Williams Poto: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10929. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am pleased to use sign to talk. [In New Zealand Sign Language] We would not have known had it not been for the Canterbury earthquake sequence whether we would actually be debating this piece of legislation here in its third reading. So in some perverse way it is fortuitous that as a result of what happened over the last 5 years we have come to the conclusion that we need to do something about ensuring that we do not put our people at risk further. It is a sad lesson but it is a lesson that has been learnt from Canterbury. We will do everything we can to protect the loss of life and I must acknowledge the 185 people who lost their lives but also the thousands of people who lost their homes the communities that were disrupted and the significant amount of change and work that has happened in the Canterbury region over the last few years.If we look to the recent quake that happened on 14 February which resulted in further claims to Earthquake Canterbury—I think within the first few days there were something like 1700 claims—it did actually provide us with some measure of comfort I guess in that immediately after that quake I along with the deputy chair of our community board and some of the local community patrols actually got out on the streets. We went to the areas where we knew there would be some particularly prone buildings or some areas where there might be some issues only to hear that people were saying the technology that was used to rebuild the residential properties in many cases had done exactly what it was designed to do.The RibRaft that was used extensively through the Parklands area for example which is very much prone to liquefaction and is one of the sensitive areas moving forward—many people said the technology the RibRaft that was used there did what it was designed to do: it moved gently with the earthquakes. It gave the community some comfort that in terms of our technology in terms of our learnings we had done something right. However that was not always the case and as I stated before there were claims that were made after Valentine’s Day. So we have still got much work to do.I was part of some of the previous readings on this bill and the committee stages when there was some very robust discussion about what the impacts of this bill would be on other parts of the country—other areas where they felt there were unduly harsh provisions that their councils and territorial authorities would have to undertake to ensure a standard of building which was felt during those debates to be unreasonable. I am pleased that the volume and the quality of those debates got us to the point where further work was done further consultation happened and we now have a piece of legislation that is broadly supported across the House.I do want to make just a couple of points about how this legislation makes it very clear—it gives some consistency of standards to councils and it makes it very clear about time frames and about what needs to be done. I think the exercise in developing those risk ratings prioritising those key buildings such as emergency services and educational facilities and looking at those structures such as verandahs and parapets and at the methods that can be used to strengthen those has been really useful. Mr Assistant Speaker I will not continue my contribution. I want to thank you for the opportunity also to use a little bit of sign in this Sign Language Week. Thank you.