McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to discuss this bill at first reading: the Emergency Management Bill. This is obviously a very important and salient topic for New Zealanders and my thoughts certainly go out to those who were affected by recent events and are still being affected.This bill has been touted as not a fundamental transformation of the emergency management system and it's pretty understandable why and I couldn't agree more. As a bit of background this bill has been in the works for some time now and is ostensibly a result of the 2017 ministerial review that was launched under the previous Government. Between the actual drafting and the first reading this morning we've obviously gone through multiple emergencies in the meantime which have significantly challenged the operational side of emergency management and stress-tested the coordination between agencies. The outcomes there have been very interesting to look at and have generated many lessons for future responses independent of this piece of legislation. So I'm curious as to how many of the lessons from the cyclone Cyclone Gabrielle in particular are in this bill given the timing of its arrival in this House because operationally the response has been a bit of a mess. This bill prescribes a considerable amount of detail and procedure with a view to managing the emergency management system across … risk reduction readiness response and recovery". So it claims to do some pretty grand things while at the same time claiming to not be particularly transformational of the emergency management system. It was interesting—and other members have spoken about localism—to note in the Minister's statement that "The strength of our emergency management system is that it is locally led." I say that it's interesting because we've just had recently two pieces of legislation passed in this Parliament under urgency where this Government gave themselves enormous powers with an emphasis on centralisation and of course a response led from the Beehive's bunker. So either the best approach is locally led or centrally led and it can't really have it on either of those extremes. Further on the ground they have to decide if those efforts should be led by civil defence teams or other groups or perhaps it's iwi-led and if there's a lack of clarity here then the same problems with communication and coordination will continue. If I can refer to an article by Radio New Zealand where they stated that "Legislation [that] was tabled in Parliament [is] to try to head off a repeat of the crippling effects of another Cyclone Gabrielle." and I would just ask how do we know. The official response to that cyclone was "Henry VIII" bills and if this bill isn't intended to be transformative given we're lagging behind in international standards in this space how is this bill supposed to avoid those effects? It is useful to note that according to the legislative statement this bill contains lessons learnt from the likes of the COVID-19 pandemic. That's interesting because if there were useful lessons from the pandemic then were those lessons not learnt prior to Cyclone Gabrielle? So if we turn to some of the key points of the legislation there is a clarification that committees are responsible for regional coordination and governance and local authority members for leading and delivering local emergency management to their communities and participating in the committee. There's that emphasis on localism again which I re-emphasise is arguably not consistent with the approaches taken this year. Then we turn to a fairly significant part of the bill which is that it "recognises and enhances Māori participation in the emergency management system" and that sounds very good. Obviously iwi-owned organisations already do play a significant role in emergency response with the nature of that role depending on the regions affected. Following Cyclone Gabrielle in particular—especially over there in Tairāwhiti—many iwi-led organisations were doing much of the heavy lifting in terms of getting resources to people in need and they continue to do so even without this legislation in place. Of course as Chris Penk pointed out so did a whole range of other charities and under this bill I think it's useful to ask looking into the future who will manage some of those resources in future. Will the mayoral funds for instance or will the Red Cross be allowed to continue the work that it does and the money it collects and the allocation although I understand now that with a lot of the money that the Government has put forward there have been challenges getting that through to the communities.This bill is not just about engagement though. It fundamentally establishes the National Emergency Management Advisory (NEMA) group to advise the Director of Emergency Management—OK. It mandates that Māori members be appointed to the emergency management committees and emergency management coordinating executives and it requires emergency management committees to collaborate with Māori on the development of the committees' plans. So therein lies a bit of a problem for us with this bill because what it lacks in transformation and actual usefulness and coordination it tries to make up for by somehow being a co-governance bill and it is almost as if there was a starting point of "Let's do something more around co-governance. Well we've got this emergency management stuff that's been under way for a while let's take that on to the end of it." So whatever good things are in this bill they have been overshadowed by ideology and the motivation for doing it—which is disappointing—in addition to the timing. So I'm really just asking fundamental questions I think for the select committee: what measurable outcomes are they trying to achieve with this and how will it be different to the level of collaboration that already exists today in the engagement and in the services provided in marae opening their doors—all of this stuff that's already happening. Why is this legislation actually necessary? Moving on there's also the unsubstantiated and unclear raid on the private sector: "requiring critical infrastructure entities to … share information with the National Emergency Management Agency [other] agencies and … Committees for [their own] planning:". It will require them to "establish and publish" their plans. It will require "annual reporting to the Director" as ongoing compliance and as the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) says while this was unlikely to provide meaningful information companies sort of did this anyway. Companies from electricity to comms companies and port companies opposed this saying that it was more red tape and costs. So it was unclear why they were doing that and really the deal is where's the focus on resilience building resilience and improving wastewater hospitals and roading? What are the expectations for Waka Kotahi what's happening with Wellington Hospital—the list goes on. So where's that resilience aspect? It's just a whole lot of compliance and bureaucracy fundamentally and during Cyclone Gabrielle the Government did not even make it clear that they should reconnect first emergency services hospitals something else—telcos. Telecommunications were obviously not prioritised and there were lots of lots of issues there. They were doing their part they did their part very well and it seems like they're just getting hit with compliance. The committee will be required to engage with communities disproportionately impacted by emergencies—on the face of it that seems fine. It's a bit unclear and non-specific. Notwithstanding that it sounds pragmatic but that's what an efficient and effective system does based on people's needs anyway. It shouldn't need to be put into the legislation; it should be expected and I would say that if officials have been ignoring the worst-affected people in recent events they should probably be sacked.I'll just turn quickly to some of MBIE's concerns. They've stated that "Planning Emergency Levels of Service … are unlikely to achieve stated objectives—the … regime is unlikely to provide meaningful information to communities …the costs of [these] reforms are unclear" and those are very concerning comments. They note that "there is very little detail on what role/functions of lead agencies [of] NEMA and CDEM"—and I mean this is extraordinary. With the amount of content in this bill that sort of feedback is quite worrying. It is not clear what immediate action is being taken among the raft of agencies to fill the gaps. No agency has responsibility for the critical infrastructure system and a number of critical sectors are not subject to regulation around their resilience at all. So the raid on the private sector isn't even especially focused and it's not very well-thought-out. So the whole system is a game of catch-up for New Zealand by international standards with other developed countries more advanced on their disaster-proofing their services in the face of the growing threats and the increasing threats here in New Zealand. In light of what's going on in other countries we just have to ask: how does this bill actually help? It just seems like it's rearranging the deckchairs. Really the Government needs to solve resilience get rid of the ideology let the private sector help don't close the runways enable funding to actually reach communities and don't pretend looting and crime isn't happening because that's extremely unhelpful and it's gaslighting locals. Thank you Madam Speaker."