Adams Amy: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — First Reading 
Adams Amy: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17914] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 It is a privilege to rise to speak to the first reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill although it is one of those times when one wishes we did not need to be here to provide a response to this sort of situation. I know this has been said before but 4.35 in the morning on 4 September was the beginning of a hellish period in Canterbury and it was the time when everything started to change. From my perspective from that date everybody in Canterbury has been working tirelessly and doing everything they can to help to get the region back on track—and that is every political figure every elected figure of any persuasion every volunteer every household every school every business every lines worker and every council worker. I have not seen anybody in Canterbury who is not doing everything they can to try to get our communities and our region back to being the best region in the country. 
But for all that this situation is like nothing any of us have ever dealt with. I do not think anyone is taking this position but for any of us to assume that we know exactly how this situation is to be dealt with is wrong. We are learning as we go; we have to. This is without doubt the biggest natural disaster that this country has had to deal with and the repercussions from it—the loss of life the impact on the community the loss of homes and the uncertainty—will be with us for a long long time. We as a Parliament have to do everything we can to help that process to be as manageable and as survivable for everyone in Canterbury as it can be. 
Over the last 7 months we have learnt that this is a huge event and that the recovery will take years. We have learnt that we need to have a single point of coordination and ultimately control and we have learnt that there will be many many views as we go through this recovery on what should be done. As we fight our way through it and learn how to deal with it inevitably there will be disagreement on each step and on how we should get there. We all know what we want to achieve but we all know that we will not agree on every step of the way. I think there will be as many different views on what should happen in Canterbury as there are people in Canterbury. That is an absolutely valid and important part of it but equally we have to have a central hub through which progress can be made. 
We have learnt that a process is needed that can help us to move positively—because I think positivity will be a key element of this recovery—and decisively. At the heart of it all is acceptance by everyone. Acceptance will not be easy to reach but there should be an acceptance that there is no way that a business as usual approach to any of this situation will work. If we think we can simply roll out the tried and true normal business as usual approaches to decision making and to Government and judicial processes—such as having a review and consultation—in the way that we would for every other decision and in the way that we all agree is usually appropriate we will get nowhere and Canterbury will not get back on its feet within the sort of time frame in which it needs to do so. We know that after 4 September the House passed the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act which contained significant and wide-reaching powers. The Act was an appropriate and necessary response at that time and as all sensible commentators are agree it was handled appropriately and necessarily. The earthquake on 22 February made things considerably worse but the earlier period gave us the chance to learn about the sorts of things that we would have to get in place quickly in order for this recovery to work. 
I will now take the opportunity to very quickly quote from clauses 3(a) and (b) of the bill which set out the primary purposes of the legislation: “The purposes of this Act are—(a) to provide appropriate measures to ensure that greater Christchurch and the councils and their communities respond to and recover from the impacts of the Canterbury earthquakes: (b) to enable community participation in the planning of the recovery of affected communities without impeding a focused timely and expedited recovery:”. That is the framework against which any powers under the legislation have to be exercised. It sets out the key principles against which the exercise of those powers will be judged. The bill is not about setting up a structure and framework that will be implemented from day one; it sets up a framework of powers that we can access and have recourse to if they are needed. I see them as a backstop to the usual council processes so that if there cannot be collaboration and we cannot reach a point from which we can all move forward together then at the end of the day there is a backstop of ultimate decision-making. I do not see anything that says that is constitutionally inappropriate. 
I do not think anyone in my communities whom I have spoken with would not say we have to have community input. Community input is fundamentally important but at the end of the day the community must be able to draw a line in the sand and have a final decision-maker who will stand up and take a decision. If as a community region and Parliament we fail to accept that we will never get to a place where everybody agrees with the outcome then we will get nowhere. I do not realistically hear that view in the debate but I think it is worth putting that on the record. There will not be a time at which we can say yes everyone is on board and let us move forward. Yes we must have participation but let us make it very very clear that the discussion will not be endless. There will be people who leave the discussion and input without liking the results and they will therefore feel ignored. They will not have been ignored but not everyone will get the outcomes that they want. I bet I will not like a lot of the decisions we reach in this process. I might have done some things differently. That will be true for every Cantabrian. There has to be a point at which we say we have heard and listened to people but now is the time to make a decision. 
If anybody were to start going around stirring up dissension and concern on the grounds that not getting their own way means their views are being trampled on then that would be playing politics. It is politicking to telling people that if they do not get the outcome they want their views have been trampled on. It is the sort of thing that Cantabrians will very quickly turn against. If one message is coming through to me loud and clear it is that Cantabrians want to see a way forward. They want to see positivity and they want to see their leaders pulling together. Cantabrians want to see their leaders questioning being involved and disagreeing but as soon as they start to see point-scoring my view is that they will shut down and turn off very quickly. 
Cantabrians need us to provide hope positivity and vision. In this legislative chamber they need us to provide the framework within which that can happen and happen in a time frame that will allow Canterbury to get back on its feet. For those reasons I am very pleased to commend the bill to the House.