Flavell Te UruroaHon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker mōrena mōrena ki a tātau i tēnei ata. Ka nui te harikoa kua tae mai ki te kōrero ki tēnei pire mō te wā poto; me te tautoko anō hoki i tōna whāinga. [Thank you Mr Speaker morning and morning to us this morning. I am hugely delighted to have arrived here this morning to speak to this bill for a brief moment; I endorse its purpose as well.]I come just for a short call on behalf of the Māori Party to say that we support this particular piece of legislation going all the way through—the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill (No 2). I cannot but agree with some of the sentiments already expressed around our civil defence actions to address emergencies in this country being a little bit short from time to time and I am pleased that there has been a technical advisory group that has been established. I commend the Minister of Civil Defence for that. I have had the opportunity to stand in front of that committee myself to present some observations as a Minister and certainly as Minister for Māori Development and have been involved with some of the emergencies that we have had recently. My predecessor the Hon Dr Pita Sharples when Christchurch happened grabbed Te Puni Kōkiri straightaway and got people down there and coordinated many of the medical responses available to help people out. The Māori wardens took their part. They established particular positions called Kaitoko Whānau which were available to help out whānau. I was privileged probably about 2 months ago to go down to see the wrap-up of—I have forgotten the organisation but basically the group that came together all across Christchurch to assist families to get into housing. It was a great occasion to go and acknowledge the work that had been done. Not long after the Whanganui floods came along and of course all the communities up and down the river of Wanganui were impacted. I was able to fly up to the top into Wanganui to find a marae that had been basically washed through. Some of the wharenui had mud all the way through them. The impact on those communities where they had been separated off—I mean it is hard enough now. They are separated off as the Hon Chester Borrows will know and separated out from much of the main communities as it is but to be blocked off—they managed to get together and to support one another.Kaikōura—I was down at Kaikōura; I had an opportunity to go there. But then it sort of came home to me the impact some of these catastrophes have on readying and prompting Māori communities to come together. In Christchurch it happened in Whanganui it happened and at Kaikōura the marae from my reports was pretty much the centre of the response effort on behalf of all the agencies but there were some cracks in how everybody responded to that particular crisis.Then of course came Edgecumbe. That is when it really came home to me because I all of a sudden found out that members of Parliament for their particular areas are not automatically advised about catastrophes in their area and where there have been civil defence alerts made. I thought that that would have been par for the course that local members of Parliament would have been advised but that is not the case. So I went down to the bunker to have a look for myself and have a look at the operation—pretty good operation. I did not see the length and breadth of it but that was a real worry. Then the second worry was that back in Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty the regional council said there was a civil defence emergency but Rotorua said: Oh no there isn't." So there are some serious issues to be addressed there. Luckily I had the opportunity to put that to the Minister.Since that time again and again and again I say that one of the things that I hope comes out of the opportunity that we have because we are extending the time for this report to go through is that we dig deep down into the contribution of Māori organisations and communities in a response opportunity. I say that because in Kaikōura the marae itself while they were overrun by people—fed the people—they got into scraps with a number of organisations like the Red Cross because they got the food flown in but all of a sudden everybody was arguing: "Oh this is for me this is for me this is for me." In fact they ended up having to call the police in to try to bring some sanity to that. That is a worry when the relief effort does not necessarily go straight through.The second part was that at Edgecumbe again a big huge voluntary force went in but in behind the scenes there were marae—and I say Rautahi I say Kōkōhīnau I say Ngāti Tarāwhai marae the people of Nga Maihi. Everybody pitched in to look after the Māori wardens to look after the voluntary force to look after all those who were associated with the response to Edgecumbe and they actually opened the marae up for those people who were suffering from the fact that their houses had been basically lost. I took 1 day to go into one and I spent only 1 day in one house cleaning out all the stuff in that one place. My gosh there were hundreds of people there giving a hand.So it is important that we take a good serious look at our responses to emergencies in this country and I am pleased that this legislation allows us to do that because we must do it to ensure that we futureproof our responses from now on.Bill read a first time."