Draft transcript - Thursday 02 June 2016First draft - subject to correction.Draft transcript - Thursday 02 June 2016Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONDARROCH BALL (NZ First): I think about 90 percent of that speech if not 99 percent of it was talking about the offender. If we continue to address this piece of legislation and this problem of child sex offending starting with the offender at the centre and as the foundation of the conversation we are going to get it wrong. We are going to get it wrong not only for the previous victims of child sex offending but for the potential future victims of child sex offending. We will be supporting this bill because we do agree that at a minimum there needs to be a register. As we have heard not only today but yesterday throughout the second reading speeches it is a complex and wide-ranging topic in that it encompasses quite a few issues. It is not a simple straightforward one-dimensional issue and that is why we see across the House the varying degrees of agreement or disagreement in opposition. There are a number of issues that New Zealand First has with this legislation and the way that it is implemented; the way that it is written. We have got some concerns and obviously we have got some opposing views as well. The main one for us is that New Zealand First believes that this register should be made publicly available. We have introduced a Supplementary Order Paper that will be discussed further through this process but we believe that it is absolutely essential that in order to put the protection and safety and rights of the children at the centre of this conversation that register needs to be made public. But this is not a new groundbreaking piece of legislation. We have registers around the world that work and we have got evidence that shows that it works. Not only are there restricted registers but there are actually countries that have publicly available registers. So we have 19 countries around the world that have fully functioning working registers right now and seven of those are either publicly available or have variations of being publicly available. A further 12 countries are considering using registers and are in the process of putting legislation through the House just like we are to create a register. This is not new. It is not groundbreaking legislation. Nowhere in those 19 countries that I have mentioned—they include Australia Canada the UK and the United States—is there any evidence that it does not work. There is no evidence anywhere in those countries that states that it does not work. We heard the advice of the Green member who spoke who said that because there is no evidence that it does work we should not do it. Because there is no evidence that it does work we should not do it. The only reason why you would choose to oppose it based on that fact is if you were leaning in favour of the offender. If you had any doubt whether a public register a register itself works—if you had any doubt—and putting the children first you would ensure that you put that register in place. If you have any doubt and the member is wrong and you do not put that register in place—and that member was wrong or that idea or concept was wrong—then who will suffer? It is the children. That is the stance that New Zealand First is taking. We need to ensure that we take that step not only to make a register but to make it fully public. One of the issues that we have like I said in my opening statement is that this is not one-dimensional. It is not a simple concept. There are wide-ranging issues. But what some of the parties in this House are doing is they are literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They are throwing out the entire concept of having a register or the possibility of making it public because there are some issues that surround it or that fall out of having a register or making it public. Anything that we have heard from some of the members who have spoken previously is only anecdotal. There is no actual evidence that it does not work. Those were the member’s own words—there was no evidence that it works. That was it. We have heard arguments today that have been about the offender’s rehabilitation or the ability for an offender to rehabilitate about reintegration and about issues with vigilantes. We have even heard about the offender’s human rights. But we have heard very little about public safety and the protection of our children which should be at the centre of this conversation. That is a fact. That is a fact. There is a need for a register. What needs to happen is that there needs to be—if the Green Party or other parties in this House want to concentrate on or invest in rehabilitation and reintegration and all of those things that the Green member talked about that is fine. But that does not mean that you throw out the entire concept of a register. That does not mean you throw out the entire concept of making that register public. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This conversation has turned into a perpetrator’s rights versus children’s rights. That is what has happened—the protection of the human rights of the perpetrator versus the right to protect the children. We have heard about the issues that have come out. I have got some articles about things that have happened recently very recently that prove there is a need for a public register. We have had—and this is only in the last few months and there are a number of them—“Recidivist south Canterbury sex offender imprisoned.” He appeared on representative charges of indecently assaulting a female between 12 and 16 and this is a recidivist child sex offender. The judge said that he was convicted in 1991 of a very similar offence and I assume it was a less-frequent series of assaults and his major quote was: “It is inescapable it is part of your character”—it is part of your character. That is why we have got hundreds of convicted child sex offenders being released into society every year and we do not know where they are. In fact I have got the statistics here about just how many. I will be interested to see if members in this House know just how many child sex offender convictions have occurred in the last 10 years. The number is 4000. In the last 10 years there have been 4000 convictions for child sex offending. That is 400 a year; that is more than one a day—more than one a day. If we are talking about an issue with name suppression there is a misnomer out there that people think that there are a huge number of child sex offenders that get name suppression. In fact only 10 percent of child sex offenders get name suppression. The vast majority of child sex offenders do not get name suppression. If we are talking about the reoffending rates of these offenders these criminals we are talking in the vicinity of—because there have been quite ranging numbers and percentages of reoffending rates—around about the 20 to 25 percent mark. That means that over the last decade of the 4000 offences there have been a thousand offenders who have been reoffending. I have an article here that actually takes the views the comments and the point of view of the victims. The headline says: “Sex offender register should name paedophiles.” and the sex abuse victims say that a child sex offender register is needed and they want it to go one step further by making the names public. This is the victims. These are the victims’ voices that it seems that no other party in this House is listening to. It goes on to say that name suppression protects the perpetrator and not the victim: “It hasn’t protected me as a person at all. I live a life sentence. They serve if they do get convicted a few years and then they get out and then they can freely travel wherever they wish and continue to do it. They just get smarter.” The New Zealand Law Society does not support a register and argues the bill before the Social Services Committee in Parliament takes a blanket approach treating all sex offenders the same. It says: “The proposed register should be redesigned so that it is aimed only at serious child sex offenders who are likely to reoffend.” But Helena Watson said: “Encouraging silence feeds their ability to reoffend.” What an action of not creating a public register does is feed those offenders with the ability to reoffend. At the basis and the heart of this is giving the ability to parents in the community to know where these sex offenders are to know who they are and to protect their children. That is why New Zealand First is putting through a supplementary order paper to ensure that this register becomes public. We are standing up for the victims we are hearing the victims’ voices and we need this register to be public. We will support this bill and we look forward to discussing it in its further stages. Thank you.