Faafoi KrisKRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Can I begin with the obvious acknowledgments to the people of Christchurch tonight to the families that are affected by the third night I think it is of fires on the Port Hills to the men and women who have helped over those three nights to attempt to put out what is turning into a rather major fire and to those communities that have been affected areas very close to where I grew up around Westmorland and Tai Tapu where my parents lived not so long ago. Our thoughts go to those communities as they go through these difficult times.As others have said as well there has been a helicopter pilot who has passed away during the efforts to quell the flames. To Steve Askin's family go the collective thoughts of this House for the loss of a brother and a husband especially for the efforts that he made during his time fighting that fire.Can I also acknowledge the Government Administration Committee which I used to be a member of and the chair Ruth Dyson who I think led this process very well. It is a rather large piece of work and I think the members on that select committee worked through a lot of technical issues to make sure that the bill could be as good as it could be. And I do acknowledge Ruth as the local member of Parliament for Port Hills who is back in her electorate tonight tending to the issues that need to be addressed with the fire that is going on there.There are two issues that I wanted to address in the second reading and members who remember my first-reading speech so fondly will be happy that I am following these up. The Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade from my electorate made a submission on this bill around a number of issues but primarily around two practical issues that it had some concerns about. It saw the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill as an opportunity to address those.One of those was the ability for fire brigades to access water for training not necessarily from hydrants but from rivers streams lakes or ponds that they thought might be useful for them to train with. Under the old settings—which I guess are current settings—it was very difficult for them to get permission to allow them to do training around pumping water out of those water bodies so that their volunteer fire brigade members could get practical experience around some of the local areas of Porirua. My understanding is that the practical problem was that they had to get permission from the Wellington Regional Council just to set up a pump in one part of a stream operate the pump so they knew how to work the pump and then pump the water straight back into the stream. They had to get permission for that. That was onerous and they thought—I think rightly so—that this issue should have been dealt with in this bill.To the credit of the Minister in charge Peter Dunne and to the Government Administration Committee they followed up on the recommendation to this bill by the Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade and other members of volunteer fire brigades and professional fire services in making sure that clause 45 stayed within the bill. That is around the power to use for any emergency and training purposes" "all hydrants and control valves installed in any water mains and any water in the water mains for—(i) the purposes of performing or exercising FENZ's functions duties or powers; or (ii) training for the purposes of performing or exercising FENZ's functions duties or powers;". In plain English that means the fire brigades like mine around the country no longer have to go through the rigmarole of being able to access waterways to make sure that they can train in those areas. I think that is a good thing. It is a good thing to make sure that these things are followed through and my local fire brigade can be happy with that.There is still one other issue with the bill that they wanted to see through that has not been dealt with in the bill and I am almost definitely likely to put in a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage of this bill. That is around when fire brigades are testing fire hydrants in our communities. To test every individual hydrant they have to get a traffic management plan to make sure that they can do their job. They have to register with the local councils every time they check each individual hydrant. They are mandated within this bill to check that the hydrants work and to use them for training purposes. But every time they do that—to check or train—a traffic management plan has to be done. That has been onerous. It has been very taxing especially on smaller volunteer fire brigades because it has meant a lot of red tape that they have had to go through a lot of planning that they think is unnecessary for the simple job of making sure that a fire hydrant in their area works.They made a submission that as long as Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) set out some criteria and that the local bodies agree to it that they would not have to undergo the onerous task of having a traffic management plan for each individual hydrant that they test. So just to give people at home an idea of that we see hydrants probably every kilometre or 500 metres sometimes in some areas. For every one that they checked they would have had to put in a detailed traffic management plan about where they were going to put cones out how many people were going to be on that testing what they were going to do and how long they would be doing that testing for. You can imagine that with a small volunteer fire brigade with maybe eight nine or 10 regular active members that would be quite a hassle to do.This piece of legislation still does not deal with that so I think that in the Committee stage we should actually reconsider that submission from the Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade because it will help them to not only do their job but if that is the main work of a fire brigade it is going to be pretty hard to attract new members. You are going to get caught in red tape most of the time and not be out doing what Melissa Lee was doing which was having a go with the hoses training to put out fires. I think that this House should reconsider that and make sure that we give those volunteer fire brigades the freedom and the ability to do the job that they volunteered for and not get caught up in the red tape in and around traffic management plans. I think that is a waste of time.I think these people have already volunteered their time and they will have technical ability and are already safety conscious enough to make sure that they are going to keep themselves safe when they are testing the fire hydrants because when they actually have to use those fire hydrants there is no traffic management plan—none whatsoever. They are going to have to use a bit of initiative and a bit of instinct when they are going to these incidents and I think it is good to train as you would if you were in the actual situation. I will hope that the Supplementary Order Paper that will be coming in under my name—which will basically be a carbon copy of what was suggested by my local fire brigade—is taken up and that this House seriously considers it. I think it will save a hell of a lot of time for our local volunteer fire brigades."