Delahunty Catherine: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Delahunty Catherine: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13948] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 I rise to take a very brief call on the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill and to mihi to the people of Aoraki and Canterbury. The rest of us have lived through a time very different from theirs and those of us who have not been shattered by an earthquake need to acknowledge what a tough time it has been. I was in Gisborne during the 6.8 earthquake a couple of years ago and that felt really bad but it was clearly nothing compared to what the people of Aoraki and Canterbury have been through so we need to acknowledge them. 
I also support the comments that Dr Graham and other members have made about this legislation. It is important to look at the long-term implications of the bill and that is why we are calling for an amendment that would include a sunset clause for a review after 6 months. That is not to say that the legislation could not be extended after that period but in extraordinary times such as we are in now we need to be extraordinarily vigilant about the kind of planning and decision making that we facilitate. When I look at the Acts that have been mentioned the provisions of which could be suspended under this legislation—such as the Resource Management Act and the Historic Places Act—I see certain red flags that we need to think about. We will be dealing with enormous amounts of infrastructural development and change as well as waste and waste disposal and that has implications in terms of resource management for many years. 
The Minister mentioned the issue of sewage discharges which is a problem I have spent much of my life glamorously working on! Under section 107 of the Resource Management Act we currently have an exceptional circumstances provision that allows for the emergency discharge of sewage so we may not need to suspend holus-bolus all provisions of such Acts. That exceptional circumstances discharge measure has been misused. It has been used to enable 40 years of pollution in the Bay of Plenty. I am not suggesting that is the intent of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery in this bill; I know it is not. But when provisions such as that exceptional circumstances provision are already in existence under the Resource Management Act we have to be careful about suspending existing legislation. 
Equally in the case of the Historic Places Act one can envisage a situation where an area that is an archaeological site for example could be in an area that has been damaged and could be destroyed without any kind of survey. We would lose forever the archaeological knowledge that the Historic Places Act was set up to protect. In our haste to rebuild we could lose the essence of some of the key aspects of our communities. 
The Minister said quite rightly that the landfills will be under enormous stress. If so will we dump the range of hazardous waste with the range of ordinary waste? That is the kind of thing that has happened in the past in landfills. 
Huge issues of planning and decision making urge us to have caution as we debate this legislation. We have nothing to lose by supporting the Act which we would like to do and ensuring that within 6 months we stop wait and ask our communities whether the process is on track whether we have made good decisions and whether we are doing the right thing. Some of us are concerned about community voices. As Minister Turia mentioned in the first reading we are concerned about representation of Maori on the commission. We have already had the debacle in the Auckland governance legislation on the representation of tangata whenua and we do not want that to happen again. In the rebuilding of a vibrant city we need the voices of tangata whenua we need to have community planning and we need to have a review process. Before we start holus-bolus getting rid of the powers that have been developed under certain Acts we need to think about the long-term environmental conditions we are creating. The last thing the people of Aoraki and Canterbury need is to have long-term problems built into our desire with the best of intentions to create emergency legislation that is not well thought through. 
We hope that some of our amendments will be adopted. We think it is really important that we consider what could happen if they are not adopted and consider the importance of planning carefully. This is not a time for any form of paternalism; it is a time for engagement with local communities and that is what this Act needs to be about. Much of it is about that but we have concerns about the sunset clause. We have nothing to lose by limiting the lifespan of this legislation to March 2011 when we could review the legislation and those issues. Tena koutou katoa.