[Continuation line: NGARO]Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. There are some comments that were made in regards to the whole aspect of the register and its importance. I just want to say that the purpose of the register is to provide the authorities with another tool. It does not just exist on its own. There is a list that people will look at and then make a judgment and create some analysis. Just to provide a little bit of background information what has happened previously is there has been the role of information sharing between different agencies. That has played quite an important role especially with policing and with the Department of Corrections. In fact back in 2012 this role was significant because it was at that time when they were able through that information sharing to identify a convicted sex offender who was actually a teacher at a school. Without that information sharing that would not have happened. That was critically important. It highlighted the need to have the analysis to have good data and good information that allowed them to be able to make a judgment call about what needed to happen in that case. In 2013 a collaboration between Police and the Department of Corrections meant they set up what they call the CISO—the Centre for Information for Sexual Offending. That was set up. Particularly so there could be both the analysis of the information but also to be able to form what they would call a product of intelligence that allowed them to give a profile around a particular offender to the individual. That was critically important. Out of that analysis they were then able to have individual profiling which allowed them to then make an assessment about the risk factor of that offender. The purpose then for this bill and for this register is to fit into that context. So firstly the Centre for Information of Sexual Offending will become the administrator of the register. Secondly it adds to the analysis because it gives regular up to date information. Currently there is no legislation framework that allows them to be able to do that. In order to be able to minimise risk you have to have what they call an appropriate management risk framework. So this fits into a framework. It is not purely a list that exists on its own it has an administrator it has two key stakeholders the Police and Department of Corrections working together. They have the analysis. What the register will do is give them up to date information that enables them to make an assessment at that point in time. Their role is to both monitor and manage the risk. That is the reason for the register that is the reason why it is actually absolutely important for us to have this register inside that framework to truly make a difference to reducing the risk of offending and at the same time too—I would agree with the member David Clendon—to be able to then provide other forms of rehabilitation that may be appropriate to the offender. That is the reason that is there. Mr Clendon also made comment around the $146 million. We all had the inquiry and the information that we wanted to ask as to how when you think about the cost-benefit analysis almost two-thirds of that $146 million is already consumed in current roles of responsibility already there. So we are not talking a huge amount of extra fund that is going to be used to administer this register that is being proposed at the moment. That is critically important. We also feel that that is important because again it enables them to be able to have this up-to-date information as well. We had 135 substantive submissions and 98 of those submissions talked about the need—and I take Mr Darroch Ball’s comment—for making the register public. There was concern because they felt that the public needed to have the information—in fact many submitters talked about the right of the public to have that information—so that it could give them the ability to be able to assess their own risk and their own challenges that they had in their own communities. You would have to say there is some merit in that submission and in that advocacy for that. There was some comment that there was no evidence; there is evidence and it was presented to us. There is a 2011 study by Prescott and Rockoff from Columbia University in the United States which was substantive enough to identify two things. The first thing that it identified is this: there is little or no evidence to demonstrate that making the register accessible to the public improves public safety overall. So here is the evidence. The fact is they were saying that there is no evidence to say that by making it public it was going to be able to reduce the offending that was in there. But here is the thing that I think is actually really important too: inside of that it said that we find that the evidence that the registration reduces the frequency of offences by providing law enforcement with information on sex offenders. There is evidence; it does prove the importance of the register— No. 1 to be able to have approved accredited providers that will ensure that those key stakeholders have that information. We did ask the question to ensure that that information would not be able to be breached or leaked out into the public to ensure in a sense the confidentiality. However the balance is this: do we have the right information to create the right analyses so that the monitoring and the managing of high-risk offenders could be put into place? We think that is important as well. The last thing I want to say is that this Government has also passed other forms of legislation such as the public scrutiny information that is there that is provided—it is the public protection orders and the enhanced extended supervision orders which are also in place. When there are high-risk offenders this form of legislation will ensure that the enhanced extended supervision orders are actually still behind the wire. It means there is accommodation that is there. That is another tool along with the register to ensure that we both monitor and manage high-risk offenders that are a risk and could be a risk to our communities. At the end of the day it is about keeping our children and our communities safe. I commend this bill in its second reading to the House.Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONThe ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.[Continuation line: LOGIE]Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONJAN LOGIE (Green): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. The Green Party is opposing the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. I just want to put on record at the beginning of this speech my discomfort of hearing our Opposition characterised as not centring the needs of the victims and not being concerned with the needs of victims. Green Party members are passionate advocates for survivors of sexual violence. I am on record many times in this House talking of the number of people who I know personally who were offended against as children; of the many more women and children I have worked with as a volunteer in specialist sexual violence services and Women’s Refuge; and of how passionate I am about sorting out the system to ensure that they get the support that they need that we have a functioning justice system and that we have the appropriate treatment for those who offend so that they will not offend again. To suggest that we do not care about this issue and the survivors of sexual violence is blatantly untrue. We oppose this legislation for many reasons but the heart of our opposition is actually based on a real commitment to reducing the prevalence of sexual violence in this country and making sure that survivors and perpetrators both get the right help so that we can reduce violence. START a very well respected Christchurch-based NGO—it has spent years supporting children in particular as well as adult survivors of sexual violence—did not support this bill based on the experience of its work. It brought forward to the Social Services Committee a US-based study that found “no support for the effectiveness of registration and community notification laws in reducing sexual offending by: (a) rapists (b) child molesters (c) sexual recidivists or (d) first-time sex offenders.” The regulatory impact statement also notes that there is limited research evidence from other jurisdictions about the effectiveness of sex offender registers. I heard the member from New Zealand First saying that there is not evidence to show this work does not mean that it does not work. Well actually that US-based research does question whether it works. We also have to recognise the potential for harm from this register. The possibility—when we acknowledge that we have a 1 percent conviction rate in this country—that people will see this register particularly if it is public and they will think “OK ‘they’ are the dangerous people over there. Anyone else we don’t need to be so worried about. We don’t need to make the efforts around having vigilance and ensuring that people know how to report because ‘they’ are the dangerous people.” In actual fact they are a tiny percentage of the dangerous people in our society because our justice system does not work. The $146 million—which I might say is about three times what the entire sexual violence sector got out of the select committee inquiry which they had to fight and advocate for decades to get based on strong strong evidence—is being given to an unproven method and $86 million of that will come from police baseline funding when police are patently unable to do their job of getting cases to court at the moment because of resource pressure as well as a failing legal system. To take money from them and their resources to put into a register when we have no evidence that it is going to work is to me creating more potential harm than not. So the Green Party is absolutely opposing it on the basis of the needs of victims. We need to put money into prevention services right across the country and we need to put money into ensuring that our justice system works. That is where our money should be going in the first instance alongside support for survivors. We were given evidence by the Law Society that said that we could do this with some law changes through parole and sentencing to ensure that when there was evidence of risk that we could put measures in place. We have to recognise there is the potential that if this goes through and the Law Society does not support it that it may be a deterrent against sentencing people which we have seen with increased penalty rates. So there is significant harm at play here.