Banks John: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Banks John: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4807. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the first reading of the National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill. Of course as previous speakers have said the bill seeks to give the Government the necessary statutory authority to complete the memorial park by April 2015. This is a timely bill in our history. It will be the 100-year anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landing at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Dardanelles on that fateful morning of 25 April 1915—lest we forget. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign gave birth to the Anzac spirit of comradeship and bravery beyond all odds. It contributed much to our sense of national identity. This empowering bill is as much about national identity as it is about an empowering bill that will enable us to put in place a long-living memorial to those brave souls who lost their lives in such great numbers on that first day and days thereafter 25 April 1915. 
Today Anzac Day commemorates all our brave fallen from the Western Front and other theatres of war—World War II to the conflicts in Korea Malaysia and Viet Nam to modern places of conflict in East Timor and currently much in our minds to the conflict in northern Afghanistan where the brave men and women of New Zealand stand in harm’s way. In Anzac Day we still celebrate the close bonds of friendship and family with our Australian cousins and our shared sacrifice at Gallipoli since then with our Australian cousins. Some have said that Anzac Day is as close as New Zealand has to a national day. I would agree with that. In part this results from our annual controversy around Waitangi Day. 
However I believe the better explanation is that Anzac Day does not celebrate war as the great adventure; rather it reminds us of the tragedy and utter waste of war the longing for family and the familiar. We remember the young New Zealanders buried in some corner of a foreign field. We look to our own families where most have experienced loss and disability from war and those who have had family members in the service of New Zealand. In short Anzac Day speaks directly to the shared experiences of most extended New Zealand families more than any other day in our national life. This is what this empowering bill is all about. 
 I am glad that this is a shared belief and commitment from all corners of the Parliament. As the number of active service personnel who experience conflict falls in real terms it is even more important that we remind ourselves annually of the horror and loss of war and reaffirm and confirm our commitment to the young men and women who stand ready to go into armed conflict on our behalf on any day. So this bill will enable the building of a memorial park. As a Wellingtonian born and bred that is a very fitting place of national commemoration and national mourning—the capital city of the country. 
All New Zealanders should be proud of this day and what this empowering bill follows and what this piece of legislation will deliver. It does so by granting the right to the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Chief Executive of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to design construct maintain and operate the park during the construction and alteration of this significant piece of our roading network. It requires mitigation of an actual or potential adverse environmental effect. It provides a series of statutory powers that are incidental to this objective. The extensive schedules to the bill which run to a mind-numbing 92 pages essentially provide what would be in a resource consent issued by the Wellington Regional Council and the Wellington City Council. In essence the project is to cut and cover Buckle Street to develop a contiguous park directly linked to the Hall of Memories and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. I salute all of those who have been responsible for the design of this everlasting memorial and the complexities of what they have been given and what they have had to work with. This of course will provide appropriate space for ceremonies involving our service personnel and a place for memorials for those nations that are closest to us. 
I acknowledge the work of Ministers Finlayson and Brownlee for their persistence and tenacity and delivering this today at this time for this memorial. I also place on record the contribution of the Wellington City Council and in particular the outstanding individual Ian McKinnon the Deputy Mayor of the Wellington City Council. We hope that the memorial park will be a place where New Zealanders will visit to reflect and remember our fallen. This is a bipartisan memorial and I salute all of those former Prime Ministers arts and culture Ministers and members of Parliament from the Wellington district who have committed to this memorial and who will vote for this today through their affiliations in this Parliament. 
So it is with some caution that I want to make this observation to the House in passing. I accept fully the Government’s contention that this worthy project cannot be completed in 18 months. In most other developed countries it could easily be completed within 18 months within a standard consenting process. This speaks not to the complexity of this worthy project but rather to the unwieldy effect of the Resource Management Act 1991. I sat in this Parliament opposite on the front bench of this Parliament and then on the Government side of the Parliament in 1991 where at 11 o’clock at night in a third reading 7-minute dissertation by the Minister of the time the Resource Management Act was posted unanimously on to the statute book by this Parliament with little understanding of the consequences that would follow the implementation and interpretation of the Resource Management Act over 20 years. It has been in general terms a complete disaster for growth investment and jobs for this nation and that is why the ACT Party is at the forefront of two tranches of reform to the Resource Management Act which is well overdue. If there is one flagpole that should be attended to today and a flag raised it is the flag for democracy it is the flag for private property ownership and it is the flag for development growth and jobs that is well overdue here. 
We should not replicate the Resource Management Act high jinks that cost the constituent ratepayers of the Auckland City Council $10 million in cost overruns in building the refurbished redeveloped art gallery in Auckland City—that is $10 million of political high jinks around the Resource Management Act and the Environment Court by a litigious handful of people which cost us so much money. It is entirely appropriate that we continue to expand and perfect our freedoms so that those who were sent and did not return from places that are listed on the battlefield plaques around this Parliament are not disappointed in this new century around an Act of Parliament that stops sensible stuff like this happening. New Zealand after 100 years have passed remains committed to the memory of those brave souls who fought the battles recorded on the walls around this Chamber and soon to be recorded with a new memorial for the 100-year commemoration of that fateful day of 25 April 1915.