Simpson Scott: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9140. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee which considered this piece of legislation it gives me enormous pride to be speaking in the second reading debate.The Minister for Building and Housing and the previous Labour speaker Dr Megan Woods have both alluded to the fact that we are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the Canterbury earthquakes. Really a greater tragedy than the earthquakes themselves 5 years ago would be for us as a Parliament and for us as New Zealanders not to take heed of the lessons learnt and not to act upon the knowledge gained as a result of those tragedies. That would be utterly remiss of us as a Parliament utterly remiss of us as a society and utterly remiss of us as New Zealanders. This process of getting this bill back for second reading has been an example of the Parliament of New Zealand working I think at its very best.The bill as first introduced caused a lot of angst and concern across the whole country in fact but we were able—through a process of consultation of listening of taking advice of working with each other of going back to work with the Minister and his advisers—to come to what I think now is a very good satisfactory solution. It will not ever guarantee that risk from future earthquakes will not occur but a much diminished risk for New Zealanders in the future will be the case as a result of this legislation passing its way through the House.Our report back was a bit unique in that it had the unanimous support of the committee but we went through a process of seeking submissions early on on the first iteration of the bill as it was first presented. We received 121 submissions and then as a result of work done with the Minister and advisers and listening to the very good submissions we significantly redrafted the bill.We felt that it was necessary to give submitters an opportunity to come back to us again with their views on our significant proposed changes to the legislation. I am pleased to report to the House that 51 of those submitters did that and almost all of them were congratulatory of the work that had been done because we actually had listened and taken note of their submissions.I too want to refer to the very passionate very compelling and committed submission from Ann Brower who was as other speakers have already mentioned the sole survivor on the bus on that day. She gave remarkably confronting evidence to the committee that made us sit up take notice and really get to grips with the risks that were prevalent in terms of unreinforced masonry.I think we have got to a very good spot in terms of addressing those issues and so the balance of public policy versus risk versus time versus cost across the country will now be spread I think quite evenly and quite equitably in a way that reflects the seismic risk to the geography of the nation.We all know that in different parts of the country there are different elements of risk. We know for instance that—well I was always taught that in Auckland the great risk was of volcanic activity and I was always taught as a kid that the great risk of earthquakes would actually be in Wellington. But it turns out that Christchurch which actually was not mentioned as an earthquake risk when I was going to school was actually where the problem was.But we have much better information now than we had in those days and we are able to get sensible intelligent scientific information about the risk to the nation. We overlay that with a sensible pragmatic approach in terms of the time frames involved then we spread those out determined by the risk and by the seismic information that we have and then we overlay that further again by acknowledging that some buildings some public facilities and some infrastructure is more important in terms of sustaining services after an earthquake and also in terms of the likely impacts if an earthquake was to occur—for instance in educational facilities. So all those layers have I think been very neatly and satisfactorily addressed in this redrafted bill.I too want to thank members of the committee for their work. I particularly want to thank the advisers I want to thank the Minister and I particularly also want to acknowledge the incredible amount of work done by submitters—not once but in many cases twice—in giving of their valuable time and resource to the committee in both appearing and preparing written material for us.As I said in my view this was an excellent example of the select committee process working as it often does. For many people who watch the proceedings of this House they often see us just barracking at each other across the Chamber and sadly they do not necessarily get to see the work that is often done in select committees where good constructive bipartisan work is done with the intention of creating good legislation and good outcomes for the citizens of New Zealand. It is a great pleasure as the chair of the committee to endorse with enthusiasm the second reading of this bill and I commend it utterly to the House.