Auchinvole Chris: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAuchinvole Chris: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16106. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I rise to speak in support of the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. I notice that there is a theme—I am not a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee which worked very hard on this bill and it is to be complimented particularly the chair of the committee.Tim Macindoe: You were a very fine chair in years gone by.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: In years gone by I thoroughly enjoyed working as the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee. It was fantastic. It was a very busy committee and the second-largest in Parliament.Phil Twyford: Good times.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: They were good times—they were. But I think this bill has been very well handled by that select committee.I was interested to hear Moana Mackey who is something of a veteran politician herself say that she would rise reluctantly or sadly to support this bill. That seems to have been a sentiment that has been expressed by almost every speaker. Without having been party to the submissions and the detail of the bill I have reflected on why that might be. I reflected on the question of how this whole thing came about. I guess one could say that it was users versus non-users of a service collective benefits being sought versus individual rights and peremptory changes being made by a council versus transparent procedures.The good people who live inTata Beach andLigar Bay who are affected by these stormwater rates are strong individuals. I have met them. I know them. They are nice people. They have a fine sense of personal justice individual rights and what is right and what is wrong. Tasman District Council which I think is probably one of the country’s larger unitary councils is a council of fairly determined councillors and very experienced staff. I think there has been a case of a certain amount of antagonism if I can use that word without it affecting individuals and a certain amount of antagonistic points of view on both sides in relation to identifying the problem and then seeking a solution to it. It was a “Yes you will.” “No we won’t.” sort of job. So the councillors found themselves nonplussed.This seems to have been a somewhat long-drawn-out bill. Observers could say that there was an element of wishing that it would go away or hoping that the antagonism would stop. I understand that they have tried a variety of mediation techniques discussions and listening to individuals and to one another to seek settlement. It did not happen. So legislation became a requirement. Not to proceed would have simply passed the vexation of one group on to another group and it would have gone on. So they sought legislation.What is the parliamentary view of that? One of the things that we learn early on as politicians is the difficulty of preparing legislation and the difficulty of foreseeing unforeseen circumstances. If you look at New Zealand statistically it has its fair share of re-legislating or passing of legislation to correct things that were not foreseen. As this is a country of some speed and a very fine sense of fairness I think it is reasonable to anticipate that you will be correcting legislation for unforeseen circumstances.The difficulty with this particular piece of local legislation was that it did not have an unforeseen consequence; it was perhaps just representative of equivocal leadership. Things were not done correctly and yet people wished to hold on to what they haddone. The council’s apology has been commented on as being singularly sincere. Some of the comments that have been made today have been that this bill was in fact a waste of Parliament’s time. I do not perceive it to be a waste of parliamentary time because there was no other solution apparently available to the contestants in this particular issue. Therefore in my mind it is not a waste of time. I think it is a perfectly proper use of parliamentary time. It is necessary to re-establish confidence and certainty in the work and the efforts of the Tasman District Council.We have heard from a variety of speakers on this bill from Maggie Barry Jacqui Dean Paul Goldsmith Nicky Wagner Andrew Williams Moana Mackey and others—people who one could say are fairly experienced in the ways and workings of district councils. If we were not to pass this bill then people would be deprived of their rights and the consequences would be very long-drawn out.We come again to the point that has been made that the good of the community has to be borne by the whole of the community in order to create collective benefits. That is OK as long as the whole of the community is in a position to share the benefits. I understand without knowing the particular detail—and I have not participated in any of the select committee discussions having being engaged in other select committees—that in this case there will be people who are not really comfortable with this outcome. I think that is always going to be the case where you have this type of imposed legislation to try to sort out a problem. So they will not be particularly happy.But let us remember the purpose of the bill. The purpose of the bill is not to make people happy because Parliament did not make them unhappy in the first place. What we have to do is validate the rates set by the Tasman District Council for the 5-year period affected during which the council did not follow correct process in setting the rates. I think the fact that the complainants in this issue will hear very clearly that the council has acknowledged—and we in Parliament acknowledge—that it did not follow correct process is going to ameliorate a lot of hard feelings in this particular issue.The bill also validates rates and penalties paid over the period and authorises the council to recover any unpaid rates and ratify theTata Beach andLigar Bay stormwater rates. I have no doubt that that bit will stick in some people’s craw. They will feel that they were robbed and that it is not a fair way to do it. I am assured by members of the select committee that every other possibility was exhaustively examined—exhaustively examined. Having been a member of that particular select committee for about 3 years I am very familiar with the excellent advice it gets the work of the local government officials who advise the committee and the sincerity and commitment of the individual members of Parliament from all parties. I think it is one of the select committees that demonstrates a lot of bipartisan approaches to the work in hand.One of the things I take confidence in in particular is that National’s Better Local Government reforms will help make local government more efficient responsive and well focused. The Better Local Government reforms include a work stream to monitor and improve council performance in order to help prevent future procedural errors. Finally this bill highlights to other councils sadly—sadly—the consequences of not having proper scrutiny when setting rates. Thank you.