[Continuation line: NASH]Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Let us first put on the table that in my view sex offending against children is the ultimate betrayal of trust. It is that fundamental breaking of a social contract that exists between people who live in the community and the community itself. I actually do not think to be honest there is such a thing as a disproportionate punishment for child sex offenders but what I do want to see is money spent in a way that keeps our community safe. So what is this bill about? What it means is that all child sex offenders will have to be on this register if they are 18 years old or over and are sentenced to imprisonment. They will have to update the register annually. They will have to update the register within 72 hours of a change of details or within 48 hours prior to travel. What happens is depending on the sentence they will stay on the register for either 8 years 15 years or life. The ministries that will have access to this register are the police the Ministry of Social Development Housing New Zealand and the Department of Corrections and the reason they have access to the register is so they can manage the risk to public safety posed by known sex offenders who are living within the community. I do not think there is anyone in this House who would disagree with the intent of that in any way shape or form because it does have to be managed in the interests of public safety. According to the bill police and corrections staff will have to inform third parties that they consider necessary to protect the safety of the community. So the police and corrections staff do have the mandate to go out to the community and say “Be aware there is a known sex offender living at this address” or “living within this community.” The real concern I have about this is the fact that the police and the corrections service just do not have the resources to do this so what I would like to see before I supported this in any way shape or form is assurance from the police that they are going to really police this bill and manage this in a way that is going to achieve the objectives. As Darroch Ball mentioned if they do not do this and we have recidivist sex offenders living in our community with a high risk of offending then this bill will mean absolutely nothing so there does have to be an absolute assurance from police and corrections staff that they are going to manage this in a way. I do have a concern that this will be leaked. I think that is a very real concern because if we put ourselves in the situation of someone from police the corrections service Housing New Zealand or the Ministry of Social Development and we saw on the register that a known sex offender was living beside a friend of ours or beside a school it would be incredibly difficult. There would be a real moral dilemma I believe on whether to speak out or not—on whether to inform a school or a friend with children that a known sex offender was living beside them. I think the moral dilemma around how to keep such a register confidential is very real and we must understand that. The one thing that must lead policy and legislation in this House is evidence and Alfred Ngaro talked about this. If you look at my Facebook site you will see that I am no apologist for child offenders in any way shape or form but what we need to do is develop legislation that is based on good evidence. What I have read is that the evidence suggests that making such a register public actually does not do any good to the community whatsoever. It does not stop child offending in any way shape or form nor does it protect the community in a way that we all want it to. If the evidence pointed the other way—if I had evidence that said making a register public would protect our community—then I would be all for it. But the evidence I have seen says that making a register public does not in fact protect the community. Just to sum up I have absolutely no doubt that every member in this House has the safety of our community at heart. We have the victims as the No. 1 group that we want to protect and we have our communities’ safety at heart; there is no doubt about that whatsoever. But what we must do is ensure that if this bill passes there are the resources in place in the corrections system and police to give effect to it and make sure that our communities are safe.[Continuation line: PARMAR]Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill’s second reading. I am taking this call to support this bill. It is important to reduce any possible risk to children including the risk of them being sexually attacked and the responsibility of this cannot be left on parents and guardians alone. It is not written on the forehead of offenders that they are child sex offenders so we need a system to record that: a system that is kept up to date that serves the purpose of informing people—those who can be affected like parents teachers or other community groups looking after children. This bill is to establish New Zealand’s first child sex offender register and there are conditions around who goes on this register. They should be over the age of 18 should be convicted of a qualifying crime and should be sentenced to imprisonment or a non-custodial sentence with a judge’s direction to go on the register. It is important that we have this register so there is a process for authorised police and corrections system people to work on this register to keep a record of people because at the moment what happens after child sex offenders finish their sentence is that they go back into the community. But we want to track them. We want to see whether there are any changes in their circumstances that can increase their risk of reoffending. As a member of the Social Services Committee I want to thank all submitters. There were a huge number of submissions; 140 written submissions were received by the Social Services Committee. That shows that there was huge interest in this legislation. All submitters expressed concern about this offending and I want to thank submitters because it helped us understand their point of view. All submitters agreed that child sex offenders pose a serious risk the community that they choose to live in. There was a wide range of views that came through submissions. Some submitters thought that the child sex offender register should be publicly available. Others thought that it could be misused. So there were extreme views on this. But overall a majority of them agreed that it should not be publicly available. The issue of name suppression when child sex offenders go through the process also came up. All acknowledge that child sex offending is a serious problem in New Zealand that it is a significant problem in New Zealand and that monitoring of child sex offenders in the community is limited by the current legislation. In 2014 alone 451 offenders were convicted of a child sex offence and 307 were sentenced to imprisonment. So once these offenders complete their sentence they are free in the community. There is no system in place for them to keep in contact with the justice sector. That is what we want to fix through this legislation. This register is going to be a substantial register looking at the numbers as it is estimated that 472 offenders will be registered in the first year rising to 1541 in year four when an evaluation will be completed. So along with being a substantial register in terms of numbers of child sex offenders that will go on this register this is an expensive piece of legislation. Looking at the system that is required to set up this register and then there is ongoing maintenance of this register that will be required—but we do not want to compromise the safety of New Zealand families especially children. We all agreed that this will not completely eliminate reoffending but this will definitely enhance child safety. So I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.