Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker thank you. Pleased to take a short call on the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. This is a sensible bill. The Government over the last decade has spent $11.4 billion and rising on responding to natural hazards. We live in the shaky isles. We're assaulted by increasingly severe weather events major floods earthquakes seismic hazards and landslips so having better information on natural hazards on the land information memorandum (LIM) to enable people who are fortunate and wealthy enough to buy a house to get that information is really sound. Others have railed against this going through under urgency but I understand that this bill does need to be passed by the middle of the year in order to meet the time line in the national adaptation plan.I think this bill also meshes well with the Spatial Planning Bill and the Natural and Built Environment Bill which we as the previous speaker noted were discussing last night because in the regional spatial strategies councils have got to identify matters that relate to the risks arising from natural hazards and the effects of climate change. So that planning at a regional level and then this work that is including accessible information that the public can actually understand on the LIMs will help people make good purchase decisions when they're buying homes. As the departmental report noted there's an expectation that there will be significant improvements over the next five to ten years in the information that we have available on natural hazard risk data. We've got the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) developing a national flood-risk model. We've got the Earthquake Commission (EQC) with its portal for natural hazard risk and resilience. We've got the national direction that will be part of the national planning framework on natural hazard risk management and we've got the work that's happening under the national adaptation plan. Can I assure Mr Court that I understand that the Climate Adaptation Bill is coming but it will largely deal with issues around managed retreat rather than just the natural hazard risk information that these LIMs will provide. So this is a part of that bigger jigsaw and a very useful part of it.I think also there was quite a sort of discussion in the submissions that the Governance and Administration Committee considered about what level of information regional councils had to provide to territorial authorities for them to include in the land information memoranda and the department referred back to the Kāpiti District Council case on coastal hazards where the court held that councils need to provide known natural hazard information. They don't need to believe that the information is accurate or even probably accurate but there has to be a reasonable probability of the event occurring. So I think there's still quite a level of uncertainty in exactly what information regional councils need to provide and the department has said that regulations are likely to be developed to provide guidance here and submitters were concerned that there'd be good consultation with local government before those regulations are developed.So I think there is a need for quite a bit more policy work before those regulations are developed so that we do ensure that there is better guidance to councils. But this is a step forward and the Minister has gone through the other provisions around non-disclosure the protective provisions that emulate the regime and the Official Information Act for when information shouldn't be disclosed on national security grounds. We recognise that there's concern about that but again it's not really going further than what is already in the Official Information Act at that national level. So the Green Party like others in the House supports the bill.