Brownlee Gerry: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13950] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 I would like to clarify a couple of things. Firstly on the Building Act issue that the member Phil Twyford just raised I said earlier in my second reading speech that if we look at building activity for the whole of New Zealand in the last calendar year we see that it would take the total focus for some years of every consenting officer in the country just to deal with the consents that may come out of this disaster. So quite clearly business as usual will not work. I am very happy to involve local MPs to let them know where we get to with all this later in the week; we will be running a standard briefing each week at 9 a.m. on a Friday so that everyone gets tuned up as to where things are going and what is happening. Essentially the moving parts here are firstly the Building Act with its standards which are important. The second aspect is the quality of the tradespeople who will do the work. The third is the supply chain. The fourth aspect is the process of consenting to work which includes the issues of inspecting and signing off on work. What sits under all of that is the property information memorandum which for residents in Christchurch will be the enduring record of how well the damage is dealt with. 
I do not think it is the desire of anybody in this House to see property values written down in future because of shoddy work practice during the next short while. I can give the member an assurance that it is the Government’s desire as I know it is the House’s desire that we come up with processes—and I say “come up with” because we simply do not know what they will be at this point. There are too many aspects of this recovery that need to be considered: lenders insurers the Earthquake Commission and council consenting processes as well. But when all of that is dealt with I hope in a few days’ time we will be able to give people a clear understanding of how they can get high-quality work done and paid for quickly. That is the intention around the reference to the Building Act and all the other Acts that are named in the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill. It is a genuine attempt to give a list of the sorts of Acts that may at some point need to have a temporary arrangement applied to them. 
I will talk to an amendment on the Table in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to appoint a recovery coordinator to carry on the powers of the civil defence coordinators should that be necessary. The problem I have with that is that we are saying the civil defence coordinators have done a great job. They have got us through a tight time. They will in the next day or so stand down and we will go into the normal processes of district councils running the areas. The chief executives in each of those areas will be putting together their recovery teams which have been well organised over a long period of time. To have an individual step over the top of them for any long period is I think not acceptable. It goes quite counter to the concept of having a flat commission structure that recognises the fact that people who live in Canterbury generally do not like to be told what to do. There is resilience in the Canterbury community. It is self-reliant and it is very very parochial. It would serve no good purpose and it would certainly not stand as any encouragement to Canterbury for us to appoint or to prescribe in law the need for a recovery coordinator. 
I am quite convinced that if the commission itself sits down and says the best way to deal with matters is to collectively set up an organisation that deals with them without expanding the commission as a legal entity or anything like that then it will do so because it has a huge incentive to get its communities up and running. It has as big an incentive for that to occur as anybody has who stands in this Chamber. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Will they able to instruct? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The member asks the right question by way of interjection: whether the commission will be able to instruct the councils. The fact is that the mayors are the commission effectively so I do not think there is any impediment to that occurring. But it is very important not to undermine the capacity that exists within the local authorities to get this job done because I cannot think of anywhere else we could go in order to pick up an organisation to do this work. We are reliant on the councils. We have to empower them and we have to trust them to do the job. 
On the issue of clause 6(3) I just say it deals with the courts’ power to look at recommendations for the making of an Order in Council not with the Order in Council itself. It stands there as a prohibitive measure. We all know that there are many examples of the courts choosing to look through those orders. In essence it says to the courts that if there is silliness around a proceeding then there is no obligation through any other provision for them to continue with it. If it was totally outrageous I have no doubt that a judge would be prepared to look through this particular provision in the bill. If someone takes an issue to a lawyer and asks whether they can have a crack on it then the lawyer will have something to fall back on to say that it is not a good idea to do so. It is a mitigating aspect. As I said before we need to see this bill in the light in which it is presented—with the goodwill of members and the desire to get the best outcome for the people of Canterbury—not as a tricky move to apply all sorts of powers to a range of other things. 
I finish by saying the 10 lines of the purpose statement include the words “Canterbury earthquake” five times which makes this provision very specific and shows a very specific link to the powers within this legislation.