Ngarewa-Packer DebbieDEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora. First I'd like to share with my colleagues in a mihi to our bereaved whānau to our affected whānau our displaced families and businesses and also mention the first responders and community volunteers and all those that are out there fund-raising for the various communities as well. I think if anything in this crisis we've seen the real backbone of Aotearoa which is aroha manaaki and ngākau. I also want to do a mihi to two big kaupapa that are coming up which are the Tūtira Mai relief fund that is happening at Pipitea Marae this weekend and another big fund-raising at Hoani Waititi Marae on 25 March. The spirit of Aotearoa has certainly wrapped around the hardship of what everyone is enduring.To return to the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill the first reading we support the purpose of this bill. I have a couple of short things that we'd like to mention alongside that. We understand that it is to improve resilience for the areas affected by the severe weather events and their councils and communities. It's a practical measure and clearly is needed in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle to support emergency responses. So we will be again as I said supporting the bill at its first reading.We have a few concerns. We have not seen mention of hapū iwi marae Māori or even Te Tiriti o Waitangi either in the Act or this amendment bill. We are therefore calling on the Government to adopt our recently announced policy to recognise a national Māori civil defence framework in the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. Marae have been outstanding and they are outstanding emergency hubs and we look forward to seeing this realised and resourced.Having spent time in devastated communities in Ngāti Kahungunu and Tai Rāwhiti over the past few weeks we've seen firsthand the importance of having aligned resources that get to the ground and get to where they're needed. I guess what we've been really concerned about is we understand there is another bill in the works looking at a wider overhaul of the emergency management system. It's also being reported that the current Minister is dropping the previous Minister Kiri Allan's proposal to have Māori representatives with voting rights on the local emergency management groups and this is a concern and that there should not be Tiriti obligations—again this is a concern that the Minister is applying this approach.We believe that the bill before the House today shows that despite how our people how our marae act with urgency that they are the first to stand up supporting all peoples of Aotearoa when responding to natural disasters that urgency is not applied to us as tangata w'enua in supporting and resourcing our people. Our people need to see the same access to resources and infrastructure as local government such as access to helicopters which we saw a lot of comment about. There should be legislative obligations on local and national response groups to engage and resource w'ānau hapū iwi marae Māori organisations and community response groups. Nō reira te āhuatanga o tēnei wero.[So the nature of this challenge.]Again as I said we support it but we do hope that there'll be improvements as the process quickly goes along. Kia ora rā.