[Continuation line: SEPULONI]Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillContinued Speech - DAVID CLENDONCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am standing up on the behalf of Labour to say that at this stage we support the bill but we do have major reservations. Those reservations are based on the evidence that we have had put before us. I do want to address something that was said by another member of the House and that is that anyone who might oppose this bill is not putting children at the centre of the debate. I think that is incredibly unfair. I think no one in this House can say that there is any party or any individual that does not care about the welfare of children in this case in relation to sexual offences against children. There is no one in this House who does not care about that. Our job here is to be rational in our thinking to use evidence to guide our decision making because it is so easy to be guided by emotion. This is an emotional issue. It is an emotional issue for us in this House. This was an emotional issue for the people who came to make a submission. It is an emotional issue for most of the country actually. Keeping that in mind we just need to remind ourselves that our job is to make rational decisions on behalf of the country and to use an evidence base to make those decisions. Of course we support the intent of the bill and that is to reduce sexual reoffending against child victims and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders by providing government agencies with the information needed to monitor child sex offenders in the community and providing up-to-date information that assists the police to more rapidly resolve cases of child sex offending. I do not think anyone would dispute that. The dispute would come in respect of whether or not we need a child sex offender register to be able to have that kind of data information-sharing between government agencies. So people during this process have felt misled or have been misled in some ways by the fact that this bill says “child sex offender register”. The assumption is that this will be a public register and of course we know that that is not the intention. That is why New Zealand First who do think it should be a public register have put up or will be putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to say that should be a public register. That is why we on our side of the House though are putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to say that it should not be a public register and that there should be no doubt that it is not a public register. One of the concerns that was raised by many of the submitters and a concern that we now have based on the evidence that we have had put before us is that a child sex offender register can give a false sense of security. Giving it some context I think we really need to look at the wider issue that we have at hand and that is sexual offending against children. If we look at the most recent statistics for New Zealand we see that one in three girls in New Zealand will be sexually abused and one in seven boys in New Zealand will be sexually abused. And the sad case is that only 10 out of 100 sexual abuse crimes are actually reported only three out of 100 sex crimes will actually make it to court and actually only one out of 100 sexual abuse crimes in this country will actually lead to conviction. So when we are talking about a sex offender register we are only talking about the sexual offenders who have actually been convicted who can actually go on that register. It is only one out of 100 of the sex crimes that happens in this country. So we are talking about a very small part of a huge issue that we have as a country. A recent statistic that I saw as well was that more than 23 percent of women who participated in a recent Auckland study reported having been sexually abused as children and most of those women reported that it was a family member who committed the sexual offence. It makes us all feel very comfortable in this place. It makes us feel very comfortable in the public as a country that actually the reality is that the people whom our children are most likely to be sexually abused by are family members or close friends and family. It is not the stranger that we are talking about here. It is certainly not the person who has been convicted of a sexual offence because so few are actually convicted of a sexual offence. So to give people this false sense of security is concerning. We are not resolving the issues. We would not even be making a dent in the problem for these children who are at risk of being sexually offended against by introducing a child sex offender register. It was raised by several submitters that this register is going to cost a lot of money to actually administer. We are talking about $146 million over 10 years—that is $14 million a year. And the agencies that actually deal with children with women with men who have been sexually offended against—those agencies have come to us and said: “There are better ways to spend that money. There are more effective ways to address this issue.” There are more effective ways to spend that money and that is a very valid point. This is a big chunk of money going towards a tool that evidence tells us will not be effective in stopping sexual abuse against children. We did have over 100 submissions on this bill and the ones that I was actually reading up on before I came to the House today were the ones that are from the people who actually work in this sector. They are the people who work with children and with adults who have been sexually abused or who have had a sexual offence committed against them and overwhelmingly those organisations that actually undertake this work—individuals who have committed their lives to working with people who have been sexually offended against—are actually against a child sex offender register for many reasons including some of the ones that I have just stated: the cost and the fact that that money could be channelled into more effective measures to stop sexual offending against children and also the false sense of security that they are concerned it will give people. There were some submissions by these organisations that raised the fact that this could actually further serve to isolate the offender and could actually result in the offender being more likely to go on to reoffend. We have to take those concerns seriously particularly when they have been raised by reputable organisations and reputable individuals in those organisations who have committed their lives to this work. I want to quote a couple of them so we just get an understanding of the thinking that has gone on within these organisations. We have got one here from the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse. To quote from the submission: “The vision of the Clearinghouse is that families whānau and relationships are healthy respectful and free from violence. Our purpose is to provide access to high quality research and information on family and whānau violence. We are committed to working towards the elimination of all forms of family and sexual violence including child sexual abuse. However we do not support the establishment of a child sex offender register. This is because there is little to no evidence that registers reduce rates of child sex offending. We believe the high level of resourcing a register would require would be far more effectively spent on initiatives which have evidence of effectiveness. Further information including references to relevant research and our recommendations are [included in this submission].” That is just one of many of the reputable organisations that submitted on this bill and have actually said to us that we need to rethink it. We are in the position where we will support this bill at this stage through to the next stage. We will have amendments that we want to put up in the Committee stage  and we really have to think through whether or not we will support this bill at third reading. We need to know that this is actually going to make a difference in people’s lives and that it is actually going to assist us in reducing sexual offences against children before we can support this particular bill. Thank you very much.