Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you Madam Speaker. Can I thank Chris Penk for his comments and the way he expressed them and also Minister McAnulty for bringing this to the House. I was on select committees that were considering the equivalent legislation post the Canterbury earthquakes and the Kaikōura legislation. I recall the very reasonable way in which the Hon Gerry Brownlee who is in the House tonight liaised with those committees in order to try and put checks and balances around these very broad powers that are being conferred on the executive to override ordinary processes under legislation in order to expedite things that have to be done quickly post a disaster. I am very happy to put on record what I thought was the very responsible way that the Hon Gerry Brownlee handled that and in response both the committee and Parliament. We all rallied around and did the right thing.We've now sadly had to do this on three occasions: Canterbury Kaikōura and now. On each occasion we actually learnt from the prior events and slightly improved the legislation. I am not going to take my full 10 minutes but I will just reiterate the importance of there being some checks and balances around these extraordinary powers that are essentially being given to the executive to override the laws that normally apply to New Zealand. Those laws are listed in Schedule 2 of the bill and there are some very important laws in there like the Land Transfer Act the Land Transport Act the Local Government Act the Resource Management Act the Waste Minimisation Act—various other Acts. There are 30 of them listed there—so it's quite wide ranging. Then clause 8 of the bill includes limitations on when the Minister may recommend an order that overrides those pieces of legislation.It says the Minister must be satisfied the order is necessary for the purposes of the Act which are described elsewhere; the extent of the order is not broader than is reasonably necessary to address the matters that gave rise to the order—that's another limitation; the order doesn't breach section 11 of the Act—section 11 of the Act lists some things that you can't do which relate to personal liberties or people being in custody so orders couldn't override those sorts of things; the order doesn't limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990; the order has been reviewed by the panel—the panel has been addressed by other members so I won't cover that again; the draft order has been provided to the committee of the House of Representatives responsible for the review of secondary legislation—the Regulations Review Committee gets to have a look and makes recommendations. And if that's not practicable perhaps because something is urgent and the House could be in recess or something—I don't know; it normally would be practicable but if it's not practicable—each leader of the political party has to have been presented with a copy of it.Then the Minister has to have regard to the panel's comments and the other people that have come back and have made comments and then in the resource management sphere the Minister has to consider effects on the environment and whether adverse effects can be avoided remedied or mitigated. And that I think arose also in the Kaikōura legislation particularly in respect of the State highway and railway repairs that were necessary up and adjacent to the coastal marine area. So there are a number of protections. I look forward to the report from the select committee that is giving consideration to this and I'm sure that the Government will be amenable to changes if they prove to be necessary.