Barnett Tim: Christchurch City Council (Lancaster Park) Land Vesting Bill — First Reading 
Barnett Tim: Christchurch City Council (Lancaster Park) Land Vesting Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15766] 
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I move  
That the Christchurch City Council (Lancaster Park) Land Vesting Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee. It is with great pride as the member of Parliament for Christchurch Central as a Cantabrian by adoption and as a native of the iconic English Midlands town of Rugby that I rise to urge this House to support this proposed law. It will bring ageing and redundant legal structures into the 21st century and free significant impediments to further development of a very special place. 
This bill is about a stadium known by many names—initially as the new ground down Ferry Road then Victory Park Lancaster Park Jade Stadium and now AMI Stadium. It is not just any old sporting venue. It is not a modestly impressive oversized facility in a provincial town nor a brash modern architectural statement or even a place with unrealised potential hemmed in by high-density residential housing. It is Australasia’s most famous sporting venue. Why do I claim that? I claim it because it has a gripping history that reflects its city and region because it has hosted a multiplicity of sports because its backdrop of the Port Hills gives it extraordinary character because the quality of the rugby played regularly on its verdant green is the best in New Zealand and because it is loved by the people of our city—the second-largest in the nation—with a depth of devotion unique to the people of our nation’s leading province Canterbury. 
In seeking to reform this extraordinary institution its guardians have moved with care and determination. The stadium is now managed by Vbase a fully owned council company which has an excellent local reputation and is led by Bryan Pearson who has been generous in keeping me in the loop as this bill has been prepared; he is an exemplary public servant. 
I note that a common concern with local bills is the lack of adequate engagement with tangata whenua in the process of preparing the legislation and that under the Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu has the right of first refusal to purchase the land in schedule 1 of this legislation. They have agreed in the interests of the Christchurch community to consent to the promotion of this bill and the deferral of its rights under the 1998 Act. 
The reasons for this new law live in the history of the stadium and understanding that history has been made much easier for me by Don Neely and Joseph Romanos. I thank them for their superb work in preparing the 2006 publication  
Lancaster Park 
 which was presented to each of the local Canterbury members of Parliament. The passion idiosyncrasy community-mindedness stubbornness and outstanding sporting skills of Cantabrians shout out from each page. 
This bill takes the stadium into its seventh age. Its first age started in 1880 when the land then a cluster of swampy paddocks was identified and the proposal to establish a multisport venue there was raised at the Canterbury Cricket Association’s annual meeting in Warners Hotel on Cathedral Square. The Canterbury Cricket and Athletics Sports Co. Ltd was formed shares were sold 10 acres of the Lancaster estate were acquired and a fence was put up so that admission could be charged. By March 1882 there was a high-quality levelled grass area a cinder running track and a pavilion costing £1500 That same year 5500 people came along to see an all-professional visiting English cricket side overwhelm the locals. In 1888 10000 people—one in three of the South Island’s population at the time—came to see a visiting British rugby team do much the same thing. This all happened years before the modern Olympics began and only a generation after the first mass European arrivals in the province. 
The park’s second age began around 1900. By then it had hosted American Wild West shows athletics ballooning band contests Caledonian sports meets cricket cycling—including a unique bicycle band high-machine races on penny farthings and the world’s first women’s cycling club—firework displays lawn tennis religious sports days school sports tradesmen’s sports trotting and rugby union including the first All Black match in New Zealand in 1894. By 1903 the park was recognised as New Zealand’s finest sporting ground. But money was shaky ownership was unstable and development was overreaching the fund-raising potential. Hockey swimming and motorcar racing were added to the range of activities. Competition between the major codes became intense—and that has been a recurrent theme of the stadium’s history right up to the present day—and the city council became involved in stabilising and improving the facility and its management. 
World War I saw a deepening financial crisis and in 1916 the ground was ploughed up for potato growing. The third age of the park began after World War I. It was saved by the extraordinarily titled Lancaster Park Mortgage Extinction Fund Art Union which ran a series of fund-raising raffles that made the park debt free for the first time in its existence. In 1919 the park was vested in the Crown through the Victory Park Act so that the Government could hold the land in trust for recreational purposes and we are now addressing that legislation. 
Facilities were rationalised when the park was reopened by the Minister of Internal Affairs Sir Francis Bell. In his words it was “a ground dedicated to sport and fit for any sport in the world”. Rugby league made a cautious entry to the scene although its professional status caused dramas for decades to come. Canterbury became—and of course remains—a feared rugby union side regularly beating international visiting sides. In fact Canterbury at that ground was the first New Zealand side including the All Blacks to beat the Springboks. The famous Victory Memorial Gates in the ground were completed in 1926 their tablet inscription reading “Erected to commemorate the efforts of the Commercial Travellers and Warehousemen’s Association in the preservation of the park for rugby football cricket and amateur sport as a memorial to the athletes who fell in the Great War 1914-18”. 
Also in 1926 22000 people—one in three of the city’s population—attended the first Ranfurly Shield game there. In 1930 the first-ever New Zealand cricket test match was held against England and over 35000 people which was the largest crowd in the first half-century of the stadium’s life attended a rugby test against the British Isles. This was an era when sport came to the fore because the stadium management was performing so well. 
The fourth age of the stadium began in 1940 with an inevitable wartime decline. Indeed the army took over the whole complex between 1942 and 1945 with 900 trainees and officers living there. The American influence was evident postwar. Softball and baseball as well as netball made an appearance. In 1956 4000 people watched 3500 compete in the national marching championships. American evangelical preachers appeared at the stadium. In 1959 Billy Graham attracted over 100000 people over two nights. 
The fifth age of the stadium began around 1961. It was an era when the world’s spotlight was truly on the place. Peter Snell set the world 800 metres record there in 1962 and although it was not the Commonwealth Games’ main stadium much activity happened there. The sixth age started in the early 1980s. Usage diversified politics came to the fore with the Springbok Tour—something that Madam Assistant Speaker is well aware of—with the test on 22 August 1981 generating scenes that are still part of local activist legend. The 1980s also saw the rise of the mega - pop concerts including one by Dire Straits in 1986 which attracted the largest-ever crowd at the stadium—64000—and led to complaints from the SPCA that seagulls were choking on used condoms discarded on the ground. Rugby and cricket became internationalised and expectations of stadia standards rose rapidly. Economic impact also became a factor. The impact of stadium events is now computed at about $20 million a year for the city. 
The seventh age comes with this bill. It winds up the Victory Park Board and transfers its assets to the Christchurch City Council. A decade of facility improvement—certainly not creating a Cake Tin but rather a proud and tall statement—is cemented with this transfer and the stadium is now ready for the future maybe for the opening ceremony for the Rugby World Cup or maybe for the opening ceremony for the southern hemisphere’s first Winter Olympics. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.