[Party vote on second reading—Ayes 107 Noes 14][Continuation line: CANTERBURY PROPERTY BOUNDARIES AND RELATED MATTERS BILL 2R]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am really pleased as the Minister indicated to speak in the second reading of the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill. It might sound a bit dry to some people—and that is not a reflection of the quality of the speech that the Minister made; I just meant the topic generally. It is actually really important for Canterbury so I just want to acknowledge to anyone that is listening that if you think this is not important actually it is. In Canterbury we had about 11000 properties that moved at least 20 centimetres. That means that some people’s boundaries are not where they used to be—quite a lot of people’s boundaries are not where they used to be—and that has caused some problems and so I totally agree with the Minister that is an issue that needed fixing. In June 2016 we are fixing it—excellent. It could have been a little earlier but at least it is done now. I want to acknowledge the Minister who has just resumed her seat not just for the contribution she has made in the debate but for the fact that she not just once but twice invited Canterbury members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to her office for a briefing that enabled us to get well on top of the issues ask questions and get answers before the bill was introduced. That is really appreciated. It is as I said a little bit dry but it is actually very important to people who are affected by it and for us to be able to get direct access to officials ask questions and have them answered made us more able to respond to questions from our constituents. That is what is important in the end: getting accurate information from this place particularly about significant changes to the people who are going to be affected by it. So I really want to acknowledge both those briefings that the Minister provided us with and say that I would recommend to her that she spread the world amongst her colleagues because it would be a really good thing if we could do things particularly those that do not have a political divide on a little more collaborative basis. The Minister indicated the number of submissions that were heard. I think that she did not indicate enough though how important some of those submissions were—I guess they were all important but in terms of the organisations that were represented. One was from the Christchurch City Council—obviously a critical player—along with Waimakariri District Council and Selwyn District Council. In this space there has been the other elected representatives for the individuals who are affected by this mass land movement. Also there was the Cadastral Surveyors Licensing Board which did a written submission; it did not do an oral submission—Hon Simon Bridges: Spell it.Hon RUTH DYSON: Sorry Mr Bridges?Hon Simon Bridges: Spell it.Hon RUTH DYSON: “I.T.” Mr Bridges. So there you are—the response of the week. I will get in the Labour notes for that one. That organisation represents the people who are responsible for drawing up the boundaries. It had a lot of really important issues to raise particularly in terms of whether previous boundaries surveyed post-quake and pre-legislation would be deemed illegal and the liabilities of such and also provisions about other activities that were negligent basically and to make sure that negligence was not captured by the removed of liability in this legislation. Those matters seem to me to have been captured in the main by the select committee and I commend it on that. In the Committee stage I will be raising one issue that has not been captured by the select committee as a query because it was raised in the submissions as a major issue by the Christchurch City Council. I cannot find anything in the commentary or the amendments from the committee that refer to it and that is the application of boundary provisions and watercourses that was raised by the Christchurch City Council as a major issue. It does not seem to me to have been responded to. I will just give the Minister a bit of a heads-up that when she is sitting in the chair during the Committee stage I will be putting that question to her. She might want to read the Christchurch City Council submission again—because that is where the issue was alerted to me from—and just figure out why that was not responded to. It would be really helpful to get an explanation of that. The select committee has recommended a change in the time frame so that definition of Canterbury earthquakes is extended to 14 February 2022. Some people will know that we had another significant quake on 14 February this year. It is not the way that most people want to be moved on Valentine’s Day—there are better ways of achieving that—but it obviously set a new time frame in terms of significant quakes. The fact that the time is now set out to 2022 is not an indication that we wish to have any more quakes until then; it just means that there will be security for surveyors homeowners and planners right up until that time. Obviously if there are any more quakes between then and now it will give Parliament time to produce more legislation to push it out even further or to amend this legislation. I hope we do not need to but I think the change that has been made was very good because it does give that certainty. I think a 6-year time period is sufficient in advance in terms of planning. Whether it is subdivisions or alterations to a home or it is building a new property it will allow all the key players the security to know that whatever they mark out as the boundaries will be the correct boundaries. The title conflict has been resolved and that was another good change that the committee made that I want to acknowledge. A lot of people said that there should be a dispute resolution framework. That is another point that I was a little surprised that the Minister did not talk about much because we know that there are some properties that will be negatively impacted by this legislation. Quite how they resolve their disputes or how they get any compensation as a result of that does not seem to have been adequately addressed and I thought the Minister’s contribution may well have clarified that. The dispute resolution framework was raised by a number of submitters but for reason the committee decided not to go ahead with that. The liability for early surveys and boundary determinations was clarified. In what might be an interesting precedent setting the Local Government and Environment Committee decided that the guidelines issued by the Surveyor-General would have no legal status and I am not sure whether that has a flow-on effect to other guidelines that might be issued by the Surveyor-General or by another Government department or agency. For example if the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment issued guidelines would this set a precedent for it not having any legal status? I am not sure about that. A helpful definition of “landslip” was given by the committee and that pretty well sums up the changes that were made to bring us to the second reading that we are now going through. Although I commended the Minister for Land Information not just for her contribution but also for her process I want to say I was frustrated at the first meeting—and expressed that frustration and it was not resolved by the second meeting—in terms of the community organisations that were asked or informed or had this issue discussed with them. I think there were a lot of residents associations that would have appreciated the sort of briefing we received so that they could have made a considered contribution to the bill. Not many people would read the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill on the Parliament website—two unlikely occurrences—and think that it might affect them and they should make a submission but residents associations are ideally placed to make that connection and involve the people who affected by it. That was not done. The Minister took the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s advice and consulted with the community forum. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is gone now—it has been disestablished—and the community forum is gone as well but I want to say that that was not the appropriate body. We should remember when we are trying to get information out to the public that we do not need to create bodies. They are already in existence in our communities. They are well informed nimble and I think the entirely appropriate people to have responded. So we missed out on good community engagement. That may be the reason we did not get as many submissions as we may have but that is a lesson to be learnt for the future. I also want to acknowledge the work of the Local Government and Environment Committee. From the outside looking in reading its report and looking at the submissions and the way it responded to them it seems to me as though they gave the issues in this legislation a great deal of thought and consideration. I think it has done a commendable job. I want to just conclude by saying the submitters have really helped in this process. It is obvious from the amendments that were made that the submissions contributed to a better-quality outcome of the legislation. That is I guess the process that Parliament should aim for. We should say: “Well obviously the bill that we get at the start is the best that we thought we could do the best the Minister thought he or she could do but the select committee and the submitters can really improve it.” So as a result of that we have got a better bill to discuss in the next stages. People of Christchurch will welcome this giving them some certainty after a period of a lot of uncertainty. Thank you.