Court Simon; Parker DavidSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you. Can I just ask you to clarify because we understand another bill is coming and it's likely to be introduced on I think 28 March according to Grant Robertson. But today is 16 March and for people who have been waiting for some indication as to how they should clean up and what they should do with the materials waiting another couple of weeks for the Government to bring another bill to the House and we assume it will be under urgency again and we'll have one day of submissions again—while there is still fine weather while you can still get tracked machines excavators dozers gear with grapples while it's still possible to get there and clean up before the ground is wet why on earth can't we amend this bill today to allow for adoption of a suitable site management plan that allows for open-air solid-waste burning notwithstanding that there are human health risks notwithstanding that there are environmental risks? Of course the US Army Corps of Engineers' procedure for open-air burning of solid waste in contingency locations provides for bunding around the areas where burning is going to take place so that run-off does not contaminate surrounding areas. Of course it allows for burning to only take place when wind directions and atmospheric conditions are favourable and that means so that the smoke is not blowing in the direction of residential communities.Now all of this knowledge has been accumulated over decades and decades of probably not the best environmental practice but I would have thought that when in 2022 the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center publishes a document that says this is how it could be done safely in response to an emergency in a contingency location that should be able to be included today. Otherwise farmers rural landowners are going to have to wait weeks even to work out what they might be allowed to do with it. They can't even plan. They can't get a contractor to come and say Here's an environmental management plan. Here's a site management plan. Here's an outline plan of works." because they have no idea what is the regulatory framework they're operating under. And that seems to be a massive omission in this bill that we're prepared to pass here this afternoon and yet provides no direction at all for people faced with this enormous task of cleaning up Minister.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you Mr Chairman. I can confirm that these issues have been carefully considered by the local councils with assistance from the emergency management teams the Ministry for the Environment the Ministry for Primary Industries and I think the Environmental Protection Authority. Currently there is a prohibition in the local district plan or at least one of them—I think it's the Hawke's Bay district plan; I'm not sure about Tai Rāwhiti—against the burning of tanalised timber and therefore at the moment burning a mixed pile of timber that includes tanalised timber is a prohibited activity. So there is a problem that does need to be remedied here because it is clear that although as Horticulture New Zealand says on some occasions it is realistic to sort the tanalised out and separate it it is not always realistic. I have been as has emergency management Minister McAnulty to sites where these huge amounts of debris are being put into windrows in readiness for burning in the future. I certainly accept that in the future some of these piles of debris are likely to have to be burned and they won't be able to be all sorted to remove all of the tanalised timber. I'm also aware from my discussions with the horticulturalists who have been piling up those piles of debris which are a mixture of trees that have come from higher up the catchments; more of them are actually the likes of willows that have been pulled out of the sides of the riverbanks and then have come through breaches of the flood banks over horticultural land and farmland—but mainly horticultural that I'm aware of—plus shelter belts from the orchards themselves plus trees from the orchards apple trees or kiwifruit vines or grape vines depending on the circumstance plus tanalised posts sometimes plus lamp posts. I'm aware that all of those materials were swept into place by water. Ipso facto they are actually currently very wet and the people that I met did not want to burn them at the moment even if they could because they wouldn't burn very well and they wouldn't burn hot and there would be more smoke and toxins including from the tanalised. So the person that I met with said that he thought that the plan should be that those materials be allowed to dry over the next year by which he meant through the balance of this year and the summer next year at which point he thought those materials—this is what he told me—would be ready to burn. So in response to the member's question there will probably be a need for this Parliament or the Government through Order in Council to override the rules and the plan that absolutely ban the burning of tanalised material but we don't need to do it today. The better route for that is to enable that through the second piece of legislation which will enable by Order in Council the overriding of some of those strict prohibitions in the current plan which I think the district council and the locals and probably even the district health authorities—one of the health authorities present in the area has noted that we do need to be a bit cautious about this because we don't want to create another problem. So the route for that is by an Order in Council and through that Order in Council rather than just having a simple deemed permitted activity rule with no controls on how you do it we can then through that Order in Council impose an appropriate set of rules as the member has said an offshore wind—not everyone doing it on the same day. You know that would be a conflagration that the local fire brigade probably would have a problem putting out if we had this all being on the same day. But farmers and horticulturalists can rest assured that I think everyone realises that we do need a practical solution here. It's just something that can't be done today and should be done by the Order in Council route under the second piece of legislation."