Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) Link to this

I move, That the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill be now read a second time. The House will today deal with this bill through its remaining stages, and as we begin the second reading it is after a very short select committee process at which some evidence was able to be gathered from people who have an interest in this bill.

The reality is that some 400,000 people have an interest in this bill, those people being the residents of the province of Canterbury. In particular, there are those residents who are part of the very broken up areas of Christchurch, where life at the moment is not particularly comfortable, nor is it easy. There are many others in the city who have uncertain employment futures as the devastation has wrecked workplaces and severely disrupted business activity in many cases. I hasten to add that a great deal of the city is still functioning and a large number of people are still very much gainfully employed, and one of the ways in which other parts of the country and indeed our offshore neighbours can help us is to continue trading with businesses that are operating in Christchurch, and I would definitely encourage them to do so.

This bill is designed to create an opportunity to move the recovery along as quickly as possible. Essentially, it recognises the fact that if we have widespread community engagement and a whole lot of activity about how things get put back together, unless there is a decision-making body that is able to deliver on some of those decisions and some of those desires, then not much is achieved. There will be debate about what international literature tell us about these events and the recovery from them, but in my estimate the thing that comes through most clearly is that too often a discussion held in a room with a lot of people putting forward ideas is confused for action. I sincerely think that having a structure that allows rapid decision-making that can give effect to decisions that the community is on board with is exactly what is required here. That does require the taking of powers that are somewhat extraordinary. But I think that anybody living in a broken house somewhere in Christchurch, dealing with a chemical toilet day by day, uncertain about their water supply, uncertain about their winter heating, uncertain about the condition of the roads outside, and uncertain about what a big rain will mean for them will care little for the academic exercise about how powers might be accumulated in order to deliver them a successful result.

This bill is an enabling framework setting out a range of powers that may need to be exercised during the recovery process. It does have significant checks and balances on the use of those powers, and the most clear check and balance is the requirement that all of those powers must be exercised in the recovery process and cannot step outside of that. What we have recognised with this bill is the need to restore social, economic, cultural, and environmental well-being in Greater Christchurch. Further, it recognises a need to facilitate, coordinate, and direct the planning, rebuilding, and recovery of Greater Christchurch, and it places importance on community participation in the planning of the recovery while balancing that against the need for timely, focused, and coordinated recovery processes.

I want to address some of the concerns that have been raised about the suggestion that we should not have a Government department running this but instead should create some sort of a new entity that sits at arm’s length from the Government. That is an interesting concept, but there is no more direct accountability than a Minister sitting on top of a Government department whereby there can be daily questions in the House, select committees can require people to come before them, etc. I say that the laughing and joking going on over on the other side of the House shows scant regard for the lives that so many people are living in difficult circumstances at the present time.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) Link to this

Let me say from the outset, despite the comments earlier on from Mr Brownlee, I suspect there is not one member of Parliament in the House who does not want to get this right—we all want to get this right. We all want as fast a pace of recovery as humanly possible. No one, in putting up amendments to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, whether they be from the political party of which I am a part or yesterday’s submitters, has put up amendments with the motivation to slow things down for our community. Mr Brownlee has an obsession with the framework that is, I think, to use his words, “pace versus taking time”. I think Mr Brownlee’s definition of the framework is that if we do not do it his way, the people of Canterbury will be delayed. I agree with him when he says people sitting in their houses are digging their lives out of their back lawn, without a chemical toilet, without the basic provisions of life, having been dislocated from their basic routines, and having lost their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods, and, tragically, family members and/or friends. The one thing they want, to use the phrase that Mr Brownlee has made a brand of, is for us to “get on with it”. I agree with Mr Brownlee in that respect.

But the other thing the people of Canterbury want—and they do not want this legislation and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, which is already in place through Order in Council, so, really, one could argue that this is rubber-stamping what Mr Brownlee wants, because he has already told us he has the numbers—is for us to get this right. If we do not get this legislation right, and if the authority that flow from it stuffs it up, then who will be the losers? I doubt whether they will be many people on either side of this House, who sit here with jobs, and with houses. I acknowledge that colleagues on both sides have some munted properties, but we can survive because we have a thing called income, we have means, we have mobility, and we have other resources. The big loser will not be Mr Brownlee—although maybe he will be in a political sense—it will be the people of Canterbury. I put this to Mr Brownlee: on many occasions through this process he has broken many commitments he has given to us about acting in a non-partisan way. I say that not out of self-interest; I say that we came to the table before this legislation was put up—

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) Link to this

I am always interested in the contrast between select committee work and speeches in the House; often one wonders where the marriage is between the two events. We are talking about something that is extremely important to all of us in this House: the rebuilding of Christchurch. I am sure that that is just as important to people in any position in the House. It is the most important thing we can do. We are not rebuilding just the body of Christchurch, as we were told yesterday by some of the submitters, but also the mind, the heart, and the spirit of the Canterbury people.

It was a moving occasion to be part of the parliamentary committee that was established to hear the evidence given. This issue reaches across the South Island to have an effect on the West Coast. It reaches down to have an effect in Southland and Otago, and up in Marlborough—everywhere. Christchurch, our second-largest city, is in desperate need of assistance. The spirit of the people, though, is strong, very strong.

When the second earthquake occurred I remember getting calls from people overseas who wanted to know what was going on. Some interviewers from the UK said: “We understand it was chaos.” I said: “Well, it was a big shake—about 45 seconds.” But they asked: “How long did the chaos last?”. So I said: “Well, about 45 seconds.” They said “No, no, but what about the chaos in the city?”. I said: “Well, New Zealanders don’t do chaos very well. They are not very good at chaos. They get organised quickly.”

After spending an hour in Christchurch yesterday, and visiting the places that have been really badly affected, one can see the organisation, the spirit, and the strength of the community coming through. Then we had the opportunity to meet people who wished to give us evidence and contribute to the bill. Collaboration is very important.

There has been criticism—and I acknowledge the criticism—that the time lines were tight. We have just heard a fairly spirited and political speech from Mr Cosgrove, who was a member of the committee, and I thank all members of the committee for the way they applied themselves. We were relatively free of partisan comment and activity. Everybody applied themselves heavily to the task, and I thank the members from all sides of the House for the way they did their work.

The evidence we received was, we agreed, of a remarkably high quality. I think that one of the crucial points that need to be considered in this whole business is that delay does not equate to quality of product. So the suggestion that we should have longer, that we should have a further week, and all that sort of thing, would not, I think, alter the strength of the submissions we received very much at all, because the quality was high—the quality was high, and that was agreed. We had a short, tight timetable, and the committee worked well to meet the requirements of that. The evidence was strong, and I understand that it is already being included in possible changes to the bill.

We heard from people in Wellington, and we heard from people in Christchurch. They had a singular quality that came through all the time: sincerity of approach. They were most sincere that they wanted to do the best they could. Even amidst the rhetoric that we heard earlier from a very experienced speaker, that message still came through. We all want to do the best we can. For me, it is very important that we concentrate on that, because this is not just the main Government priority for this year; I suggest that it is the main parliamentary priority for this year.

When we debated the reform of the Resource Management Act last year, we saw the consequences, the difficulties, and the delays that can occur with legislation that has passed its use-by date. We have seen that normal features of legislation can be disruptive and delaying in making the sorts of changes and decisions that have to be made in order to get Christchurch on the move.