[Continuation line: SMITH]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): It is a pleasure to speak on the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill. I say that because many of my colleagues do not think I am a Canterbury MP but in fact the Kaikōura electorate is actually a little bigger than the state of Israel. It extends from the Marlborough Sounds right down to the Ashley River which is just north of Christchurch. Many of my constituents were affected by the earthquakes directly and some have properties in Christchurch that have been affected by this. I also have quite a few constituents who have moved north out of Canterbury into my electorate and I run into those people quite often and in fact have advocated on their behalf in many earthquake-related matters since the earthquake. I think this bill really touches on one of the main tenants in our society and that is property and property that we all hold very dear. One thing we expect with our property is that it is all set in our boundaries and our boundaries define our property. Generally it is accepted that property boundaries are fixed and do not move. In fact surveyors generally accept the principle that they do not move at all except for gradual unnoticeable water-boundary movement which I guess stands for erosion. In fact as has been pointed out over 11000 properties it is estimated had their boundaries move by at least 20 centimetres which is significant by anybody’s measure. The difficulty is that the surveyors and residents generally expect they are fixed so something had to be dealt with in the law. I was quite surprised that only 11 submissions were received on the bill as has been alluded to before but I accept that some of those represented bodies that were quite significant in that being the council and other bodies. I think it is quite significant too that some of the recommendations that came out from the Local Government and Environment Committee were quite significant in taking note of the aftershocks and earthquakes that have occurred since and particularly the one that has been mentioned on Valentine’s day of this year and extending out this bill to take account of that right through to February 2022. If you look back at history after significant earthquakes in New Zealand and we have had quite a number the aftershocks and earthquakes do go on for a long period of time particularly after an earthquake of the magnitude and the ground accelerations that occurred in Christchurch. So that is quite a prudent matter for the select committee to touch on and I think that will be a very welcome addition to the law. A number of submitters thought that a dispute-resolution mechanism should be put in the bill itself but there are however existing processes under the Property Law Act 2007 and also the Land Transfer Act. The select committee felt they provided quite adequate mechanisms for dispute resolution and of course the various parties can always get through a dispute like that on their own. The select committee came to the view that it would add complexity that was unnecessary and so therefore it decided not to follow those submitters’ recommendations. It also recommended amending clause 10 to specify that it provided the specified criteria be met and there be no liability for surveyors and boundary determinations done in the interim period between 4 September 2010 the first earthquake and the commencement of this legislation on its ascent. I think that is a very good move. It takes away any liability from those people and the decisions they have made in good faith. But that will be with no negligence bad faith or misconduct or non-compliance with statutory obligations and professional standards. So I think this is a really good bill. It is necessary. It is a shame we have to do these things but given the uncertainty thrown up by the earthquakes this is very necessary. It is with great pleasure that I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.[Continuation line: CUNLIFFE]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I rise to take a brief call in support of the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill . I am doing so as Labour’s land information spokesperson. It is a role that I am relatively new to and therefore I was not in attendance during the select committee hearings on the bill. However we are in possession of a very useful committee report so I acknowledge the chair and all members of the Local Government and Environment Committee who have contributed to that. Like the member who has just resumed his seat Stuart Smith I have a connection with Canterbury. In my case I grew up in South Canterbury in the beautiful little town of Pleasant Point . For a teenager growing up in the Point Timaru was the sort of big smoke and Christchurch was the really big smoke. That road has been travelled many times. I have a particular affection for Christchurch and still do. Like all New Zealanders I was gutted to see the horrific earthquakes of 5 years or so ago and like the people of Christchurch I have been watching and waiting and doing what I can to support the rebuild of our second-largest city and something that is a jewel in New Zealand’s array of urban living. Canterbury people whom I speak to say they just want to move on. It has been so long. They want the remaining hurdles to being able to get on and settle down and live a normal life to be behind them. They cannot understand why it has taken as long as it has to rebuild the central business district  to get the infrastructure in place and to get final agreement on things like the conference centre. They have witnessed the argy-bargy between local and central government. But this is not a time for party politics; this is a time for focusing on this particular aspect of being able to move forward. So to drop down to the content of the bill the issue is of course as others have noted that some 11000 properties have had their boundaries moved because the land has moved by 20 centimetres or more. That is significant. If the boundary peg was in one place on a GPS  then it will be in a different place after that movement. This bill therefore sorts out an argument about whether the true boundaries are where they were on a GPS basis or on a peg or marker basis. It basically says that the legal boundary of the property will move with the peg or the marker as a result of the earth movement in the earthquake. That is a sensible practical way to deal with this. However there is no one-size-fits-all rule in a disaster of this magnitude. You can contemplate for example properties in the Sumner area some of which ended up over a cliff because the ground fell away. So there is a case where this bill deals with things like landslips and provides now I am pleased to say a dispute resolution mechanism where if there is an unintended consequence people can get around a table and sort things out so that we actually get a reasonable result for the people of Canterbury. This is I think an example of Parliament working cooperatively. There are no partisan politics in this bill. Members have worked assiduously around the select committee table and they have addressed themselves to a number of technical issues which we will deal with in more detail at the Committee stage. But just to briefly note the definition of the Canterbury earthquakes has been broadened to include significant aftershocks . That is important because boundary movements continue to occur. There are mechanisms to address title conflicts and dispute resolution and ways in which liability for earlier surveys and boundary definition can be sorted out including cases of negligence and bad faith. It clarifies that guidelines issued by the Surveyor-General will have no legal status and dealing with landslip situations. I would like to acknowledge Scott Simpson the chair and other members of the select committee on the Labour side—my colleagues Megan Woods  David Parker and the team. Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to this bill. We look forward to further discussion at the Committee stage and send the message to the people of Canterbury that we stand with them. We hope that this bill will enable them to get on with their lives as one remaining uncertainty is removed.[Continuation line: PUGH]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONMAUREEN PUGH (National): It is my pleasure too to stand in support of the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill in its second reading. Having been in this 51st Parliament for only a few months I have not been involved in this select committee process but I can see that it has been a very cordial agreement across the parties to reach this point in this legislative change. This bill aims to provide certainty regarding where the legal boundaries are. As we have heard the land shift in Canterbury during the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes has been significant. It has caused some problems in identifying those legal boundaries. This bill aims to give the surveyors and the property owners certainty about the correct location of those legal boundaries. We all know how severe the impacts of those events in Canterbury were for everyone and 5½ years after that first big shake we find ourselves at this point of regeneration. This bill aims very much to support that process. The problem this bill sets out to address or the generally held principle is that legal boundaries do not move. But given the extent of that movement in Canterbury we find ourselves in this position where we are looking at this legislation. It has created some difficulties given the extraordinary scale of that land movement. For instance some neighbours could find themselves now legally harvesting fruit and vegetables or picking the flowers