King Annette: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8037. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak at the third reading of the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill and to first of all congratulate Jacqui Dean. It is a shame that she is not here because she has shown great tenacity with this bill. It was not without some controversy. It has actually had quite a long birth and delivery but she has stuck with it and has resolved an issue of long standing. 
Like the previous speaker Nicky Wagner I too would like to thank the officials. The reason for that is that the Local Government and Environment Committee was determined to get to the bottom of the legal status of one particular piece of land that is covered by this bill. This bill actually revokes the status of two pieces of land within the Waitaki District. 
Nicky Wagner 
: Three. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: It replaces three sorry but it was only one that was controversial and it was a piece of land called Lookout Point also known as Forrester Heights. 
We were determined to get to the bottom of what had really happened to this piece of land going back to 1884. That is not easy because it was found that there were records missing. Records that had once been there had now gone. There had been interpretation made on documents over the years. But we were not going to make a decision on this bill until we had looked at all the issues and all the legal documents we could to ensure we were getting it right. So I want to thank the officials for the way they went back as the chair of the committee has just said not once not twice but three times to check the records to ensure we were making the right decision with this piece of land. 
We supported this bill to go to the select committee but we did raise concerns about Lookout Point. We said we had to be assured we were making the right decision. It was as I said after an extensive search that we found and the committee was satisfied that the status of the land at Lookout Point - Forrester Heights was endowment land. That was really important because if it was not endowment land—if it was reserve land which it was believed to be—it could not then be sold by the council. 
So we needed to know whether it was actually reserve land which could not be sold or endowment land which the council could sell for whatever use it wanted to use it for. We are satisfied with the work that was done that this land is endowment land and that it was a genuine mistake that was made resulting from various meanings and legal uses of the word “reserve”. Being satisfied that this was the case we support this bill in the third reading. 
There were not a lot of submissions on this bill although a lot of interest and quite a number of members of this House actually went down to Oamaru and visited the site. I know that my colleague Phil Twyford in particular made a special trip down to look at the piece of land and to talk to the locals. Although there were not a lot of submissions there were two very significant submissions that I want to mention: the submission of Mr Warren Crawford and a second one from Mr Barry Monks. They actually were concerned about the status of the land and had set about to try to find the records to show that it was reserve land that it was made a reserve back in the 19th century and that it could not be sold. Out of their own time and money they had gone to a lot of work and they produced a lot of documents for the select committee that we had not had before and I think in many ways they helped the officials in their continuing search to ensure we got the right status on this land. 
So I do want to commend those two men for the work that they did particularly Barry Monks who did a lot of historical research. He worked through and he sifted through what was an incomplete confusing and chaotic paper trail about this piece of land. I do not think they are necessarily satisfied with the decision that the select committee has made but it has been made on the best evidence we have got and I believe it is the right decision. 
There were also issues raised particularly during the Committee stage by the Green Party members that they were voting against it because of the process used in terms of the use of the land. They are perfectly entitled to their view but in our view it is not appropriate to oppose a piece of legislation where we are deciding on the status of land on the grounds that the use of that land was not consulted about correctly properly for long enough or whatever. That is another matter. I do not disagree with the Green Party that in fact the consultation around the use of the land was poor and even the council when it came to the select committee had to concede that the consultation had not been good. But that is not what this bill is about. I hope the council has learnt that it does need to do good consultation otherwise it raises all sorts of issues in its community that are unnecessary and unnecessary angst in its community through a poor process. 
So we disregarded in terms of this bill the process the council used around consultation on what the land would be used for. Our interest in this bill and this House’s interest in this bill is whether this land is endowment land or reserve land. We believe that it is endowment land. We believe that we have made the right decision. But we also understand the suspicion of the people of Oamaru. There was some suspicion from local people who on the face of it thought there was some kind of jack-up between property developers and local politicians on what was and is a very valuable piece of land. We understand that but they need to be reassured that the select committee I believe did the very best job it could with the information provided to make a decision that makes sure that this land is able to be used for the benefit of the people of Oamaru. We support this bill at the third reading and I am sure Jacqui Dean will be delighted to see it through.