We see the contrast, too, and I have to say that although I have never met the gentleman, I hold him in very, very high regard. I am talking about Roger Sutton, the chief executive of Orion. He is the man who got the power back on. He used phrases such as: “It ain’t pretty but it works.”, in respect of overhead cables instead of underground ones. I would not suggest, at all, that he manipulated any permit arrangements or anything, but fast-tracking certainly got the work done, and this bill is designed to use the Roger Sutton approach to getting things done—which is so much a New Zealand concept that it needs the opportunity to be expressed within the community in Christchurch.

We have to enable community participation in planning the recovery of affected communities, without impeding them, in a focused, timely, and expedited manner. I had an enjoyable time in having brief conversations with people who came to the committee not just to make submissions but to wish us well with the work we were doing, to thank us for coming, and to express their concentrated appreciation of what was happening. Christchurch is strong, Christchurch is well, and Christchurch needs the assistance of this bill.

I appeal to members on all sides of the House to perhaps suppress the understandable rhetoric they feel—because this is very personal and emotional for the people who have representation down there. Let us concentrate on the real need, let us concentrate on Christchurch’s need, and let us concentrate on getting this bill in place. Thank you.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) Link to this

I am pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will begin by acknowledging the member who has just resumed his seat. I have spent a bit of time in Mr Auchinvole’s company over the last 3 or 4 days, and I have a great deal of admiration for the way he chaired the Local Government and Environment Committee. There was a lot of tension around the debate, and a lot of frustrated submitters—a lot of frustrated members of the committee, actually—dealing with an issue that is really important to everyone who was on the select committee. Mr Auchinvole treated us all in a manner that was respectful, and I think he engendered better behaviour as a result of his chairing; I want to acknowledge that.

Members from our side of the House are totally committed to the Canterbury recovery, but what the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery has failed to understand, and, annoyingly, despite the best efforts of many submitters, what the majority of members on the other side of the select committee table have failed to grasp, is that recovery is about more than speedy demolition, removal of rubble, the rebuild of infrastructure, and the rebuild of buildings. Recovery is about ensuring that the residents of Canterbury are part of the vision of the future of their area—of their suburb, their community, their city, their region—and every one of us needs to have a strong voice in that recovery. It is about ensuring that as we look at what is going to happen to streets, suburbs, and shopping centres, we take this opportunity to ensure that the current inequities we have in our city are addressed, and that we give everyone a better place to stand as we recover from these earthquakes.

In my view the Minister does not understand that fundamental difference. The National members of the Local Government and Environment Committee did not appear to understand the difference between rebuild and recovery, and therefore this is a tragic, wasted opportunity not just to get it right but to get it better. I hope that as we progress this legislation today, as we go through the Committee stage, the Minister will look seriously at the amendments we produce. I hope he will do as he said he would do when he gave us a commitment and look seriously at the recovery aspects of the submitters’ proposals.

This has been a very unusual process, but, as members have already stated, these are very unusual times. There is no normal any more in Canterbury. We talk about a new normal, and I guess the select committee process was a good example of how to do things quite differently. It is quite unusual that we did not have a bill referred to us. We did not have advisers, which is very unusual. So when submitters appeared before us we had no officials who could explain why they had put X, Y, and Z in the legislation to answer the questions from the submitters. We did not have any of the usual technical advice available to the select committee, and we have gone through this process frustrated as a result.

The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery came to the select committee and gave us over an hour of his time. He was able to answer some of the questions. He assured us when he left that he would get back to us with other answers, and I am sure he will. I can see that the Minister is nodding. I am very pleased about that, because we are not sure which of the unanswered questions will be addressed in the Supplementary Order Paper. Another unusual incidence is trying to give a second reading speech about possible amendments as the Minister is giving out his Supplementary Order Paper responses.

The point of that comment is to emphasise my concern about this entire process. I think it is better to take a little more time, particularly in preparing legislation such as this, to get it right rather than to rush it and get it wrong. The politics of that would be entirely borne by Mr Brownlee, but in my view the future recovery of Canterbury is far more important than any political muck the Minister might wear as a result of getting things wrong in this legislation. That is why I urged that a little more time be taken so that submitters could consider the bill, so that the Minister could consider the submissions seriously, and so that more people could have an input into what is a very, very powerful new organisation, and we as a Parliament could send a message to Canterbury that we have a united voice in supporting the recovery of Canterbury. In my view that would be ideal. But, instead, we got a hotchpotch, last-minute, rushed, frustrated process without the select committee even having the opportunity to have technical advice.

We had some high-quality submissions. The submitters looked quite exhausted. Some of them had literally spent the night prior to the select committee hearing in Christchurch preparing their submission. That is not a good process. It is not a good process for people to get a bill at 4 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and be expected to appear at a select committee between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. the following day. That is a very poor process and it reflects badly on this Parliament. It reflects badly on how we view the concerns of submitters. I think it is disrespectful to expect people to prepare a considered and thoughtful submission with that sort of notice.

Some of the submissions were very serious. In fact, the submission from the New Zealand Law Society—a highly regarded organisation—said that one of the clauses, clause 70, gives very wide powers for Orders in Council to override enactments, contrary to the rule of law and good legislation principles, and is therefore undesirable. That is a very strong comment, and others were equally concerned. Although the submitters all said that they support a timely process for the strong recovery of Canterbury, they all also expressed concern about the rushed nature of this process.

The other big concern I have, alongside my concern about the rushed process, is the lack of genuine community engagement. If we do not take the people of Canterbury along the path of recovery then in 5, 10, or 20 years’ time the people of Canterbury will not be as passionate about and proud of their region as we currently are. They will not debate vigorously the merits of any adjustment. They will not have the sorts of debates we have about the Square, one-way streets, different buildings, or whether the fountain in the botanical gardens is a certain colour. We will not have that sort of passionate debate, because people will not feel part of their city and their region. We can debate more rigorously about details of our city than any other part of our country, and I want that passion to remain. Other people are amazed by it. Other people sometimes laugh at it. They find it extraordinary. But it is part of the passion of our city, and without community involvement as part of the recovery we will lose that passion.

Mr Brownlee’s lack of understanding of how fast communities can engage, and how seriously people want to do that, is demonstrated in the legislation by a clause that says we will have community engagement but it cannot be at the cost of timely recovery. We all know that, but it is insulting to the communities to treat them as something that will slow down and hinder a strong recovery. In fact, the Waimakariri District Council put it very well in its submission when it said quite clearly that not only had the community’s involvement not slowed down the process but also, as the mayor described it, it had made the recovery enduring.

Without the people of Canterbury going along this path of recovery it will not be a sustainable recovery. It may be a recovery where we get buildings demolished and rubble removed quickly, and where we get our infrastructure rebuilt—we all want that; we all are committed to that path—but what has to be included in this is the voice of the people. No amount of rubble removal, no amount of rapid demolition and rebuild, can give Canterbury the spirit that we need for a strong recovery. Only the voice of the people can do that.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) Link to this

I rise to take a call in the second reading of the all-important Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will begin by adding my own thanks in the first instance to Mr Chris Auchinvole for his astute and sensitive chairmanship of the Local Government and Environment Committee hearings, such as we had. I agree with Ruth Dyson that it made a critical difference to the manner in which we were able to get through our work. That was in no small measure due to the personal skills of the chairman, and I thank him for that. I disagree with only one thing, which he said just a moment ago, to the effect that he saw no causal relationship between the time allocated for submitters and the quality of the submissions. Normal human nature makes it very clear there is a close causal correlation between the amount of time one has to make a submission and the quality of that submission. The fact that the submissions were of such high quality was a testimony to the skills of the submitters but not to the integrity of the process, and I think we need to draw that distinction.

