Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak at this the third reading of the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Bill which the Green Party is pleased to be able to support. I will recognise that we supported this bill on its introduction at first reading and to select committee. There was a moment in the select committee when we were considering where we were at and we were not sure whether we would be able to support it through the stages of consideration because it is such a significant power that is being handed to the executive. But it is really honestly with a sense of real relief that we are able to support this legislation.We feel ourselves accountable to the people in the affected communities and to those other New Zealanders who hold dear the rule of law and the process and the power of decision making of this Parliament. We hope that people will look at what happens from this critically and provide feedback at any point where they feel it is going awry. But we do hope that this will be seen as an improvement on the processes that have gone before; that is the point we have got to with it. I do want to just spend a bit of time—and I do realise that if anybody is at the point in the affected communities of watching this debate they will probably just be wanting us to shut and up and pass it. I recognise that but I would just like to spend a few minutes talking to those other people about exactly or loosely what this bill does. It enables a Minister or Ministers together to be able to put in an Order in Council and what that is in effect is an amendment to or an override of a piece of legislation. So if a community has found that the legislation that we have passed collectively through this Parliament is actually providing a barrier to its ability to respond urgently to the needs of its community or to promote the recovery of its community then there is the ability for that Minister to come up with a distinct solution that is not consistent with the law that was passed in this House.So that is a very very significant power but it will need to be for the purpose of response and recovery and there are specific points in the purpose clause of the bill that give more detail to that. It needs to be necessary desirable and not broader than required to solve the community's problem. This applies to areas that are included in the bill which are the areas of the Hurunui District Council the Kaikoura District Council the Marlborough District Council the Wellington City Council the Hutt City Council the Canterbury Regional Council and the Greater Wellington Regional Council area. So in effect from South Canterbury right up to Masterton there are areas that are covered by this bill where the Minister has the ability within that scope to be able to override legislation to meet their response needs. There was certainly some question about whether Wellington and Greater Wellington should be included in this bill and it is a very difficult call to make. The Hutt City Council supported this legislation. Conversations I had with Wellington City Council were that it was supportive—the Mayor of Wellington was supporting this legislation and having it cover Wellington although the Mayor of Hutt City did say that actually at the moment the Hutt City area did not need it. So it was a bit of a judgment call. But I do recognise that actually in Wellington there are so many businesses that have been affected by the quakes and although there has not been an interruption to telecommunications or water systems a lot of buildings are uninhabitable and people have been put out there. So some of the ability to provide relief around filing for tax returns may actually be welcome for those businesses in this area and that is within the scope of this bill—to give them that relief or delay. So on the balance of things we went with being able to accept the broad geographic area and we are very pleased that additional geographic areas were not able to be added to this.When the Minister decides if it crosses different areas that an Order in Council is needed they will talk and they will start talking about what the solution might be. We have built into the legislation a requirement if at all practicable for that Minister or Ministers to contact affected people or to notify them publicly so that people can provide input to help make sure that the view of what the problem is and what the solutions might be is not too limited. Then that draft order and the reasons that the Minister thinks that it is necessary will be sent to a review panel. That review panel will be convened by a retired High Court judge and the members on that review panel will have specific expertise. Initially they were going to be representative positions but now on the advice of submissions from Local Government New Zealand—I think there was another submission also supporting that—it has become more based around expertise including mātauranga Māori and tikanga Māori and local government and public administration.That review panel will also have the ability to get comment from other people and within a specific time frame they will be required to feed back to the Minister and provide advice on any possible improvements to that order. That advice will need to be made public as well. Then or simultaneously the draft Order in Council goes to the Regulations Review Committee of Parliament which includes most parties—sadly at this moment not the Green Party. So we do hope that in the Standing Orders review that the Green Party is included on the Regulations Review Committee so that there can be proper parliamentary oversight of these draft Orders in Council that represents the full representation of parties within Parliament because we do have some good contributions to make—representing the people that we do.Then the Regulations Review Committee comments will also obviously be public and will be reported back to Parliament. Then the Minister will need to have due regard to those comments reported back and they will be public. Any Order in Council that is put in place through this process will be time-bound until April 2018 if not finished before that because it was no longer needed which does create an impression that councils or people if they believe there is no longer a need for that override of the legislation could I guess make pleadings to the Minister for it to finish early.There has been an exception again: Local Government New Zealand through the submission process asked for an extension of that time-bound nature to 2021 for specific provisions around the Local Government Act and ratings requirements because of the experience in Canterbury. When there is a massive effect on and damage to property and ongoing aftershocks in particular that damage can go on and it can be very hard to do the rating assessments and get them happening in that time frame. So that seemed to be a sensible change though we do hope that it will be kept very much within scope.So that is roughly the outline of what this bill does and we hope it meets the needs of the balance of checks and powers and the ability to support communities.