Cosgrove Clayton: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18131] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 Let me say from the outset despite the comments earlier on from Mr Brownlee I suspect there is not one member of Parliament in the House who does not want to get this right—we all want to get this right. We all want as fast a pace of recovery as humanly possible. No one in putting up amendments to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill whether they be from the political party of which I am a part or yesterday’s submitters has put up amendments with the motivation to slow things down for our community. Mr Brownlee has an obsession with the framework that is I think to use his words “pace versus taking time”. I think Mr Brownlee’s definition of the framework is that if we do not do it his way the people of Canterbury will be delayed. I agree with him when he says people sitting in their houses are digging their lives out of their back lawn without a chemical toilet without the basic provisions of life having been dislocated from their basic routines and having lost their jobs their homes their livelihoods and tragically family members and/or friends. The one thing they want to use the phrase that Mr Brownlee has made a brand of is for us to “get on with it”. I agree with Mr Brownlee in that respect. 
But the other thing the people of Canterbury want—and they do not want this legislation and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority which is already in place through Order in Council so really one could argue that this is rubber-stamping what Mr Brownlee wants because he has already told us he has the numbers—is for us to get this right. If we do not get this legislation right and if the authority that flow from it stuffs it up then who will be the losers? I doubt whether they will be many people on either side of this House who sit here with jobs and with houses. I acknowledge that colleagues on both sides have some munted properties but we can survive because we have a thing called income we have means we have mobility and we have other resources. The big loser will not be Mr Brownlee—although maybe he will be in a political sense—it will be the people of Canterbury. I put this to Mr Brownlee: on many occasions through this process he has broken many commitments he has given to us about acting in a non-partisan way. I say that not out of self-interest; I say that we came to the table before this legislation was put up— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: No politics in this! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Well see there he goes; he just said there were no politics in this. That is a telling comment from Mr Brownlee and I will tell members why: Mr Brownlee has defined playing politics as anybody who disagrees or puts up an alternative idea. Mr Brownlee labels those people as playing politics. Any member of the community who says “Maybe there is a better way.” “Can we be helpful?” or “Maybe Mr Brownlee should do his job slightly better.” he labels as either impeding progress or playing politics. Well shame on that member—shame on that member. 
I say that the people of Canterbury want to get this right. Here is the risk: we have had commitments from him from the start of the formation of the authority. Mr Brownlee asked to see me privately. He wrote on a piece of paper—and I still have it—a short schematic of his embryonic thoughts in respect of the authority. He said he wanted consultation with Labour which is consultation with the communities we represent actually because it not about us and what we think; it is about the feedback we get from our communities and our constituents and that is why we are entitled to the Queen’s shilling—that is our wages. He looked me in the eye and said “We want you on board. This is real consultation; this is non-partisanship.” So we agreed. We asked two things: we asked for input and we asked for advice papers and he agreed to it. He set up two meetings with Mr Goff and me and he cancelled both. We rang Wayne Eagleson the chief of staff of the Prime Minister in the week the legislation was going through a Cabinet committee. We were told that it would not be dealt with at the Cabinet committee—not at all. We got a phone call on the Friday of that week to be told by Mr Brownlee that it was a fait accompli. 
I do not know about playing politics but I used a word about three times in respect of Mr Brownlee at that meeting that I will not use here; I am sure it could be couched in the definition of breaking one’s commitments or word. That is the nature of the process. Then we bounced forward to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Submitters had 4 hours and 40 minutes to provide evidence to that committee—4 hours and 40 minutes. Most of the submitters had not been consulted at all before they received the bill via the Internet—they plucked the bill off the parliamentary website after I asked the Clerk to put it on because the Minister had not provided it. They had 4 hours and 40 minutes; they had less than 24 hours to prepare submissions. The Law Society which as members will know is asked very regularly if not all the time in respect of legislation to participate in the process and to actively submit in the process appeared before us. Its members got the bill at 4 o’clock the day before. They had less than 24 hours to put in a submission. The Legislative Advisory Committee the Government’s own agency made up of eminent legal minds got the bill for the first time it told the select committee at around the same time as it was laid on the Table of this House. 
The people of Canterbury are going to say “So what? As Mr Brownlee says we want our lives back. Why are you guys worried about all the technical detail? Get on with it.” But here is the problem I come back to again: Mr Brownlee has shown scant regard in terms of listening to experts and expert evidence and giving people one extra day perhaps. The only reason we had a select committee hearing was that last Thursday Labour members in a meeting with Mr Brownlee demanded one. We also asked Mr Brownlee if he was going to agree to it to please flag it on the Friday—before this week—so that submitters would have the weekend to put their arguments together and do a robust job. Well he messed about and then he announced it less than 24 hours before. Councils were late to the meeting because they had been told about it only the night before. The Christchurch City Council was given a bill a week before the select committee—a draft; 6.4. The city council’s solicitor was given it and told they were not allowed to show it to any city councillor. So we had this farce of the deputy mayor turning up and giving a submission and having to admit through the city council’s solicitor that no one on the council had even seen the bill because the Government had told them they were not allowed to be shown it. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: No that’s rubbish. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Mr Brownlee calls the solicitor of the city council a liar—that is what he says; he says what the solicitor said was rubbish. I ask Mr Brownlee to say that outside the House and allow the city councillor solicitor to action that. 
Moving on the point I make is this: we want to get this right but Mr Brownlee holds a view that he holds a monopoly on all knowledge on this. OK National has the numbers we are adults—we accept it. But here is the point I make to Mr Brownlee: he holds the pen as the earthquake tsar. He declines to agree with me when he says he has wartime powers. Let me say to Mr Brownlee that if he looks at the history of it he will see that he and his Government have to return to this House to seek the permission of this House to amend only a very small number of Acts. He can do basically what he likes and as Philip Joseph said clause 73(2) is an ouster clause which means that Mr Brownlee or any of his Ministers cannot be challenged by any court in the land for a decision they make in respect of this earthquake. 
So I say to Mr Brownlee that he has chosen his course of action. He has shown throughout this that he would not listen to the business community of Christchurch. That is why they mounted the barricades and took up placards. I have never seen that in Christchurch. He has taken the view that he will not listen to Opposition members and he has broken nearly every commitment he had made for a bipartisan approach. He made the commitment privately; he never made it publicly but he knows he has broken it. I have never seen a politician sit across a table from me and say he or she will do one thing and blatantly break that commitment some days later. Normally certain politicians of that ilk use more diplomatic or surreptitious means to lie—but I will not use that word in respect of Mr Brownlee. But Mr Brownlee said “It is my way or the highway.” 
I tell Mr Brownlee that the people of Canterbury will support this legislation. The people of Canterbury will wait and the acid test of this legislation and of the stewardship of that man over there and John Key—who promised that “no one in Canterbury will be worse off”—will be whether this legislation fails. We have a paper trail a mile long of the assistance we have tried to render privately and publicly. We have a paper trail a mile long of the assistance members of the public and eminent organisations have attempted to render privately and publicly. We will know what the legislation will look like when the amendments come up the amendments that Mr Brownlee will furnish to us as usual minutes—he said to me at 11 o’clock—before this second reading debate concludes and the Committee stage begins and the people of Canterbury will judge whether this legislation will fail. 
But Labour will try to make it work and we will work with Mr Brownlee regardless of the concerns we have. Our concern like his is to make this thing work. But if it comes a gutzer I say to Mr Brownlee that it will be visited on his head on the heads of his Canterbury colleagues and on the heads of his Prime Minister and Government—and on their heads alone. The people of Canterbury will judge that.