Brownlee GerryCIVIL DEFENCE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AMENDMENT ACT 2016 AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Acting Minister of Civil Defence): I move That the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill be now read a first time. This bill effectively amends a bill that was passed through the House with unanimous support just 4 days before the Hurunui/Kaikōura event occurred. One of the features of the bill is that it brings in to existence a thing called a transition period which means that after a state of civil emergency has largely dissipated in an emergency sense there is a need to continue with recovery. While that might take some years there is a transition to that recovery as well. What this enables is the establishment of the transition period and of transition managers under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016. We have effectively brought a provision forward that was going to come into effect on 14 May 2017; this amendment bill would bring it into effect on 28 November 2016. I do not think I need to speak too much more about that because these matters have been well discussed by the House and in fact have received unanimous support as I said.I do want to talk about a new little aspect to this bill which was considered broadly by the cross-party discussions of the last week or so and that is to give the power to civil defence controllers and recovery managers to require building assessments. Unfortunately it is just a gap in our law but it is unacceptable—building owners do not always have to assess their buildings after a big earthquake. Their obligations stop at the health and safety legislation which requires them to provide a safe workplace for either employees or tenants. What this bill does is to say that if one of those managers has a reason to request an assessment of the building then the assessment must be done. There is an appeal against that but the expectation in that circumstance would be that responsible landlords will act responsibly. I have to say that there is no particular group—of landlords or others—that has prompted this; it is simply the gap in the law that has prompted it.I would note that there is one very prominent landlord in Wellington who said that he had of course inspected his buildings and had engineering reports but did not believe he was required to hand them to the council. I think that what happened there was that there was a protocol with the engineering profession that they would hand them on—but it is just not clear. What we are doing here is making it absolutely clear that if it is asked for it needs to be provided. I do not want to sound like we are coming after landlords at all—that is not the case. It is just a gap in the law that we are filling in.There were a number of concerns raised about this at the cross-party forum as you would expect and I think that the wording that we have finally settled on is going to ensure that we do get sensible behaviour around this. First there are tests that would require that it is in the public interest and proportionate to the circumstances. If we had a minor shake here in Wellington where it has quite clearly not caused the sort of damage that you get with something that is much more major—as big as the shake on 14 November—then of course you would not expect the same degree of response. Second there are some requirements that the decision makers must have regard to whether the structure—or type of structure—that they are looking at may in the circumstances pose a risk to the safety or the lives of individuals or to other property. We do not want a situation where a local community hall that is used periodically and which is a single-storey timber building—this was raised by the New Zealand First Party and I think appropriately—ends up having to go to a committee that is cash-strapped to find a lot of money to tell them what they can know at a glance.It is therefore a bill that is necessary in the circumstances and I think I would similarly like to say that I appreciate the way in which it has been dealt with by that cross-party forum. It has left us in a very comfortable position about bringing forward legislation that is already law albeit not quite timely at the moment.