SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. I'm pleased to take a short call on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. It is a short bill but it is an important one. Like the Hon Kiritapu Allan I really acknowledge the huge heroism of so many on the ground in areas that have been affected by these severe weather events and their strength in keeping on going on this long road to recovery and the dedication that they are applying to supporting others. I also thank the media for the stories that they have shared with Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond which has enabled others to come in and awhi and support those who have been affected.This small bill is important because it does override existing legislation—normally the Green Party is never very comfortable about that particularly if it's being debated by Parliament under a very shortened select committee period of only a day but if this doesn't go through this week recognising that next week is a recess week then potentially some of the activities that are being done in Tai Rāwhiti in Hawke's Bay in the Bay of Plenty in Tararua and in Auckland are illegal. So that's why we are supporting the bill and acknowledging the reality of a shortened select committee period being necessary in this instance.Aotearoa has suffered a lot of emergencies from in recent years the Pike River mine disaster the Christchurch earthquake sequence the Rena oil spill the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquakes Mycoplasma bovis the Port Hills the Nelson-Tasman fires the Christchurch mosque attack—of course we're coming up to a significant anniversary of that—and Whakaari / White Island. Our emergency management system is how we organise and manage the people the plans the infrastructure and the assets which are needed to respond to these events. There is a small element in this bill in terms of the video meetings which comes out of something that the Hon Gerry Brownlee initiated back in 2017 a technical advisory group to look at the experience of the Canterbury earthquakes and how emergency management could be improved. There have been subsequent amendments to legislation to take account of those learnings.One of the changes here to the Resource Management Act is to allow landholders and land occupiers if they've been affected by Cyclone Hale Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend storm to take action if they consider that immediate preventative or remedial measures are required to avoid remedy or mitigate loss injury detriment or damage. That means that these activities responding to the weather damage can be done as a permitted activity. There were very similar provisions done in response to the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquake sequence which assisted particularly a lot in the farming community to respond where there'd been major slips earthworks were needed fencing needed to be restored works in riverbeds to actually enable them to farm again.I do not recall any evidence that there was any abuse of those provisions and I think while Mr Woodhouse has raised the burden of paperwork I do note that the bill refers to the landholder or occupier simply providing written notice to the council within 60 days. That potentially could just be by email. It's not requiring anything similar to a resource consent application and communication is critical in recovering from disaster events. Having the council know the scale of works that are being done in rivers on erosion-prone hillsides for infrastructure—like culverts and bridges—is important in terms of coordinating the recovery efforts. So just this notification to the local authority I think is an important provision.I recognise too our whole civil defence and emergency network and the significant effort and involvement of local authorities in that. They are the foundation of that. So the provisions in the bill which allow the emergency management groups to meet by video and councils to meet by video are important. I was surprised to see those in the bill—that this hadn't been done before. Parliament select committees meet by Zoom all of the time—not all of the time some of the time. Why local authorities can't do that permanently and why this measure to allow them to meet by video ends in April 2024 seems puzzling; similarly with the emergency groups. That should just be part of the nature that they operate now recognising of course if communications are down that will be challenging—but recognising that when roads are closed and it's not physically possible to meet face to face they should be able to meet by audiovisual means. It's also a much more efficient use of time when these people are enormously busy in doing the response and coordinating others. So both of those seem logical. Similarly with the changes to the Food Act and the food regulations to allow an extended period for food businesses to renew their operations and continue operating that also seems a really sensible change. The bill is going to the Governance and Administration Committee and the astute chairing of Ian McKelvie I'm sure will draw out any issues in it.I do just want to respond to some comments made by Simon Watts in relation to three waters. I similarly was puzzled when I first saw that provision in the bill which allows councils to amend their long-term plan in relation to three waters infrastructure but recognising that in Tai Rāwhiti Gisborne the huge damage to their water network would mean that unless there was provision like that which allowed them to amend their long-term plan they may not be able to have the funding to improve that network. So that made sense; it was obviously something the select committee didn't pay enough attention to when the Water Services Entities Bill went through last year because potentially unless that prohibition on councils investing in waters services through their long-term plans is removed it creates a deficit in terms of what the entities will inherit when they come into operation. So that change also made sense.It's a small bill but it will be very useful in terms of a better-coordinated emergency response and allowing people to get on the road to recovery and actually do the work on the ground and to ensuring that the declarations of emergency and the transition period that any of the issues with those overlapping are worked through as well. So it's a bill that the Green Party supports.