But I thank him for his astute chairmanship.

I also want to pay personal tribute to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. I did so in the select committee and I wish to do so again here. Our criticisms of this bill are in no way intended to attribute any issues of personal trust to the Minister. We recognise the integrity of all members of the House and the Government and also the hard work he has put in to this bill. The issues of trust, as I said in the first reading, are irrelevant. The Green Party is quite critical of both the process behind this bill and the substance, and we will have more to say about that, but it does not attend to personal issues.

Finally, I pay a word of thanks to the officials who have backed up the Minister. I have seen them in action in the last 2 weeks or so. I will not name them because they would be embarrassed, but they know who they are and I pay tribute to their skill and their perseverance. The Minister has just distributed a very detailed analysis of the submissions. Obviously the officials have worked through the night on this, and on a very quick, cursory reading it looks very thorough and very professional. It is a tribute to the officials working under the Minister to be able to produce that in a short time.

As I more or less intimated in the first reading, all of this is redolent of our September experience but it is more critical and it is more intense. So our obligation and responsibility to get this right is heightened, and I doubt there will be any legislation this year in which there is a greater obligation to get this right for the people not only of Canterbury but of New Zealand as well.

We said in our minority report that went into the select committee report that we continue to have concerns both about process and substance. The Green Party has never been convinced that the legislation for the recovery of Greater Christchurch needed to be taken under urgency. It is important, of course, to scrutinise the reasons for any extension of a state of emergency, and I take the point by the Minister that he and his Government are under pressure to end the state of emergency. We, in fact, were querying the criteria for it, and so on; that is the normal requirement on our part. Due provision is rightly in place to restrict the scope and period of such civil defence emergencies. But in our view there is a stronger justification for extending the state of emergency for several more weeks to allow the normal passage of this Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill under normal parliamentary scrutiny than there is to circumvent proper public and parliamentary scrutiny of the bill, which contains such far-reaching measures. The absence of adequate consultation with the responsible entities or expert input through the proper select committee hearings is to the serious detriment of this draft legislation.

We acknowledge that the task of recovery in Christchurch is massive. We acknowledge that the purposes of this bill are appropriate. We acknowledge that there is a role for central government, an essential role for central government. It does not follow that that role has to be a dominant one.

We see potentially three phases in the response to the earthquake. There is, first, the emergency period, there is a recovery period, and there is a rebuild. In the emergency period central government naturally has the dominant role. During the immediate crisis—the emergency—when the tanks and the soldiers are in the streets, the urban search and rescue teams are feverishly retrieving survivors and bodies, and the demolition squads are levelling buildings under urgency, civil defence under emergency powers are appropriate. That period does not last for ever. It has been extended from 22 February to 16 April. The civil defence controller is in charge. That is appropriate. The representation of central government is through him. Local municipalities such as the Christchurch City Council play a secondary role during that period. The search and rescue period is essentially ended. It has been there for almost 2 months. It is entirely possible for it to continue for, say, 2 more weeks so this bill can be decently guided through proper parliamentary passage.

We then move into the recovery period. That involves the reinstallation of utilities: housing, power, water, and sewerage. That is the natural role for the utility operators acting under the authority of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. During this period—let us call it a 9-month period; it is there in the bill—there is the requirement to develop the strategy and the plans. In our view, during the recovery period, the lead should be taken by the local authorities—Christchurch City Council for Christchurch.

I recognise that the bill acknowledges that the lead role should be taken by the council but there should be not only the lead role but sovereign authority on decision making, in our view. That is where we differ from the Government. Under the bill sovereignty in terms of final sign-off resides with central government. Whatever happened to the principle of subsidiarity? We can suspend subsidiarity during the emergency period; we should not continue that suspension of subsidiarity during the recovery or during the rebuild.

Finally we would have the period of rebuild itself—the third phase. That will take, let us say, 4 years under the 5-year period we see here in the bill. Why does the rebuild of Christchurch have to be operationalised under the sovereignty of central government? There is no reason for that.

We will be submitting a series of Supplementary Order Papers to remedy the deficiencies in this bill as we see them. They derive essentially from the question of who has the sovereign authority during those three phases to sign-off on decision making. We will be submitting Supplementary Order Paper 232 on the issue of public engagement pertaining to clause 6 to make the community forum more representative. We will require that community membership be confirmed by parliamentary resolution, that the Minister must heed the advice of the cross-party group, and that the Minister will have an obligation under the statute to consult with affected communities. We will be submitting Supplementary Order Papers on the question of powers in respect of clause 15 and clauses 70, 71, and 72. Ruth Dyson has already mentioned clause 70 and the Law Society’s concern over the fact that it is contrary to the rule of law and proper principles of legislation, and that, therefore, it is undesirable. For the Green Party it is not simply undesirable; it is unacceptable if that is the case. We will be submitting further Supplementary Order Papers on a variety of clauses, clauses 10, 30, 24, and 27, to ensure the powers currently under the bill are not excessive to the purposes of the legislation. Thank you.

Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) Link to this

I rise to take a short call on this second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, on behalf of the ACT Party. I have participated in the process at the Local Government and Environment Committee for the hearing of evidence, as we have gone through this bill under urgency. When it comes to principles, the ACT Party would not normally be in favour of the broad sweeping powers we see in this bill, and under normal circumstances we would raise a large number of concerns. But these are not normal circumstances; we have had a terrible coinciding of principle and circumstance as a result of a terrible, terrible natural disaster. We have heard not just as part of the proceedings of this particular bill but since the first earthquake on 4 September of the situation the people in Canterbury are facing, and will face for a large number of years yet. Although I was not there for the particular submission, one submitter yesterday said that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and that is exactly what this Parliament is faced with in this particular instance.

The ACT Party is supporting the provisions in this bill. I particularly enjoyed the select committee process, when we had robust discussion on a large number of the clauses, with varying views being put on the table. I had some concerns, as I know that Labour members also did, about some process issues. I felt it was unfortunate that technical advice was not quite as forthcoming as it may have been in the first instance. It is difficult to make good decisions when we do not have the availability of all the advice we need. However, we worked our way through those issues, I believe, and I think that it was very good of the Minister to make a submission to the select committee. That certainly helped with our working our way through many of the provisions. I do not want to talk in detail about the clauses. I think there has been plenty of discussion already about them, and the Committee stage is the appropriate time to have those discussions and debates.

But I come back, always, to broad principles. It is incumbent on us to do our very best for the people of Christchurch. Although this is a little outside the scope of the bill, I suppose, I tell the House that the ACT Party’s view is that in order to fix Christchurch we will need to fix New Zealand, and that we will all look with great interest at what happens in the Budget. New Zealand is facing difficult circumstances, quite aside from the natural disasters we have suffered in the last year. The ACT Party will have a lot to say, particularly about making wise fiscal decisions for the country, in order to be in very good shape to help Christchurch and Canterbury to the best of our ability.

