Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of the Green Party in the Committee stage of the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Bill which the Green Party is supporting. I too want to add my voice of thanks along with the other members of the committee to the select committee staff and the officials and to the Minister Gerry Brownlee indeed who put in a huge amount of work to enable us to get to this point. It is very clear as the mood in the select committee indicated that we all want to get this right—that these are extraordinary powers that are being handed to the executive and that is something that should never be taken lightly or done in a sense of panic or emergency without very proper consideration.I have been encouraged that there has been a significant amount of thought about what checks and balances we could practically put in place that would help good decision-making because at the heart of it those checks and balances are about preventing a misuse of power but they are also about making sure that we get good decisions for communities that are already in a really terrible situation. We know that in those times of extreme stress—and there is no doubt that people in Kaikōura and Hurunui must be feeling extreme stress at the moment and will be for a significant period of time—there will be a temptation to just get things done but sometimes that may lead to poor decision-making that will have irreparable consequences. Part of this process is putting in some checks and balances to prompt a second thought following that first option and idea that we may all be compelled by.Some of the changes that happened within the select committee process were that there has been a reduction in the number of Acts that can be changed easily by Order in Council and I think there are eight fewer Acts on that list. That also shows that the ministries that are thinking about what might be needed in these areas have gone through and thought a bit more carefully than their first take about actually how could we do this—how could we support these communities where could we do it within the existing law and where might we need a bit of override of current legislation?We had some concern at the beginning that there is a provision in here that enables additional Acts to be added to that list. That remains—additional Acts can be added—but for an Act to be added the Minister needs to send a draft of the intention to do that to the leaders of all of the parties in Parliament and there needs to be near-unanimous support from those party leaders for that to go ahead. That is giving some of that power back to Parliament which is a check and balance on the power of the executive. That seemed to us to be a good compromise because we do understand that we cannot anticipate what might happen—or indeed what is invisible to us at the moment that may only become clearer later.There was also concern from us at the beginning that a provision of the bill as it went to the Local Government and Environment Committee said that—and I cannot remember the exact wording—things could not be challenged in the court. There was a very real concern from the committee that that meant judicial review of any of the Orders in Council was ruled out—that there could be no scrutiny of these Orders in the Council by the courts. That seemed concerning to put it mildly. So there has been some clarification of that and there was a negotiation in that process. However the committee was not unanimous in support of the point we got to and we would have liked to see possibly an ability for a review beyond whether an Order in Council is authorised by this Act. However it is a compromise point that all parties could live with at least even though the Green Party would have gone further.There was also a part in the Act that talked about the fact that if there was another quake that happened—or a significant event or tsunami—that impacted on affected areas then Orders in Council could be applied to those other areas. The example that we discussed in committee was if there was an earthquake in Hawke's Bay or a tsunami and that affected one of the regions in New Zealand that was covered by this piece of legislation then actually you could use Orders in Council in Hawke's Bay or up in Auckland just by virtue of this bill. The committee and the Minister agreed that that was a step too far—that if there was an event of that nature then Parliament should reconvene to consider exactly what bespoke response was needed to that event and that that should not be able to be dealt with by this piece of legislation. And that is a good improvement I would say.We also had a bit of concern—in the initial draft that we had seen before it came to the House there was the ability for affected people to be able to provide comment into the process. Then the bill that came to the House did not include that and we were concerned about that. It was an interesting discussion in the committee because we asked Professor Geddes whether he supported that provision through the submissions and he said: Well actually if you specify it needs to be 'affected people' then actually you're opening to a legal challenge on the basis that you didn't identify all the affected people." So that actually seemed a reasonable point and a reason why we would not want "affected people" locked into the legislation.But what we have—and I thank the Minister for it—is a provision that in drafting an Order in Council if it is practicable the Minister either will give a copy of the draft and reasoning to people whom the Minister considers will be affected by the legislation or will publicly notify it. So there is an opportunity for people in those communities to be able to have a say potentially in that drafting phase of an Order in Council. We strongly believe that that input will help make good decisions. It gives the Minister the opportunity to get more information to be able to weigh up the different potential impacts of an Order in Council and we thank the Minister for adding in that provision.We did also have I guess some concerns about how wide the purpose of the Act is. There was debate about that within the committee. It has been tidied up from where it was initially and I thank Denis O'Rourke for his contributions towards that. I do recognise that it is a very difficult balance between making the purpose so wide that really nothing is challengeable in the courts and making it too tight and being unable to respond to the events that arise that you cannot foresee. I think we were willing to accept where it got to on the basis of it actually being a really difficult decision to make. It is probably one of those things where I hope there will be an evaluation of how this works after this time is over so that we can consider whether the purpose scope was too wide or not. We look forward to that discussion in the future.I see that my time is running out on this but I really do just want to say that it was a very constructive process that reflected the concern right across the House for the people and the communities that have been affected by this quake."