Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): It's my real pleasure to stand and take a call and to speak to this bill and I do want to say from the beginning of the call that National will continue to oppose this bill. I do want to actually outline the reasons why we're opposing because when you actually look at this bill there looks initially to be some merit in it but upon closer examination when you start to unpack the component parts of it there really isn't that much in it at all.The reality is that we fundamentally need a much better and a much more comprehensive piece of legislation to help us realise the goal of greater utilisation and productivity of Māori freehold land. We fundamentally believe that's a great goal. We buy that logic incredibly well here in the National Party. But I want to talk about those two stated goals that the Minister alerted us to before which is really that this bill is supposed to be about the facilitation and the development and to encourage greater utilisation and ultimately occupation of Māori land and it's also modernising some rating legislation in how it affects Māori land. If I can just take both those goals I'll actually start to unpack them a little.As I said the goal of improving the utilisation of Māori land and improving its productivity is something that the National Party totally supports. We really buy into that. But on this side of the House we know not just in the Māori economy but in the general New Zealand economy that this country for the last 30 years has been suffering from a productivity disease. We are deeply interested in that and we care deeply about that because we know that improving productivity is the single biggest thing that we can do to raise our collective standard of living. When you look at the facts across New Zealand—outside the Māori economy just for a moment—we are one-third lower than the OECD average in terms of labour productivity and that's been steadily declining and that's a big problem. So we have to work smarter. We have to work much harder and realise those productivity gains to get our standard of living up to the standard of services that we want to be able to support going forward.Getting back to Māori land as a component of our broader economy. In that broader economy we know there's 1.4 million or 5 percent of this land that's tied up in Māori freehold land. We know it's often isolated we know it's often lower quality we know it's underutilised but we do believe there is much more potential for them to realise from the ownership of this land. We do agree with the broad intention of the bill as I've said earlier about utilising better ways of using that land because if we could turn it into crops if we could turn it into honey or forestry or housing that will in turn strengthen whānau and actually strengthen the productivity and the value of those communities.Disappointingly in this bill there has been no examination of the impact that this bill will have on general land owners as well. I think that's a shame because if we're all signed up to that collective challenge of improving New Zealand's productivity and the ability for us to generate enough cash to fund the lifestyles that we all want to live in that's a big problem. So we think we should all want to help improve the productivity of general land not just Māori land as well. That desire of wanting to improve it for all of New Zealand is important.It's not just Māori land owners who have unproductive land. It's not just Māori land owners who own land collectively or may benefit from rates remissions as the Minister just outlined. For example if you think about it there are many landowners—general land owners—across New Zealand who have under the guidance of the Government's stalled National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity actually planted out huge tracts of land in indigenous biodiversity which is then rendered unused and unproductive under the significant natural areas. Equally under our freshwater rules that have been recently implemented there are massive swathes of farmland that have been put aside around riverways that actually become unproductive for farmers as well. If you think about it there are plenty of property owners—general property owners—across the country who have planted out trees as part of an environmental initiative. They don't get to enjoy the reductions in rates that we're talking about and proposing here. There are plenty of general land owners who have large families who would like multiple dwellings on their property being treated as one single dwelling too as we're seeing in line with this bill here. So as I said earlier it's not just Māori land owners who have unproductive land who own land collectively or who may benefit from rates remission. We just simply ask: why not allow all New Zealand land owners to benefit from the same flexibility? Why only apply it to Māori freehold land?Now if I can move to the second goal which is really the discussion around ratings remission and really in this bill that is the central thesis: that if we can remit rates and write off rates we'll be able to unlock the productivity or realise productivity gains with this land. There are some really positive things in it. There are some good minor changes—things like getting clarity on the origins of Māori land; making sure there is no inadvertent sale of Māori land which was classified from Māori land to general land under the 1967 legislation; enabling councils to do a rates remission at the beginning of a development so that there's certainty around financial planning and consenting; and Māori land that's tied up in the emissions trading scheme being exempted from rates as a result.So those are some of the minor sort of tidy-up stuff which is sensible and it seems quite worthy and common-sense sort of stuff. The two major bits are fundamentally the ability to be able to take multiple land blocks and be able to treat it as one large block or likewise to take one large block and to be able to separate it out into separate blocks. The reason for that is that it ends up lowering the rates it ends up lowering the uniform charges and it ultimately ends up being able to help people access rates rebates. That's a good thing because rates rebates have actually been not fully accessed across New Zealand.The second thing that this bill does under the ratings remission bit is it really gives blanket authority and powers to the local council CEO to be able to write off those rates as they see to. I guess that's the issue that I did want to talk a little bit about because the issue here is: What problem are we actually trying to solve?" because under the existing legislation today councils across New Zealand can in fact write off rates as that stands. We've only got to look at our former parliamentary colleague the former Mayor of Hastings Lawrence Yule who actually spoke about this piece of legislation in the first reading. I wanted to quote what he said. He said "I've been a mayor where I've remitted those rates so I know it can be done. I've been a mayor when we have put the uniform charges together on several properties so the rates per property have been reduced. It can be done."That same point I think was really made well in one of the submissions from the Auckland Council Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board. In their submission they said "Nearly all the changes proposed are already delivered by Auckland Council through its rating policy and Māori land rates remission and postponement policy." So as I said there's a real issue there. Under existing legislation you can deliver rates remission today. There's nothing stopping councils and councils are doing it. There's creative solutions being developed in the Far North in terms of how councils are dealing with arrears of rates and incentivising the right behaviour going forward for rates payment.As an aside I'd just say that there's been no financial impact that I've been able to read around this bill to say what the actual costs of writing off these rates will be for local government or central government. I think it's important to just log that when you start writing off costs and revenue you narrow the rating base and ultimately you're shifting the cost burden to other ratepayers to pay. I just don't think we've fundamentally had that conversation to address it.So I guess the bottom line fundamentally is that the ability to write off rates is already available currently in the current law. I'm actually struggling to understand what is so fundamentally revolutionary about this bill and what it is expecting to fix. I think when you strip it down and you actually look at it really closely it's very narrow. It's doing very little and not comprehensively solving the problem or realising the opportunity. The thesis of the bill is flimsy. It's basically just saying that Māori land productivity can be improved solely through a rates write-off which actually can be done today under current legislation. So the problem isn't actually being solved and I think it's a very junk food - like sort of bill when actually what we really want is a substantive proper high-quality meal and that's what we kind of need.I just want to say you know don't worry about the incremental tinkering. We don't despair because here in National we have the answer and the answer for us is a fundamental repeal and replace of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. I want to commend to the other side of the House this great member's bill from Chris Finlayson. Chris Finlayson was the colossus of Treaty settlements who actually believed in helping Māori realise their potential and got a lot of things done. He drafted a great member's bill here and my colleague Gerry Brownlee is taking it forward from here. But that's the bill that we really need here. That's the bill that fundamentally gets into the other components around this issue.If you want to solve the issue and you want to activate and unlock and accelerate Māori productivity on this land you need to look at things like owner and descent relationships. There's none of this conversation in that bill. There's ownership interests of Māori. What about collective ownership? What about whānau trusts? The dispositions of Māori freehold land—none of that has been discussed in this bill that we're talking about tonight. The amalgamation and partition of land; the sale gift exchange and mortgages; governance arrangements; court jurisdictions; governance bodies; administration of assets—all these things. You need a comprehensive solution if you really want to deliver it. If we keep doing it in a lightweight way we're not solving the problem.So I just want to say to the House that National is actually going to oppose this bill. We want to encourage the Government to join with us and be bolder and braver and fundamentally unlock and accelerate productivity."