I say again that the ACT Party supports these measures. Under normal circumstances we would have a lot more to say, in a negative sense, about them, but I come back to the point that extraordinary times do indeed call for extraordinary measures.

NICKY WAGNER (National) Link to this

I am very pleased to support the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill at its second reading. The Local Government and Environment Committee has spent the last 2 days listening to evidence on this bill. We listened to 17 oral submissions and received 23 submissions in total, and I am very pleased to report that all submitters saw the need for this legislation. It was the general opinion, as we have just heard from Heather Roy, that the extraordinary events in Canterbury need an extraordinary legislative response. As the New Zealand Law Society stated: “The Canterbury earthquakes and their aftermath justify some sort of emergency legislation to facilitate the speedy restoration of the region. That response however still requires transparency and accountability. The Bill largely meets these objects.”

The Legislation Advisory Committee referred to previously established principles required in disaster response legislation, and commented that this bill ticks all the boxes. Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu is confident that statutory centralisation of powers is necessary in this instance. They said that “International experience in recovering from natural disaster demonstrates the need for dedicated leadership; clear distribution of responsibilities between entities; clear accountabilities to the people and business of Christchurch; funding and resources from central government.”, and I agree with them. There is no doubt that the people of Christchurch want to get on with recovering from the last three earthquakes as quickly as possible, and the powers of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority are there to help us achieve that.

But with powers come responsibilities, and this bill includes checks that balance those powers. Firstly and most important, the powers can be used only for earthquake recovery—only for earthquake recovery. Also, the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery is fully accountable to Parliament, and that means to all parties in this House. He has to report every 3 months, and every year the whole Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority organisation has to be reviewed. There are the Order in Council review panel, chaired by a retired High Court judge, the community forum, and the cross-party forum, plus every Christchurch and Canterbury person has their democratic right to speak out, personally or in the media, to hold the Minister to account and to hold the authority to account, and Cantabrians are well-known for their robust, passionate debate on anything and everything. So in this extraordinary situation the bill grants extraordinary powers, but they are not unchecked. Furthermore, it was noted by the Law Society that the previous legislation, which was put in place after the 4 September earthquake, had not been abused. There is no reason to think legislation will be abused this time.

Many groups have spoken about the need for public consultation or, rather, public engagement—that is, the public of Christchurch being involved in the decision making—and those of us who live in the area know that the people of our communities are very keen to contribute. They want to contribute all their ideas to the rebuild. This is our home, and with the opportunity to rebuild it, to rebuild it better, to rebuild it safer, and to rebuild it more beautifully, we all want to have a part in the process. The Minister is very aware of that need. He told us just last night while giving evidence that if we are to achieve anything in Christchurch and Canterbury, the people have to be on board. People want and need the rebuilds, and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority will help them happen. All the work of the authority is being done in partnership with the existing democratically elected councils and community boards, and the central business district recovery plan must be notified publicly.

I have lived in Christchurch and Canterbury all my life. Right now all my energy, like the Government’s, is focused on rebuilding the city I know and love. I believe that the bill provides the framework to get our city and our province moving. I am voting for this bill because it will be good for Christchurch, good for Canterbury, and good for our communities, and it will enable us to restore not just the infrastructure of our place but also the heart and soul of our home. Thank you.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) Link to this

I will make two preliminary statements, and they are the following. Firstly, I reject the assertion that disagreeing with the Government means that we are not treating this matter seriously. We are treating this matter seriously. Secondly, I reject the assertion that advocating for my constituents is playing politics. In fact I resent that suggestion, as do my constituents, who are frustrated by the fact that their MP is treated with such disregard when advocating on their behalf.

I will reflect on a couple of elements of what occurred yesterday with regard to submissions on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. There was some criticism of the lack of notice and the failure of the Government to provide access to the draft legislation. I believe that that criticism has great merit, but that people came to the table with goodwill.

I will comment, though, on the Christchurch City Council’s submission. I was disappointed that the mayor and the chief executive of the largest council affected by this legislation chose not to change other commitments that they had in the 4½ hours that we had available. They had the choice of any time within those 4½ hours to come to the Local Government and Environment Committee, but they did not choose to rearrange their other commitments in order to come to the select committee. Instead they sent the deputy mayor and an in-house counsel, who was quite a good person to have there. They could have brought him anyway, but he was in the unique position of having seen the bill about a week before the legislation was introduced. The chief executive had been allowed to show it to one member of staff, and he was that lucky member of staff. His contribution was very valuable as a result of that, and I place that on record.

I also place on record how valuable the contributions were from the individual councillors who came to plead for community engagement to be at the heart of the process of Canterbury’s recovery: Chrissie Williams, Yani Johanson, Helen Broughton, and Glenn Livingstone. I say to all four of them, well done. They were doing what their constituents elected them to do: to represent their interests in the best possible way that they could, under very trying, difficult circumstances. In saying that, I recognise the fact that not one of those councillors had seen the legislation other than on the website on the previous day.

But to read in the Press this morning that Christchurch City Council had no idea of what it had done wrong after the first earthquake beggars belief, which is why the chief executive should have fronted to the select committee yesterday. I will be tabling four pieces of correspondence—in fact, I will be tabling a number of pieces of correspondence over the next few hours. But in the second reading I will be tabling four letters.

On 4 February I wrote a letter to Tony Marryatt, Chief Executive of the Christchurch City Council, and I copied it to every single one of the councillors who sit around that table. I will cover just quickly what I covered in that letter. The first item was recovery planning, and I highlighted the fact that “As you are aware local authorities have a leadership role under the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Regime with respect to the recovery effort. I understand that in the case of this event the CCC has had to wait to see what response the government would give to EQC’s recommendations on the ‘Stage 2 report’.” But the council did nothing before that, and it did nothing after that. I went through how it was really important that the council use the template for a recovery action plan on the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management website if it did not know how to do such a plan, and how our mutual constituents would gain a sense of what is planned and who would be accountable for meeting milestones if it adopted that simple process.

I then went on to say “I am aware of the email that you sent councillors where you said that the council is participating in the CERC task groups that have been formed as if that absolved you of your responsibility to develop a recovery action plan for the city—the other affected Councils”— Waimakariri District Council and Selwyn District Council—“haven’t adopted this attitude, and are getting on with the job.” I then went on to say “I have had an email from a constituent this morning asking why Kaiapoi is proceeding first—I will be replying that the Waimakariri District Council is doing an excellent job of recovery planning. You have said that the CCC is treating the recovery as ‘business as usual’, with the exception that you have geared up to provide both the infrastructure rebuild and resource and building consent extra demand. If the CCC thinks that this is your sole role and that recovery can be treated as ‘business as usual’ then you have read none of the literature, you have not considered recovery best practice, nor have you looked at how other local authorities have dealt with disasters”. I used the example of Tauranga post the landslip, and the fact the Terry Wynyard, who was locally engaged with the Earthquake Commission, could have been available to lead the recovery effort. He had led the effort in Tauranga and was available in Christchurch to talk to the city council. So I have actually done what I said I would do: I have worked behind the scenes to give the council all the information that it needs.

I then went on to talk about the fact that the council had made a number of decisions that were predicated on the wrong information, and said I felt it should engage with the Earthquake Commission and the insurers in a meaningful way, so that we could get on with the rebuild part after the first earthquake. I talked about the council’s rates rebate policy missing the mark. I talked about Variation 48 to the district plan becoming operative on 31 January, and I raised several questions about how section 72 of the Building Act would be applied.

