Whaitiri MekaMEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. It is indeed an honour to contribute to the third reading Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Emergency Relief Bill. As previous speakers have mentioned the bill attempts to do three things: extend the emergency time frames under the Resource Management Act address the permitted activity status for emergency farming works and of course restore the Kaikōura harbour. I support all previous speakers around the way that committee members—particularly clearly the Minister with cross-party support—have addressed this particular bill. As our hard-working chair of our select committee Scott Simpson indicated—despite it being a truncated process I do want to inform the members of the House and any members of the public that it is working and that we did undertake although truncated a form of public scrutiny in the form of submissions. We received approximately 13. We had four from district councils—Marlborough District Council Kaikōura District Council Hurunui District Council Environment Canterbury and Wellington City Council. We obviously had Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. We had inshore fisheries. We also had the rock lobster industry the pāua industry. We had KiwiRail Federated Farmers Forest and Bird the Law Society.My short contribution in ensuring the passage of this bill is actually about a submitter who made a submission on behalf of the Kaikōura guardians—what is their name? What have I done with that? Is this not typical—sorry it is the Kaikōura Coastal Marine Guardians and in particular Mr Ted Howard. I want to just acknowledge his submission because he was actually talking about the implementation stage and he really wanted to ensure that the local community as best as possible was involved when this particular bill was enacted.I just want to quote—because he had a short passage that I would like to share with the House: We are dealing with complex systems and we have a great deal of local knowledge present in this community. We ask that at every stage of this process that all plans and the rationale for them are made fully publicly available rapidly and that locals are given an opportunity"—he is talking about a few hours and not more than a day's delay at any stage "… to comment on those plans and that reasonable alternatives will be seriously considered." When we had Mr Howard on the phone I could sense his absolute love for his community of Kaikōura. He actually wants the best for it and so do we. We want to ensure—in the passage of this bill and when we get to the implementation stage—that we think about people like Mr Howard in terms of involving the local community. His message was not lost particularly on this member of the Local Government and Environment Committee around ensuring wherever possible that we involve the local communities and that we operate in a very open and transparent process. That is what Mr Howard wanted and it seems like a reasonable request as we see this bill's passage through the House.Can I please just end by adding my absolute word of thanks to the officials who supported the work of the committee given that the time was very constrained. I want to acknowledge our hard-working officials who were sitting on the right side of you Mr Assistant Speaker and of course the work of our Parliamentary Counsel Office and obviously our select committee clerks for ensuring that we did justice in examining the bill that was presented to us and in a timely manner. I too believe that we have come back to the House with a very very robust piece of legislation which I am proud to stand up and support and like everybody else I wish the people of Kaikōura and Hurunui the very best. This enabling legislation is only the beginning—the real test is actually implementation and the commitment to getting the communities of Hurunui and Kaikōura back on their feet as quickly as possible. I commend this bill to the House."