Peke-Mason Soraya; Williams PotoSORAYA PEKE-MASON (Labour): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. It's a privilege to stand here and take a call on the Emergency Management Bill at its first reading and I want to thank all the Ministers that have been involved in bringing it here today. I stand by the statement: The strength of our emergency management system is that it is locally led." The bill will set the emergency management system to be more responsive and it will lay the foundation for regulations appropriate for the hazards this country is exposed to. It makes some practical improvements to ensure the system is best placed so that our next generations feel safe and they have a future and a future for those yet to come. It will help to minimise those risks and help them to manage them in the future. The bill does recognise the lessons from the recent major emergency experiences. We want communities to be better prepared to respond and recover from these emergency situations. I know for a fact that there are communities already doing their bit to be better prepared—for example locally my local kaunihere kaumātua o Whanganui. They are already asking the questions around how they can strengthen their communities how can they strengthen themselves and how can they put together their own little emergency management plans during these times. For them they are concerned about their friends and their whānau that live alone. Who is going to take care of them? Who is going to go and look for them? Who is going to be there to awhi and to manaaki them? Notwithstanding of course that iwi and Māori communities have the ability to execute they have the ability to manoeuvre and they have the ability to expedite help and support to whānau hapū and the communities around them. They are passionate about always including the wider communities around their marae. I've seen their ability to regroup as a region. I've seen how they can bring leaders together and people on the ground within minutes and within hours consecutively. This is not unique to one community either nor is it unique to one marae or hapū; this can happen across the motu—this can happen across Aotearoa. For me it does make sense to ensure that any considerations be taken into careful and serious thought when it comes to developing the bill and I want to acknowledge too that the bill talks about enhancing the ability for Māori and iwi to participate. So I acknowledge that their contribution to emergency situations is spoken of within this bill. This will be done of course by clarifying who is doing what and the roles and the responsibilities. This bill is geared towards inclusive community-led responses to natural disasters and health events as well as towards continuing to work with the iwi and with Māori given the vital role they play in the emergency management. This will not remove existing local and regional responses and recovery roles nor change the emergency powers available under the state of emergency. But what it will do is it will repeal and replace the current two-decade-old Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. I commend this bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. I call Simon O'Connor—five minutes."