Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. The Greens will absolutely support this Building Amendment Bill which is a new system for managing buildings after an emergency. It immediately took me back to when I was working at the Human Rights Commission in the Auckland office. Our Christchurch office building got locked up—well for years—and people had left their desks and had left the building as is and could not go back inside. I recall the difficulty of trying to manage that process. This is from what I can see exactly what this bill is trying to do better on. I mean everything changes with those earthquakes with natural events with incidents and the purpose of this bill primarily goes to risks to public safety and risks to public property. So I'm thankful for the opportunity to speak to this and relate it back to what I myself can recall around the time as a colleague of Christchurch staff who had to try and manage that whole process. There I guess the bill also tries to pick up on the balance and the tensions between building owners occupiers and tenants and public safety and safety to property. So this bill provides for that new system to be able to be flexible enough and respond to everything being turned upside down and allows for those investigations of building failures to take place. That was actually the problem was that it was trying to streamline. And the reason why our staff couldn't get back into their offices was because we were waiting for the investigations to take place to actually figure out what was going on; whether anybody at all could even go in and retrieve everything—computers documents their stationery even their personal belongings—waiting for those processes to happen and a lack of clarity around who could even do it.Actually and on that note I was quite interested to know who the responsible person is who gets to exercise the powers that this bill is wanting to provide. So the new processes for buildings affected by emergency works to address those safety concerns and new powers to bridge the immediate response work with the completed recovery work and how that even comes together. It involves allowing for responsible persons exercising powers to investigate to see what works need to be completed to assess the safety of the buildings and the risk to public safety. So it is in section 133BJ of this bill—which talks about the management of buildings in designated areas—it sets out who may exercise those powers under this new management process. I just wanted to put on to the House—for interest also—that those sorts of responsible powers of course will come to people like the relevant Ministers or On direction by the Minister by the territorial authority that is responsible for the designated area". So those are the local or regional authorities but it also could include the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act officers and those can be controllers and recovery managers. Responsible persons who could exercise those powers could also I guess end up with controllers and constables and directors of civil defence emergency management groups. So it's most definitely not just a loose definition of saying "Someone is responsible". There are clear—and we didn't quite canvass that tonight in the House—definitions of who those responsible persons are. I also picked up that the provisions under this Building Amendment Bill would also protect heritage buildings and there has been—after Kaikōura Christchurch—discussion of course about whether marae if they are registered come under heritage protection. So this bill would apply to marae as well. Now that's going to be interesting if we are ever faced with a situation of again—because and other speakers have mentioned while the bill gives some clarity as to balancing those powers of property owners and tenants with public safety actually at the heart of that will be how they manage the relationships to have that conversation—this is what's going to happen making sure everyone's on board so that we can streamline those new processes and those investigations to happen in a way that will have a better outcome for everyone concerned in a way that won't cause further confusion and disruption. I don't know where it is but there's a principle of limiting the disruption to the owner or tenants' operations as much as possible. So the bill tries to be balanced and reasonable tries to get the job done and tries to keep public safety and the protection of property at the core while keeping a check on any response being proportional to the incident—to the earthquake to the natural disaster—and to what has actually happened to the building. So it's really well-thought-out—and I've only just skimmed a small part of it but really well-thought-out.I must congratulate the select committee for working through these incredible details the submissions that allowed for some amendments and further clarity to be made to the bill that has come back in second reading and for taking on board the concerns of submitters and the logic and the insight of submitters to be able to make it a better bill I think that has come into the House today. So I'm really pleased to be able to support this and to continue the debates. Whether there are any further changes particularly around balancing the sort of private property and public safety aspects is what I'll be listening to hear and contributions later on in the committee stage from the Minister as well. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."