out of their neighbours’ gardens simply because they now encroach on to their boundaries. We could find people arguing about parking cars in someone else’s garage because it legally is across their boundary. Potentially there are problems with set-back rules with the Christchurch City district plan. Encroaching on those set-back rules is through no fault of the property owners and it would be a nonsense for any correction to be forced upon those property owners. This bill as I said recognises that those boundaries have moved through the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and it also takes account of aftershocks. The bill applies a very common-sense approach to correcting the legal boundaries. It is going to put them where property owners would expect them to be. It is not going to be a definitive result. It is going to be a cordial result and people will reach common-sense outcomes. It is going to recognise in this bill that there have already been surveys and it is going to give validation to those surveys that have already been undertaken. That provision is made in this bill also. It is essential that the people of Canterbury whose property boundaries have been affected by the earthquakes and the aftershocks have certainty over their property rights. I believe this bill achieves that. It is another step in the regeneration of that region and it also compliments the $17 billion that this Government has committed to the initial response in Canterbury. It is one of the most ambitious programmes in New Zealand’s history. It is for that reason that I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House.[Continuation line: SAGE]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONEUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a short call on the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill. The first time I came into contact with any surveying was in Hokitika in the then Department of Lands and Survey office there. There was a dusty storeroom and it had the notebooks of Charlie Douglas or “Mr Explorer Douglas” who in the late 1860s 1870s and 1880s was roaming and mapping South Westland. He was employed by the survey department I think through the 1880s and early 1890s. His notebooks of those surveys included some absolutely beautiful watercolours. He was not only mapping but describing the areas as well. That was my first exposure to surveying. The matters in this bill are slightly more technical. I learnt the difference between accretion where legal boundaries in relation to land and water move gradually and avulsion which is a much more sudden movement. But this is a very practical bill because as others have said the significant number of properties in Canterbury that were affected by the earthquakes some 135000 properties moved but most of those were within the tolerance and there were about 11000 that moved by more than 20 centimetres. There was some confusion. There were guidelines that Land Information New Zealand put out. Those surveyors who were working on the ground—some of them were putting a practical interpretation and ensuring that boundaries actually did move with the land as most people would expect. But the guidance did not clarify the situation so it is appropriate that we have had a bill through Parliament that makes it clear that boundaries rather than being fixed as they are in the law rather than being where the survey mark is where the pegs are if they have moved more than that tolerance of 20 centimetres then the boundaries go with the land movement. I think the bill as others have noted is also providing more certainty to people in Canterbury. It is ensuring that those surveys that were done in that interim period where they were approved by the Surveyor-General—those boundaries will stay where they were surveyed. I think there were some 3500 of those. So people can continue to rely on the surveys that were done there. There were 11 submissions and three of the organisations that made submissions were professional organisations representing surveyors. The major one of those the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors which involves some 1300 professionals was supportive of the bill. There were concerns raised around a disputes resolution process and yes the select committee has not amended the bill to implement that. It has instead said that people have to have recourse to the provisions in the Property Law Act and that may involve going to court. There is also provision for compensation of course in the Land Transfer Act. A bill to reform that Act is currently before the Government Administration Committee ably chaired by Ruth Dyson. There have been quite a few submissions on the provisions around compensation which may benefit from clarification in that separate select committee process. The bill is a sensible one. The Green Party is supporting it. We hope that it progresses promptly through Parliament. Thank you.[Continuation line: BALL]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONDARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Denis O’Rourke to take a short call on the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill 2015. New Zealand First agrees with the purpose. The purpose has two main points as has been mentioned previously. The first is to clarify the law. In any case to clarify a law is a good thing and New Zealand First agrees with that. With regard to this piece of legislation it relates to locating the legal property boundaries of land affected by the movement of that land as a result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquake sequence in Canterbury. The other part of the purpose is to provide the guidelines that are to be issued on standards to assist with boundary determinations so that surveyors can do their job properly and people can rely on what they do. As has already been mentioned there have been around about 11000 houses that will be affected by this legislation obviously in a good way—not only for the homeowners of those 11000 properties but also for surveyors who will be able to do their job. At the moment the surveyors have been finding it very difficult to do their job especially with identifying and interpreting the physical boundaries of the land. That includes surveying pegs and the like which moved during the earthquakes. This bill addresses that problem by attempting to provide people landowners and surveyors alike with some certainty about their legal boundaries. It does that by providing some flexibility around the general rules that usually apply to the location and the identification of boundaries and to provide for practical solutions. The Surveyor-General will issue guidelines for registered surveyors so as to maintain standards and technical consistency. That is consistent with usual practice and the bill simply reinforces that in relation to these special circumstances. The select committee has made some sensible changes especially to the definition of the earthquakes for the purposes of this legislation and also allowing 6 years for the entire sequence. New Zealand First also agrees that there is no new dispute resolution process that is needed because there are already adequate provisions. New Zealand First supports this bill and we look forward to discussing this further in the Committee stage. Thank you.[Continuation line: NAYLOR]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONJONO NAYLOR (National): It is a pleasure to rise. I think this is the first time since I have been in Parliament that I have been able to speak on a bill that is related to trying to put things right in Christchurch. Often our Christchurch MPs or the Local Government and Environment Committee MPs have had this task and it is I guess in some small part by speaking in support of this bill my opportunity as a parliamentarian to be able to contribute something towards helping to improve the lives and the ongoing livelihood of those in Christchurch. This is I have to say an incredibly sensible bill and I guess a number of speakers have already said that. The level of support that this has right across the House I think really iterates to me the level of support that there is for wanting to find solutions to some of the difficulties that are being experienced in Christchurch and have been experienced since the first earthquake in 2010 and the subsequent earthquakes. There has been such a vast array of difficulties that people have faced. Of course that was highly publicised early on with people being without water people being without sewage roads being a mess people having houses that were uninhabitable and the issues have gone on for a very very long time. You know the general public of New Zealand I think were initially very supportive and are aware of ongoing issues that have made the headlines and have been widely circulated. But this is a particular issue that has significant impact for homeowners making it difficult for them to be able to perhaps move on or—I mean you basically need to know where your property begins and ends in terms of what you do with it. This is a problem that has not been widely known by the people of New Zealand. It has not been widely talked about but it is a