Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on this legislation which as my colleagues have indicated and given very good reasons for Labour is supporting. I would like to acknowledge what the Minister in the chair has said—that he is a member of this Parliament that has gone through a lot in regard to a disaster and the immediate recovery phase of that as have Canterbury MPs from across this House. I would like to acknowledge them all.In my contribution I want to deal with the powers in new Part 5B of this legislation. This legislation deals with how it is we transition from the emergency phase to the business-as-usual phase. I—like many New Zealanders I think—before September 2010 understood civil defence very much in terms of that emergency phase. It was the yellow pages at the back of the telephone book that told us all what to do in a disaster. That was very much my understanding of civil defence.But I will never forget in September 2010 being down at the Addington Raceway with the then member of Parliament for Wigram Jim Anderton trying to do some of the things that the Minister in the chair has just mentioned. And trying to sort out some of the things that were needed that we had not anticipated in a disaster lasting this long: such as where were people going to do washing over a protracted period of time such as this; or how were we going to cater for the ethnic diversity of people who needed to be housed and for the different kinds of sleeping arrangements that needed to be held at the Addington Raceway. Then in February 2011 I will never forget being down at the Addington Raceway as people flooded in thinking that this was once again going to be their safe haven in an emergency—that this was the place that they could go to. But of course that facility was so badly damaged in that quake that it was not able to be used. The logistics of trying to shepherd people to somewhere safe was something that was quite harrowing to watch and I would like to acknowledge the many volunteers within civil defence who give so tirelessly of their energy and of their expertise and of their skills to do that.I think that is the phase that we can understand but what I have come to understand more over the last 6 years is how it is that we transition. As the Minister said there are certain powers that do need to be put in place so that we can deal with an emergency: how it is that we clear roads how it is that we put in place—as we had to in places such as in the Hon Ruth Dyson's electorate—barriers to stop rock falls coming down and how we do that at the kind of speed at which we need to do it with to keep people safe.But how then do we transition back to business as usual? That is the bit where new Part 5B in clause 28 of this legislation—that transitional period—becomes so critical. I would like to acknowledge here the work of the Government Administration Committee chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson the work that all members of that committee have done and Supplementary Order Paper 237 that Clare Curran has put forward here. This is because what is absolutely vital in this transitional phase is to make sure that we strike the right balance between trying to do things in an expedited fashion to keep things moving along but making sure that locals have a real say in their recovery—that they are absolutely part of this transitional phase—and that they feel that they are part of it and they once again have some control over their lives. As people come out of an emergency phase the adrenalin starts to wear off. That emergency phase starts to dissipate and things seem to be returning to normal and people very much want to be part of their destiny.The other thing that I think we have learnt is that this is not a linear process. Emergency recovery and transition overlap and that for different people in different communities at different stages we need to have the flexibility to do that. One of the things that I would like to talk to was the suggestion from the Canterbury District Health Board that was put up under this new Part 5B which was that greater power would be given to the medical officer of health and there would be the ability to do that. I think we were very lucky in Christchurch not to have had a public health outbreak. We did not suffer from the communicable diseases problem that people anticipated was going to happen because of the kinds of situations people in Canterbury were living in in the emergency phase and beyond the emergency phase and I would like to see that as something that this House kept an open mind to. That is a critical thing that we do need to consider when we are considering those things so I would like to see that. But I think that this is legislation we are happy to support. I do acknowledge the comments that have been made about how this is legislation that is set up to deal with the small and medium sized disasters and that we will be coming back to revisit larger disasters. But Labour is happy to support this piece of legislation.