Woods Megan: Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill Riccarton Racecourse Bill — First ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill Riccarton Racecourse Bill — First Readings[Sitting date: 22 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7540. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I am happy to take a call on this as the member of Parliament in whose electorate the Riccarton Racecourse sits—an important part of the Wigram electorate. Labour will be supporting this legislation and I am pleased to see that both of these bills have been put together into one package. I echo the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery’s sentiments that it was a sensible decision of the Business Committee to package these together.We know that in Canterbury post-earthquake we have had to open up more land for housing—that there is a need for us to develop new areas. What we have seen is the westward shift of the city—the southward and the westward shift—as well as some movement to the north and with this comes great complexities.What I would like to acknowledge in the course of this speech is the proactivity of the local residents who live around the Riccarton Racecourse who even before this legislation was introduced had already held a number of meetings around this. I have been involved in a number of meetings with the local residents the likely developer of the land and the board and members of the Riccarton Racecourse itself to talk through some of the issues and some of the reservations that may be held by the present residents around what having a new development on their doorstep means. I think this is something that any community feels when there is a likelihood of a new development and I would like to talk through some of those very local concerns that come through but I would also like to acknowledge the site that we are talking about today.It is the site of the Riccarton Racecourse which of course is the home ground if you like of the Canterbury Jockey Club. It is the oldest and for a long time the most pre-eminent of jockey clubs and racing institutions in New Zealand. It is a very important part of Christchurch’s and Canterbury’s history. If you look through the members of the club they certainly were some of the power-wielders of Canterbury in terms of its establishment and its set-up. What we do know is that very early on in its history the decision was made on 4 November 1854 that a club was needed. I will note that that dateis my birthday although the year is not the same so I would just like to establish a connection there—although I can assure everyone I was not born in 1854.The club was taken to its present site in Riccarton which was then very much on the outskirts of the city. It was very much removed from the city as it stood in the 1850s. It was probably hard for many of the people who made the decision to place a racecourse that far from what was then Christchurch City to imagine that this would ever grow—for the city to meet it. But it has and the earthquakes have very much hastened that process as we have seen development spring up all over the western suburbs of Christchurch.Hornby Riccarton Yaldhurst—these are all suburbs that are teeming and heaving with new subdivisions and my concern is that the infrastructural needs of these suburbs these neighbourhoods and these communities are not being kept up with. When this development was first mooted there was a lot of talk about it being put through under what was a really good idea between the Crown and Christchurch City at the time as an exemplar development. Christchurch and Canterbury more generally was going to be rehoused through what were going to be known as exemplar developments where the highest standards of urban design were going to be employed where there was going to be a good proportion of affordable housing and where there were going to be well-defined transport links that would see these neighbourhoods and these communities be fit for the 21st century and we would see that these would be neighbourhoods that would survive the test of time.But unfortunately we in Christchurch have seen only one of these exemplar developments take shape and take form in Halswell. I would have liked to see this Riccarton development take shape under that because the residents do have real concerns about what putting another 600 houses into this part of Christchurch with no consummate transport planning is going to mean for their neighbourhood. We know that many of the main roads around this area—Yaldhurst Road and other roads—are already at capacity. They are barely coping with the amount of traffic that they are having to carry post-earthquake let alone putting another 600 homes into this area which could see another 1200 cars feasibly come on to this site. This is something that is of concern to the residents and I would like to see that this is something that is considered through the select committee process as we hear those submissions.One of the other considerations that the residents had was around what it would mean for them. They have bought their homes relatively near the edge of the city by a racecourse. Some of them did that because they liked racing but many of them did that because they would be next to a beautiful reserve and they would have the use of that reserve and there were all the things that they could do in this space. The racecourse over a period of time has been very welcoming in terms of letting local people in to use the amenity that the racecourse provides to that community. So there were some concerns from residents that they were going to lose the capacity for dog-walking there for walking themselves and for all kinds of recreational use that the Riccarton Racecourse is used for. But I am happy to say that is something through the proactivity of the residents of this area that we have been able to talk through with the intending developer and with the management and boards of the racecourse itself and residents have been able to see that allowing this development to go ahead is not going to impinge on their recreational enjoyment of the land that remains.I know that there are number of people who are going to be very excited about buying a house that will literally look over the starting line of a racecourse because some of the homes will actually have a view out to where the long races at Riccarton start. Grant Robertson might like to buy a home there. He tells me that Riccarton has never been a lucky course for him. On one of my very rare visits to the races I put a dollar each way on a nag from Burnham and it paid four to one Grant so I might need to take you—Grant Robertson: Four to one?Dr MEGAN WOODS: Four to one. I might need to take you to Riccarton one day and show you what a lucky course that can be Mr Robertson.But one of the things that we really do have to consider in this is that the Government is talking about this housing development being part of the plan for affordable housing in Christchurch and in Canterbury. But this really comes back to not just Canterbury but to what it is that this Government thinks is affordable housing. The benchmark that is being set here is $450000. For many many many Cantabrians $450000 to get into your first home is simply unaffordable. This is a Government that is setting its definitions of what “affordable” is outside the reach of ordinary New Zealanders and this is being encompassed in this bill. So when this Government talks the big talk about affordable housing being available on this site let us bear in mind what that is and think about what the mortgage repayments would be for someone on an average wage and whether that is affordable. For most people that will simply be out of their reach.I am eager as the local member of Parliament for this area to keep the strong engagement that we have already begun before this legislation has even reached the floor of this House with the local residents with the racecourse and with the probable developer around what it is that we can do to make this part of an already established and strong community. Because my part of Christchurch has had the opposite problems of many parts of Christchurch: it is not about people moving out; in my electorate it is about people moving in. My challenge as a local member has been around how we can retain community how we can retain strong neighbourhoods and how it is that we can make sure that as the need for development caused by the earthquakes occurs we do not lose the good that we have got.I am really looking forward to the select committee process where local people do get to come and have their say on this. We might even like to go and hold our hearings at the Riccarton Racecourse in an area and a facility that would—Grant Robertson: On race day?Dr MEGAN WOODS: Not on race day Mr Robertson. But it was a facility where actually court proceedings were held in in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. As an undamaged facility in our city over the last 5 years it has been very important. On a more sombre note it was also the site where a number of the funerals of people who died in the February quakes were held because it was one of the few large facilities that were standing in the immediate days after the February quakes. So it is an important part of the history of our last 5 years it is an important part of the history of Christchurch more generally and I want to see it be the best possible development it can be for the existing community. I am happy to commend the bill to the House.