Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I begin my contribution to the Committee stage of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill by acknowledging Minister Gerry Brownlee who has picked up the responsibility for the passage of this bill and also by acknowledging the Hon Nikki Kaye who brought this bill the House and as the member from New Zealand First who has just resumed his seat Clayton Mitchell indicated has maintained a very close interest in this bill to the point of contacting the various parties following their second reading contributions and saying: You mentioned this; I'd like to talk about it. You talked about an SOP." So thank you Nikki Kaye for your ongoing interest and we look forward to you picking up this responsibility again. In the meantime you can be assured that we worked hard on it at the Government Administration Committee. You can actually tell that the select committee worked hard on it by the number of amendments that came back and were discussed during the second reading. I want to primarily focus though in my contribution on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 237 which is in the name of my colleague Clare Curran. You may remember that during the second reading I and others expressed some frustration as we had had in the original legislation the provision about the preparation of a strategic recovery plan. There was a debate about whether it was implicit or explicit. It certainly was not clear; submitters raised that for us. It was Labour's view that we should make it clear. It was National's view that because it was unclear we should take it out—we should remove section 57A in clause 21. Just removing it did not seem like a sensible way of resolving a lack of clarity. As a result of taking out section 57A we ended up with no provision to require the preparation of a strategic recovery plan. What Supplementary Order Paper 237 does is essentially put that provision back in. So in clause 2 the words "section 19(3)" are replaced. In clause 7 the phrase "the development of strategic recovery plans for emergencies:" is inserted into section 9 and in clause 19 new subclause (1AB) inserts the words "the strategic planning for recovery from the hazards and risks referred to in paragraph (b):" into section 49(2) of the principal Act. Basically what my colleague has done is what half the select committee wanted to do in terms of clarifying that original section 57A. Unfortunately it was the one disagreement that the committee had between National and the Labour-Green members on it and the National Government decided that it would remove it.I certainly support this SOP. It is great that National has given an indication that it is going to support it as well. There are lots of legislation where you think it is probably great to have a cross-party agreement but I do not think there is any more important than civil defence so that right through from community organisations to volunteers to community leaders through our territorial local authorities through the civil defence structure and through to central government we are all on the same page when we are thinking about how we can deliver the best response to a civil defence emergency. This SOP being supported will give a clear message that Parliament has thought about it. We have made a lot of alterations during the consideration and I think that the Committee stage should go smoothly as a result. The other point I want to mention is that during the earliest deliberation on this bill there was quite some concern about the use of a permanent legislative authority (PLA). I was not sure whether any members would seek to amend that provision because it was raised earlier. There do not appear to be any other Supplementary Order Papers on the Table other than Clare Curran's to which I have already referred. I hope that is an indication that everyone is now satisfied that the use of a permanent legislative authority is entirely appropriate in this situation. It was one thing that gave us a little bit of angst but because there is no SOP on the Table referring to another tool another mechanism I hope that everyone is satisfied with that PLA use. We were convinced at the select committee that it was an appropriate use and it seems that the Committee of the whole House does as well. So thank you for the opportunity to contribute and I look forward to the progress of this bill."