Smith Nick: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading 
Smith Nick: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13903] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill is an appropriate and timely response to Canterbury’s massive earthquake on 4 September. It is an exceptional bill but these are exceptional circumstances. It is a realistic bill given the scale of the challenge to rebuild Christchurch and its surrounding communities. The bill is designed to take us smoothly from emergency to recovery. It is important we consider this bill in the context of the Canterbury earthquake being the most costly natural disaster in the history of our country. The release of energy at 4.31 on Saturday morning from this 7.1 magnitude earthquake was the equivalent of 1000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Engineers prefer to measure earthquakes by ground horizontal acceleration levels because it is these that cause the building damage. The Canterbury earthquake recorded accelerations of 1.26G at Greendale. That is the horizontal force exerted on buildings was 1.26 times gravity and is like tipping up a building like Parliament House on its end and then putting it back again. These are the highest ever recorded on a New Zealand seismograph and amongst only a very few of that size globally. 
Yes we are fortunate that the earthquake occurred at an hour when most people were at home in bed. But the main reason the casualties were so low is that New Zealand post the 1931 Napier earthquake implemented building standards that ensured their structural integrity under such an earthquake. Christchurch owes much to two remarkable Cantabrians Professor Bob Park and Tom Paulay both now deceased who set the global standard for the design of earthquake-resistant buildings and bridges in the 1960s and 1970s. That no modern building or bridge built to these standards failed is a huge tribute to the quality of their successful research the work of their successors and the hundreds of engineers whom they trained. 
Numbers tell a powerful story. It has already been mentioned that the Haiti earthquake at the beginning of the year of magnitude 7.0 killed 230000 people; the earthquake in the Sichuan province in China in May 2008 of magnitude 7.9 killed 69000 people; the Kashmir earthquake of magnitude 7.6 in 2005 killed 79000 people; the San Francisco earthquake of magnitude 6.9 killed 63 people; and the Kobe earthquake of magnitude 6.8 in 1995 in another developed country killed over 6000 people. We can be justifiably proud of the design standards that proved their worth last Saturday. 
I must also join others in paying tribute to our civil defence and emergency staff both nationally and locally for their response over the last 10 days. When in Christchurch at the weekend I caught up with Professor Green from the United States who has visited the site of almost every major earthquake in the last two decades. He noted that the organisation of the response in Christchurch and Canterbury was the best he had seen and set the standard internationally. That is a huge compliment to the hundreds of professionals and volunteers who have been working so hard over the past 10 days. Our challenge with this bill is to ensure we continue that excellence as we move from emergency to the recovery phase of this disaster. 
This will get harder not easier. There are some very difficult judgments to be made about which heritage buildings should be demolished as they are beyond repair and which ones must be saved. Tough calls will also need to be made on which areas can be and should be built on which areas need some form of geotechnical ground improvement before rebuilding and which areas are too unstable to safely reconstruct on. The enormous challenge is in making these important judgments quickly but correctly. Nobody wants people to be unable to live in their homes or unable to resume trade in their businesses for a day longer than is necessary. Yet the decisions made over the next few months will impact on Christchurch and Canterbury for a century or more. Getting the framework right for these decisions is vital. 
This bill creates the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission to lead that work. It links the work of central regional and local government. It makes sure we work in harmony through this recovery and reconstruction phase. The bill provides the necessary provisions to override current Acts. For instance we do not want our council staff spending the next several months filling out the many forms required for retrospective approval for the demolition of buildings that have already come down during the civil emergency nor do we want officials applying for consents for discharges that have inevitably occurred into Canterbury’s waterways. If we are to get through the recovery phase as quickly and efficiently as possible we need to be very focused on the right priorities and those are rebuilding the houses and infrastructure of Canterbury as quickly as possible. 
As one of the three responsible Ministers listed in the bill I assure the House that those powers will be used sparingly. In the early stages of drafting this bill we attempted to identify with officials the very specific provisions we would need to amend. We rapidly came to a conclusion that that would be impossible. There were so many issues that we would inevitably get it wrong and the only practical way forward was this sort of generic empowering bill. In the coming months it will require trust and goodwill to work and like the Minister in charge of the bill Gerry Brownlee I appreciate the cooperative way in which Opposition parties have approached this bill. 
Questions have been raised about the geographic provisions of the bill and why they are deliberately orientated towards the impacts of the earthquake not just to the geographic area of the districts of Selwyn Waimakariri and Christchurch City. That is with good reason. For instance the landslide that is being dealt with in the northern part of Canterbury is outside those districts but related to the earthquake recovery; equally so the Kate Valley landfill which is taking the bulk of the waste is outside those districts but the provisions of this bill may be needed. There have also been questions about the specific Acts that are affected. We have attempted to list all those Acts in this bill but again it is inevitable that we will not know all of the issues so flexibility is provided for in this bill. 
I completed my PhD two decades ago in geotechnical engineering at the University of Canterbury. I studied liquefaction earthquakes and landslides from a very academic perspective. None of that prepared me for my visit at the weekend to Canterbury and the sight of uprooted houses wrecked bridges collapsed buildings split stopbanks and fractured pipe systems. The forces at work are indescribable but this disaster has brought out the very best in people. My favourite story has been about the Facebook-driven droves of young people getting out and helping the people of Canterbury with the clean-up. This bill is about Parliament doing its bit and giving us a commission and the necessary powers to get on with the most difficult part which is the rebuilding of New Zealand’s second-largest city. With patience goodwill and cooperation and by tapping into New Zealand’s world-renowned engineering expertise we can rebuild a better safer and cleaner Christchurch. I commend the bill to the House.