Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I am pleased to take a call on the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Bill. I will just say before starting that the Green Party is thinking of the many people in Indonesia's Aceh Province. Certainly there has not been the destructive tsunami that there was in 2004 but hundreds of people there have lost loved ones and a lot of people have suffered serious injuries so we are really thinking of the people in Indonesia suffering as a result of that massive earthquake. I think too of the people of Kaikōura South Marlborough and North Canterbury as they are struggling with their damaged homes and with how to rebuild their businesses without State Highway 1 and the visitor traffic that that provides. Can we assure them that here in Parliament we have been dealing with this legislation trying to get it through as expeditiously as possible and the select committee and officials have worked very hard on that. I would certainly like to recognise the work of officials in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the officials they have consulted with from the Ministry for the Environment and others the select committee staff of the Local Government and Environment Committee parliamentary counsel and everyone who has put a lot of energy and very careful thought into this bill. Not least I acknowledge the Minister and his preparedness to engage with the select committee as a result of our consideration of our submissions and thoughts around the bill. I think that this bill even though it went to select committee for only less than a week and submissions were open for only a working day or so highlighted once again the value of the select committee process because the bill has come back to the House through the Supplementary Order Paper process with a number of changes as a result of submissions and as a result of the committee's consideration. As Mr Parker noted and as the Regulations Review Committee discussed in its report some have certainly suggested that it would be desirable to have legislation around recovery from a national emergency prepared as much as possible in advance. Certainly superficially that is attractive because it means that the issues are considered in a reflective and a measured way but I think the shortcoming is that because such legislation is generic it would have to provide very broad powers and potentially larger powers than are needed. So even though it means that people are working under pressure I think with this bill bespoke legislation is better because there is focused attention on the powers that it should provide and the situation that it should respond to. I certainly acknowledge the Green Party's appreciation of the work done by the Regulations Review Committee in finalising its report Inquiry into Parliament's legislative response to future national emergencies. That was a very good series of recommendations that I think assisted the Local Government and Environment Committee particularly because it built on the work done by the Law Commission. The Green Party has considered this bill very carefully. Like everyone I think in the Parliament we are reluctant to support legislation that allows the executive through Orders in Council to modify suspend and override primary legislation with no opportunity for parliamentary debate public submissions or scrutiny and consideration by a select committee. As noted by submitters particularly constitutional lawyers and also Dr Ann Brower breaching constitutional norms as Dr Ann Brower said is a bit like eating fish and chips—if you are going to do it it had better be worth it. I think certainly the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquake sequence—the huge damage that it has done to the land there and the access that it has cut off to Kaikōura—means that emergency powers are required. We acknowledge that the bill as introduced by the Minister did improve on the Canterbury emergency legislation in response to the earthquakes there with additional safeguards including the fact that the Orders in Council that are made by the relevant Minister must be necessary or desirable in terms of the proposed purpose and that they cannot be broader than required. This bill has a list of Acts about which Orders in Council can be made rather than the bill being a much more blank cheque as with the Canterbury legislation. Those Henry VIII" provisions as they are called were rightly criticised in the Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation because of the very considerable powers that they gave to the executive to suspend and modify Acts of Parliament. There the executive was able to override all but a handful of Acts in relation to constitutional matters and custody and detention. So it is positive that we have schedule 2 in this bill and the list of I think more than 40 Acts that the bill applies to. They themselves are very broad Acts. They include things like the Resource Management Act the Conservation Act the Railways Act the Maritime Transport Act the Land Transport Act and others. In the select committee we inserted some additional safeguards in recognition of the concerns that were raised by submitters and also in recognition of our own concerns. Like the Labour Party the Green Party would have liked to see a protection of the ability to take judicial review because the courts provide through their scrutiny of Ministers' exercise of the Order in Council power an additional check and balance. But we are pleased that the changes have been made in proposed clause 8(4) and clause 16(4) I think it is where there is a provision that nothing in the Act except as provided in the clause prevents the court from determining whether an order is authorised by this Act. What that effectively means is that if an order is ultra vires—if it goes outside the purpose and the scope of that purpose—then there is the ability to invoke legal action and ask the courts to examine that. So that is certainly making that much clearer than the provision in the bill as introduced. We are also pleased in terms of clause 16 that where the Minister wants to use an Order in Council in relation to Acts that are not in schedule 2 then the Minister must put the proposal for the draft order to the leaders of the parties represented in Parliament with the reasons he or she wants to make that order and he or she has to be satisfied that there is near-unanimity from the parties that the order should proceed. So although it is not coming to the Parliament before the order is made there is quite a deal of political influence in that provision. And of course in this clause if there are Orders in Council made that bring in and affect additional Acts to those listed in schedule 2 those Orders in Council have to be affirmed subsequently by the Parliament. In the Green Party we would have liked to see that affirmative resolution procedure applied to all Orders in Council as an additional check on the Minister's powers and a safeguard against abuse but we will be supporting this bill and we are not using the fact that that is missing from the bill as a reason to oppose it. That is partly because of the additional safeguards around Orders in Council; the composition of the review panel which has a number of people with specific expertise on it; the fact that the Minister must have regard to the advice and consider the advice that the review panel provides; and the fact that there is now a process for seeking some public comment—and my colleague Jan Logie may talk further about that. These additional safeguards have I think put better checks on the Minister's powers. The other major improvement that the select committee made was in relation to allowing additional local authorities that have not been affected by the Hurunui-Kaikōura earthquake sequence to have Orders in Council imposed there. Clause 16 has been amended and that provision about the Minister specifying one or more local authorities where orders could apply has been removed so it is very much restricted to those local authority areas that have been affected by the Hurunui-Kaikōura quake. Nevertheless as Mr Parker has said the ambit of this bill does apply to a large geographical area from the Waitaki River right through up into the Wairarapa even though—"