Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Speaker. Like my colleagues on this side of the House I am pleased to take a call on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. The piece that I want to talk about specifically is the changes to the Resource Management Act 1991. This was an issue that was raised with me on 23 February so one week after the cyclone and flooding events occurred. And I raise it because some of the landowners and farmers that I'd met with on the ground were very concerned about you know the threat of doing work and then being punished afterwards for unauthorised activity that in many cases they did to save lives to save their animals' lives and. to a much lesser degree about property. I think one of the things that's really unfortunate in this—and National does support this legislation I want to be clear about that—is the delay of the three weeks has had an enormous enormous impact on some of the people particularly those who live in the rural parts affected.I'll specifically talk about Hawke's Bay because that's the area that I've spent time in. I think that's the bit—we have a model of legislation: the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Act 2016 is the one that was proposed and I think the lesson that needs to come out of this is when Parliament has legislation that has been used before we need to be much faster. We need to be much faster. So for the issue to be raised on 23 February three weeks later for us to be dealing with legislation that in many cases is a very close mirror of the Hurunui/Kaikōura legislation I think is frustrating.And you know members that have spoken who have visited many of the people involved will know that every day is another day that exhausts and stresses them. And so the inability—while in the grand scheme of things it's a month today since the event every day dealing with the very severe circumstances that they're facing is a day too long. So for many of the families that are still isolated and cut off the ability to be able to take some of those very simple actions to remediate to restore access to provide access to water for their stock for example for drinking—all of those very practical sensible things.It was really telling on one occasion in one of the rural communities getting an explanation about what was happening on the ground and a very flash car pulling up with some very you know well dressed people getting out. And the locals said There's the clipboard Charlies." If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have realised just how frustrated they were with the group of what they saw were officials that were to tell them off to tell them what not to do to tell them they had to stop. For some it was anger and frustration and for others it was fear. It was quite remarkable—the fear of legislation like the Resource Management Act and that they might have to do something and then apply for a retrospective consent that might not be granted and that they would end up in court because they'd taken action on their farm to save their animals' lives. It seems irrational right? But actually that was the fear. And I think with this legislation although National supports it it would have been really useful if we'd got it in faster.So I would say for those affected by it organisations like Federated Farmers although it's only a short select committee process I really hope that they do submit on it so that the legislation if there are still wrinkles in it can be ironed out. And I would encourage the Government to look at measures like this permanently. So instead of having to wait an additional three weeks for special legislation actually let's have some sensible provisions in the Resource Management Act that allow for extreme weather events and doesn't have to have the event listed. Thank you Madam Speaker."