Mitchell Mark; Rurawhe AdrianHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Madam Speaker. Firstly can I just add my voice and pass on my deepest condolences for the loss of our two firefighters that were caught in the Muriwai slip Craig Stevens and Dave van Zwanenberg. I have to say that everyone remembers where they were when they got the news. I was at the Silverdale fire station in my own electorate when the news came through. Obviously there was a very sombre mood but our firefighters kept on turning out and they kept on responding to the communities that needed them. So I just want to acknowledge them and their families.It's very easy for politicians to stand up in this House and for us to acknowledge our first responders and the amazing work that they do in supporting us and it's important that we do that. But part of the problem that we have in this country—and certainly there was a megaphone put around it on the 27th in Auckland when we were hit with an event that we were hours late in having a state of emergency declaration put in place. That's been well litigated through the media. It's something that we have to have a look at in the review. Certainly in my electorate there was no excuse for it. I rang my own acting police district commander and said Why is there not a state of emergency in place?" He said "We've been asking for that for four hours."We had people trapped we had roads going down we had power going out and we realised very quickly that a centralised response was not able to prioritise was not able to triage which meant that we weren't getting the right people in the right place at the right time. And that's something that we actually have to look at in this review and make sure that we get it right because a centralised model doesn't always work. And I think that the one thing that has been shown very clearly with Cyclone Gabrielle is that the local response is what's actually worked for the local communities. I want to thank and acknowledge my own police Area Commander Roger Small; my Chief Fire Officer Don McErlich; our senior manager for St John's Andy Everiss; and Faron Turner from our surf clubs—just four of our leaders. There were many more but they all came together and we clearly identified that we had to take a local response back for the second round that we had come through Auckland. We made sure that we positioned our surf lifesaving assets at the fire station. That became a local command and control centre. St John's had their mobile unit there police operated out of there and it meant that second time around without using the centralised model we were able to get the right people in the right place at the right time. I visited the Hawke's Bay. I went to Wairoa where I met with the deputy mayor because the mayor was actually down with COVID. Denise Eaglesome-Karekare by the way has provided outstanding leadership at a time when she lost her own house and they had three families trying to live in a four-bedroom home while she was still responding to the needs of her community. I want to acknowledge Juanita Savage. She was the incident controller in Wairoa. When she turned up there was no power and there were no comms. She lit a candle and she tried to work out how they were going to deal with it. The farmers were actually the heroes on the night. They figured out what was happening in town. They got their tractors out they hooked on the trailers and they rolled into town and they started taking people off house roofs to save them from the floodwaters. I went to Puketapu in Hawke's Bay where Kirsten Thompson a young mum with some civil defence experience had stood up to actually fill the gap that was left by civil defence and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in terms of no response for her community. She turned her house into an emergency centre. She did that for 12 days. On the 13th day she called a public meeting and she begged for help and said "I cannot do this any more. I need the Government to step in and take over." That's what they need. All these communities now especially the ones that are isolated—Wairoa's still cut off from Napier Ruatōria is still cut off from Gisborne. They had their first public meeting in Ruatōria only about three days ago. These are their major concerns: number one that they've been forgotten; number two that there's no decisions been made. They're not getting decision makers in front of them. They've stepped up through the worst of it when they had the adrenaline running when they realised and they understood what they had to do to support and protect their communities. They are the true heroes. And the thing about our first responders in this country is that they're so good. They go above and beyond. They often plaster over the cracks that have been created by the faceless bureaucrats that are sitting around computer terminals more interested in entering data than actually making sure they get the right people to the right place.You might look in horror over the other side but this is fact. This is coming from the people in the communities that are actually doing the job. So let's step up and make sure that number one they aren't forgotten; number two they get the decision makers in front of them; and number three—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. I understand this is a split call. I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes."