English Bill: Appropriation (2010/11 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
English Bill: Appropriation (2010/11 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:673;Page:19559] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I thank the member who has just resumed his seat Stuart Nash for his kind invitation to help clarify these matters. I think the first question he raised was about who had been consulted before decisions were made by the Minister of Finance and Cabinet. Of course we do consult Mrs Adams and the other knowledgable members of the caucus which means all of them. It is a very democratic caucus and a very democratic process. I have to admit that not every member of the Government or Cabinet will have their head around just how the supplementary estimates or changes to them work so I will explain it. Mrs Adams and the chief Government whip made a good point which was that these matters were all dealt with while we were in recovery mode following the earthquake.  
The sequence as I recall it was that there was a strong push to set up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and the House including the Opposition was notably cooperative in getting that entity set up. Because it was a new Government department the focus at the time was particularly on its powers rather than on some extensively thought-through budgeting process about exactly what activities it would have. Certainly it was not a process that we would replicate in Government; we would not usually set up a new entity without a lot more clarity about exactly what funding it would require at least for the next 12 months.  
In this case the authority was set up and there was a big focus on making sure it could pick up civil defence emergency management powers so that it could get on with the job of getting the recovery under way. At the time it was set up with a budget of about $4 million which was intended to be an administrative budget and enough to put in place the authority’s people and its capacity to work with the council and exercise some of those powers.  
Within a fairly short time it became apparent that it had to get on quite quickly with some practical tasks particularly to do with demolition. It has been surprising to those of us who have spent a bit of time on it just how complicated these issues can get quite quickly. So the authority was set up but the deadline for finalising the details of the supplementary estimates passed in early April. The authority was set up on 29 March and within about 10 days the supplementary estimates deadline of 10 or 14 days had passed. At the same time a discussion was going on about what the authority could or could not do bearing in mind that at this time it had no chief executive staff or premises. But because of the urgency of the situation the Government was already aware particularly under the decisive supervision of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery my colleague the Hon Gerry Brownlee that there was work to be done.  
The money that was then required to allow the authority to get on with the demolitions could not be obtained through the supplementary estimates. In other circumstances and with other departments we might have been able to shift money around perhaps but even then it would have been after the supplementary estimates deadline. We did not really have the choice of waiting around to be able to appropriate the money later on in the process that necessarily has to go on between Parliament and the executive. The ideal choice would have been that we would know enough about the activities of the authority within a week of its being set up—and I have to say that that would have been a bit difficult. On the other hand we could not really have waited around for the next phase because a big part of the commitment that I think we have all made to the rebuilding of Canterbury is that we should make those decisions that can practicably be made as quickly as possible in order to build confidence in the face of what are fairly difficult circumstances.  
So that is how we have ended up here with this Supplementary Order Paper which covers about $27 million for property demolition and related costs and compensation allowing some money for demolition-related property purchases. That all applies to the central business district where significant progress has been made with the latest estimate I saw showing that several hundred buildings have been demolished. That progress is not visible to many people but part of recent progress has been the capacity of the authority to exercise the powers that this Parliament has given it to encourage and occasionally compel building owners to get on with the job. At the same time it has needed the funds to exercise those powers.  
I know that the Committee is approaching this particular issue with goodwill and it is really the demanding circumstances of getting the authority up and running that have put us in an unusual set of circumstances. The member asked whether there is some kind of precedent. In a procedural sense there is no particular difficulty with carrying out this procedure but I do not think it has been done for some time. I would expect that in the normal process of good Government it would happen very rarely.