Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:17557] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 I hoped that Mr Macindoe would make a full contribution on a bill that is important to our city The Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill but perhaps he will have something to say on clause 9. I certainly hope he does have something to contribute in that regard. Clause 9 essentially gives powers to the Registrar-General of Land to make the computer documentation of the transfer of Parana Park into the hands of the Hamilton City Council. I would like to be able to say “Parana Park of X number of hectares” but of course that is in some dispute. I really want to stand up and support this clause because I think it makes sense and it is very sensible. However there is the issue of the outstanding problem of not knowing exactly how much land will be registered by the Registrar-General of Land. I do not know whether people following this debate can remember 2 weeks ago but in changing the drafting of one of the earlier clauses defining this piece of land my colleague David Shearer did a bit of maths and worked out that the new descriptor of how large the piece of land was did not match the previous description of the land which went through a number of blocks of land that made up Parana Park. What we discovered— 
Tim Macindoe 
: He took 10 minutes to tell us all about it again today. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well I say to Mr Macindoe that that would be because we still have not had an answer from the member sponsoring this bill David Bennett. He has had 2 weeks now—he has had 2 weeks. I know that David Shearer asked the question about whether David Bennett had been in the electorate during that period of time and I can say that I know that David Bennett has been in the electorate during that course of time. It would have been great if he had got out because we had great sunny weather for the whole of those 2 weeks. He could have got out with his tape. He could have gone around and measured the circumference of Parana Park and done some real work for this bill. I do not know—maybe he did put pen to paper and draft this bill but my guess is that he probably did not. 
Grant Robertson 
: I’m thinking not. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Possibly he did not but it would have been good to see him do some background research over the course of those 2 weeks to find out what the area of that land is. Because we have a dispute between the two definitions. It is of concern when we look at clause 9 because now clause 9 is giving the power to the Registrar-General of Land to transfer this land on to the computer database yet there is still some uncertainty about how large that piece of land is and what the definition should be about describing that piece of land. 
On clause 8 which we have just finished debating I must say that we were all in support of it because it did not put unnecessary costs on the Hamilton City Council. As I described in my previous contribution it is a city council—and I am sure it is not alone in this—that is struggling because of a lack of economic growth in the area to contain the cost to ratepayers. Let us face it: any cost that is put on the Hamilton City Council by the passing of this bill will be passed on to its ratepayers. Those ratepayers have already faced an increase in GST on everything they purchase they are facing increasing petrol costs and some of them are facing increased early childhood education fees as well. So we do not want to pass on any more costs by passing this bill to the Hamilton City Council which would therefore be picked up by Hamilton ratepayers. 
It concerns me that the select committee made a change to clause 9. We previously looked at a bill that was drafted to state: “The Registrar must without fee (a) issue a new computer register in the name of Hamilton City Council for the land …”. That has now changed. The bill states: “The Registrar-General must on application”. That means the Hamilton City Council—and I am assuming it will be the Hamilton City Council—will be responsible for paying a fee for the computer transfer to occur. I think that is really unfortunate.