Baldock Larry: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
Baldock Larry: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17742] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the amendment to clause 105B set out on Supplementary Order Paper 322 in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope which corrects an anomaly in section 18 of the Foreshore and Seabed Act. As the member before me has mentioned that legislation was rushed through Parliament several weeks ago. Many of us who opposed that legislation—not so much because of its content but because of the indecent haste with which it was being put through Parliament—warned the Government that there could be unforeseen mistakes in it. In fact in my minority report on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill I mentioned the fact that Local Government New Zealand might be quite concerned about some of the unforeseen issues that would arise. No one would have thought there would be as large an unforeseen issue as this which would be the biggest land-grab ever. The problems with the treaty issues and the confiscations in the 1800s pale into insignificance when it comes to central government taking most of downtown Wellington and prime pieces of real estate in my home city of Tauranga. There would be some land affected in Auckland as well. I raised an issue in my minority report about whether the Government could make compensation for the land it took. Well Dr Cullen’s huge surplus would disappear overnight if he were to pay compensation for that land-grab off local government. 
I have an image in my mind of Winston Peters towards the end of the debate on that legislation standing up and saying that New Zealand First had fixed the legislation and had taken care of it all. A number of the New Zealand First members stood up one after another and said they had done a great job of fixing the problems for New Zealand. I said to them at the time that if you want to claim credit for having fixed the legislation you must also take responsibility if you have not. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member should not bring the Chair into the debate; he should use members’ full names. 
LARRY BALDOCK 
: I apologise; I will not bring you into it. I said that if the New Zealand First members were going to claim credit for having fixed that legislation they would also have to take responsibility for any mistakes that appeared. Here one does appear and it is a huge huge mistake. Of course it has to be fixed and of course we cannot blame the officials who worked so hard on that legislation but it is such an illustration of how we get things wrong when we rush things through under urgency without having a proper process for submitters to come and share their wisdom with us. 
The wonderful thing about the parliamentary process is that when submitters come and share their views they bring great wisdom to the table. They see things that perhaps we do not see here in Wellington when we look at legislation. I am sure that someone from Local Government New Zealand would have seen that glaring error and pointed it out to us had we had the opportunity over the summer to let people look at a draft of the bill before we then come back to it and pass it early next year. So it is unfortunate that we have made that huge mistake. I believe the people of Tauranga will be very very concerned about what their local member has done in contributing to that and conspiring with the Government to take away much of The Strand and some other very valuable pieces of real estate in Tauranga. 
United Future will be very happy to step up tonight and give our support to the Government in order for it to be able to make that alteration and correct the error.