Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): ACT will support the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill but there are some problems that this bill tries to solve that in solving creates some consequences such as additional unfunded liabilities unfunded obligations on local government that the bill doesn't solve. The bill is providing for councils to put information about natural and physical hazards soil contamination as a result of industrial activities—for example agricultural or horticultural sprays that were once used on market gardens in places that are now a suburban or urban residential property. And so it's important that people developing that land or people living on it now know whether their land was used for those type of activities hazardous activities on their land and therefore what they should do about it. That's one of the other problems with this bill. It's one of the other things that's missing. It says councils have to put the information or should put the information on the land information memorandum (LIM)—should be disclosed—but it doesn't say who should do what with the information. And if you live on a property have a young family and council says your property is contaminated or it's at risk from slips or liquefaction or some other kind of hazard you'll want to know What should I do?" Well who knows? Because what this bill does is it gives councils cover to put the information that they might have held for some time on the LIM but does not provide a mechanism to resolve between landowners between regulators and local government policy makers and local government and central government how existing risks that have a financial implication should be resolved.And one of them climate change risk potentially we've heard this evening from another member of the House a very trusted member the Hon Eugenie Sage that there will be a climate adaptation bill brought to the House at some point in this term of Parliament. Hon Eugenie Sage: No.SIMON COURT: Apparently not—apparently not. Don't worry.Hon Eugenie Sage: It will come.SIMON COURT: Don't worry. I've asked the Minister in a written question. We'll find out one way or the other. So what's missing? The climate adaptation Act. That might tell people who live in an area exposed to coastal hazards when their property is tagged with a hazard layer: what should they do who should they call how will it be resolved if their land is no longer safe to occupy and their buildings are at risk? Again this provides just one small piece of a much larger puzzle that's no doubt left to future Governments to much smarter people to solve. There's another missing part and that was raised by officials in the regulatory impact statement which is that there is no funding to create a more unified and comprehensive database of information about natural hazards. Because many many councils particularly smaller councils don't have the budget to do that they don't have the competencies in house to do the LiDAR to do the aerial surveying or to do physical surveying on site. It can be very very expensive getting drilling rigs out doing bore holes and creating geotechnical maps or maps of natural hazards like landslides. But there are organisations that do that and that the Government does fund to some small extent such as Geological and Nuclear Sciences or the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and the Earthquake Commission. But that information is incomplete. I've spoken to people about those databases and they said they need a secure long-term funding stream so they can build an information set for New Zealand which means that whether you're building a shed on a farm in a remote valley or you're trying to build a subdivision in an urban environment you have access to good quality information that is essentially repeatable across districts and across regions. Now the Government had undertaken to fund some of that work in financial year 2021-22 but as officials point out that level of funding was insufficient and that programme was scaled back. So at a time when we've never been more acutely aware of natural hazards natural risks from cyclones storms floods landslides such as at Muriwai and Karekare in West Auckland where I live the Government has created essentially another unfunded obligation on local government to do the work that central government said they were going to do but decided they weren't going to pay for it. So that's very disappointing. Now funding's missing a climate response Act or a climate adaptation Act's missing. A lot of information can go on land information memorandums about climate risk. If you go on to Auckland Council's GIS database you can click on a layer that will tell you about whether your property is in a coastal hazard area a coastal risk area and what different levels of climate change - induced sea-level rise will do to your property. So for example you can click on a layer that says what happens if there's half a metre sea-level rise in the next hundred years or 1 metre in the next hundred years or you know heaven forbid 2 metres in the next hundred years. And what that layer will tell you is there's many many properties in the Auckland region that may well be subject to coastal hazards to the risk of sea-level rise but in the absence of a climate adaptation Act which is supposed to tell us about managed retreat and adaptation—what do we do to protect vital infrastructure what do we do to stop land that has public assets on it for example falling into the sea? It's all very well knowing about it but what are we going to do about it? That is what New Zealanders have come to rely more and more on the ACT Party to provide answers for. What do we do about it? Practical solutions. Practical solutions to how do we fund councils so they can do the work to collect the information about natural hazards.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Court there are a number of Speakers' rulings about third readings not being about what's not in the bill. You can touch on it. We're now two minutes to go so let's just start concentrating on what is in the bill shall we?SIMON COURT: Well thank you Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: You've had a pretty good run. SIMON COURT: Thank you Mr Speaker. You're right. The ACT Party's had a great run so I will come back to the bill. There's some important amendments in here particularly around official information as it relates to cyber-security and central government agencies sharing information with councils because many local councils around New Zealand own critical infrastructure. I'm aware that many of them have traffic control systems enormous networks of CCTV camera traffic light systems—all kinds of systems that govern how rail tracks operate for example. You know where and when trains should be or should not be what trains should do when they come to a red light—we should probably tell KiwiRail they should probably stop. But if those systems are compromised because their cyber-security is not adequate then of course that has really significant and potentially life threatening consequences for people using public infrastructure owned by councils. So it's important that if central government agencies—and if we're talking about people who might be collecting information about scams about malware about attacks on our information systems—DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's a long way from the bill and you've 43 seconds left Mr Court.SIMON COURT: Well in fact that's actually—I've got a quote from the bill. Amendments relating to official information—it's important these amendments allow councils to protect information that would otherwise prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or the international relations of a Government to New Zealand. So again it'd be very interesting to know if Wellington City Council declaring Ramallah part of that terrorist State of Palestine a sister city or a friendly city—whether that would have breached any rules Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. Sit down Mr Court."