Mallard Trevor: Canterbury Earthquake Commemoration Day Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading Procedure Third Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Canterbury Earthquake Commemoration Day Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:670;Page:17133] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I want to join with members in the tone of this discussion. I was not going to start this way but I will acknowledge the work of the police and the teams they have developed. It must be pushing 15 years since I spent a number of nights out with the police in my city. On one of those early occasions I was with a team that was involved in cleaning up after a road accident where someone had hit a power pole and the remains were spread over 50 to 70 metres down a road. The police officers were using tweezers to pick up body parts. The police and others in Christchurch—our other heroes—are doing that on a scale 200 times bigger and that is an enormous effort. It is almost like under every boulder brick and stone they lift there is a possibility of finding part of a loved one. It must be so hard yet in a way I am sure for many of them it is rewarding. 
I have had discussions with people from my area who have been involved in the work just as there are people in Christchurch from every area in New Zealand. Police from my area have been in Christchurch and have come back. In a funny way it must also be enormously rewarding work to be part of a team that is now doing the best that can be done in returning as much of the remains of the loved ones to the families as they can for appropriate burial or other disposal. It is hard work and we thank them for it. 
Perhaps a related question is that of whether there can be some informal arrangement or direction from the commissioner that the police and others who have already worked in Canterbury and who are now back home can be taken off active duty at least for the period of the memorial service so that they can be part of the commemoration. I think that would be a good thing and it should probably apply to the fire service and other personnel as well. 
I say to the Minister of Labour—again I think it will be a matter of the discretion of individual employers—that there are now tens of thousands of Cantabrians who are outside Canterbury. Many of them are working for nationwide employers or are outside their normal place of work in the Canterbury province. I wonder whether the Minister—and she might like to report at a later stage—could encourage employers to treat those Cantabrians who are now outside Canterbury as if they were in Canterbury for the purposes of the commemoration. Because of the television aspect to the commemoration I think a lot of us will want to feel a part of it and it would be good for those who were in Christchurch or who would normally be there to be allowed to be part of it. I think gentle encouragement could be given for that to occur. I do not think we need an amendment to the legislation but if we can get some leadership from the Government on arrangements for the police and paid firefighters at least then that would be a good way of progressing. 
As well as acknowledging those people an enormous number of public servants in Wellington as well as in Canterbury have been burning the candle at both ends in order to best respond to this terrible event. We need to acknowledge them and thank them. In fact I tell the Minister of Police that the police with whom I have had a discussion have had some arrangement where they have been down in Christchurch for a week. I think they went down on the ferry late in the afternoon of the earthquake and stayed there for a week. There was not one occasion when they had their normal 9-hour break between shifts. They were always working for at least 16 hours a day and often longer. There will be some issues that flow from that. 
Before I get back to that point I acknowledge Anne Tolley and the work she and her team have done. Through informal links—and occasionally some tears on Lambton Quay—I have caught up with what has been going on within the Ministry of Education and its team. I acknowledge her leadership and the work that Karen Sewell and those people have done in order to make the best possible arrangements at this stage. It is an enormous job. It could have gone much worse. There will be enormous challenges to come and I am sure that at the appropriate time we will give Anne Tolley some hurry-up to make sure the good work continues. She has taken some leadership there and part of it has involved some additional funding some double funding in order to make sure that arrangements are appropriately in place for schools. 
I want to go back to the Minister of Police and ask that she too looks at the effect on police district budgets as a result of the earthquake work arrangements. Because of briefings on the Rugby World Cup I know that this year will be enormously tight for the police. As far as leave is concerned there are large blocks of time when the police will not be able to take leave and therefore there will be an accumulation of leave. I understand that the Minister of Police has already approved the paying out of time in lieu for police who have been in Christchurch where that is appropriate. I say to the Minister of Police that I think we should not pressure some of the police who have been in that situation to take payment of time in lieu unless they choose to. As a result of working for a week some of them have effectively accrued about 3 weeks’ leave. If some of that is paid out that is good. But I just want to make sure that the funding arrangements are in place in the same way that the Minister of Education has arranged it for schools so that policing is not reduced as a result of the exercise. 
I know it is a matter that will take some working through and it is not as urgent as it is in respect of education but it is a very real question. Having been involved in some negotiations in the past as the Associate Minister of Finance—if I take off my shoes and do some counting on my fingers—I think about a week’s policing from the Hutt was the loss of an officer for about 6 months. That gets to be quite a serious drop in a relatively small community so we need to work though it. 
I will finish on what might be a slightly discordant note and say as our leader and deputy leader have indicated that because the Government has made this decision and because of our determination to stand beside the Government in these matters we will be supportive of it. I just want to toss in my personal view now which is that it might have been better to wait a little while until we had an understanding of who died or at least as good an understanding as we will ever get. I know of a relatively close friend and acquaintance who has died but whose name has not been released. I do not know whether others are on that list. I think that all of New Zealand is thinking about that at the moment. At Pike River we knew who the 29 were. But we do not know in this case and my view is that it might have been better to leave it a bit longer until we do. 
But what is clear out of all of this is that at some stage in the future we have to work out what a proper memorial is. I want to think in grander ways than the physical for that sort of memorial. Thank you.