Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Just taking another call in the Committee stage of this bill first of all I would like to thank Minister Brownlee for his words and for the signals he has given for the next piece of work that needs to be done. On this side of the Chamber we would express eagerness for those discussions to start being held and for there to be as much community involvement as possible in those. I am certainly aware of some pieces of work being done around the country into various scenarios. One of those is a piece of work being done into a major alpine event down in the southern part of the Southern Alps and the impact of that. It is something that we have to bear in mind. Another issue of course is the impact on New Zealand of a tsunami following a major earthquake event somewhere else. I do want to put on record here in the Chamber tonight that we have got some real concerns about the ability of New Zealand's coastal communities to be able to respond to such an event. I think we had an instance of this at the beginning of September when there was a definite delay in the time period before there was an alert provided to the community and the manner in which that alert was provided was called into question. In 2016 it is time that we grappled with the fact that we need a national alerting system and that there are means to do that. This Government seems to have been going around in circles on that. Perhaps it could be the subject of another debate. There has been a considerable amount of money spent on looking into various models but we still do not seem to be any further ahead. I am just alerting to the Committee that that is something we really should not be sitting on our hands about. I would also like to make some comments about the absolute importance of this legislation with direct reference to a medium sized event—it could have been described as a small to medium sized event—in Dunedin last year with the 2015 floods in South Dunedin. Certainly for the people who were affected it was a major event and the response from Civil Defence to that was dire. In fact it was better described as a non-response. That night Civil Defence personnel were not even aware that there was an issue in South Dunedin and actually had gone home to bed. They were not even looking at South Dunedin. To this day we still do not know just how many homes and businesses were affected by sewage-laden water during that night. Elderly people with dementia in rest homes had to be moved into the middle of the rest home or moved out of the rest home in a rather chaotic manner. Two elderly people who had water up around their thighs got back into bed because they did not know what else to do. Two families with small children were left feeling quite desperate and had to move out of their homes for months and battle with insurance companies on their own. I guess the point I want to make tonight is that—it is a plea really—through what this legislation is part of through a legislative review we should address the civil defence organisations around the country that really just are not up to scratch and are operating as fiefdoms with Dad's Army types of organisations behind them. I know that that is changing but there are still remnants of those. In my part of the country there have been some changes made but it has taken nearly a year and a half for that to happen. I look forward to ensuring that that is not replicated anywhere else in the country and that anyone else does not have to go through that kind of situation. Just finally I want to make a few comments about the permanent legislative authority. I will echo the comments from the Green member—that it is a sensible mechanism—and also from Ruth Dyson. We did think when we had the first reading of this bill that we were going to have a bit of an argument about that in that this all looked a bit unusual. I think we all learnt something in the select committee about a measure and a mechanism that is actually being used for other things and is quite sensible. It is used as a way of funding New Zealand's contributions to international forums such as the IMF and the OECD—payments of tax credits and search and rescue costs. Those are just a few of the different kinds of examples. We certainly did receive sound advice from a Treasury analyst who helpfully appeared before the select committee and reassured us that the permanent legislative authority was a flexible mechanism for reimbursement of expenses during an emergency and for providing ongoing authority for such expenditure. So we were comfortable. There has not been any debate on that throughout this discussion on this bill. There were not any real concerns about that. I think that ultimately we do have a reasonable piece of legislation. It is a pretty good piece of legislation that has been helped by good cooperative relations across the select committee and good advice from officials. I thank the Government for its support for the Supplementary Order Paper on the Table tonight. I look forward to the next discussion that happens around the bigger picture and how we deal with major events in New Zealand. Thank you.