Walker Holly: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Walker Holly: National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5705. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a short call at the Committee stage of the National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill. May I start by saying as I believe my colleagues have at other stages of this bill that the Green Party is strongly in support of the objective of a National War Memorial Park at Pukeahu and that we share the desire if it would be possible for this to be completed in time for the Gallipoli centenary and Anzac Day 2015. We believe the proposed memorial park will provide New Zealanders and overseas visitors with a dedicated space in which to reflect on the loss and sacrifice of life in numerous armed conflicts to pay respect to the dead to contemplate the causes for which those conflicts were fought and also importantly to consider the cause of peace and to reflect on how future armed conflicts may be avoided. It also would provide a haven of much-needed green space within the busy environs of the capital city. 
However we have found ourselves unable to continue to support the bill despite some of the amendments made at the select committee because of our fundamental concerns about the extraordinary powers granted by the legislation. 
But I would like at this point to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which I sat in on for the duration of this bill. I think the first point to note about that select committee process is that it was an extremely constrained one and very challenging for the committee to do its work within the time frame and indeed for the officials to do the work within the time frame allocated and that is part of the concern that we have with this bill. But within those constraints I think the committee did work well and I enjoyed my experience on the committee. 
I am pleased to say that some of the amendments that the committee has made are minor improvements to the bill—for example the adoption of changes recommended by the Regulations Review Committee which somewhat improve the transparency and accountability of the Order in Council process by making sure that Ministers have to explore every other available option relevant before moving to making Orders in Council and indeed to beef up and improve the community forum and improve the number of times that that community forum is delegated to meet. 
So there are some changes the committee made that do improve the bill but unfortunately the fundamental concerns that the Green Party has with the legislation remain despite those changes because not only does it remove and replace normal planning processes which limits the ability for the public and key stakeholders to participate in decision making about the park but also it grants the ability for the Crown to make wide-reaching changes by Order in Council without the usual parliamentary scrutiny. We in the Green Party are very concerned about the precedent that these powers set about the primacy of the rule of law in New Zealand. We heard at the committee a particularly interesting submission from the Legislation Advisory Committee which expressed concern that if we put aside the rule of law in the case of this legislation in order to expedite what is indeed a noble goal in the National War Memorial Park it will become easier to put it aside again for future legislation. Indeed we believe that that is what has already taken place with the fact that we have this legislation this extraordinary legislation in front of the House in the first place. 
This legislation is based upon the provisions provided for in response to the Canterbury earthquake which was a national emergency. We were told at the time that those provisions for Order in Council and those extraordinary powers granted to the executive by that legislation were necessary only because it was a response to a drastic national emergency and were so extraordinary that we need not be concerned about their use elsewhere. Yet here not so very long after that we have a piece of legislation effecting those same powers for what is absolutely not a national emergency. In fact it has been foreseen for a very long time that we might want to commemorate the centenary of Gallipoli in some appropriate way in 2015 and indeed the plans for this particular memorial park have been in place for a long time. The urgency with which this legislation has been addressed was necessary only because of a decision to halt funding for the project—a long pause in its progress—and then a very rapid decision to advance with it after all. That is not good process. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 131 in the name of Te Ururoa Flavell to insert new clause 3A be agreed to.