Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe tuarua ki ngā mema o tō tātau Whare tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātau katoa. [Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker and secondly to the members of our House salutations and acknowledgments to you collectively and to us all.]I am very pleased to speak on this bill because the cathedral with its huge gaping hole where the wonderful rose window once was with the barricades around it since the time of the earthquakes is a symbol of decay of the earthquakes. With the pigeons being able to get inside it with it being open to the weather it hasn't been a symbol of regeneration and where Christchurch wants to go in terms of the future. So this bill is a great step towards the reinstatement of the cathedral. Like others I acknowledge the Hon Nicky Wagner the Hon Gerry Brownlee and the former Government for the work that particularly Nicky Wagner did in working with the Church Property Trustees and Bishop Victoria Matthews to ensure that there was a proposal that went to the synod was accepted and formed the basis really for the bill that we have before us today.The cathedral as others have also said is at the heart of the city. Like Rino Tirikatene I can remember going up to the tower and looking out over the city after that steep climb up all of the steps to the viewpoint. In earlier days you didn't often get that sweep of the city buildings from such a vantage point. The tower is now demolished. There are proposals for a new wooden version of the tower that might potentially form part of this reinstatement.This bill recognises that the Resource Management Act and the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act may provide processes that might take quite a while and as we in Christchurch know the division of views around the cathedral—the litigation that resulted from the section 38 notice under the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority legislation which could have seen the cathedral demolished—needed to be healed. Work was done setting up the Government working party to look at the options that engineers and the Church Property Trustees had to see whether there was a way forward in terms of not going through with wholesale demolition but actually with reinstatement and then the former Government brought in all of the parties last year to actually look at how we could get a cross-party approach. So that's why this bill I think is a really good symbol for Christchurch—because it has got support across the Parliament and the examination of it at the select committee may lead to some changes that strengthen it.It is a challenging concept having Orders in Council that override the legislation that Parliament has passed but there are a number of checks and balances in this bill which mean that I am really comfortable to strongly support it. Those checks and balances include the fact that the Minister the Hon Megan Woods who's brought the bill here is able to consult the public on a draft order or proposal and consult a particular review panel that's being set up with a lot of expertise to provide feedback. It's also a check in the fact that the bill provides that it will have Orders in Council that override only two pieces of legislation: the Resource Management Act and the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act. It's got a sunset clause of 15 years; that's another check.There is also provision that some bills particularly the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act legislation are excluded from having Orders in Council that can overpower them. The Minister must publish reasons in the House for recommending an Order in Council and the Minister must be satisfied that the Order in Council is necessary and desirable. So that provides a mechanism for judicial review which the bill also enables through a truncated process in terms of having to start within 28 days. The fact that a draft order has to go before the Regulations Review Committee or if Parliament is not sitting that it must go to party leaders is another check. The Minister must have regard to the advice of the Regulations Review Committee and the advice of the regulatory panel.So all of these are checks on this extraordinary power of having Orders in Council override our primary legislation. Why is it necessary? Well when the Christchurch plan went through the process recently of developing the final plan that plan did provide for reinstatement of the cathedral. It recognised that it would need a reasonably expeditious process but still under the plan because the actual scope of work to reinstate the cathedral is not fully known there may in fact be potential need for resource consents that would be fully notified and then could be tied up in litigation.What has been achieved with the synod's agreement to the Government proposal and the funding that has come into that is a major opportunity to get started with the reinstatement. We must take advantage of the agreement that has been reached between the parties after years of litigation and years of division about the future of the cathedral. So this bill is critical in terms of its timing and in providing the legal framework for allowing reinstatement to occur expeditiously.When you look at the cathedral particularly if you are looking at it from the east where you see what seems an intact roofline—quite an intact structure from the east; certainly not looking from the other direction—the potential for the cathedral to be a symbol of resilience is also really strongly there. Massive craftsmanship went into that building with huge quantities of timber of basalt and of stone and beautiful carvings both inside and out. The Arts Centre in Christchurch has shown what happens when we get superb artisanship engineering skill seismic strengthening vision and funding from philanthropists from the city council and from the Government coming together to restore such an important symbol of place and heritage in our city. This bill is going to allow that to happen to the cathedral. I commend the bill to the House.