Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): I'm very pleased to take a call on behalf of the ACT Party. The Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill is a very important piece of legislation. The fact that it's been introduced under urgency is a surprise to ACT because clearly the problem has been defined for some time. It was a problem when I worked in local government as a civil engineer working in an infrastructure agency actually involved in assessing hazards and risks—slips for example in quarries; contamination as a result of past industrial activities; what we do with closed landfills that present a manmade hazard: landfill gas and leachate. So I'm familiar with these problems but I'm also concerned about some of the aspects of the bill that omit to deal with specific issues.We have the natural hazards component and then we have the amendments relating to official information. We only have to think about all of the information that local government holds that could be used for nefarious purposes by somebody with evil intent—for example all of the traffic management systems. Now if you've ever used an app like Google Maps for example to work out where to go what's the fastest route how to avoid traffic congestion—that's pretty much impossible in Auckland or Wellington or Tauranga because of the lack of investment in roading infrastructure and modern intelligent transportation systems by this Labour Government—they hold all kinds of information. Councils have CCTV monitoring centres where they monitor 24/7—thousands of cameras—and where they accumulate millions of hours a year of CCTV camera footage showing all of the terrible crimes that happen in our city showing the police chases showing the gang violence and thuggery showing the shootings in public.These are not things that ever make it to the 6 o'clock news but for people who work in local government for people who work in the command and control centres which monitor the CCTV camera network for example they will tell you that's what they see. They protect that information now because they would prefer that the police had access to that CCTV information so they can go out and catch the bad guys. The only problem is that what a lot of these CCTV camera operators see is that when they ring the police and they say We are watching a smash and grab. We are watching a break-in to a vehicle and the theft of a vehicle." and they give them the details the police say "We'll get someone there soon—we'll get someone there soon. But when we get there we won't be allowed to chase them. We'll just be allowed to monitor them by following them at a 200-metre safe distance."ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Barbara Kuriger): We're deviating a bit from the bill Mr Court.SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Speaker. I think it's important that we acknowledge what type of official information is going to be protected. The ACT Party actually thinks it would be good to have some sunlight on some of this information and that the New Zealand public got to see what some of these traumatised local government employees forced to watch this terrible charade play out day after day watch in these CCTV monitoring centres. But the ACT Party will support the protection of information and will support this bill to select committee.Now I want to come to the natural hazard component. If we look at the definition of a natural hazard in this bill which refers to the Resource Management Act (RMA)—that soon to be extinguished piece of terrible legislation that this Government wants to replace with RMA 2.0; the ACT Party has a different view on what resource management reform looks like but we'll be talking about that next Tuesday 29 November when we release our own resource management policies so we'll come to that later—a natural hazard is an atmospheric or earth- or water-related occurrence: an earthquake tsunami erosion volcano geothermal activity a landslide subsidence. That's a sinkhole. For some of us actually the potholes are so big on the State highway network that they could be sinkholes! So maybe that's subsidence. Maybe potholes are also going to be included in natural hazards! Wind drought fire or flooding—these things can all happen but if they happen where no one lives it doesn't really matter. So "natural hazard" actually means one of those things that adversely affects human life or property or other aspects of the environment that really affect humans.If we're going to disclose information on LIMs land information memorandums which then sit on the property title—and that information will influence how people use their property how potential buyers see the value of that property how they assess the risks of what kind of development can go on—we need to make sure the information's accurate.Right now we don't know that it's accurate. In fact we know it's not accurate. I attended a presentation by a National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) scientist at Engineering New Zealand's stormwater forum earlier this year where we heard that for the flood modelling—the flood models and the prediction tools that NIWA uses for example that tell local government and that tell civil defence and emergency management controllers where floods are likely to occur say after heavy rainfall events or snow melts—actually a lot of the data that they're relying on is based on survey information from when New Zealand was first surveyed in the 1800s. Since then there's been a very high level of modification of the natural environment: we've cut down trees we've turned that land into farms and orchards we've built highways and we've built cities. So a lot of the information that might be relied on and then might end up on a LIM actually hasn't been validated and could well be out of date.If you think about climate change for example this bill aims to give us more information about the impacts of climate change. Well there's a wide range of potential outcomes for how and where sea levels might rise and what the impacts will be on people and infrastructure as well as the natural environment. If we took the extreme scenario the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the UN prediction the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario—now hardly anyone listening on 882 AM will know what that's about; maybe some people who watch Parliament TV regularly will be familiar with the UN climate change scenario—that says that sea levels will rise 3 to 4 metres. So if your local council chooses to use that one well that means half of Auckland's CBD will be underwater; most of Wellington's although you can never really tell whether it's underwater or not depending on how many pipes have broken lately.Or they could choose a much more reasonable scenario in line with the emissions reductions of New Zealand businesses and people who actually manufacture things and produce carbon and who are reducing their emissions. That's what the UN was told last week at COP-27. Actually we're on track to beat our emissions targets by 2030 in which case maybe your council could pick the lower value which predicted only a 0.3 metre to 0.5 metre sea level rise in the next hundred years and maybe it wouldn't even be that much.So if we're going to be relying on information that goes on people's property titles and affects their property rights—their right to use their land—we need to be confident that it's accurate. Right now there's nothing in this bill that talks about the quality of information. So the ACT Party when this comes the select committee will be laser focused on inquiring about how this information is to be derived how we rely on it. Because if I lived in a coastal area and somebody sent me a letter saying "Your council predicts sea level rise of 3 to 4 metres in the next 100 to 200 years." I'd be like "My property is done. It's worth nothing." But if they said "We've done an assessment. Actually our culvert is undersized"—which may have something to do with the way that that Nelson subdivision was completely destroyed by flooding a few months ago because the council had permitted undersized culverts to be installed—"there might be a flood here. We've done some flood modelling. We reckon our stormwater networks are not up to scratch. That means your property is at risk." well I know what I'd be telling the council: "Fix your pipes. Don't put that tag on my LIM report unless you're going to do something about it."—right?Local government has a responsibility to communicate information about natural hazards. What they also need to do is communicate what they're going to do about it who owns that responsibility who should be paying for stuff and in what time frame because it's not fair on property owners to say "You're at risk of flooding"—but by the way we're not telling them that actually it's because we haven't bothered to upgrade our stormwater system or we don't give consents to people who want to clear streams and rivers of debris and logs and all the other things that block streams and rivers like they do on the West Coast that ends up causing floods in Buller."