Woods MeganParts 1 and 2 schedule 1 and clauses 1 to 3Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call in the Committee stage on this bill. It is a piece of legislation that as a Canterbury member of Parliament I am eager to see pass through this House. It is a piece of legislation that is required by many homeowners in the Canterbury region in order to get on with their lives to settle their insurance claims and to be able to begin the process of rebuilding.What this bill does is something quite fundamental. It acknowledges that after a series of earthquakes of the magnitude such as we have seen in the Canterbury region since 2010 the land has moved. When the land has moved the boundaries need to move with it because there are a range of discrepancies. There are around 11000 properties in the Canterbury region where there has been a greater than 20 centimetre—either horizontal or vertical—movement of the land. So this is no small problem that needs to be rectified for those 11000 people for whom this is a problem. This piece of legislation seeks to tidy that up and to look at that.I think that there were some important changes that the Local Government and Environment Committee was able to make when it heard submissions and then came to consider this piece of legislation. They were important because some interesting questions were raised. It has to be said there were not submissions in their thousands but there were some quality submissions on this. The Christchurch City Council gave a very considered submission the Law Society gave a very considered submission and we did hear a number of points raised by the surveying community and professional surveyors and what their views are.One of the things that have happened during the passage of this legislation of course is that the dates that are covered have had to change. After the Valentine's Day quake of this year in Canterbury the cut-off date for when this legislation would apply needed to be moved out. So the decision was made to extend this legislation out from a 6-year period from now until 2022 in recognition that there was further land movement on 14 February of this year from that quake in the Christchurch region. It is heartening to see the Government realising the long-term impacts that the earthquakes are having on the city of Christchurch and the region of Canterbury. I would implore the Minister for Land Information to perhaps speak to some of her colleagues about the ongoing mental health issues in the Canterbury region and about some of the other ongoing impacts that are going on.It is heartening to see that the dates have been extended out in clause 4 of this piece of legislation. The other clause that I would like to speak to in this is clause 8 of this legislation addressing a title conflict. It goes to the heart of what happens when there is a conflict between two property owners around a title when the land has moved and it may be when we talk about the land moving that someone's garage now resides on their neighbour's property or it may be that when someone is seeking to rebuild on a parcel of land that parcel of land is substantially different for the purposes of where the boundary of that land is in terms of the rebuild.So the select committee did make some recommendations to the original legislation that amended clause 8(1) to clarify that the approved interim surveys must satisfy the provisions in both clause 8(1)(a) and 8(1)(b). One of the things that this piece of legislation does is it goes back and retrospectively validates some of the surveying that has been done in the nearly 6 years since the September quake of 2010. But in order for that to be validated it does have to satisfy those requirements in clauses 8(1)(a) and 8(1)(b) and it is important that we can have certainty in the Canterbury region around what it is that we are retrospectively validating because the last thing that any of us wants to see is these boundaries coming back and being disputed and for people to enter a further period of uncertainty around their homes and around their properties.One of the other issues that came up that would come within here was that a number of submitters made the recommendation to have a dispute resolution framework included in this legislation with the inevitable conclusion that there would be disputes between property owners and between neighbours around how it was that the boundaries now fitted together in the changed landscape of the Canterbury region. The select committee was of the opinion that the Property Law Act of 2007 and the Land Transfer Act provided adequate mechanisms to deal with those disputes and there was not a requirement in this piece of legislation for specific dispute resolution. I would like to just signal that that is something that we do need to keep a watching brief on to check that that is a fit for purpose mechanism that is able to deal with the particular nature of any of the disputes that may arise within this piece of legislation.But Labour is supporting this bill. We are supporting it at this Committee stage. We have supported it all the way through. We think that it is really important that we do get this matter rectified for many constituents in the Christchurch area and many citizens in the wider Canterbury area. Their insurance claims cannot be settled until these issues are settled. So it is absolutely critical that we do get this. Perhaps once this roadblock is removed from getting people's insurance claims settled maybe the Government can look at removing some further roadblocks to allow Cantabrians to get on with their lives. But Labour is happy to commend this legislation to the Committee and we will be supporting it.