Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It is a pleasure to rise to take a short call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I just want to make a few points and they do come out of the Christchurch experience and ensuring that we do not miss the opportunity to ensure that we take the learnings out of that experience when we are preparing legislation. I know that this legislation is really not designed for the large-scale events that we saw but there are a couple of things that we can learn from Christchurch.I know that this bill looks specifically at the definition of recovery" but the important thing to note is that recovery is about more than just the provision of essential services. Those civil defence workers are required to have a range of knowledge and to support a range of experiences. As you may be aware Mr Assistant Speaker when you turn up to a particular event you are never quite sure what you are going to find. It is important to ensure that the workforce development is up to scratch. It is more than just ensuring shelter and that people are protected from immediate danger. There are some longer-term impacts that our civil defence emergency people are important in supporting.One of the real lessons that has been learnt that we have not really taken full cognisance of is that around strategic recovery plans there are some things that we have really missed. One of those is around business continuity. What happened in Christchurch is that in the initial phase there were some plans put in place to ensure that businesses could continue in the short term but we did not fully take into account what happens in the longer term for businesses. For example every time in Christchurch a road is dug up or a walkway is cordoned off for some works that impacts our local businesses. There are many businesses in the eastern suburbs of Christchurch that month after month after month have had to put up with disruption particularly to traffic and foot traffic that severely impacted their long-term viability as businesses.Although that might not sound important it has been hugely important to them because as soon as you disrupt the ability for customers to get to a business—if you do that once they are unlikely to return. It has been our local businesses in Christchurch East that have really suffered a huge impact because the level of disruption has meant that their long-term business viability has really been impacted. So when we are looking at strategic recovery plans after an event or a disaster we must look at business continuity not just in the early days and weeks but longer term—particularly when we are in the recovery phase—when we are looking at the disruption that might occur.There was a submission made by the Christchurch City Council—it made three submissions—and this one in particular talks about local control and ensuring that we have adequate local control. That is one of the lessons that I think that we have not learnt in Canterbury. Local people know their environment. They certainly have the expertise. They should have the ability to be able to effect whatever plans they need to in terms of the recovery of the city and the community that they know so well. We were very disappointed when we were unable to effect local democracy back through Environment Canterbury. We are really hopeful that the Government will see sense and restore local democracy sooner rather than later because our communities actually know what is best for them.In the few seconds I have left I do want to make one final comment and that is about ensuring that we have the ability to have an alarm system and the warning system for everybody in our community—and that includes the vision-impaired and the hearing-impaired. I want to acknowledge the petition that has recently come to the House to ensure that those of our community who are hearing-impaired have the opportunity to have the alarms which they do not currently have to warn them to get out of dangerous situations. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Just before I call the next member could I just mention to the member who has been on his phone if you want to use the phone that is for the lobbies—not for in the House."