Brooking Rachel; Rurawhe AdrianRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to start by acknowledging the stories that we've just heard from across the House about the harrowing events of the past few weeks and that the Prime Minister started his statement with some very vivid images of those tragedies. I won't talk further about that because I've been very much focused on supporting my colleagues by being around this place and in my home in the South where of course we have issues with drought—quite the opposite.I want to talk about climate change because this is very relevant and has of course been in the news quite a lot. I think it's important that when we're talking about climate change we think about that phrase and what it means and we split it into mitigation and adaptation. And of course those two are linked—that is by talking about them separately I'm not saying that they aren't linked. So what this Government is doing on mitigation—there's a big work programme. We've had the first emissions reduction plan that's dealt with a lot of issues such as in transport and renewable energy and we've heard some speeches on that topic already this afternoon. Related to this I think it's interesting that our free-trade agreement with the European Union yet to be ratified but signed incorporates the Paris Agreement. That's really important. And that agreement will get duty-free access for 97 percent of our current exports. On a side note I want to acknowledge that we have had members of the European Parliament in this place this week and it's been great to catch up with them. But one of the reasons for caring about mitigation is trade. Do our exporters have a market? But that of course is not the only reason. We need to be a good neighbour we need to be an abider of international rules and of course there are issues about biodiversity and then there's much more dramatic and front-of-mind issues about where we live. So that's why I want to now talk about adaptation that has been in the news. The idea of adapting to climate and new things is not a new one. But we do know when people exist in an area that is going to be affected by climate change whether it's sea-level rise or these very intense rainfall events or cyclones that that's difficult to deal with. There are many unknowns. We don't know how much the temperature of the world is going to increase. We don't know how much we—well hopefully we do know—are going to emit. We're going to stick to our carbon budgets but we don't necessarily know how much the rest of the world is going to emit either. The Randerson report that I was pleased to be a part of during the previous Government did address this issue and said that we do need specific legislation for climate adaptation to deal with these existing areas where people live but there will need to be some change. That went into the Labour Party manifesto and now it is part of the wider resource management reforms. It's very important that whatever happens in our climate adaptation discussion that we involve local communities. So we've seen that. We've heard from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that when we're looking at cyclone recovery it's very important that those local communities are at the heart of that. Where I live in Dunedin we have issues that have been talked about for a long time now in South Dunedin after a 2015 flood event and when you just talk about it without engaging the community that scares people and that makes sense. So you really have to work with people and we need to talk about things like trigger points and funding and of course our wider planning system. On that I note that with the resource management amendments one of the really important changes is to increase the hazard provisions in that so that we can—councils can—say No that is not an area to build new houses on. We're going to strengthen the hazard provisions." and to enable some extinction of existing rights as well. So that deals with new things. Talking of new things of course this Government continues to invest in infrastructure and one of those things is the Dunedin Hospital with over $1.5 billion of investment to come for two main hospital buildings in Dunedin. I want to end by acknowledging that again this year we will have a public holiday for Matariki and that will be on 14 July and I hope that everyone is able to enjoy that occasion. Thank you Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: The Hon Aupito William Sio—five minutes."