Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): It is great to be here on a Thursday afternoon talking to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. It is very nice I have to say to sit in this House—or to stand here and sit here—and listen to this House fully supporting this bill and expediting it because I think it needs to be expedited. New Zealand First has certainly been a very proactive supporter of this bill. We would also like to send our thanks to the Minister the Hon Nikki Kaye and her office for the way she has conducted herself in putting this bill through this process. She has been very very open and very very helpful and has extended her offers to us to submit ideas and even amendments as and when it has been required. So that just shows the collegiality of it.We see the importance of it and it is very refreshing to be standing here in the House talking about something that will make the lives of New Zealanders affected by these incidents if you like—weather incidents and earthquakes—a lot easier to go through the tidy up as well as dealing with the actual disaster itself. It is about the six p's but we have dropped one of the p's out because it is probably a little bit of a profanity and should not be spoken in the House but it is about perfect preparation prevents poor performance—we dropped out that p in the middle there—because of course that leads on to the five r's that it affects: the risk reduction readiness response and recovery.This is a two-part review. This is the first part. It will be coming into effect after today in just a little bit over 6 months' time. We would like to see that hurried through because of course as has already been lamented by Jan Logie this is a time of change. The weather is very very unpredictable and we are seeing far more weather incidents that are affecting a very very wide range of communities right from the far North to the deep South. But the second part of this review is absolutely essential that we actually speed this up to get that into this House to put some frameworks and legislation around major events—the catastrophes of the like that have seen many many people lose their lives their businesses their homes and have their families certainly jolted with the likes of the earthquake in Christchurch.Even this week we had a shakeup here in Wellington. We have had them off the East Coast of the North Island up around Whakatāne and Gisborne and we are always—I suppose by the nature of New Zealand's land and where we are situated in the Pacific—going to be under that pressure of potential earthquakes and tsunamis. It is also very important to remind everybody that we really have not actually got—although it is on the front of our minds I suppose and we have had earthquakes that have created tsunamis around the world—a tsunami warning system in the Bay of Plenty in Papamoa and Mount Maunganui specifically. Those residents in the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga are crying out to actually have a warning system that will give residents plenty of time to evacuate the area safely. I think the civil defence emergency management groups and the planning from the civil defence emergency management groups will certainly go a long way towards establishing a recognised warning and sounding alarm that would help raise people and get them out of their beds and off to higher ground.This bill does four things. I think they are very very good things. In fact the first thing it does is it mandates the roles and responsibilities for emergency service providers during an event. So it is about who does what. The second thing it does is it strengthens the recovery planning. It is about how we do it. Then it moves on to providing a framework to ensure a seamless transition from the response to the emergency to the initial recovery period—and we are talking about transitional notices here. Those transitional notices whether they be local or national transitional notices are very important—particularly around an event where you have got the powers of conservation of fuel. You can get the police or if it is required the army or such to actually intervene to block off areas to strengthen buildings that might be unsafe and the ability to remove people from those areas of high-risk where they might not be thinking necessarily quite rationally.We can now under his legislation enable those people to be mobilised secure areas ration fuel out and do those sorts of things which is very good. I think probably one of the most important things is it gives some framework around who pays for it and how that funding is going to be applied to these local areas that are affected in an emergency.Looking around and looking into this bill a few things have popped up and one thing that I thought is worth mentioning here is that some while ago they had a memorandum of understanding between Airbnb and the Auckland civil defence group providing free accommodation through Airbnb for those people affected by a civil defence emergency such as displaced families or even the workers and people who are coming into an area to actually help with the recovery and the clean up of an incident. These are the sorts of things that the civil defence emergency management groups can actually build into their planning stages and certainly taking a model out of what has happened in Auckland would be a great start. New Zealand First would be recommending that this is actually put on around the country because it does absolutely make sense. New Zealand First does support this.We would like to have a consideration around a ministry of emergency services. I think we are at a position in time where we could amalgamate these emergency services and bring them together under a single ministry. I think with the likes of the role that the civil defence plays in an overarching way of fire as well as police and ambulance that perhaps that framework would put it in underneath that ministry with special powers that fit within this bill to actually put it into a position to direct in a moment of emergency. New Zealand First is doing work on that. It is in our policies that we have a ministry of emergency services and of course part of that would be the police the fire the ambulance and potentially some other pillars that would come down underneath that.To wrap things up New Zealand First supports this. We would like see it run through nice and easy as I am sure it will tonight. We look forward to after the Royal assent in 6 months' time having it implemented as I am sure New Zealanders all around the country would be happy to see.