Dyson Ruth: Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8680. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am delighted to take a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill at this peak viewing time in parliamentary terms. I want to begin by commending the Minister for this bill—not only the Minister in whose name it is the Hon Nikki Kaye but I actually want to particularly commend the Minister who spoke to this bill. I watched the Hon Amy Adams after the September 2010 quake in Canterbury and both in her own electorate in our region and in this House she portrayed what had happened in a way that touched people around the country and that is important to do. Sharing—I do not go on about it because their eyes glaze over but people did need to know the impact of that.I watched the Hon Amy Adams lead thinking and recovery in her own electorate and I often reflected that she would have been an excellent Minister of Civil Defence had that position not already been taken to lead the overall recovery. So I want to genuinely commend the Minister for the work that she did at the time. I think she understands what is needed in this legislation from her own experience but also because she is a bit of a thinker on policy and structures. As my colleague Clare Curran said Labour will be supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee.Civil defence is one of many areas where I believe we should have a whole-of-Parliament agreement as much as possible. It does not apply to everything. There are some fundamental differences between the values and the aspirations of members in this House. Otherwise we would all be in the same party and I just cannot imagine that happening. But in the civil defence space it would be great if the select committee could be as open as possible hear as many views as possible and be given the support of the Minister in whose name this bill is to make significant alterations.I have seen increasingly and to my frustration select committees not having the independence and robust debate and decision-making powers that they have had in the past but being entirely dominated by the Minister’s decision on which way any particular policy call should go. I think that is a major negative in the progress of this Parliament. When I first started in Parliament which was some time ago now select committees had much more ability to make their own decisions and be genuinely independent of a Minister. That is sadly not the case now. So I would encourage the Hon Amy Adams to use her powers of persuasion and talk to her colleague the Hon Nikki Kaye to see whether she can get her to give the select committee a bit of independence so that we can come back with the best possible legislation not something that is entirely driven by bureaucrats and where the decision is made by the Minister.In my view this bill should be about the four Rs that are at the heart of civil defence—that is risk reduction readiness response and recovery—and that is where my first concern lies in this bill. It deals with only one of those four Rs and frankly the strength of one of the four is not a quarter. It is much weaker than that because it needs the entire package to make any one of the components work. If you do not have strong risk reduction strong readiness and a strong response you will not have a strong recovery but here this bill is talking about just the final R which is the recovery. It has missed out what I think are the three most important components.We saw that in Canterbury. My colleague has described what the response was like in Dunedin to the floods. Other members have had natural disasters occur in their home areas as well. If you do not have a community structure that is resilient where community members know each other and have the capacity to support each other through natural disasters then the end product—the one that we are talking about in this bill—will be weaker. But nowhere in this legislation does it go to the heart of those other three components. So that is my first big concern: it is fundamentally flawed because it does not deal with what I consider are the most important things. Without those other Rs you cannot have a satisfactory recovery.The scope of the new powers caused concern for me. We have watched in Canterbury wartime powers being used in non-wartime situations. Sometimes we wish the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery had used them to the betterment of good people but he did not and other times we wish he had not used them when it suited him and he did. So any extraordinary powers or any powers that you would think were outside the normal range of acceptability we will certainly be looking at with very close scrutiny.The final point I want to make is that Labour is concerned about how robust this bill will actually be when it is put into practice. This is the first major amendment that we have had to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. Three years ago there were some minor amendments to the Act but this is the first major amendment to the Act. I do not think that it is being done on the basis of looking at the complete picture from start to finish. It feels to me as if our civil defence response is still too Wellington-driven too bureaucracy-driven and not enough related to what happens on the ground in our communities which is the first response starts if those other three Rs that I mentioned are addressed and they are not in this legislation.There are a lot of other good things in this legislation and I am not being critical of the bureaucrats from Wellington who did the actual drafting of it. I just do not think they are as connected with communities that have been through natural disasters as would give the best possible picture. So they are competent and able they have done a good job in drafting this but I think their scope has always been too narrow.I missed the referral that the Minister mentioned in her contribution to the House but I understand from the contribution made by Sarah Dowie that this bill is going to be referred to the Government Administration Committee which I am privileged to chair. We look forward to that. We have had reports from the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management over the last couple of years and they have been really interesting but this is the first time we have had the opportunity to actually discuss how its reviews and its reports are to be reflected in legislative change so I am looking forward to that opportunity.I hope we get a lot of submitters. I would certainly invite people from around the country—obviously from my own region in Canterbury and from South Dunedin where they have just been through the floods. I know that another presiding officer Chester Borrows has had significant flooding in his electorate. Other members will have as well. So I would ask members to leave this House tomorrow evening as we finish with the thought in their mind that they will know good people in the community who could make a contribution to this bill and to invite them over their summer break to write a submission.I am sure our committee will be generous in terms of time. We will not want the submissions in the middle of January. Our committee will be respectful of people having the right to have a holiday but we would like to hear from people who have been through experiences that will help other communities be able to respond to them better and be able to recover in a quicker and stronger way.Nothing is actually more important in New Zealand than ensuring that our families and our communities are as safe as possible. I have no doubt that every single member of this House shares that view and that is what we want to do with this legislation. I do believe that the Minister should reflect on whether the scope of the bill could be expanded to make sure that those other three Rs are addressed because otherwise I think we run the risk yet again of having a top-down imposition in a civil defence emergency situation that undervalues the contribution that the community can make and that therefore frustrates it and makes its recovery slower.Everyone is well aware of Sam Johnson and the Student Volunteer Army and the amazing work they did in our region following the September 2010 and the February 2011 quakes particularly. When Sam and others from the student association went to civil defence and offered to help they were told on day one: “There’s no place for volunteers in this. This is an emergency.”Debate interrupted.