Gosche Mark: Airport Authorities (Sale to the Crown) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Airport Authorities (Sale to the Crown) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6768] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I am looking forward to the Airport Authorities (Sale to the Crown) Amendment Bill coming to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I congratulate Darren Hughes on his excellent work as a local member of Parliament who is prepared to listen to his community and act on its desires and wishes. Many people have worked very hard over many long years seeking to get some sort of justice from a situation that everybody knows was unjust. In the last term the select committee put in a very thorough piece of work. The committee was aided by some very very good legal brains and by people with expertise who were advisers to the committee. 
This bill seeks to do something that I think National Party members should support rather than coming here tonight to say they are opposed to it. I would like National members to explain what they are opposed to in new section 3AB “Sale of airport land must be offered to the Crown first” inserted by clause 5. I would like the National Party to explain to the New Zealand public why that should not be the case because this land was taken under the Public Works Act in the first place—from both Maori and Pakeha owners. The expectation of those owners was that should the land not be needed for that purpose again it would be returned to them under the Public Works Act or at least the offer to buy it back would be made to them. 
But the device that the National Party came up with was to form companies and then pass legislation to allow them to get the land—or in the case of Paraparaumu Airport sell it for half of what it was worth on the basis that it did not have to keep going as an airport. Can members imagine anything more crooked? I cannot in terms of the Government doing that sort of thing. 
Hon Member 
: Don’t talk about crooked. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: The  
Hansard  
of that member’s speech will be kindly supplied to all the people in the electorate via the good member here Darren Hughes. Those people will see that that National member actually supports that sort of crooked behaviour and that the National Party has not learnt a thing. We went through this thoroughly and there are all sorts of things that the National members should be ashamed of. They have a chance tonight to redeem themselves by supporting this bill. 
Under the former National Government Paraparaumu Airport was sold for a lesser value than what it would have sold for if it had been required to continue to be run as an airport. If it was not required that it continue to be run as an airport the taxpayer would have got twice as much money back. What happened when the owners got it? The first thing they decided was that they did not need a particular bit of land so they sold a small part of it for $800000. The National Party thinks that is OK. Well let us make sure that the word gets out all around New Zealand too. 
I looked at some of the Cabinet papers on Ardmore Airport and I saw that one of the National members had to be told to back off in that sale process because he was acting in a very strange way—to put it politely. National has all sorts of dirt all over its hands on this whole issue and I cannot understand why National members would oppose the land going back to the original owners if it is no longer needed. That is what everybody understands the Public Works Act to be. I am looking forward to some convoluted explanation from the next speaker for the National Party as to why that is wrong. 
Darren Hughes 
: You will get it! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: I will get it because National members are used to getting highly paid lawyers to try to get them off the hook when they behave badly. They are doing it this week they did it then and they will keep on doing it if they ever get the chance to be in Government again. It is disgraceful. 
There is an open and shut case of injustice here and we are trying to remove that injustice. It is not as though the current owner has to give it back. The current owner can continue to do what he says he will do and run an airport and nobody will interfere with that. It is only if the land is no longer needed for the airport that we would look at giving some justice back to those people who lost their land. They had to go through court cases. They had to go through petitions. They had to go through occupations. They still got no justice out of the National Party. The National Party could not even spell the word let alone understand it. 
I look forward to this bill coming back to the select committee where we can look at tidying it up. This legislation is long overdue. I give Darren Hughes another word of congratulations on being a good member of Parliament. He is prepared to take up the fight against injustice for all his constituents and stand up to the National Party which is interested only in looking after vested interests.