Cosgrove Clayton: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18153] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I will pick up on some of the process points Mr Chauvel dealt with. I say to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery that I was not here for his explanation as to why we do not have a Supplementary Order Paper from the Government but I had a short conversation with him. We are here in the Committee stage considering extraordinary legislation and we have no Government Supplementary Order Paper. That is not good enough. It goes beyond just-in-time management. 
The people of Canterbury want the bill to work but for it to work we have to have a basic process. Yesterday in the Local Government and Environment Committee extraordinarily we were denied the right to have officials with us in an advisory capacity. People who are listening need to understand the situation. I suspect as I have said before to Mr Brownlee that people want us to get on with the bill but they also want us to get it right the first time and not be back here in a couple of months 6 months or whenever saying that we have to fix the things that people told us we should fix but we did not. People want us to get the bill right first time. We need officials in the select committee because we do not have a monopoly on all knowledge. Submitters were testing out arguments and making suggestions and it would have been helpful and strategically smart for all sides to have had officials present for a health check so we could get the bill right. 
We did not have officials present and we had 4 hours and 40 minutes of a select committee process with the public. I agree that the select committee was rightly targeted to key stakeholders. We did not expect as I think somebody said that there should have been weeks of a select committee process but we would have been happy with an extra 24 hours. We would have been happy if the Minister had signalled to submitters on Friday that there would be a select committee hearing so that they had the weekend to come up with robust submissions. Submitters had less than 24 hours’ notice. They did an extraordinary job. I pay tribute to Chris Auchinvole for his chairing. He did a wonderful impression of Henry Kissinger in trying to diplomatically knit the show together. I accept that there is some robust emotion around the bill which some people characterise as politics and others of us would characterise as doing our job. 
We had 4 hours and 40 minutes for people to discuss their submissions. As I have said before when Dr Warren Young and Mr George Tanner from the Legislation Advisory Council were asked when they had received the bill they told us that the first time they had seen it was at 4 o’clock or thereabouts when it was put on the website. Why do we want a little extra scrutiny? We want a little extra scrutiny so that we can ensure as I keep saying that we get the bill right. There is no politics in that. If I were the Minister in the chair I would first recognise that I do not have a monopoly on all knowledge and I would want a reasonable amount of advice from others even if it was for a political alibi—to say I listened. But even that advice has not been engaged. If I were the Minister I would want advice to ensure that I could put legislation in front of this Parliament that would give confidence to the people of Canterbury that we will get it right first time. 
Here we are now at 5 to 11. We rise for lunch at 1 o’clock. We will come back for question time which I presume will go from 2 o’clock to 3 o’clock or 3.30 and then we have to vote on the Committee stage. We then have to have the third reading which has to be concluded by 6 o’clock. We do not have a Supplementary Order Paper sitting here from the Minister. 
Members might ask where Labour’s amendments are. Our amendments are sorted but we cannot put them forward until we know exactly what the Government’s plans are. We have an indication and I thank Mr Brownlee for that. We asked him for an indication last night and a short time ago a list arrived of what he agrees and disagrees with in respect of the submitters. But before we can deal to the bill in a proper and professional way we need a Supplementary Order Paper. I say to Mr Brownlee that this is not parliamentary technicalities. For those outside this place who do not know I tell them that a Supplementary Order Paper is the guts of the Government’s amendments to the legislation—what Mr Brownlee agrees with and will pass and what he disagrees with and will vote against. We do not even have that. 
I say to Mr Brownlee that his approach goes beyond just-in-time management. Normally Mr Brownlee drops a Supplementary Order Paper 2 or 3 minutes before we are about to debate it to ensure that the Opposition has virtually no time to see it. We are now in legislative limbo because Mr Brownlee has not done his job. I do not say so out of any malice or spite. I say to Mr Brownlee that his job like all our jobs in this place is to get the legislation right. We are in the Committee stage of the bill and we do not have a Supplementary Order Paper. We do not have the Minister’s intentions as to what he proposes what the plan is the detail around the structure of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and his formal response to submitters—not just to us. We had input through letters to Mr Brownlee.  
This process will fill people will fear if this is how we will march on. Submitters were not allowed to have their say and were not given any notice. They were given 4 hours and 40 minutes to discuss their submissions. The committee was prevented from asking technical questions and receiving technical advice because officials were not available to us in an advisory capacity and we could not engage with them as advisers. The Minister owes the Committee a detailed explanation. If having less than 24 hours to put together submissions is good enough for submitters—councillors the Legislation Advisory Committee and the Law Society which had less than 24 hours to put together a very diligent submission—then I would have thought that with all the Government’s resources and departments at its disposal working overnight to Mr Brownlee’s timetable he could have turned up at the start of the Committee stage with his plan and his legislative amendments. It is impossible for the House to respond to legislative amendments that we do not have before us. I pay tribute to Mr Graham and the Greens who have set out their proposals. We have seen the proposals and I believe that we have shared many of our amendments with the Green member. But we cannot respond until we have the Government Supplementary Order Paper.  
I do not know whether this is a portent of things to come. I make the offer to Mr Brownlee as I have consistently made that we want to enable the legislation to work. I say to Mr Brownlee that it will go through today with or without our support. We reserve that right until we see his Supplementary Order Paper but the bill will go through; the Minister has told us the Government has the numbers. Regardless of our fears and thoughts on the issue once the bill goes through Labour members will work diligently to try to ensure that it works even with the reserverations we have and even with the extreme process.  
I say again to Mr Brownlee that it is not good enough to confuse consultation with delay. One does not impede the other. Twenty-four hours given that the state of emergency is extended until 16 April would not have altered or delayed the position for Cantabrians one iota. It would have allowed more expertise and for officials to gather their thoughts and provide assistance to the Government as we have tried to do. Now we sit here in legislative limbo as the hours tick away until lunch and we do not have a Government Supplementary Order Paper.  
I do not know whether the Government has ground to a halt overnight. I do not know whether it is because of a level of incompetence or fatigue; it could be both. We are willing to cooperate with the Government even at this late stage. Mr Brownlee knows the amendments we wish to make. He has had the letters for a week. Even at this late stage we are still willing to cooperate. I make that genuine offer to him. I would say to the Minister that if this is a deliberate attempt to try to shut us down or if this is incompetence or mismanagement he owes it to the people of Canterbury to get on his feet and explain in detail where we are on this. 
I reiterate one other point. Mr Brownlee can stand and say that any member who raises a criticism is being political. Well I say to hell with that. I will stand like Ms Dalziel Ms Dyson Mr Burns and others have beside our constituents and raise concerns and ideas until I drop. If others want to characterise that either in the media or in this place as being political well so be it. I will sleep at night with my conscience clear because our duty on this side of the Chamber is to assist. 
Normally in the process when a member is upset about something in Parliament he or she fires off a press statement and has a go. Our modus operandi has been to speak to Mr Brownlee privately to then write to him if there is no action and then if we are deeply concerned to raise the issue publicly. We have not engaged in piles of parliamentary questions or endless media statements and we have entered the public arena only when we have been deeply concerned that no action was occurring. We have acted differently. In fact we have been criticised—I have and I know Ms Dalziel and others have—for the fact that we have not put the boot in and that criticism has come from people who are deeply concerned. So I say to Mr Brownlee that he owes us an explanation.