Graham Kennedy: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Graham Kennedy: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
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Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I rise to take a call in the second reading of the all-important Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will begin by adding my own thanks in the first instance to Mr Chris Auchinvole for his astute and sensitive chairmanship of the Local Government and Environment Committee hearings such as we had. I agree with Ruth Dyson that it made a critical difference to the manner in which we were able to get through our work. That was in no small measure due to the personal skills of the chairman and I thank him for that. I disagree with only one thing which he said just a moment ago to the effect that he saw no causal relationship between the time allocated for submitters and the quality of the submissions. Normal human nature makes it very clear there is a close causal correlation between the amount of time one has to make a submission and the quality of that submission. The fact that the submissions were of such high quality was a testimony to the skills of the submitters but not to the integrity of the process and I think we need to draw that distinction. 
But I thank him for his astute chairmanship. 
I also want to pay personal tribute to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. I did so in the select committee and I wish to do so again here. Our criticisms of this bill are in no way intended to attribute any issues of personal trust to the Minister. We recognise the integrity of all members of the House and the Government and also the hard work he has put in to this bill. The issues of trust as I said in the first reading are irrelevant. The Green Party is quite critical of both the process behind this bill and the substance and we will have more to say about that but it does not attend to personal issues. 
Finally I pay a word of thanks to the officials who have backed up the Minister. I have seen them in action in the last 2 weeks or so. I will not name them because they would be embarrassed but they know who they are and I pay tribute to their skill and their perseverance. The Minister has just distributed a very detailed analysis of the submissions. Obviously the officials have worked through the night on this and on a very quick cursory reading it looks very thorough and very professional. It is a tribute to the officials working under the Minister to be able to produce that in a short time. 
As I more or less intimated in the first reading all of this is redolent of our September experience but it is more critical and it is more intense. So our obligation and responsibility to get this right is heightened and I doubt there will be any legislation this year in which there is a greater obligation to get this right for the people not only of Canterbury but of New Zealand as well. 
We said in our minority report that went into the select committee report that we continue to have concerns both about process and substance. The Green Party has never been convinced that the legislation for the recovery of Greater Christchurch needed to be taken under urgency. It is important of course to scrutinise the reasons for any extension of a state of emergency and I take the point by the Minister that he and his Government are under pressure to end the state of emergency. We in fact were querying the criteria for it and so on; that is the normal requirement on our part. Due provision is rightly in place to restrict the scope and period of such civil defence emergencies. But in our view there is a stronger justification for extending the state of emergency for several more weeks to allow the normal passage of this Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill under normal parliamentary scrutiny than there is to circumvent proper public and parliamentary scrutiny of the bill which contains such far-reaching measures. The absence of adequate consultation with the responsible entities or expert input through the proper select committee hearings is to the serious detriment of this draft legislation. 
We acknowledge that the task of recovery in Christchurch is massive. We acknowledge that the purposes of this bill are appropriate. We acknowledge that there is a role for central government an essential role for central government. It does not follow that that role has to be a dominant one. 
We see potentially three phases in the response to the earthquake. There is first the emergency period there is a recovery period and there is a rebuild. In the emergency period central government naturally has the dominant role. During the immediate crisis—the emergency—when the tanks and the soldiers are in the streets the urban search and rescue teams are feverishly retrieving survivors and bodies and the demolition squads are levelling buildings under urgency civil defence under emergency powers are appropriate. That period does not last for ever. It has been extended from 22 February to 16 April. The civil defence controller is in charge. That is appropriate. The representation of central government is through him. Local municipalities such as the Christchurch City Council play a secondary role during that period. The search and rescue period is essentially ended. It has been there for almost 2 months. It is entirely possible for it to continue for say 2 more weeks so this bill can be decently guided through proper parliamentary passage. 
We then move into the recovery period. That involves the reinstallation of utilities: housing power water and sewerage. That is the natural role for the utility operators acting under the authority of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. During this period—let us call it a 9-month period; it is there in the bill—there is the requirement to develop the strategy and the plans. In our view during the recovery period the lead should be taken by the local authorities—Christchurch City Council for Christchurch. 
I recognise that the bill acknowledges that the lead role should be taken by the council but there should be not only the lead role but sovereign authority on decision making in our view. That is where we differ from the Government. Under the bill sovereignty in terms of final sign-off resides with central government. Whatever happened to the principle of subsidiarity? We can suspend subsidiarity during the emergency period; we should not continue that suspension of subsidiarity during the recovery or during the rebuild. 
Finally we would have the period of rebuild itself—the third phase. That will take let us say 4 years under the 5-year period we see here in the bill. Why does the rebuild of Christchurch have to be operationalised under the sovereignty of central government? There is no reason for that. 
We will be submitting a series of Supplementary Order Papers to remedy the deficiencies in this bill as we see them. They derive essentially from the question of who has the sovereign authority during those three phases to sign-off on decision making. We will be submitting Supplementary Order Paper 232 on the issue of public engagement pertaining to clause 6 to make the community forum more representative. We will require that community membership be confirmed by parliamentary resolution that the Minister must heed the advice of the cross-party group and that the Minister will have an obligation under the statute to consult with affected communities. We will be submitting Supplementary Order Papers on the question of powers in respect of clause 15 and clauses 70 71 and 72. Ruth Dyson has already mentioned clause 70 and the Law Society’s concern over the fact that it is contrary to the rule of law and proper principles of legislation and that therefore it is undesirable. For the Green Party it is not simply undesirable; it is unacceptable if that is the case. We will be submitting further Supplementary Order Papers on a variety of clauses clauses 10 30 24 and 27 to ensure the powers currently under the bill are not excessive to the purposes of the legislation. Thank you.