Whaitiri MekaMEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Labour supports the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Bill to the select committee and joins with all the speakers who have spoken formerly. We acknowledge that this is the last of the kind of legislative trilogy of bills to address the tragedy that occurred in the districts of Hurunui and Kaikōura. I also want to add my acknowledgment of the recovery personnel who worked particularly immediately after the earthquake and who continue working today and obviously those who are yet to come into the area to help out with the recovery. I just want to acknowledge that. I guess as members of this House it is important that their work is not done in vain so it makes sense that we are standing in support of this particular bill. Previous speakers have touched on it but just in terms of the explanatory note the learnings from the Christchurch earthquake are acknowledged in the explanatory note. What I found interesting was the point around the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act 2010 and then the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011. I am sure the Acting Minister of Civil Defence would know that the point was made around the fact that the mechanism attracted some criticism but it may be of interest to the House that 60 Orders in Council were made through those particular pieces of legislation. Also I note that not all requests for Order in Council in terms of the Christchurch example were granted and that there was one case of successful judicial challenge involving the unsuccessful challenge of the demolition of a heritage building. As previous speakers have already alluded to I guess in terms of the checks and balances essentially how do we ensure that this bill—which is the Order in Council mechanism that people have spoken about—can address the economic recovery for those communities and councils? The Minister did touch on them so I will not repeat them but I will note that when it comes to the Local Government and Environment Committee we will be scrutinising to ensure that we have got the right mix of checks and balances there and of course it will be interesting to hear what submitters will have to say in terms of assuring that.I do not want to go on much more but I do want to acknowledge that some of us are a little jaded having sat for quite a significant amount of time considering this bill but I too want to add my acknowledgment of the officials who have supported our select committee. For us to move as quickly as we can over a piece of legislation within 25 or 24 hours as the chair quite rightly acknowledged it requires the diligence of not only officials but I am talking about clerks of our select committee as well as the Parliamentary Counsel Office in terms of the next bill that we are going to bring. What is important for me is that when we need to move urgently in this House in dealing with emergency legislation we are creating a standard of how we do that with all the moving parts—from the Minister across parties and right through to officials—to ensure that we are able to respond in a timely manner when crises occur around the country. I just want to put that on record. I want to thank our officials. We are still not through but it is enough to say that without their support we would not be able to pass this bill in the timely manner that I am sure the Minister and the Government want to do it. We look forward to this bill coming to the select committee. Kia ora tātou.