Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Look I just want to clear it up for people watching at home and for the Minister and for everyone in this House: the ACT Party is not seeking to politicise this. What we're asking for is for urgent and specific action that gives confidence to those people who are seeking to recover.So I just want to speak to a Supplementary Order Paper that ACT has tabled which talks about actually putting a time limit on the Orders in Council that the Minister—this Minister of Local Government or a Minister for a Resource Management Act or another Minister who might be responsible for transport. It says if they want to create an order it needs to be approved by the House of Representatives within a certain amount of time or it becomes revoked. That was a check; that was a balance that the Government proposed when it came to the COVID-19 recovery legislation. This text here is cut and paste from the Government's own COVID-19 recovery legislation which included provision that every 90 days or so that legislation was brought back to the House so that if the Government wanted to make any changes they could table it we could debate it—then the Government used its majority to pass it. If Opposition parties had any suggestions as to how the response could be improved it could be debated and the Government might—as the Minister has acknowledged—take up some suggestions from submitters at select committee or from other members on the select committee and make some changes. But that's not what the Government's chosen to do.What they've chosen to do is to give themselves Henry VIII" powers to change up to 27 pieces of legislation for up to five years and to give a minimum of three days' notice to a review panel that these changes these orders are necessary. And so what ACT is asking—and Minister I'd just like you to explain why there is no time-limiting clause which would limit the relevant period that these orders are valid for the longer of which would be 10 sitting days of the House after the order was made; 60 days after the date the order was made as an alternate; or any other period that the Minister might want to specify in the legislation. That wouldn't stop the order from operating. It wouldn't undermine any instructions or actions taken when the order was in force. But what it would do is provide a check provide a balance from Parliament and from elected members who could scrutinise the order; the actions of the Government; what are the costs and benefits; is it doing what it said it would; and actually give New Zealanders some confidence that this Government's directions instructions orders and actions are working.Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister for Emergency Management): I thank the member. Again this bill is based on that which was passed by Parliament after the Hurunui/Kaikōura earthquake. This bill's checks and balances have been significantly strengthened since then and through the select committee process there's been further improvements. The ACT Party was happy to vote for the bill then and so they should feel comfortable that given the strengthened checks and balances this bill will ensure through the parliamentary process that those Orders in Council will get adequate scrutiny. But I would point out that a significant problem with this Supplementary Order Paper is that there's likely to be very large infrastructure projects which will take a very long time to complete and having a provision that requires it to be continually coming back to the House will ultimately undermine certainty in those projects; that's likely to undermine the level of investment that we might be able to attract or indeed those companies that wish to seek the contracts to deliver that work. Uncertainty in these sorts of things slows things down—the very thing that the ACT Party is urging us not to do."