Dalziel Lianne: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18141] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I will make two preliminary statements and they are the following. Firstly I reject the assertion that disagreeing with the Government means that we are not treating this matter seriously. We are treating this matter seriously. Secondly I reject the assertion that advocating for my constituents is playing politics. In fact I resent that suggestion as do my constituents who are frustrated by the fact that their MP is treated with such disregard when advocating on their behalf. 
I will reflect on a couple of elements of what occurred yesterday with regard to submissions on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. There was some criticism of the lack of notice and the failure of the Government to provide access to the draft legislation. I believe that that criticism has great merit but that people came to the table with goodwill. 
I will comment though on the Christchurch City Council’s submission. I was disappointed that the mayor and the chief executive of the largest council affected by this legislation chose not to change other commitments that they had in the 4½ hours that we had available. They had the choice of any time within those 4½ hours to come to the Local Government and Environment Committee but they did not choose to rearrange their other commitments in order to come to the select committee. Instead they sent the deputy mayor and an in-house counsel who was quite a good person to have there. They could have brought him anyway but he was in the unique position of having seen the bill about a week before the legislation was introduced. The chief executive had been allowed to show it to one member of staff and he was that lucky member of staff. His contribution was very valuable as a result of that and I place that on record. 
I also place on record how valuable the contributions were from the individual councillors who came to plead for community engagement to be at the heart of the process of Canterbury’s recovery: Chrissie Williams Yani Johanson Helen Broughton and Glenn Livingstone. I say to all four of them well done. They were doing what their constituents elected them to do: to represent their interests in the best possible way that they could under very trying difficult circumstances. In saying that I recognise the fact that not one of those councillors had seen the legislation other than on the website on the previous day. 
But to read in the  
Press  
this morning that Christchurch City Council had no idea of what it had done wrong after the first earthquake beggars belief which is why the chief executive should have fronted to the select committee yesterday. I will be tabling four pieces of correspondence—in fact I will be tabling a number of pieces of correspondence over the next few hours. But in the second reading I will be tabling four letters. 
On 4 February I wrote a letter to Tony Marryatt Chief Executive of the Christchurch City Council and I copied it to every single one of the councillors who sit around that table. I will cover just quickly what I covered in that letter. The first item was recovery planning and I highlighted the fact that “As you are aware local authorities have a leadership role under the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Regime with respect to the recovery effort. I understand that in the case of this event the CCC has had to wait to see what response the government would give to EQC’s recommendations on the ‘Stage 2 report’.” But the council did nothing before that and it did nothing after that. I went through how it was really important that the council use the template for a recovery action plan on the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management website if it did not know how to do such a plan and how our mutual constituents would gain a sense of what is planned and who would be accountable for meeting milestones if it adopted that simple process. 
I then went on to say “I am aware of the email that you sent councillors where you said that the council is participating in the CERC task groups that have been formed as if that absolved you of your responsibility to develop a recovery action plan for the city—the other affected Councils”— Waimakariri District Council and Selwyn District Council—“haven’t adopted this attitude and are getting on with the job.” I then went on to say “I have had an email from a constituent this morning asking why Kaiapoi is proceeding first—I will be replying that the Waimakariri District Council is doing an excellent job of recovery planning. You have said that the CCC is treating the recovery as ‘business as usual’ with the exception that you have geared up to provide both the infrastructure rebuild and resource and building consent extra demand. If the CCC thinks that this is your sole role and that recovery can be treated as ‘business as usual’ then you have read none of the literature you have not considered recovery best practice nor have you looked at how other local authorities have dealt with disasters”. I used the example of Tauranga post the landslip and the fact the Terry Wynyard who was locally engaged with the Earthquake Commission could have been available to lead the recovery effort. He had led the effort in Tauranga and was available in Christchurch to talk to the city council. So I have actually done what I said I would do: I have worked behind the scenes to give the council all the information that it needs. 
I then went on to talk about the fact that the council had made a number of decisions that were predicated on the wrong information and said I felt it should engage with the Earthquake Commission and the insurers in a meaningful way so that we could get on with the rebuild part after the first earthquake. I talked about the council’s rates rebate policy missing the mark. I talked about Variation 48 to the district plan becoming operative on 31 January and I raised several questions about how section 72 of the Building Act would be applied. 
I have done my job as a local representative of the people of Christchurch East and I resent the fact that the city council through its mayor then went public to say we were making political capital out of the situation. I wrote to the mayor on 7 February 2011. I said: “I decided not to be offended by your statements about some city MPs trying to make political capital out of the situation because I am aware that you too have been stressed by the earthquake coupled with the enormity of the task that this city must confront.” I then went on to explain why the council had missed the boat in terms of its obligations regarding the recovery. It seems to me that the fact that the response effort of everyone was absolutely brilliant—it was textbook; it was fantastic; nobody could criticise the response in the wake of either earthquake—masked the fact that the city council has completely failed the ratepayers of its constituency by not doing recovery at all. It did not even start the recovery process after the first earthquake and we have lost valuable time as a result of that. 
I will table two other letters. One is the letter I wrote to the Hon Gerry Brownlee on 27 September last year. This is how I concluded the letter and I referenced it in the letter to the mayor: “Thank you for what you are doing to lead the recovery effort. It is a major challenge and I remain committed to assisting you in any way I can.” He wrote back to me on Christmas Eve and said to me that my comments about how we could have community consultation and communication were well made and that he would refer those comments through to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission. I have done everything I can to work behind the scenes to look after the interests of my constituents. 
The Minister talks about the people who are living in damaged houses on damaged streets with limited services and who are uncertain of the future of their properties. He is describing my neighbours. The only reason I do not include myself in that description is that I have some resilience factors that some of my neighbours do not. I am mortgage free. I have a good uninterrupted income. I have the ability to make choices that are not available to others. I can even sneak away for a quake break and pay for it myself. The Minister says that if we do not agree with this model then we are imposing a delay on resolving the future of my neighbours. I reject that. How the land report information is released to my constituents must be respectful and must allow for an opportunity to engage that must be better than the handling of the release of both the stage one and stage two reports. 
I repeat the offer that I have made to the Minister to continue to work with him but I have to say—and I have said this in writing to the Government—that trust has diminished and tolerance levels are much lower than they were after the first earthquake. But I will help. I will help because this issue is too important for politics and too important for us to get it wrong. There is a need to balance speed and deliberation but community participation actually promotes the focused timely and expedited recovery that the Government says in this bill it wants to achieve. That is why the community must be at the heart of the recovery. I seek leave to table the letters that I referred to in my address. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There appears to be none. The member may table them. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House.