Locke Keith: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Locke Keith: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
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KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 It is rather sad in my opinion to have to rise in the Committee stage in this body which is the highest body in our democracy the most representative body and to give what is in effect a primer on the nature of democracy and democratic decision-making. Democracy is fundamentally violated by this bill. Democracy is not about giving a Minister the power to override the decision making of local bodies and that is exactly what the explanatory note of this bill states. It states that the Minister has: “the ability to suspend amend cancel delay any council plans and policies.” It is very definitive and sums up the bill in that respect. 
Councils it is true have a consultative role under this bill and the Supplementary Order Papers being put forward by the Green Party try to extend the extent of consultation and community engagement required under this bill. But consultation cannot substitute for people at the local level actually making decisions through their local representatives about their future as a community and as a city in this case in Christchurch. 
The reason why local bodies should have this power apart from the fact that we would like to be democratic is that local people know better than any bureaucrat from Wellington or anywhere else what is important to their future. There are absolutely vital decisions to be made over the next while particularly over the next 5 years in the currency of this bill that will shape the future of Christchurch—their city not our city; as we are sitting here in Wellington. Those decisions must be made by the people of Christchurch not by a Minister or a bureaucrat residing here. 
Does central government have a role? Absolutely. It has a role to assist the people of Christchurch not to control the people of Christchurch. Our assistance is to give the resources to help speed and streamline the process of recovery rebuilding etc. and yes to enable shortcuts to be taken through certain bits of legislation. The Greens do not oppose that. We agree with the parts of the bill where modifications are allowed to particular Acts to achieve a more rapid recovery than would be normally the case through existing statutes. But to achieve that we do not need to give power to the Government to override most of the laws on our statute book. 
Some of the submitters to the Local Government and Environment Committee including David Bullock and Daniel Jackson said that the legislation overrides a whole range of Acts including the Human Rights Act the Crimes Act the Habeas Corpus Act the Official Information Act the Ombudsmen Act and I could go on and on. There is absolutely no reason for those Acts to be overridden. The overriding of Acts is not effectively constrained either by the law courts or by Parliament. Although there is some right of review it is not effective in a legal sense and of course the Law Society in its submission to the select committee wanted much more reference to Parliament whenever laws were overridden. Some of the Green Party amendments to this legislation try to put the power back into Parliament to a greater extent. 
Is having a tsar in the form of a Minister to direct the recovery of Christchurch more efficient? Is this sort of state of emergency justified? It is true that with emergency powers sometimes things can be better streamlined and we have had a series of weeks of a state of emergency which has helped in the recovery of Christchurch to this point. The Green Party has supported those orders. But even when we look back at the history of that although there are advantages we see that there are disadvantages. 
We note the complaints as late as this morning on  
Morning Report 
 of business owners who have not been able to get into their offices in the red zone in the central business district to recover basic items like computers files etc. Day after day there have been complaints like that. Outside the red zone where there is not the same application of constraint people have been entering dangerous buildings taking calculated risks and retrieving their files etc. from inside buildings. But the bureaucrats in the red zone have been ultra-conservative in their risk assessment just taking no risks whatsoever of any danger and have caused in the process a great amount of angst and depression amongst business people and workers. All sorts of things like that are the result of this avoidance of risk which is characteristic of people who have absolute power and are not necessarily in touch with the local situation. 
Communities have huge resources and abilities to address those problems and they are being underestimated in the bill. In the suburb of Sumner for example it has been fantastic to see people getting together all sorts of subcommittees to deliver services social events you name it. The Student Volunteer Army has also been fantastic. It shows that the capacities of local people can be unleashed if we allow them the initiative. I think the people of Canterbury have the capacity to come forward with plans to implement with the assistance financially and in terms of resources put in from the central government level. 
We have had a lot of discussion here about the constitution and constitutional restraints etc. It is useful to refer to why we have them. Often we hear that so far we have not done too badly and we should trust the Minister Gerry Brownlee. We hear that he is a good bloke and that he would not unnecessarily override constitutional provisions in Acts etc. But that is not how democracy works. We have these constitutional restraints because we do not trust anyone in the executive as such and because people do not always do the right things. 
It may be that we have a dream run with Gerry Brownlee for the next whatever but we should write laws not according to the trust in a particular person the particular Government of the day or whatever but according to what is constitutionally right and what is basically democratic. Writing off the appeals to courts and the validation of actions by Parliament is not the way to do that. I think that the process of urgency here is another illustration of the problem with this bill. We did not need to go to this rapid process of dealing with the bill over 2 days not knowing what the bill was until a couple of days ago and not knowing what the Government’s amendments are even now part-way through the Committee stage. 
All we needed to do—and the Green Party proposed and stressed this—was extend the state of emergency a bit longer and have a few weeks to have a proper select committee process. It could have been done it should have been done and there is absolutely no reason why it was not done. Now we are in probably the biggest mess I have ever seen in my time in Parliament discussing a bill without the Government’s amendments—which are probably fairly numerous—before us when we are most of the way through what is claimed to be the Committee stage. That is absolutely unacceptable. 
The fact that the Government would force this urgent process and not allow people in the community proper time to come forward with their amendments and changes just shows the need for constitutional restraints and the need not to just trust this Government or any Government on such matters. The select committee process is vital in our democracy. 
Chrissie Williams made a submission; she only just managed to get hold of the bill before the select committee process. She did a handwritten criticism of certain aspects of the bill. She is a city councillor and we have a process where even the city council the body technically responsible for recovering Christchurch—although that is now being overridden by the Government—did not have access to the bill to be able to properly work out a response to it. It is just unacceptable. As Dean Knight one of the submitters said the legislative scheme is drawn in command and control terms. Dean Knight’s submission was a very good submission actually. He is a law lecturer at Victoria University. Thank you.