Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

I am sure it will not be necessary to take the full 5 minutes to speak on this bill. This is a bill that Labour is supportive of. We think it is good to send it off to the Government Administration Committee. We would be happy for it to have a relatively short report-back time. I think we are setting down a 3-month period for it. From my perspective, if the select committee decided to have a shorter time—if it can handle it—then that is something I would be supportive of. I cannot imagine that there will be an enormous number of submissions.

It is not a great secret that this measure is not my personal, preferred solution for a sporting area in Auckland. But given that the stadium will be the premier stadium for the Auckland region for the next 30 to 50 years, I think it is very important that we get the governance right. The bill looks as though it is heading in the right direction. I want to watch it carefully, but I wish the promoter of the bill good speed with it so that we can make sure that these things are set up and simplified well before 2011. I think that if we can have the bill passed over the next 3 or 4 months, then Parliament would be doing Auckland and sport generally a good turn.

JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) Link to this

I rise to support the Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill. I commend the speaker who has just resumed his seat for his bipartisan approach to dealing with this legislation with my colleagues Murray McCully, the promoter of the bill, and Gerry Brownlee. The reason I support this bill is that it is of significant national importance—and it is for this reason as well that we have cross-party support—to change the 1955 Eden Park Trust Act to provide new governance arrangements that will help facilitate the holding of the 2011 World Cup, and also, I hope, the 2015 World Cricket Cup. When the stadium is completed it will hold 60,000 people.

I would probably be one of the few people in this Chamber who in 1956 sat on the sideline in Eden Park with a bunch of schoolkids, having been conveyed to Auckland by my father in his elderly car. I still have a vivid memory of Ron Jarden screaming down the touchline with the ball under his arm—

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

The Green Party is supporting the Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill. We support the proper development of Eden Park as a good stadium, not only for the people of Auckland but also for the people of New Zealand. I was in Taipei at the beginning of last year, and one of the billboards advertising some products had “Eden Park” on it, and it referred to New Zealand. I thought it gave an idea of the impact of rugby around the world, our expertise at the sport, and the way in which some of our grounds are highly respected around the world.

In some ways, it is good that commercial naming rights have never been given to Eden Park, unlike some other stadiums. It is an authentic and traditional name, and it is very well known. The ground is in the middle of the very green electorate of Mt Albert, and we have all sorts of Green members scurrying around that electorate at the present time, knocking on doors.

When we heard these plans for the Rugby World Cup at Eden Park, we thought the transport provision was quite good. There is a lot of work to go in getting proper public transport in Auckland, but there is a whole scheme to get punters to the park for the Rugby World Cup by bringing in the trains from the west, south, and east, and after the game they will go back the other way. So it is quite an efficient way of bringing people in by train, and there are bus parking areas in the new development, which I hope will be pretty full. So, hopefully, most people who go to the matches will go by public transport.

The Greens support the revamping of the trustee system. I think that is relevant given the money the Government has put into the development of the park for the Rugby World Cup.

I bring to the attention of the House the Attorney-General’s audit of this bill in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It is somewhat critical, but it is not a reason for the Green Party to vote against the bill; I am sure this can be ironed during the select committee’s deliberations. The Attorney-General says that the bill offends against section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, a provision that, among other things, relates to mental disability.

The Attorney-General says that people who have permanent assessments under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 are deemed not to be fully in control of their activities, including mental activities, and that it is fair enough to make that an approximation of their mental capacities to be a trust member and exclude them on those grounds. But in that Act there is a category of temporary orders, provisional orders, and they can come and go. They could be wrong in their assessment, and it would be wrong to remove a person from the trust under a temporary order under that Act. Hopefully, that will be tidied up at the select committee.

It is great to see the Attorney-General acting in a very proactive way. He has done a number of audits of bills in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which the Green Party, I think, takes more seriously than other parties in the House. We look forward to more of those orders—well we look forward to them in one respect, but we hope that the Government designs its bills so that these critical audits are not required.

