Mallard Trevor: Canterbury Earthquake Commemoration Day Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading Procedure Third Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Canterbury Earthquake Commemoration Day Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:670;Page:17158] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 The Opposition parties will of course be supporting the third reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Commemoration Day Bill. 
I will start off by doing something that maybe I should have done earlier and that is to acknowledge and thank the Canterbury MPs and in particular the Christchurch MPs for the work they are doing there. I have been lucky enough to hear from their—I was going to say “emissary” but Mr Cosgrove is not normally regarded as having diplomatic status. He has come out of Canterbury a couple of times when the others have not in order to brief colleagues on the situation. It has become clear that an enormous amount of work is going on there even though the personal circumstances of the MPs are not a lot different from the personal circumstances of many of those who have been affected. We know of colleagues sleeping in tents in the backyard. We know that all of them are doing enormous work and that a couple of them have lost their houses. It is a truly awful situation but like Kiwis do they are putting their all into it. 
I acknowledge that in a way this tragedy is developing a sense of community and it is a community that occurs within the city and within the country and that has been exemplified by this debate here today. Like all families and all communities some of us might have done things in a slightly different way but now that we know that a decision has been made for this approach to be taken we will get in behind it and make sure that the commemoration is the best that it can possibly be. 
One of the things I am hoping is that out of this tragedy across the country and in this Parliament—I am an optimist but I am not unrealistic; we cannot be like this all the time—we will learn that there are strengths all around the House and that the more often that we can avail ourselves of those strengths the bigger the contribution that Parliament can make to the country. Having said that I want to single out—and there are always dangers in doing this—both the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery and Mr Flavell for their contributions and but not quite to the same extent Mr Locke as well. Things have been said from a Christchurch perspective by both the Minister and Mr Locke that are very special and Mr Flavell is someone who I think exemplifies New Zealand’s understanding of death and has an ability to express it in a way that many of us would love to be able to do. 
I will share with the House the fact that I spent a couple of minutes 10 minutes ago with the senior Government whip and the Minister. I think we came to the conclusion that in a legal sense this legislation is unnecessary. The regulation-making powers that we granted to the Government under the Act passed last year following the September earthquake gave it the ability to create this day. But we came to the conclusion together that we as a Parliament are pleased that the powers that sat there are not being used and that there is an opportunity for members to come together as a Parliament to be supportive and to indicate again the fact that we care deeply for the people of Christchurch and the people internationally who have lost people for the people young and old who do not know where they are going to live over the next few months and over the next few years and for the people who have been living and are living in what are currently unacceptable circumstances. 
What we have done is to resolve to do together what we can to make the best of this tragedy to learn from it but most of all to put on the record our commitment to make sure that Canterbury is strong again not only in the Crusaders sense but as an important counterbalance to Auckland in a way that is important to our society and to our economy. As we all know although I love Dunedin Canterbury is effectively the capital of the South Island and for New Zealand to be strong it must be strong too.