule against perpetuities and that is that every trust must have a definitive life. That is basically a life being plus 21 years. There is a legal definition of this and I think it is—Hon Judith Collins: 80 years.STUART NASH: Yes I think it is 80 years—thank you Mrs Collins. It is 80 years but I am unsure whether that same rule applies to a charitable trust.Denis O’Rourke: No it doesn’t.STUART NASH: But there is nothing in here that suggests that this is a charitable trust. [Interruption] No but all I can ascertain from this bill is that this is a trust not a charitable trust; therefore it has a life of about 80 years. To those of us who are sitting in this Chamber—Denis O’Rourke: No.STUART NASH: Mr O’Rourke it does not outline the fact in here that this is a charitable trust so by law it has a life of 80 years. The member may correct me if I am wrong. For those of us who are sitting here 80 years sounds like a long time but there are a number of instances throughout history where 80 years has flown by and it leaves those who come after us with a whole lot of things to fix.The other thing also because you always pick up these sorts of terms is that it says “The council may without complying with subsection (4)”—this is clause 10 the management plan and subsection (4) says you must consult with ratepayers and constituents—“amend the management plan if it passes a resolution that—(a) the proposed amendments are minor or technical in nature”. Meka Whaitiri and I are struggling with an issue in Hawke’s Bay at the moment where a number of councillors at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council were sort of ambushed—and I use that word probably a bit too liberally actually—when they went into a meeting and said: “We are going to pass a resolution because it is minor it is technical it doesn’t require any sort of public consultation and that is that we are going to allow the council to enter into a binding contract worth $35 million.”The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Come back on this bill.STUART NASH: So what I am keen to know here is what actually constitutes minor and technical.