Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Often I begin my contributions in this House by saying it is my pleasure to take a call on a piece of legislation. But it is not my pleasure to take this call acknowledging that we are here only such a short period of time after this primary legislation was passed. We are back here amending it to bring it into force earlier than any of us ever hoped it would have to be used. I would like to extend my condolences to the family and friends in the communities of the people who died in the recent earthquake. These are very difficult times for communities to get through and it is our job as lawmakers to make sure that the right laws are in place to make this as easy a time as possible for local communities.I would also like to extend our sincere thanks and support to the emergency workers and responders and the members of the public who have been working tirelessly in the communities impacted by these earthquakes. We know that so much of the civil defence emergency response is around those people in communities working at that very local level making sure that people are looked after. I would also like to acknowledge the cross-party work that has got us into the House so quickly to pass this amending legislation. The Acting Minister of Civil Defence the Hon Gerry Brownlee has worked well across parties to bring people together and to talk about this legislation and I think this is an example of this Parliament working well.Other speakers have traversed that what we are doing with this law is bringing a bill into play earlier and getting Royal assent for a bill that was passed on—I think it was—10 November. But in addition to bringing that legislation forward some other very important provisions have been made—and I think that is something that has been once again brought to light by an earthquake sequence. We certainly saw it in the experience in Canterbury in terms of the need to make sure that the buildings that people are living and working in are safe.At present the only real legislative levers that we have to ensure that buildings are inspected are health and safety laws. What this legislation does is to bring into play an additional clause clause 11 which inserts the transitional provisions for the bill that make it optional for territorial authorities to implement the mandatory requirements of the bill around recovery managers. It is the need to inspect properties that is absolutely paramount here. Labour has previously called for these powers to require assessments to be undertaken and we are very pleased to see this put into this bill. We have a patchwork of local government trying to cope with a disaster when it happens. How is it that it can inspect its own properties—its own public spaces and its own public buildings—but the ability for it to require private properties to be inspected has not been there? So it was very pleasing to see that provision. We know that we have seen here in Wellington with the effects of the quake that there is going to be a need for this. There have been a number of government buildings that have been shown to need cordoning off and to not have the public enter them. Now the public needs reassurance that all buildings are going to be safe.Really the only power that local authorities have been able to have beyond inspecting their own buildings is to use the cordon and the cordon is something that a council can put in place keeping the public out of whole areas. But it would be much more satisfactory that we would go in and do the assessments of those buildings. I like many people who sleep at night in an apartment building here in Wellington would like to see the safety inspection certificate for the building that I am spending time in and to know that building is safe. I am sure that is not something that I am alone in.It is not only in the buildings that we have seen here in Wellington where we can see that there is real risk—and some of those buildings have been worked on—we also have the findings of the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission on what went wrong with buildings in Canterbury most notably the CTV Building and what happened there. That is where we saw the failure of a building and there was the cost of lives. What we are talking about here is of the most serious nature. We are not talking about red tape and bureaucracy; what we are talking about is our role as lawmakers to ensure we are putting the right rules in place so that people's lives are not unduly lost in the case of a disaster. We have this opportunity here with this bill to do that.So Labour is very happy to support this legislation—bringing into force legislation that we had already passed. It is pleasing to see that that work had already been done that the Parliament had already grappled with those questions it had gone through and had a good consultation in the select committee process and now we have the opportunity to add to that to ensure that here in Wellington the buildings can be made safe. So Labour is happy to support this bill.