Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker Lindsay Tisch and I acknowledge all of your colleagues including the acting Speaker Paul Foster-Bell who has just vacated the chair.This is a very very short call to reaffirm Labour's support for this bill thanking the members of the select committee and their staff who worked so hard. I reiterate our condolences to all the good people of the Hurunui-Kaikōura area who have lost either loved ones in some cases or possessions. We realise that recovery is going to take some time particularly with the munting that the State highway and the railway lines have had. We are all united in this House in goodwill and support for you.This legislation is a good piece of work. It draws on the experience of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act. I wish to acknowledge—perhaps unusually—Minister Brownlee for his work in administrating the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act and for the cooperative spirit that both he and the Attorney-General have brought to the deliberations on this legislation. It has drawn in part on the report which has been a unanimous effort on behalf of members across all parties of the Regulations Review Committee on its inquiry into Parliament's legislative response to future national emergencies. That made essentially three rules of thumb.Clear as a bell coming off the Christchurch experience the first was that executive powers to override enactments should exist only in so far as is necessary in order to deal with the emergency itself and should be exercised only for that purpose—that is no more special powers to the executive than are absolutely necessary and for the most narrow and limited of periods and processes. The second key point is that emergency legislation should incorporate safeguards—and we will come on to some of those—and the third key one is that recovery starts on day one as the previous speaker Eugenie Sage has mentioned. I think all members of the Local Government and Environment Committee have had that perspective in framing up this legislation and it is a good piece of work it seems to me. The controversial issues were really around the override of existing enactments. I am very pleased that the advice of the Regulations Review Committee was taken on board and that members of the Local Government and Environment Committee required the executive to justify the presence of each and every one of the Acts that it is seeking to have the power to override by Order in Council. It has deleted from the list initially proposed eight Acts that are now no longer—and I will not read them all out but most notably including the Public Finance Act. I think that that shows that the Local Government and Environment Committee has done its work by consensus with great diligence and I really appreciate that the executive has been open enough to that process to justify the inclusion of the Acts that it wanted to override. The tricky part too is what happens when you want to add by Order in Council a further Act to the list. The committee has helpfully clarified that you would need the near-unanimous support of party leaders and an overview by the Regulations Review Committee if that was going to occur. That seems like not a perfect compromise but a reasonable compromise. It is not too rigid and it allows for the fact that something might happen when the House is not sitting and rather than call the House back it provides a backup process that does not require the House. So that was about as far as members were able to get on that.For the various other checks and balances most of the best practice has been adopted. Probably the only thing that I draw attention to is at the top of page 4 of the report where there was a suggestion by some members that clause 8(3) and clause 16(6) be deleted. Those clauses limit judicial scrutiny and unfortunately they have been retained. I think as this evolves—God forbid we get any further emergencies—those will eventually probably pass into history. That is all I wanted to contribute. This is probably my last contribution before the Christmas break. I wish all members the very happiest of Christmas and holiday good wishes. There has been a lot of cooperation in the House of late and I think it is a good omen for the new year. Thank you very much.