Brownlee GerryHURUNUI/KAIKŌURA EARTHQUAKES EMERGENCY RELIEF BILLFirst ReadingHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Acting Minister of Civil Defence): I move That the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Emergency Relief Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House on 1 December 2016 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Order 194(1)(b) and (c). It gives me—it is not really an honour because what we are doing here is introducing a bill that is absolutely necessary in these circumstances and I think it is just worth traversing the fact that the House will consider shortly a bill that will move us from the emergency state into transition. This bill however is about making sure that people who have taken actions over the last 2½ weeks or so can do so with the comfort that they are not going to find themselves in breach of the law moving forward provided the reasons for their actions do line up with the relatively I think generous provisions that are in the law. We know that when you get an earthquake of the size of this one it does cause damage of different types in different places. In Wellington here it has been the shaking damage that has affected buildings. In Kaikōura for example it has often been landslips and the land slumping as well as the upwelling of the earth that has caused a considerable amount of difficulty. One of those difficulties is that a town like Kaikōura largely dependent on tourism finds itself now caught with just a window of 2 hours on each side of high tide when people can get the boats out for whale-watching for swimming with dolphins or feeding sharks or swimming with seals for fishing charters or for any other number of activities that go along at the side of that beautiful coast. They will have to have that harbour dredged and they need to have that done very quickly in order to preserve the local economy. So this bill enables some of that and when the committee considers the bill during the select committee process it will look further at some of the questions that were raised in the cross-party forum as late as last evening. But in essence it is a bill that will allow things to move forward as quickly as possible. I think the real point I want to make is that many of the provisions that are going to be in all of these bills are driven by the experience that came out of the Christchurch sequence of earthquakes. So it is not as if the officials who have worked so very hard on these bills have not had some points of reference—they have. They have also I think listened to the concerns that many would have about some constitutional matters that might be raised when you are passing exceptional law like this. So it is important then that if it is an exceptional circumstance there is some terminating date and in this case the bill will expire in 2018. So there is time for people to move and get their lives back as quickly as possible within the parameters as I said earlier set by this bill. I am not sure that it requires a great deal more discussion. I am sure the contributions from others in the House will elucidate areas that they wish to highlight or explain their positions on etc. But I finish this contribution by thanking all those who have participated in the process to date and I assure anyone who is watching these processes that having this bill going to a select committee for a short time recognises its unique nature but it is absolutely necessary.