Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you Mr Speaker and I thank Minister Willow-Jean Prime for her remarks. I think it's important that these discussions in the space of emergency management as we're calling it these days continue across the House and of course across New Zealand. Of course I'd be remiss not to acknowledge those who as recently as February of this year and actually even more recently in the Tairāwhiti region—places like Gisborne—have been very hard hit this year. So even though the emphasis of this bill is rightly looking forward at ways that these procedures and policies should be implemented in the future of course we have a very recent and in some cases tragic example of what can happen when natural disaster strikes and so it's appropriate that we all take this very seriously indeed.I regret to point out to the House that while the aims of the bill are worthy—and indeed even some of the detail too—what is missing from this bill is very serious in terms of some omissions of lessons that should have been learnt from early 2023 and that are playing out very much on the ground in areas like Hawke's Bay. It's not limited to that but that region was hit particularly hard and I know from having visited residents of Eskdale and Pakowhai as recently as this week that they would not be comfortable I think for this bill to be debated in the House without some of the serious significant shortfalls of that response and recovery—so far—without those issues being raised so I will do that.In doing so I should point out that National doesn't regard this bill as being sufficiently complete or comprehensive enough to be worthy of support at its first reading but we do commit to constructive engagement through the legislative process. No doubt at select committee we and more importantly members of the New Zealand public will have the opportunity to make submissions about how they feel this bill may or may not be fit for purpose. To avoid going through the details I acknowledge the Minister has set out in her ministerial statement a number of the key elements of the bill and to the extent that these are worthy of support—for example emphasising a locally-led recovery—of course we support those but with caveats and I'll come to those shortly.To focus though perhaps as helpfully as possible in my time available I do wish to emphasise the areas in which it seems to me—unless I'm missing something obvious—that there are some major gaps. The first is immunity from prosecution. There have been examples that have been raised with me in the Hawke's Bay region of actions that were taken at the time in good faith by people acting in frankly heroic fashion to assist to save the lives of their fellow Kiwis in an hour of need and to learn now that they face the prospect of legal action that would take a business-as-usual approach to matters of compliance with various norms and without the acknowledgment that the scenario is very much one that was not normal it is disappointing. I won't tread in dangerous territory to comment on a matter that's currently before the New Zealand courts but suffice to say the lessons of White Island should be heeded in terms of emergency responses undertaken again in good faith versus business-as-usual health and safety at work practices—enough said. Although on a related note in terms of looking back at emergency responses and the way that people acted in that very immediate way it's been disappointing again to discover that now there is an unseemly haggling between central government and local government in terms of who is going to pay the costs of some of those actions. I understand that helicopter fuel is an element of that in terms of sign-offs being given and actions being taken in good faith and actually to my understanding very helpfully indeed. I think if the lesson to be learnt from that is that people will put themselves in financial or legal risk by doing the right thing by their fellow Kiwis including at the organisational level for local government and therefore they'd be acting against their own interests and therefore disincentivised in the future that would be very disappointing and indeed dangerous. I don't think that the current bill in its current form addresses that. If I'm wrong then I'll very happily withdraw and apologise but it seems to me that that's a major gap that this bill should address.Second I think—if I can put this as kindly as I'm able—the focus of the bill is bureaucratic as opposed to practical in tone. Clarifying roles and responsibilities across the system is helpful in itself but to be largely silent on the issue of allowing resources in the form of funding to be spent in short order on the ground to enable a good response seems to me an obvious gap. While obviously this kind of legislation wouldn't anticipate specific appropriations—there are separate Budget and other public finance mechanisms for that—I think that's something that should be spelt out very clearly. We do need to understand in what ways it will be that local community groups—including iwi but not limited to iwi—can spend money to the betterment of their people in a way that reflects the actual need on the ground at short notice be it blankets food and so forth without the need for discomfort of a financial or other nature later.Third there doesn't seem to be much of a role for the private sector other than the community and NGO and iwi Māori kind of way. While it is absolutely appropriate and we would say in the National Party it is indeed the best thing to focus on those community organisations as part of a broader ethos of locally-led response I think to miss a trick in terms of the ability for investment to be provided from outside Government or the community sector—which tends not to be particularly well resourced moneywise—is I think again a missed opportunity.Finally I do want to just pick up on this notion of a locally-led response. We like that philosophically in the National Party and actually to give credit where it's due if we give the full range of the phrase as expressed in select committee for example by Minister Grant Robertson locally-led but centrally supported". That's worthy as I say at a philosophical level but the reality is that lessons that should have been learnt that are taking place right now in terms of the mismanagement of various aspects of the current crisis response/recovery—those lessons need to be heeded. So to talk about a locally-led response but to have a situation where in the Hawke's Bay some $8.8 million is in danger of being transferred back to Wellington because the mechanisms weren't sufficiently well set-up or operated to get that money out to the people in desperate need there—that's a major miss. So too is the idea that local government in its current form and in areas with large geographical needs—big areas but small ratepayer bases—have the resources to advise on all the things that are needed. That's really difficult and that's not an easy one because again philosophically we like the idea of localism and generally speaking our flavour of arguing these matters in asset management is very much geared towards supporting local. But the reality is that when systems are set up without sufficient clarity or without the central support that's been touted then that's the inevitable result.So too if we think about the debris waste removal fund. It's quite a generous amount of money arguably provided by local government for that—or at least announced and actually allocated—but the reality is a very small fraction of that's actually gone out the door. Again if we don't do anything in this opportunity that we have before us now to enable that to be unlocked then that would be disappointing and a miss.I do also just want to touch briefly on the aspect whereby the bill seeks to recognise and enhance Māori participation. We think that's positive in itself and it's absolutely right that the minister acknowledges—as many people have done—the role of marae and other Māori-based organisations in opening their doors and helping to respond to local need. I think we wouldn't be doing justice however to other groups in the community if we didn't also recognise those who open doors of RSAs churches sports clubs community halls and so forth and indeed individuals in their homes and I appreciate that's harder to contemplate in a legislative sense. But our view is that we should be supporting all local mechanisms and community groups and to set out one even acknowledging the Treaty of Waitangi aspect and basis for that—I think we'll do ourselves a disservice if we don't have a broad enough view that actually looks to take on the community knowledge and resources of all types of local groups.So for all these reasons we want to support the bill but we'd need to see some considerable additional work as I've outlined in this speech. So at this stage National does not support this bill."