Rurawhe Adrian; Faafoi KrisDEPUTY SPEAKER: Talofa lava. The House is resumed. Members we are on the Budget debate and it's a Labour Party call.Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. Happy Samoan Language Week to you. Can I begin by acknowledging the region of Canterbury given the events of the last three or four days and pay tribute to the emergency management staff throughout the region. Can I acknowledge the civic leadership of the region: Dan Gordon of Waimakariri Neil Brown of Ashburton District Council Sam Broughton of the Selwyn District Council Nigel Bowen of the Timaru District Council and also our former colleague and the Mayor of Christchurch Lianne Dalziel who's the chair of the Canterbury Regional Emergency Management Group for their collective efforts to keep their communities safe. Emergency management is extremely important in difficult times like this and I will get to at some stage during my short contribution a commitment of funding within Budget 2021 to assist efforts to make those groups stronger around the country in order to keep our communities safe. More acknowledgments if it's OK Mr Speaker. Can I acknowledge the regional group controller for the Canterbury region Mr Neville Reilly who was travelling with us—myself Damien O'Connor as Minister for Primary Industries and also the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and local MP for the Ashburton area Jo Luxton. Neville is a bit of a legend in civil defence circles in the Canterbury region and on Friday as they were preparing for the weather event of the weekend—which is still continuing—Neville had his farewell event in the region as well so for his swansong he was delivered a one-in-100-year weather event. So can I thank Neville for the leadership that he showed to his community when a regional declaration was made—I think I'm right—on the Sunday night.Can I also acknowledge Ngāi Tahu who are central to the emergency management response being led out of Christchurch. They had someone in the emergency operations centre making sure that they were fully involved in the response and a number of marae were set up as civil defence centres and welfare centres in the event that there were mass evacuations. Can I say we are very thankful that there weren't the mass evacuations that could have happened especially in the Ashburton area if the northern arm of the Ashburton River had broken and caused thousands of evacuations out of that area.Emergency services: the police and John Price who is a very good area commander there; Fire and Emergency New Zealand; St John Ambulance; civil defence; our own National Emergency Management Agency led by Gary Knowles—can I acknowledge him; new to the role—the unflappable Stefan Weir who was a private secretary for the National Emergency Management Agency; the Ministry for Primary Industries; the Ministry of Social Development; Te Puni Kōkiri; the Ministry of Health; and Waka Kotahi who will have some work ahead of them in order to make sure that the roads are back up and running in the region as soon as possible. Obviously with the issues with the Ashburton Bridge across State Highway 1 they will be making sure that that vital link between Tinwald and Ashburton itself—which is at the moment being tested I believe—is put back into shape.Can I also acknowledge the New Zealand Defence Force—the air force navy and army—who were there to assist the response effort; Environment Canterbury and their river-modelling team who are giving us extremely important data on what to expect from water flows from the high country down to rivers both in North Canterbury and in South Canterbury and mid- Canterbury; and the Ministry of Transport who obviously have again a job on their hands. There was 500 millimetres of rain in three or four days and they usually call a significant weather event about 50 or 60 millimetres. So that is an event of some sort. Minister O'Connor committed $500000 today there is $100000 for the mayoral relief fund and also because the Government has committed to the reform and the strengthening of the national emergency management system there is nearly $46.6 million in the current Budget that we are debating here today to make sure that our emergency management system is safe. I think what we've seen from the weekend is that it is strong but this commitment of more funding will ensure it is stronger and we thank the effort of those in Canterbury over the last three or four days. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has ended.