Chauvel Charles: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13928] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I will give a chronology of what the Opposition understands to be the development of the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill then make a few comments about some of the issues that have been raised in the debate so far. It has been said rightly earlier in the discussion that there has been a good level of consultation between the Government and the Opposition on the proposals. What was shown to the Leader of the Opposition’s office on Saturday was a series of drafting instructions that represented a wish list if you like from the Canterbury councils on the sorts of legislative amendments they felt they would need to effectively engage in emergency recovery and relief. I looked through those drafting instructions carefully. They proposed quite a wide series of amendments to exempt the councils from legislation such as the Resource Management Act Building Act Local Government Act and Land Transport Act and went on to provide for a suspending power in respect of a further series of enactments that were scheduled to the instructions. 
I was disturbed by the scope of those drafting instructions and some of the language used in them. The councils were keen for example to “facilitate an efficient clean-up in particular without diverting staff away from emergency work and on to paperwork requirements.” As a paperwork requirement one of the examples given was a desired amendment to sections 330A(1) and 330B(2) of the Resource Management Act that would have removed any requirement to notify a consent authority that emergency works had been carried out in any particular case. I cannot imagine that if we had agreed to that sort of request ratepayers or future purchasers of land or properties would have been happy with that exemption because of course potential purchasers want to know whether emergency work has been carried out on particular land or property. There needs to be notification and a record of that work. While we were formulating our response to those drafting instructions they were superseded by a draft bill that happily discarded the approach that had originally been proposed by the councils and instead adopted the sort of scheme that we are now debating in the House today. 
The bill as originally worded proposed the ability to suspend a wide range of legislation for a period of 5 years by Order in Council through a negative resolution procedure. We thought that that was a better approach than the approach that had been originally mooted by the councils but we did not think that it was an altogether perfect approach. After Clayton Cosgrove had some discussions with Gerry Brownlee we ended up with a number of changes. So there was the undertaking to notify the Opposition in advance of the detail of any Order in Council that proposed to suspend a measure and to consult the spokesperson over that Order in Council. There was a narrowing down of the 5-year period to just over 18 months. There was the agreement to dispose of the negative resolution procedure and replace it with the procedure set out in the Standing Orders that would normally apply to the business of the Regulations Review Committee. So any Order in Council under this bill will come to the Regulations Review Committee. 
I think it would be useful for the House to understand what that change means. It means that there will be systematic scrutiny of Orders in Council. There will be advice from the legal adviser to the committee on every Order in Council against the Standing Order grounds that the Regulations Review Committee normally checks delegated legislation under—rather than it being for a member of the House to simply look at an Order in Council and wonder whether there is something objectionable in it which would have been the case under the ordinary negative resolution procedure originally proposed. If any member of the Regulations Review Committee objects to any provision in any Order in Council then all that member needs to do under the Standing Orders is put a notice of motion on the Order Paper of the House to that effect. 
What that will mean is that if the Government does not bring on a debate about that Order in Council within 21 sitting days then the Order in Council will lapse. So if the Government does not bring on the debate the order will lapse. If it does bring on the debate then there will be a proper discussion in the House about the provision that is intended to suspend a legislative requirement. 
Obviously there are other safeguards that come from using that ordinary scrutiny procedure that the House has had in effect since 1986. The committee is chaired by an Opposition MP. In the way that the House originally decided to set up the committee it had a neutral composition because Rahui Katene held the balance of authority on it. I hope we will see Rahui Katene back in the committee because she plays a very constructive role in it when she attends. Because of her workload she has allowed herself to be replaced by a National member for the last 9 months or so. What I hope—because Rahui Katene is a member who has an office in Canterbury and who makes a constructive approach to the committee—is that we will see her again coming to the committee on any business to do with the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill Standing Orders and Orders in Council and that that will also help to restore the proper role of the committee to act not with a National or a Labour majority but with a cross-bencher holding the balance of responsibility in the committee. If she were to do that we would improve scrutiny even further. Those are the comments I wanted to address to the evolution of the legislation that we are debating tonight as I understand it. 
This bill is not perfect. I do not like the idea of suspending power in principle; it is a power that has caused great controversy in our constitutional history and the history that we inherited from the English common law. There are other aspects of the bill that disturb me. I do not like the privative clause that Russel Norman referred to in the speech given just before mine. Clearly the Greens have some concerns. We will look at the detail of the amendments that they put up. We will decide what our position will be on them during the Committee stage of the debate. But for the moment having agreed the concessions that we have and in particular the safeguards around scrutiny it is—as Clayton Cosgrove has said—our intention to adopt a non-partisan approach to the legislation and to support its passage through the House.