I have done my job as a local representative of the people of Christchurch East, and I resent the fact that the city council, through its mayor, then went public to say we were making political capital out of the situation. I wrote to the mayor on 7 February 2011. I said: “I decided not to be offended by your statements about some city MPs trying to make political capital out of the situation, because I am aware that you too have been stressed by the earthquake, coupled with the enormity of the task that this city must confront.” I then went on to explain why the council had missed the boat in terms of its obligations regarding the recovery. It seems to me that the fact that the response effort of everyone was absolutely brilliant—it was textbook; it was fantastic; nobody could criticise the response in the wake of either earthquake—masked the fact that the city council has completely failed the ratepayers of its constituency by not doing recovery at all. It did not even start the recovery process after the first earthquake, and we have lost valuable time as a result of that.

I will table two other letters. One is the letter I wrote to the Hon Gerry Brownlee on 27 September last year. This is how I concluded the letter, and I referenced it in the letter to the mayor: “Thank you for what you are doing to lead the recovery effort. It is a major challenge and I remain committed to assisting you in any way I can.” He wrote back to me on Christmas Eve, and said to me that my comments about how we could have community consultation and communication were well made, and that he would refer those comments through to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission. I have done everything I can to work behind the scenes to look after the interests of my constituents.

The Minister talks about the people who are living in damaged houses on damaged streets with limited services, and who are uncertain of the future of their properties. He is describing my neighbours. The only reason I do not include myself in that description is that I have some resilience factors that some of my neighbours do not. I am mortgage free. I have a good, uninterrupted income. I have the ability to make choices that are not available to others. I can even sneak away for a quake break and pay for it myself. The Minister says that if we do not agree with this model, then we are imposing a delay on resolving the future of my neighbours. I reject that. How the land report information is released to my constituents must be respectful and must allow for an opportunity to engage that must be better than the handling of the release of both the stage one and stage two reports.

I repeat the offer that I have made to the Minister to continue to work with him, but I have to say—and I have said this in writing to the Government—that trust has diminished, and tolerance levels are much lower than they were after the first earthquake. But I will help. I will help, because this issue is too important for politics, and too important for us to get it wrong. There is a need to balance speed and deliberation, but community participation actually promotes the focused, timely, and expedited recovery that the Government says in this bill it wants to achieve. That is why the community must be at the heart of the recovery. I seek leave to table the letters that I referred to in my address.

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

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker; kia ora tātou katoa. Mōrena ki a tātou katoa i tēnei ata i a tātou e wānanga nei i te āhuatanga o tēnei o ngā pire hōu e pā ana ki Ōtautahi. Ko te wāhi ki a au hei whaiwhai haere, ko te āhuatanga o te kōrero o te Hōnore Gerry Brownlee i a ia e kōrero ana mō te taha ki a au ki te Ao Māori. Ka mihi ki a ia mō tāna whakanui i te wāhi ki a Ngāi Tahu, Kai Tahu rānei, i a rātou e whakakorikori nei i a rātou anō, e toro atu te ringa ki uta ki tai, ki wīwī, ki wāwā, ki te iwi Pākehā, ki te iwi Māori rānei nā runga i te hiahia ki te āwhina, tētahi ki tētahi, ko te tautoko a tētahi ki tētahi. E tika ana ki a Kai Tahu, ko rātou tērā i whakapau kaha ki te āwhina i te hunga e rongo nei i te ngau o te mamae, otirā, ko rātou i rongo rānei i te ngau o mate. Ko rātou te hunga i toro atu te ringa ki ngā iwi katoa o te motu. Tērā pea nā ngā iwi i toro atu te ringa ki a Kai Tahu ki te kī ko ngā mamae e pā ana ki a koe Ngāi Tahu, he mamae anō rā ka pā mai ki a au ki a Te Arawa, ki a au ki a Tainui, ki a au ki Te Tai Tokerau. Nō reira, ka pai tērā āhuatanga o te Ao Māori i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa.

E ai ki ngā kōrero, ehara i te mea e tika ana māku a Ngāi Tahu e kōrero ēngari, ko tāku e mōhio nei ko Ngāi Tahu te hunga kāinga, te hunga ahi kā, arā noa atu ētahi ēngari, me pērā rawa te kōrero. Ko te hunga e noho mai rarā i Otautahi, he hītori anō rā tō rātou mō te āhuatanga o te noho ki reira. Arā nō te kōrero “Kā Pākihi whakatekateka o Waitaha”, arā nō te kōrero “Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū”, ēnei āhuatanga katoa he ingoa e mōhiotia ana i roto o tērā takiwā. E ai ki taku mōhio kua roa tētahi iwi e noho mai ana ki reira. E ai ki ngā kōrero o te Ao Māori, e 700 tau te roa o tā rātou noho ki reira. Ā, ka eke atu a Kāti Māmoe, ka eke atu ki reira anō hoki, nō reira, kua noho tahi rātou ki reira mō ngā tau e hia kē nei. E ai ki ngā kōrero, kua puta mai ngā ingoa pēnei i a “Turakautahi”. He rangatira o roto o Ngāi Tūahuriri. Ko ia tērā i noho nei i te Pā o Kaiapoi tērā takiwā. I roto i ngā kōrero kua tae mai ki a au mō Ngāti Huikai, tō rātou rangatira, toa nei a Tautahi, whakatū i tana kāinga, i tana pā tūwatawata, ki tērā takiwā o Ōtautahi. Tae atu ki te wā i puta te kōrero, ko Ōtautahi, hei whaiwhai haere i tērā o ngā rangatira o Ngāti Huikai.

Nō reira, ko te tikanga o taku kōrero he kī atu, āe, he wāhi anō tō te Ao Māori kei tērā takiwā. Kai wareware i a tātou tērā wāhi. Mai rā anō i tā rātou noho ki reira tae rā nō ki ngā rā tata kua hipa ake. Ka hoki rā anō ki te āhuatanga o te pakanga nui nei o te ao, te pakanga ki tāwāhi. Ko te Ao Māori anō rā tērā i haere ki tāwāhi ka hoki mai. I āwhina anō rā ki te whāngai, ki te tuku i ngā painga ki ngā hōia i haere ki te tāwāhi ki ngā pakanga nui o te ao. I reira anō hoki te Ao Māori.

Nō nā tata nei e kī ana te kōrero, ka mate te kāinga tahi, ka ora te kāinga rua. He kupu kōrero tērā, he whakataukī e kōrero ana mō te āhuatanga o Ōtautahi tonu. Ka hinga tētahi kāinga, ā, kua hūnuku atu ki te kāinga rua. Nō reira, ēnei kōrero katoa ka hoki mai anō rā ki a au i a tātou e kōrero nei mō tētahi o ngā kaupapa i te ata nei. Nō nā tata nei, anō hoki kua kōrero mātou o te Pāti Māori mō te kaha tautoko o ngā iwi katoa tae atu ki ngā wātene Māori tonu kua tae atu ki Ōtautahi mai i ngā tōpito katoa ki te tautoko i a Kai Tahu, ō ētahi rohe kē i Tākitimu, i a au i a Te Arawa, i Te Tai Tokerau kua hūnuku atu ki reira mō te wā poto. Kua hūnuku ngā ringa raupā o ngā tari hauora ki Ōtautahi tonu ki te āwhina i a rātou. Nō reira, ahakoa kāre au i tae atu ki ngā kōrero i nanahi nei i Ōtautahi, ki te select committee, kāre au i rongo i ngā kōrero. Kua rongo au i ngā kōrero o tēnā, o tēnā, o tēnā i te ata nei ki te kī, āe, i tae atu te hapori ki te whakatakoto i ō rātou nawe. I tōna mutunga mai, kei muri mātou i te Kāwanatanga Nāhinara i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa i te mea, kei te mōhio tonu, arā nō te iwi o Ngāi Tahu e noho nei i roto i te uauatanga. Me pērā rawa te kōrero.