The Green Party supports this bill. There are other problems with Eden Park and the Rugby World Cup. One of them is the Major Events Management Act, which was passed in the last Parliament. That Act prevents competitive advertising by people like McDonald’s, the sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, and the big multinationals. I think that the Assistant Speaker is indicating that my time is up, so I had better finish at this point.

NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki) Link to this

The Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill, which we are putting through the House this evening, is an important bill. I appreciate the Hon Trevor Mallard’s comments before, when he indicated that there is going to be wide-ranging support for this bill to go through the select committee process. I also acknowledge his indication that he would support an even shorter period for the select committee process.

In essence, this bill moves the Eden Park Trust Board from operating under the provisions the Act of 1955, through to where it needs to be in order to enable the redevelopment of the park for the Rugby World Cup to commence. When we look at that time line of 2011, we see just how close we are getting to it. So it is important that this bill gets through the House and into the select committee as quickly as possible. Judging by some of the speeches this evening, there is wide-ranging support for this bill.

When we think about the economic spin-offs that we will get from hosting the Rugby World Cup in 2011, we realise that it will be hugely significant. The figures that I have seen are that around $500 million of GDP will flow into our economy and several hundred million dollars of that will go into the Auckland economy, which is fantastic. I was fortunate enough to go to the Rugby World Cup final in South Africa in 1995, where we made the final, but, unfortunately for us, the All Blacks did not win. I recall the huge atmosphere in that ground, with over 100,000 people there. This bill will enable Eden Park to have a capacity of 60,000, which is fantastic. That will be important for us when we showcase our prowess on the rugby field and what we have to offer as a country.

This is an important bill, and I am sure that it will get through this evening. I commend this bill to the House.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this

Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy, kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei pō. Me tuku au i tētahi paku poroporoaki ki te tangata nei, ki a Marunui Murphy i hinga i nā tata nei. Ko ia te mea Māori tuatahi nei o te motu nō reira, me mihi ki a ia, me tuku ngā poroporoaki ki a ia kua ngaro nei i te tirohanga kanohi.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy, and to all of us this evening. I make a brief reference to this person Marunui Murphy, the first Māori mayor of the country, who passed away recently. And so I acknowledge and farewell him lost from view.]

Some unusual things have been apparently happening at Eden Park, without a rugby ball in sight. Last July, I am told, the Ngāti Whātua o Ōrākei chairman, Grant Hawke, and trustee Cyril Talbot launched the $240 million Eden Park redevelopment project with mihi, karakia, and a hīmene. Last month, international singer Hinewehi Mohi sang the song “Beneath the Māori Moon” to a recording of her great uncle George Nēpia. A book was launched at Mount Eden bringing together a first XV of Māori greats to launch a history of Māori rugby since the 1860s. My relation—a short, stocky fulla with short hair but still very good looking—by the name of Hika Reid, from my home town, was one of them.

What has all that got to do with the Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill? I suppose it is about knowing about all these histories, which are quite important. It is about knowing about the peoples and the stories. As other speakers before me have said, the bill simply amends the Eden Park Trust Act 1955 to establish new governance arrangements for Eden Park. As Mr Nathan Guy said, these amendments have all been made in preparation for the Rugby World Cup in 2011. The new governance arrangements were agreed to by the Government, the Eden Park Trust Board, and the Eden Park Board of Control.

The trust board is being set up “To promote, operate and develop Eden Park as a high quality multi-purpose stadium” for sports and “recreational, musical, and cultural events for the benefit of the public of the Region;”. That all sounds pretty good. The goal of the trust is “To administer Eden Park and the Trust Assets on a prudent commercial basis so that Eden Park is a successful financially autonomous community asset.” This is where the challenge comes. We in the Māori Party say that when the trust receives public money, it should be accountable to the public as well. With public money involved, there should be greater opportunities for the public to be involved.

