Street Maryan: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16097. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak again on the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. I just want to traverse a couple of things that have not been covered already but before I do that I want to acknowledge the speech of the member who has just resumed her seat Eugenie Sage. I think she highlighted in her speech some of the critical issues around this particularly vexing bill. I do not wish to relitigate that material but there are some points that I do want to make about this bill.It is now a truism to say that none of us enjoys bringing retrospective legislation of this sort before the House. I am one of those who have declared themselves to be pathologically averse to such legislation. But I do want to explain for a moment why the Local Government and Environment Committee arrived at the position it did and why I personally have come to the point of supporting this piece of legislation. Living and working as I do in the Nelson area—part of the Tasman District Council catchment covers the Nelson electorate—I have a lot to do with the Tasman District Council and the mayor and the councillors there although the particular areas of concern are in the electorate of my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor West Coast - Tasman.The controversy around this particular situation arose when the council designatedTata Beach—which is a beautiful area—along withLigar Bay as one of its urban drainage areas. The area is one of 16 settlements that have to pay towards stormwater works around the wider Tasman District. TheTata Beach andLigar Bay ratepayers discovered the change only when their rates bills soared by some hundreds of dollars a year. BobSchmuke to whom the ratepayers and certainly the Tasman District Council owe a debt is the person who brought forward the error that the Tasman District Council had made and took the case to the Ombudsman and he was successful in that effort. He was successful.But at that time the Tasman District Council said that it was going to then take this situation to Parliament to remedy. The Tasman District Council’s Chief Executive Officer at the time Paul Wiley was reported to have said in a report that was in theNelson Mail on 18 February 2010—and here we are with the second reading—that “The costs of going through a court process which we believed we would win are a hell of a lot more than the quite simple expedient of going along to Parliament saying ‘fix this technicality with some retrospective legislation’ and that is what we are doing”. That was a comment attributed to Paul Wiley the former Chief Executive Officer of the Tasman District Council. He said he did not know how much the legislation would cost.In my experience in raising other local bills I understand that there is a charge by the Office of the Clerk of some $2000 so certainly that would be all that the Tasman District Council would have to pay as far as Parliament is concerned.But I must just register that it is a somewhat cavalier attitude towards what the taxpayers pay to have this House go through all of the stages—the first reading the second reading which we are up to now the Committee stage the reporting back the third reading stage and the final Royal assent. There is a great deal of expense actually in bringing a local bill to Parliament and that falls on all taxpayers. I wanted to make that point because I was a bit concerned that there seemed to be a slightly cavalier attitude within the Tasman District Council.However I am supporting the bill and I want to explain briefly why I am doing that. It is to do with the way the Tasman District Council exercises its ability to rate ratepayers. I support the way it does it but it made a mistake in this instance and it would have been a costly mistake to the council had it not been for this legislation before the House. But the principle behind this that I support is that community assets must be paid for by all members of the community for the sake of the community whether or not one uses those assets. BobSchmuke’s particular case which gained a lot of sympathy—and certainly from me as well—was that he was not even hooked up to this stormwater system. He was not hooked up to it it did not impact on his property and here he was with these additional rates that he had not been advised about.But in the end I came down on the view that the good of the community is borne most equitably by all of the members of the community. I may not use the Nelson libraries—although in fact I do—or I may not use the Riverside Swimming Pool in Nelson but I am very pleased that the facilities are there for the benefit of all who live in Nelson. The same thing applies when it comes to drainage systems and urban drainage systems. They in the end provide a collective benefit. In this case should they have been paid for by the three houses that were linked up to this stormwater drain they would not have been affordable. By spreading the cost there is an important piece of infrastructure in place that benefits the whole community in principle. It is that principle that I support and that principle that has brought me to the position—again reluctantly but persuasively—of supporting this piece of legislation. Thank you.