Nō reira, ko tā mātou ko te kī atu, kāti, kua roa a Ngāi Tahu me ētahi atu e noho ana ki reira. E reka ana ki a mātou te āhuatanga o te kōrero a te Minita a Gerry Brownlie, ka whai wāhi a Ngāi Tahu ki roto i ngā kōrero ka puta ā ngā rā kai mua i te aroaro me ētahi Māori anō rā. Ko Te Rūnanga tonu, ko te tikanga ka noho nei i runga i tēnei o ngā rōpū ka whakahaere take nei hei whakaora anō rā i a Ōtautahi, ka mutu, ki taku mōhio ka eke anō rā a Rahui Katene, to mātou mema Pāremata mō tērā rohe ki roto i te kāhui o ngā pāti o te Whare Pāremata ki reira. He mea pai tērā.

Nō reirā, he paku kōrero ki te kī atu, kai wareware ko te reo o te Ao Māori ki reira i roto i tērā tāone o Ōtautahi me te kī atu, kai muri, kai mua, kai ngā taha a Ngāi Tahi i ngā whiriwhiringa katoa mō te aha? Na runga i te whakaaro i tipu mai ai tō rātou whakapapa i reira. Ko te ahi kā, ko rātou tērā nā te āhuatanga o tā rātou here ki te whenua kai reira. Nō reira, me whai wāhi rātou ki roto i ngā nekeneke o te wā. Kei te tautoko ake i te hiahia o te Minita kia wāhi rātou i roto i ngā nekeneke o tēnei pire, me te tūmanako ia, tērā pea ka āta wetewete i te hōhonutanga o te pire ā kō ake nei i te wāhanga komiti. Nō reira, kia ora tātou.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to us all. Good morning to all, as we debate aspects of this new bill relating to Christchurch, at this hour. The part of the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s speech that I want to follow is where I and Māoridom fit into the scheme of things. I commend him for acknowledging the part that Ngāi Tahu or Kai Tahu has played, as they roused themselves by extending a hand in all directions to non-Māori and Māori people in their desire to help and to support one another. For Kai Tahu, it was the right thing to do. So there they were, hard at work giving assistance to those suffering from injuries, and in the case of loss of life. They were the ones who extended a hand to all the people of the nation. Tribes, on the other hand, extended a hand to Kai Tahu, saying: “Pain suffered by you, Kai Tahu, affects me: Te Arawa, Tainui, and Te Tai Tokerau, as well.” So that aspect of Maoridom is wonderful, in the deliberations.

Customary lore states that it is not for me to speak for Ngāi Tahu, but I know for a fact that they are the ahi kā, the burning fires of occupation. There is much other anecdotal lore that suggests this, as well. The ones living in Christchurch can historically vouch for their presence there. Take the reference to “The wetlands and plains of Canterbury: Kā Pākihi Whakatekateka o Waitaha”. Here is another one: “Banks Peninsula: Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū”. All these kinds of references are widely known geographical terms in that district. To my understanding, a tribe has lived there for a long period of time. According to stories of the Māori World, that tribe has been there for 700 years. Kāti Māmoe migrated and settled there for a very long time, as well. According to stories, the place name “Turakautahi” came from a Ngāi Tūāhuriri chief. He established Kaiapoi Pā in that area. In the stories that came to me about Ngāti Huakai, their chief—a warrior, Tautahi—set up a settlement in that part of Christchurch, and Ōtautahi became the Māori name for Christchurch, to acknowledge him.

So the nub of my address is that, yes, Māoridom has a historical connection to that place. We must never lose sight of the fact that Kai Tahu has been there a long time and continues to be there, right up to the present. The circumstances of this presence go back to the great wars of the world, the overseas battles that Māoridom took a part in and returned from. They also helped by providing sustenance to the troops, and supported the war effort in the battles of the world. Māoridom was there, as well.

The proverb about a first home being no more, and a second one rising up in its place, continues to apply to Christchurch. When a house collapses, the family shifts to a second one. So all these matters came back to mind this morning when we talked about one of the proposals. It was just recently that we of the Māori Party talked about the strong support provided by all tribes, even the Māori wardens, who arrived in Christchurch from everywhere to support Kai Tahu; those of Kai Tahu who shifted for a short time to areas in Tākitimu, and with me in Te Arawa and Te Tai Tokerau. Some health department staff have shifted to Christchurch to specifically help them there. I did not get to Christchurch to hear the submissions to the select committee yesterday, and I still have not heard a thing. I heard different members say this morning that, yes, the community was there to express their concerns. At the end of it all, we support the National-led Government in its deliberations, because we know that the Ngāi Tahu people are living in difficult times, if I may say so.

So the statement being made here is that Ngāi Tahu and others have been there for a very long time. We are pleased to hear that according to Minister Gerry Brownlee, Ngāi Tahu and other Māori are to be included in the community forum that is to be announced shortly. The Rūnanga of Ngāi Tahu is explicitly one of the entities the new authority must work alongside, in terms of the recovery of Christchurch. Further to that, Rahui Katene, our member of Parliament for the Te Tai Tonga electorate, will be included in the cross-party forum of Canterbury MPs. That has got to be a good thing. And just a little reminder, too, that she is the spokesperson for Māoridom, there in the city of Christchurch.

Ngāi Tahu is everywhere in the consultation process—front, back, and sides—and for what reason? Their genealogy evolved from there. “Burning fires of occupation”—they are indeed that, and that is the real reason that ties them to the land there. They must be involved in the consultations of the moment. The desire of the Minister to have them involved in every aspect of this bill is endorsed with the hope, as well, that some of the deeper implications of this bill will be carefully unravelled when we get to the Committee stage in due course. So I acknowledge us .]

AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) Link to this

This is the first time, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, that I have had an opportunity to congratulate you on your new role. It is very nice to have you in the Chair this morning.

I rise to take a call in the second reading debate on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I want to start contribution where I left off in my first reading speech and restate that what this bill is all about is stated in clause 3, the purpose clause. This bill is about providing a mechanism and framework of powers that will be sufficient to allow our Canterbury communities to respond to, and recover from, the two—arguably three or more—devastating earthquakes that have ripped through our province. The bill provides a framework that, of necessity, sets up a balance between a timely, effective, and, I am not afraid to say, quick—although that is a relative term—response while ensuring that we do engage, involve, and bring our communities with us.

Through the course of the select committee process, since Tuesday night and through yesterday, one submitter was very concerned that some people may feel that “quick and timely response” and “involving the community” are mutually exclusive terms. I have never thought that that was the case; and I do not think that anyone does. I have always been of the view that one can have a quick, timely, and focused response while still bringing the community along and involving them in the process. But we do have to acknowledge and accept, if we are going to make our way through this, that that involvement will not mean the agreement of everyone.

