Mark RonRON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I want to start by congratulating the Acting Minister of Civil Defence on taking on suggestions from New Zealand First. Yesterday we asked about the Cook Strait ferries running to Lyttelton and today KiwiRail confirms it is looking at doing precisely that. We just hope that Bluebridge is not left out those conversations. Yesterday we asked about buildings occupied by the Public Service and expressed our concerns about earthquake strengthening. We believe the Minister—that everything is being done—but we again raise the question of modern building standards and the rising issue of design integrity and the sensibility of some of the occupancies we have seen. How can it be that one of New Zealand's oldest pubs the Thistle Inn in Wellington could survive a 7.2 in 1942 but the headquarters of the New Zealand Defence Force which was opened in 2007 is now deemed to be uninhabitable? The fact that the 111 service has had to relocate to a safer building and that the new award-winning Statistics New Zealand building suffered pancaking is of concern to New Zealand First and we know that the apartments in Tennyson Street have been evacuated and that also not far from us the old Deloitte building has been structurally compromised. We want to draw the House's attention to a report written by Wairarapa reporter Piers Fuller on 9 October saying that in Masterton there are 13 near-new buildings that have been deemed now to be earthquake prone due to design flaws. We cannot be smug here when considering these issues because the worst-performing building in this precinct is the Beehive. This 1970s monstrosity which New Zealand First suggested should have been knocked down back in 1998 wobbles like a jelly which might be an acceptable risk to some except when one considers that buried in the bottom of that is the bunker that is our national response headquarters. So we ask again these questions: how sensible are some of the occupancies and some of the placements and some of the usages to which we are putting some buildings? We think it really is time that we started looking through the implications of the hitherto undiscussed or mentioned reality—that being what will happen if the southern fault goes and we suffer an 8.2 like we did in 1855 and what we can expect of an earthquake of that magnitude. I am pleased that Mr Dunne spoke the way he did because this is not to be critical; this is about putting things in the air and considering in the light of what the nation has gone through what we should be doing. We need to be looking closely at our Defence Force and asking ourselves how many more times we can turn to our men and women in the Defence Force and ask them to pick up and assist us to put our country back together in times of natural disasters and disasters of this magnitude given the budgets we give them and given the equipment we give them in the inventory.One surely has to consider the difference in capability between the Indonesian vessel moored up in Auckland right now the Banda Aceh and Singapore's Resolution and compare that with what is essentially a ferry design converted into a multi-role vessel for the New Zealand Defence Force. We have had good service out of HMNZS Canterbury but it really is not a Mil-Spec vessel and is not much use to us in anything more than a sea state 1. We as a nation need to be looking forward to these major purchases going on with these disasters in mind. We need to be seriously thinking about where we should be placing Government agencies and it is time that we started considering what is essentially an earthquake bowl here in Wellington. It is time we started asking why the 111 service could not be in Masterton or Waipawa. Is there any reason why the headquarters of the New Zealand Defence Force if it has to be rebuilt could not be in Ōhākea or Linton? Is there any reason why the Electricity Authority has to be in Wellington instead of Kaitāia? Above all why does the bunker have to be under the Beehive—a building that we all know to be very unstable?Now is the time for some broader thinking about Government agencies and where they should be placed. New Zealand First would say that there is a very strong argument for moving some of these agencies and head offices out into provincial New Zealand for the future and the betterment of all New Zealanders.