significant problem none the less for those people who are experiencing it. So it is beholden upon the Parliament to take some action and rectify the situation to put things in place to give people that level of certainty. From my perspective I think my understanding of this bill is that it does just that. In particular it is about taking a really practical approach to this. It is very difficult when you have had ground move—not necessarily in a uniform way—for surveyors to be able to follow any of the old boundary lines because earthquakes do not necessarily move in a straight line. So boundaries will not be or are not where they once were and are not easily defined. But the provisions in this bill I think are great. There is going to be a sense of common-sensibility applied across this so that surveyors will now be able to come in look at a property assess it and essentially exercise a level of common sense so that property boundaries will largely be where property owners expect them to be. I think that is really crucial. If you think of the type of problems that people have had over boundaries over the years without earthquakes—often you will see a fence that has been built where someone did not expect it to be. You have all manner of issues with hedges and all sorts of difficulties that people have with their neighbours over boundaries. It is really an ongoing issue and has been for a long period of time. Instead of getting down into some real nitty-gritty problems and definitions of where boundaries should or should not be for surveyors to be able to apply some common sense and get stuck into this to ensure that where there has been this lateral movement—the spreading or sideways movement of land—boundaries are where people would expect them to be is in my mind incredibly sensible incredibly practical and will help bring some resolution to these issues. As usual the select committee—and it is a very hard working select committee of course the Local Government and Environment Committee has had a lot on its plate recently—I know put a lot of time and energy into this particular bill. I want to commend all the members of that committee especially the chairman Scott Simpson who I think has done a fantastic job in steering this bill through this process to ensure that we get a good outcome. There have been some amendments that the committee members made along the way that I think are entirely appropriate. They have taken what was obviously a very good practical sensible bill in the first place a little bit further and ensured that there have been some improvements. I guess in particular I want to draw attention to amending Clause 10 to specify that provided the specified criteria are met there will be no liability for surveys and boundary determinations done in the interim period between 4 September and this legislation. As we all know it was not just one earthquake. There have been a number of earthquakes subsequent to those particularly devastating ones in September of 2010 and February 2011. And so it is important that we actually recognise that this has been an ongoing issue for a period of time since then as well. But of course this is not a blanket waiver of liability. Very sensibly they have looked at it and said that they obviously recommend the amendment to this clause in terms of the exemptions of liability. But it does not exclude things like negligence or bad faith or misconduct or noncompliance with statutory obligations and professional standards. So this is not a blanket waiver of liability for surveyors; this is just to ensure that where they have made their best endeavours to do the best that they can between September 2010 and now where those lines that they have drawn have moved through subsequent earth movements they are not being held liable for that. I think that is eminently sensible. It is a practical approach as I have said a number of times already right across the board in this bill. So I do just want to commend the work of the Local Government and Environment Committee and commend the Minister for bringing forward something that in a small way is going to help to bring some more resolution to home owners in Christchurch who without doubt have been having all sorts of challenges over the last 5 or 6 years. This is a way that we can help them to put some things right. I commend this bill to the House.[Continuation line: WILLIAMS]Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters BillContinued Speech - Hon LOUISE UPSTONPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you to the last speaker. I want to add a little bit of clarity to your speech on this but I want to start with actually acknowledging the work that the Minister has done on this bill. She was very open in encouraging the Christchurch MPs to get involved in discussions early on when the bill was being put together. We all have an expectation that our property boundary issues will be resolved and there was a very real danger that unless we could agree on a way forward there might be some discussion and dissension in debate. I want to acknowledge the fact that she got the parties into the room with the officials to talk through some of the key points about this bill. As a matter of background as some of the previous speakers have said what happened was that the earth and the property boundaries were impacted by things such as lateral spread. When the earth stretches and potentially stretches your boundary it also has the impact in some places where the earth lifted of shrinking boundaries. So in order to be fair to property boundaries and in order to be fair to the ratepayers of Christchurch something had to get in place to ensure that boundaries could be—if they needed to be—redrawn but it could be in an equitable way so that it could minimise whatever dispute between boundary neighbours. This bill was put together in order for that to be accomplished. As a very visual kind of representation of what happened: we have a large section of the Avon River flowing through my electorate and a large part of the red zone is actually bound on either side of the Avon River. What happened is that one side of the river dropped and the other side of the river spread. So when you drive down places like New Brighton Road for example on one side of the road you are actually below the waterline of the river. So there are impacts upon you as a property owner. Large tracts of that land have been red-zoned so that is taken out of the equation—that is not covered by this bill. Immediately up against the red zone of course are the properties that are still zoned as being able to be habitable because the land is still relatively OK. So it is those properties that are up against the red zone or up against those areas of land that have been significantly impacted that this bill will apply. What I do want to clarify in the previous speaker’s speech is the issue around interim surveys. Surveys were conducted on normal properties prior to the earthquake. Then the earthquake happened and then we have the period before this bill takes effect. The surveys that were conducted from the time after the earthquake sequence and before this bill will take effect—this is the interim period for the surveys. Those surveys will be quite different in many cases to surveys that were done prior to the earthquake sequence. It is these surveys that may provide some contention and some dispute amongst neighbours. So that is where the submitters actually made the major contribution to this bill. The New Zealand Law Society provided quite a comprehensive submission on that dealing with the issue of what an interim survey actually was and then with its suggestions on how parties who might be in dispute actually could resolve those conflicts. It is those key concerns that the Local Government and Environment Committee looked at and reviewed. So when the bill came back to the House they had considered those particular issues and the mechanism with which those parties potentially in dispute could resolve those disputes. It also provided the mechanism that may provide compensation for some property owners who will be disadvantaged by any new boundaries that may be drawn. At the end of the day it could be that some boundaries go into areas that might be at the edges of rivers or creeks for example and the boundaries are no longer appropriate. So there are opportunities within this bill to provide some remedy for property owners in that regard. We have had a lot of zoning done to us as Canterbury property owners so we are really pleased that this bill addresses some key concerns. Some of the concerns will be around property value of course but they are mostly around ensuring that people feel that there is a fair process that they are going to get a fair deal and that if they have decided to stay on their properties then those properties are going to be identified and titled appropriately. Without wanting to hold up this bill we do commend it. It is a good piece of legislation. The select committee did work well on addressing those issues of the interim survey and how the remediation could be put in place after the bill is actually enacted. We do commend it to the House.[Continuation line: KORAKO]