Parker DavidParts 1 and 2 schedules 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I think that the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee who have sat on this over the last week are just about asleep on their feet so were wanting someone else to take the first call and cover the general and then just pick up the little rats and mice that were left. Could I begin by thanking Minister Brownlee. Minister Brownlee came to the committee yesterday to try to resolve the issues that were left outstanding after our deliberations and was very reasonable in his dealings with the committee and I think that is why we have got to the point when there is near-unanimity around the terms of this bill.Could I say a few things about it. Firstly the content of the bill is informed by the experience in Canterbury and by the report of the Regulations Review Committee pursuant to the inquiry that Parliament requested the committee to do into how far regulation-making powers ought to go if you have emergency legislation following an earthquake.The central proposition of the Regulations Review Committee which reflected an earlier finding from years back from the Law Commission is that it is actually impossible to have legislation passed in advance that covers all of the potential eventualities arising from a large disaster like an earthquake unless the empowering legislation is so broad that it would potentially confer in the event of a disaster powers to the executive that are broader than necessary. And for that reason when we have an earthquake it is necessary to have bespoke legislation to address the powers that are needed.As I said in the first reading of this bill my view on these sorts of powers is the same as it is in respect of taxation—as little as possible but as much as necessary. So the philosophy that I and the Labour Party took to this select committee is that we needed to give the executive as few powers to override primary legislation as is possible but as many as are necessary. With that in mind I think we have largely achieved that. There are two aspects that I do not find perfect which I will refer to—we are not voting against the bill on that basis—but in the main I think the select committee with the help from officials and submitters has got to a reasonable place. There are some changes that have been made by the select committee that are detailed on Supplementary Order Paper 255 which has now been tabled by the Hon Gerry Brownlee. Because of the pressure of time there was no time for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to prepare a revision-tracked version of the bill and therefore the changes proposed are set out on a Supplementary Order Paper. A lot of them are pretty technical. Denis O'Rourke made some useful suggestions for changing the purpose clause. That has been incorporated in the bill.Officials with scrutiny from the select committee found that there were a number of Acts listed in schedule 2 that did not in fact need to be in there. I should at this point say in respect of that list that the way in which this legislation deals with it compared with the Canterbury legislation is that instead of having a list of a few Acts that cannot be overridden like the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and then saying that anything else can be this bill is more restrictive in that it sets out a list of the Acts in schedule 2 that can be overridden but it still has a list of a few Acts like the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that never can be. The two areas that I was not completely convinced by at the select committee were also raised by some of the submitters like Professor Andrew Geddis and also in one case the New Zealand Law Society. The first of those two is that I do not think there is a need to oust the jurisdiction of the court. It is true that there is a residual ability of the courts to hold illegal an Order in Council overriding statutes that are plainly outside the terms of this bill—so that would happen for example if the Minister attempted to override an Act that is not on the schedule 2 list. But I personally think we should not be at all limiting judicial review rights. The bill does limit judicial review rights around process decisions and other decisions that the Minister takes under the Act. I do not think that was necessary. There is already a very wide discretion for the Minister. The test of his decision making is a subjective one—it is not an objective one—which gives him great latitude and I do not think we should be scared of the courts having a judicial review function that is not proscribed in any way. For example some of the concerns that you would get an activist court I think are misplaced. If there was an application to challenge the validity of a Minister's decision under this legislation that application does not stop any process. It is only if the court grants a remedy that it would stop a process. Even then it is unlikely that the remedy would be an injunctive one if the Government was saying: Look this is necessary in the face of an emergency or a situation post-earthquake." In any event the select committee has gone so far as to clarify that there is a residual judicial review right; it is just not as broad as I would have liked. The other issue—before I sit down—is the geographic breadth of the legislation. It includes already the Wellington region. The geographic impact of this bill is potentially from the Waitaki River to the north of the Wairarapa. When the serious parts of this earthquake sequence have been around Kaikōura it seems to me to be an unnecessarily geographically broad area—a number of submitters made that point. I would have preferred that we narrowed it. If you are going to have such a long list in schedule 2 as we have got it is hard to see why those powers should be conferred in respect of the Wellington area. I know that there are people concerned that we could yet have another large earthquake in the Wellington region and they would like to have the capability to invoke those powers should that terrible thing happen. I think you wait until that sort of thing happens before you confer those powers rather than confer them in advance. However as I have previously said I accept that the Minister who has had broad powers under the Canterbury legislation has not misused them and with those comments I note that the Labour Party members will be supporting the bill."