Despite the policy uncertainties around Auckland governance arrangements, Māori—the Treaty partner—are actually a significant part of the public. I think we can all learn from Tukoroirangi Morgan’s reaction to the Government’s decision to reject the proposal to formalise Māori representation in Auckland. Only a brave person could rationalise how no seats for Māori can be better than three. Tukoroirangi’s analysis was that the decision to marginalise Māori to the sidelines showed that the National-ACT partnership was not prepared to enable a Māori voice as a legitimate voice amongst other power brokers and decision makers. That is how he saw it. Those are challenging words, of course, which should be considered carefully in other settings, such as in relation to this bill. The iwi of Tāmaki-makau-rau will thus be watching this bill with a bitter sense of disillusionment that the Auckland decision has been left hanging.

I will put certain things in context. The area we are talking about is what we call wāhi whakahirahira. The Ngāti Whātua people whakapapa to the site as an old wetlands where they used to harvest kai. There are other sites of significance around Tāmaki-makau-rau for the people of Tāmaki. The Eden Park area has close associations with the volcano Maungawhau. One of the springs that provided fresh water for those living on Maungawhau is named Te Ipo Pākore. It has a particular history link to the Waikato warrior Kāwharu during the Ngāti Whātua taua of retribution in the late 1700s. The point I make is that these particular areas of Tāmaki-makau-rau are important and cannot be treated simply as towns, suburbs, or boundaries. They have deep significance to the people of Ngāti Whātua.

I will make one particular point as I close this discussion. The development of Eden Park is not just about respecting and protecting the significance of the land to mana whenua; it also cuts right to the heart of issues around Māori representation. I would like to make one key point on the back of this bill from the Māori Party point of view. The reconciliation between kāwanatanga in the hands of the Crown as provided by article 1 and article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi—the guarantee of tino rangatiratanga over taonga tuku iho of the Māori people—is one of the most urgent challenges facing this nation. Of course, tension is inevitable when both parties of the Treaty want to occupy the same space. The key issue here is how we address this tension, and we can learn from the Auckland City proposal to know how not to get it wrong. Kia ora tātou.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) Link to this

It was an honour to introduce the Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill on behalf of the Hon Murray McCully. I rise to speak to summarise the benefits of the bill. As the Hon Trevor Mallard has already indicated, it has multipartisan support across the House. The bill moves the governance and operations of the Eden Park Trust from a private sphere towards a more public governance arrangement.

In 2007 the previous Government made a commitment to renovate Eden Park, and the National Government has undertaken to continue that commitment. The purpose of the bill is to promote, operate, and develop Eden Park, not just for the purposes of rugby and cricket but also for other recreational and sporting purposes, as well as for musical and artistic purposes. The new arrangement that is proposed really is to the benefit not just of Aucklanders and not just of the people in Mount Albert, but of all New Zealanders, in terms of enjoying what is a very iconic piece of real estate in Auckland.

I must acknowledge the role of the Auckland City Council—Mayor Banks and his council—in also working with central government to provide for the facilities around the park as we move towards one of the biggest events to be held in this country, the Rugby World Cup. There is a lot of development in the Auckland City area. The development of this treasure of a stadium is really a gift that the new council, which will be instituted next year, will be presented with. The stadium should be completed by October 2010.

This bill is the culmination of a lot of work that has been done behind the scenes by the Auckland Cricket Association, the Auckland Rugby Football Union, and the Crown, as well as by the currently existing trust board. I also must acknowledge Ngāti Whātua, to whom the previous speaker, Te Ururoa Flavell, has just alluded, and their role in shaping the future of the park. It will be an iconic place in our rich sporting history. I suppose that the question now is about how to get a rugby team and a cricket team that deserve to play on it week by week.

But ancillary developments are occurring in the area. That will be very good for the Mt Albert electorate—of course, there is a by-election going on there—and those developments will be particularly beneficial to the Kingsland and Sandringham shopping precincts. They should also complement the rail system that runs through Mount Albert to Eden Park and the developments that will occur there.

This is a bill that all of the parties represented in this House support tonight. I am proud to speak in reply to the speakers who have contributed to the first reading of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) Link to this

I seek leave to incorporate a date by which the Government Administration Committee must report the Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill back to the House of Wednesday, 29 July 2009. This earlier report-back date was not mentioned when moving the bill’s first reading, and I seek leave to do so now.