Cosgrove Clayton: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — First Reading 
Cosgrove Clayton: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17901] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I will deal with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill in a more wide-ranging and general sense at this point. I know that Canterbury colleagues on this side of the House will deal with the particularity of it especially as we move through the stages. I want to say that the Labour position at this point is that we will support the legislation in the first reading in order to send it to the Local Government and Environment Committee and we will see what the outcome of that select committee produces. We reserve our position at that point. 
I will say to be generous to the Government that we did suggest some days ago when we had very short notice of this legislation and two short interactions with the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery that a select committee process may be appropriate. We offered I think through the shadow Leader of the House Mr Mallard the process of a 1-day or 24-hour select committee period at the very least in order to allow the key actors and stakeholders in Christchurch to have a say on this legislation—for instance the local authorities the unified citizens group CanCERN Ngai Tahu and other stakeholders. I say to the Minister that I am pleased that he has come to the party on that. 
But I want to observe a couple of things. There has been a lot of talk about earthquake tsars in that a chief executive who did not get an appointment would somehow be an “Earthquake Tsar” or that Mr Ombler who holds the position for a number of weeks or months is the “Earthquake Tsar”. I say to Mr Brownlee that he has wartime powers. His Government was given those wartime powers by the House to act appropriately and we did that in the spirit of non-partisanship. 
I will outline for the House so that there is no mistake how Labour colleagues have treated this whole disaster and tragedy in Canterbury. There are no politics in this issue from our point of view. Under the normal rules of engagement in this House when we see an area of criticism in respect of the Government we fire a media statement or a shot across the bows we go public and we deal with it in the public arena. 
In general we have attempted in respect of this Minister to interact at a personal level through me personally or through my colleagues. If there has been no action we have tended to write to the Minister and this folder I am holding contains the number of letters and interactions on paper we have had with the Minister since the 22 February event until today. If we have still felt strongly about it and there has still been no action at that point we have entered the public arena. We have done that with some reluctance. We have done that on only a number of occasions—specifically on the drama and difficulty that business people had in trying to gain entry to the red zone over a period of weeks. We interacted with Mr Brownlee and Mr Carter personally. It took us weeks to get a reply to our letter and we were told that we were wrong. OK that is life but that was proven to be incorrect and we were right and business people for the first time in my living memory picked up placards and stormed the barricades. 
I say to the Minister that we have approached this legislation in good faith. We have provided quite a wide range of written advice on our point of view and that advice not only gives our point of view by the way but also has been generated through our communities. We are constituent members of Parliament in Canterbury. We do not have a monopoly on all knowledge in respect of this disaster or this legislation. We have gone out and canvassed our communities and we have learnt from them. I acknowledge that there have been some amendments. I note that after a number of interventions by me and my colleagues Mr Brownlee does believe that there needs to be for instance in clause 4 a definition of the central business district which is only appropriate. After a number of interventions he has listened and I thank him for his generosity of spirit in respect of that measure. 
What have we learnt from our communities? What do Cantabrians want? I think they want what all of us want. They want detailed robust planning to be put in place. I know we have prattled on ad nauseam about this but they also want a large say in what their town—because this is a Canterbury bill—their city and their province will look like as we go forward. I know there are those who say that that is a bit PC and woolly and that we cannot have people impeding progress by going on and on and endlessly consulting. I ask the Minister to look at the most contemporary example we have which is on the other side of my electorate. It is a local authority and yes it is smaller in size but it has embarked on a series of consultation processes that were done over a 3 to 4-month period. Following the first event it took 2 to 3 months to get out the geotechnical information as was appropriate in order to work out what the hell they would do as a town and as a local authority. That local authority then drilled past politicians and interest groups. It did not bypass them it included them but it drilled past them right to the grassroots of its community. It did a really basic thing. It asked people what they wanted. 
I know Mr Brownlee has a view and I share his view that in no way do we want to impede or delay the process of people getting back their lives houses routines and livelihoods. I accept that but I have on a number of occasions invited Mr Brownlee to look at the example of Waimakariri District Council. Over a period of 3 months the council went from having basically no plan to prior to the 22 February event—and had it not been for that tragedy hitting the “Go” button—having meetings with its community where it could tell people whether they would be first or last in terms of getting their life and their house back. The council waits today for a cheque and for the tick-off from the Government and some temporary housing and it can hit the “Go” button. 
I say to the Minister that I attended some very tough meetings in my community in that half of my electorate where men were in tears and people potentially could have done dangerous things to themselves. I mean that in all sincerity so much so that people were checked the following day. People were shocked because they were told it might take some 4 years to get their houses back but the very interesting thing was that they were in support of the council. The council owned the good the bad and the ugly and they were all consulted. It does not necessarily mean that those people agreed with everything the council has done but that process was efficient and it was done over 3 to 4 months. The fact that the council can hit the “Go” button today is because it has the community’s support. It treated the people of the community with respect and as intelligent human beings and it involved them from the grassroots up. 
That is one of the pleas and central points that we want to make in the debate on this legislation. Mr Brownlee is the “Earthquake Tsar”—he holds the pen over the chief executive and all he or she will do—and it is not good enough in our view to have an appointed panel of 20 people and expect those people to be representative of the community and then say that the panel has been consulted a few times. 
Originally in the draft bill that we saw from memory the proposal was to consult the panel six times and say that was good enough. Overseas experience shows that would not be good enough. New Orleans floundered for damned near 2 years then decided to involve the community and progress took off. We do not want anybody with the ability to throw a vexatious spanner in the works. No one wants to delay this process. However we have learnt from other jurisdictions both here and overseas what happens when we involve our communities treat them with respect and give them as the Minister said accurate information not the idle speculation that we have had over a period of months such as the statement that 10000 people might be moving from a particular area. We have learnt that communities will buy into such a process and that we will have a faster and more efficient process out the back of it. 
That is one of the central points that we raise in this legislation. There are other issues to do with checks and balances in respect of the particular power that the Minister has. Let us be under no illusion: this authority will have enormous power to get things done and if that power is exercised appropriately and correctly that will be all for the good. What we are concerned about is that there should be a balance and that there should be some checks and balances so that good people who are not vexatious and who are concerned about their well-being and the well-being of their community are not mowed over. 
Mr Brownlee often says that anyone who criticises or raises their head particularly in respect of the business issues I talked about earlier or who says there may be a better way is one being political and two impeding progress. I say to Mr Brownlee that we are not being political but we do not want to do away with our right to represent our community say what we believe represent that community in a robust way and raise issues of concern. If that is impeding progress we are guilty as charged. In respect of the business community as I said to Mr Brownlee we are protecting progress. Those business people to whom we lent a voice for instance are our progress. We were not impeding progress; we were protecting it. Without those business people we will not have a central business district. I say to Mr Brownlee that we approach this bill in good faith and we look forward to a robust discussion and to Mr Brownlee and his Government perhaps listening to the representations we make on behalf of our community.