If some people go into this process thinking that if they, at the end of the day, do not get the outcome they wanted, then the process has failed, or it has not been democratic, or it has not listened to the community, then we are all setting ourselves up to fail. So my plea to everyone engaged in this process—community leaders, the public of Canterbury, central government, elected representatives, or anyone—is that they accept and be very clear from the outset that the necessary and absolutely central process of engagement will leave some people feeling unhappy with the outcome.

Much has been said about the great work that has been done in the Waimakariri and Selwyn districts since 4 September, and I concur; it has been great work. But even in those provinces some people right now still do not think that the process and the agreements that have been reached are right, and they will grizzle and say things should have gone a different way. That will happen, and in my view the trick to this balancing act is to work out how and when one draws the line under that process of listening and engaging, and gets into the “making decisions and making things happen” state. I have no doubt, at all, that the process of finding when one should draw the line under discussions, finding the point where a decision has to be made and acted on, will be the crunch point going forward.

I come back to some of what we heard from submitters over the course of the last 24 hours. I was very heartened that overwhelmingly what we heard from the submitters whom we spoke to—the key stakeholders in this process, I guess one could say—was a sense of positivity, agreement, and collegiality, and an acceptance of what actually needed to happen.

We can see, certainly from the Labour minority view and from the tenor of the select committee report, that there is a general sense of acceptance that a centralised framework of enhanced powers is absolutely necessary. I do not think I have heard anything from across the House that suggests that that is not the case, and I think that is a tremendously important point to get on the record. We do have in this House a very good political consensus around the fact that there needs to be a centralised system of enhanced powers reaching across the Canterbury region if we are to get the sort of recovery, the sort of timely focused and involved process, we must have in Canterbury. Let us not forget that.

I am not saying, for one minute, that every submitter thought everything in the bill was absolutely perfect. They all came with a number of suggestions and comments as to things that could be looked at. I appreciated that, and a lot of that was very valid information, but the thing I really respected them for was that even where they thought changes should be made, they approached the process in a sense of positive collaboration and constructive input. That is the absolute tenor that we will have to stick with all the way through this process.

A couple of comments from submitters really stuck with me during the select committee process; the truncated process that it obviously had to be. One was the submission from Mark Solomon of Ngāi Tahu, and he has already been quoted by Heather Roy in her contribution. He talked about the fact that, yes, these are extraordinary powers but it is an extraordinary and unprecedented situation. The other thing he said that I think is worth repeating in this forum is that these are extraordinary powers but they are not unchecked powers.

There is a comprehensive system of checks and balances on these powers, and to suggest that it is a carte blanche operation is an absolute farce and would be completely leading people down the wrong path. There are considerable checks on the exercise of these powers and, what is more, we have had a bit of a trial run in the response to the 4 September earthquake, where we have seen the use of this sort of open-ended power work remarkably well, even to the point where the initial critics of that process have been saying it has been working pretty well. So we are not going into this blind. We have had a dry run. It has worked very well, and I think that is why we are seeing so many of the stakeholders engaging with us in a constructive way, accepting that this is necessary, and wanting to talk with us around the edges of that.

I will comment on a couple of the points made in the contributions we have heard from around the House this morning. I thank Dr Kennedy Graham for his contribution and the way he approached the select committee process. Obviously, we do not agree on a lot of things, but I particularly appreciated the fact that Dr Graham approached the debate in a constructive, professional, and polite manner at all times. I certainly appreciated that from him. As I understood it, Dr Graham’s view was that extraordinary powers are needed only in the civil defence response period, and I cannot accept that. I cannot accept that, because I am seeing in my communities every day situations where lives and families are at risk because of potential delay.

Just this week I have been working with one constituent in my area whose family has a business that they have run for 35 years in a rural community. They were well insured, they had 12 months’ loss-of-business cover, but they are now 7 months into that cover and they are still waiting for consent to get their dangerous, red-stickered property demolished so that they can begin a rebuild. The owners want it demolished, the insurance company wants it demolished, and two structural engineers have agreed that it is dangerous and needs to be demolished, yet since 4 September they have been battling to get a demolition consent for no other reason than that the resources to deal with this appropriately are simply not there at a local council level.

That family is 7 months into this process, they have 5 months left before they face bankruptcy, and the only thing holding them up is the red tape and bureaucracy of the business-as-usual process. I cannot sit by and watch that business, that family supporting two generations, go into bankruptcy because the bureaucracy is not set up to say: “Clearly, the building has to come down, so get it done; bring it down.” So I do not accept that we do not need continued extraordinary powers, and I do not agree with Dr Graham that we can just leave it to councils to get on with it.

We have four councils in this region that have to come together and work together. We have to ensure there are centralised, coordinated powers, and we have to ensure there is a framework of ultimate power that can be exercised if the normal processes do not work. That is what this bill does, and that is why I support it. In the words of Mark Solomon from Ngāi Tahu: “When we are rebuilding Canterbury, we have to remember that we have to get on with this. We have to do it for us and for our children.” What we know from all the international evidence is that a fast rebuild is the best thing for our communities socially, environmentally, culturally, and economically. We have to get on with this. We have to do it well, and we cannot afford the delays that business as usual would bring. I commend the bill to the House.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) Link to this

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson; I will commence this contribution by acknowledging your elevation to the Assistant Speaker’s role. I congratulate you on that. I am sure you will serve this House very well.

I acknowledge the role played by the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, Chris Auchinvole, in difficult circumstances over the last 48 hours in chairing that rapid select committee process, truncated as it was. I also acknowledge that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, at least allowed us that truncated process. That was a step forward.

In his opening comments on the second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, Mr Brownlee asked whether we should go slowly or at some pace. I think that by that he was suggesting that if we had a process for community engagement, it would slow the recovery process in Canterbury. I have to say to him that I do not believe that those are mutually exclusive. In the bill, at least now, the reference to community participation has been moved from the very rear of the bill—at clause 66—to the front of the bill, but this is not actually about community consultation; it is about community engagement. It is about letting Cantabrians feel they really have a chance to have a say.

I need to point out that, to date, the process for participation has—to use a new word in the Christchurch vernacular—been somewhat munted. If we consider that in the select committee process 12 submitters were invited to offer their views on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, we know that at least half of those submitters had not received copies of the bill before about 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Indeed, we saw the farcical situation where it took my colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove’s raising the matter in the House on Tuesday afternoon—after the bill had been tabled in the House but before it was even on the parliamentary website—before members of the Christchurch City Council were able to access copies of the bill.

The deputy mayor told us in her submission yesterday that she heard about the bill on the radio. That is not satisfactory. The council’s solicitor told us yesterday that he got a draft of the bill 2 weeks ago because he heard about it and put pressure on the Government to ensure that he got a copy, which he received late in the afternoon. He had to have it back by 10 o’clock the next morning, and he worked overnight on that bill in draft. He had to do that, because the chief executive of the Christchurch City Council would allow only him to be the one nominated person who was able to see the draft, which raises the question: did the Mayor of Christchurch even see the draft of the bill? This is not consultation.

