Kaye Nikki: Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Kaye Nikki: Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5933. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) 
: 
 I am very pleased to be speaking today on the Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill. I want to start by acknowledging the local member the Hon Gerry Brownlee. I want to also acknowledge the trustees. They obviously came and submitted to us. I also want to acknowledge the many members for Canterbury. As has been expressed by many members in this House this evening at a time when Canterbury has been through a huge amount we must recognise what are community assets. Riccarton Bush is very important to the people of Canterbury and that is why I am pleased— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
NIKKI KAYE 
: As I was saying I just want to acknowledge obviously the Hon Gerry Brownlee as the local member for this bill the Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill but also next to me the Hon Amy Adams and all Canterbury members across this House—I can see Ruth Dyson as well. It has been a tough time so I think it is right that we acknowledge a community area of significance like Riccarton Bush through this bill. We also acknowledge the generosity of the Deans family in gifting this bush area—just like in areas of Auckland where we have had families like John Logan Campbell who gifted Cornwall Park—and the significance particularly given the last couple of years and the issues that we have had in Canterbury as a result of the earthquakes. 
I want to just touch on a couple of things. I want to obviously mention the purpose of this bill. We have got three primary purposes: to modernise and update the governance arrangements to better define the board’s functions and provide for the continuation of its work and enhance its finance and administration and also to vest the land at 30 Kahu Road Christchurch in the board. The Local Government and Environment Committee did make several amendments. One of them was to amend clause 2(1) and new section 23(7) in clause 10 by extending the date which has already been mentioned by the Hon Gerry Brownlee on which clause 16 would come into force. The second thing was to acknowledge and recommend that amendments to new section 23 provide for the event that the council does not approve the board’s draft financial plan which was mentioned by Denis O’Rourke. I want to acknowledge as well that the select committee did make a decision around the issue of consolidation of legislation—not to go down that road as we did believe that it went further actually than the scope of the bill. But we have heard from obviously my learned colleague the Hon Nick Smith around the difficulty of having several pieces of legislation on the statute book. But there was a submission from the promoters of this bill saying that they actually did prefer the fact that you could see that legislative history. 
Finally I want to make a couple of comments. I know that Maggie Barry is going to address the significance of Riccarton Bush. It is right that she does that. She is a horticulturalist by background. She also I understand through  
Maggie’s Garden Show 
 has actually been to Riccarton Bush and had a programme on the bush itself. She studied at Lincoln University so she knows this bush pretty well. So I am going to leave to her the intimate knowledge of Riccarton Bush. I know that it has also had an international profile via the David Bellamy show. 
Finally I just want to say that it is an area of significance to Canterbury. It is a result of the generosity of the Deans family. The bill is I think a particularly collaborative piece of legislation—we have seen members across the House work on it. It is the result of a good local member the Hon Gerry Brownlee. It is also important that we have made several amendments via the select committee process and we acknowledge that we did not go down the consolidation road because it was outside the scope of the bill. I commend this bill to the House.