The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery has taken out newspaper advertisements proclaiming that he is engaged in wide consultation on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. I say to the Minister that his version of wide consultation may involve looking in his mirror; it does not seem to involve actually engaging with the community. I would have thought that given this is the second crack at Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation and at setting up a body to deal with the issues, lessons might be learnt that real gains are to be had from taking the community with us and allowing key stakeholders to be consulted, rather than having them learn about it on the radio and rely on members of Parliament to raise the issue of getting the bill on to the parliamentary website so that it can be seen, then having people work through the night so that they could make submissions on the process. To me, that is not what community engagement is about.

I note that if we are talking about consultation, even since the earthquake itself a school in my electorate, Linwood College, has had a commissioner installed very, very rapidly with no process of consultation. That does not auger well for the process we have in front of us at the moment, but we will try to do our very best to make sure that community engagement will actually take place under this bill, because it is about making sure that our communities are empowered and are able. Our communities can work rapidly—they can work rapidly.

Nobody—nobody—wants to impede the progress of our city in recovering from our nation’s worst natural disaster. But, as Dean Peter Beck of the Christchurch Cathedral said in his submission to the select committee yesterday, this recovery needs to be Christchurch-driven. It needs to be Christchurch-driven and not Wellington-driven. That is why we need the community to be involved; we do not need to have assembled a Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority of Wellington bureaucrats. We need to have the community involved, because, as Dean Peter noted to the committee yesterday, there is much anxiety. This is not the first quake; this is the second quake, and many people have been living with the consequences now for 7 long, hard months. We are heading into what may be a vicious winter, given we have had a long, hot summer, and that is why we need to make sure the community’s voice comes through loud and clear.

As the dean also noted, we need to engage the heart and spirit of the Christchurch community, not just to have the recovery process top-down. It needs to be bottom-up, otherwise, as he noted finally in respect of his comments, cynics might say that the community forum encapsulated in the bill could be just something of a sideshow. It would be a tragedy for us all if that were the case. We must make sure Christchurch people are involved. They are strong-willed, they are community-focused, and they need to be very much at the heart of this bill.

I will turn to the issues of the central business district of Christchurch, which is at the heart of my community, and which is the focus of much of the bill—and appropriately so, given that it is the commercial heart of our city and our province. Some very big issues are looming in respect of insurance, demolition, and those who are to pay for that demolition. Just yesterday the controller announced that another 123 buildings need either full or partial demolition, and that most of them are in the central business district. That is on top of 184 other buildings, so already more than 300 buildings have been earmarked for demolition. Most of them are outside the red zone. As John Hamilton, the civil defence controller, indicated, that list will grow by several hundred. We may be talking about the thick end of a thousand buildings needing demolition, so it is absolutely crucial that this bill gets the issues right.

I note that one of the parties that submitted on the bill, the Insurance Council of New Zealand, was among those parties that had not seen the bill until it was tabled in the House yesterday. That council is the representative body of the insurance industry, and it has very valid concerns about the issues of who will meet the costs of demolition. Of course, huge buildings in our central business district may need to be imploded in order to be brought down, or we may need some other rapid process to take them down. I am thinking of the Hotel Grand Chancellor and Clarendon Towers. The signals are that to take them down by conventional process will take months and months, and that that will impact on the central business district’s ability to recover. The potential for exploding those buildings and bringing them down also raises issues about buildings in their shadow, and potentially of damage being brought down on undamaged buildings.

We have huge issues, and that is why this bill is so important in terms of its complex detail. That is why I made the point that we firstly needed to have some genuine participation in, and consultation about, the bill, and then we needed to ensure that the processes for engagement with the community—the business community and the people in affected suburbs—were genuine, and that people were able to have real input into the running of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority from there on.

I note that organisations such as IconiC, Interests in Conserving the Identity of Christchurch, which was formed after the bill was drafted, are standing ready to be involved, and they want to be involved. I will give members an example with which those organisations have already been involved. Anthony Gough owns two buildings in Hereford Street, both of which were demolished without any consultation with, or reference to, him. One of those buildings needed to come down and the status of the other was questionable, but both buildings happened to be painted the same colour, and both came down. That is why we need this bill to be absolutely precise. We need to be clear about the processes, and to make sure that people have input into those processes, which will ensure that we do not have further unwarranted demolitions like that.

I will work as the MP for Christchurch Central to do all I can in the next few hours to improve this bill. I will work for my constituents in both the central business district and the affected suburbs of Christchurch Central. I will do my very best to make the best of this Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation, but I will do so with some considerable anxiety, given the lack of engagement that the Government has had to date with interested parties.

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) Link to this

This Government is focused on the things that matter. The Canterbury earthquake recovery is top of everyone’s agenda right now. I was very proud to be part of the parliamentary committee that heard evidence over the last few days, and it was very ably chaired by Chris Auchinvole.

We have heard in this House that Labour members will not be playing petty politics, but I have to say that I have been enormously embarrassed to be a member of Parliament, having witnessed the behaviour of some of those members in the past few days. Their pathetic posturing has been embarrassing to me as a member of this House. When submitters take the time to appear before us and provide evidence, they want to know that they are being taken seriously. Members on this side of the House take them seriously. We know that timelines are tight, and that is to be expected in a time of emergency. The Prime Minister was in the Taupō electorate last week and the resounding comments when members of the public came up to him acknowledged the Government’s strong leadership in this time of crisis. One submitter yesterday acknowledged the fact that there was a short time frame for public submissions. But that was clearly preferable than having all readings of this bill at once. So instead of the petty politics that some of the Labour members engaged in today, I want to bring the voices of those submitters to this House.

The Christchurch City Council supports the bill. It accepts the need for a single Government-funded agency to coordinate the recovery in Christchurch, and it is grateful for the leadership provided by the Government. If we look at Environment Canterbury, we see that it is supportive of the direction the Government has taken in setting up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. The Legislation Advisory Committee had some very useful things to say to us. At the start of its evidence, it went through a checklist of the principles when emergency laws are being put together, and it was able to tick all of those boxes with this bill. The New Zealand Law Society acknowledged that the extraordinary events in Canterbury need an extraordinary legislative response. Ngāi Tahu’s words have been brought to this House already, and I want to stress the fact that they said that extraordinary powers were in this bill, but they are not unchecked. They also talked about the fact that natural disasters demonstrate very clearly the need for dedicated leadership, for the clear distribution of responsibilities between entities, for clear accountabilities to the people and business of Christchurch, and for funding and resources from central government.

The Canterbury District Health Board also came before us and talked about the importance of the ability to prevent illness and for people to stay healthy largely being determined by how they live their lives. It stressed the importance for us to focus not only efficiently and quickly but also holistically on rebuilding Canterbury. Orion also recognised the efforts that the Government is putting in by responding quickly and effectively. The very able member for Selwyn, Amy Adams, has spoken about the fact that her district council has worked incredibly well to recover from the first earthquake, and it is also supportive of the concept envisaged in the provisions in the bill. Waimakariri is also supportive.

I think it is very clear that the voices of the submitters who gave evidence yesterday recognise the fact that this is emergency legislation, recognise that these are extraordinary times and that extraordinary powers are being given, and recognise that we need those powers. I am very proud to be part of a Government that is committed to rebuilding Christchurch and Canterbury. It is a Government that is focusing on the issues that matter, and not playing petty politics in this House. We are focused on getting things done. This is what matters to Christchurch. This is what matters to the country. I am very proud to be speaking in support of the second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill.