Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. Let's just go over some key dates why this legislation that Labour's brought to the House tonight is necessary and what ACT believes we could do to improve it.So the floods hit Auckland devastated large parts of Auckland on 27 January. Cyclone Gabrielle arrived in Auckland: motorways were closed the Harbour Bridge was closed on 6 February and that storm devastated Coromandel Northland Bay of Plenty parts of Auckland Tai Rāwhiti and the Hawke's Bay and eventually dissipated on 16 February. A national emergency was declared on 14 February round about seven days after the storm first hit New Zealand. What did the Government do? Well they declared a state of emergency. Civil Aviation rang up Napier Airport and said You better shut down the airport to general aviation because we've heard there's planes in the air and there might be too many aeroplanes and helicopters up there trying to save people rescue people and deliver them food and water at the same time. You better shut that airspace down." Well a helicopter pilot said "You know what? We're used to flying—when we look up the valley we fly up the left-hand side and we fly down the right-hand side. And we never ever ever ask anyone for permission because this is how we operate helicopters in Hawke's Bay. But no the Government—Civil Aviation—rang up the airport and said "You better close your general airspace."And then what did we have? The Prime Minister and other Government Ministers gaslighting the people of Hawke's Bay saying that there was no crime there was no looting there were no gang members patrolling toddling around in cars looking for things to take and people to harass. There were no ram raids. There were no robberies. There's nothing to see here. Well it turned out that after a few days the Prime Minister admitted he was wrong.Then of course we've heard all the sounding off from Labour Ministers about where people should be stopped from living—what they called managed retreat. But when David Seymour and I visited the Hawke's Bay what we saw—Anna Lorck: Hawke's Bay—no "the".SIMON COURT: —Anna Lorck—was stopbanks that had worked and protected towns like Taradale and stopbanks that had failed because they were made of nothing more than gravel piled up from the river and they had never been designed and built or maintained properly. So when we hear about managed retreat in places the Government wants to stop you living let's first look at the infrastructure. And that is why—after consulting with farmers with contractors with builders with people in local civil defence actually carrying out the recovery in Hawke's Bay—ACT put together 15 urgent ideas for recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle which we released on the 3 March. Fifteen ideas. We didn't wait till 14 March to turn up with the half-baked bill tinkering around with the Resource Management Act (RMA) and trying to fix a few things with three waters like Labour has. We had 15 urgent ideas for recovery which we had road tested with the people of Hawke's Bay and other places that were affected.So I want to give you a bit of a hint about what that might involve: dealing with lawlessness—dealing with lawlessness. That's what the people of Hawke's Bay asked for. Tougher sentencing for those criminals who were caught looting. And for goodness' sake can't possibly go through with a three waters transition taking all of Hawke's Bay's and other councils' assets and handing them over to a new water service entity at the time when half of their infrastructure's underwater and they have no idea when they're going to be standing up the waste-water treatment plants again. And of course cut wasteful Government spending reprioritise things and remove those Resource Management Act barriers to rebuilding and recovering.We also proposed avoiding artificial shortages of building materials by adopting standards from other countries assuming that in Japan and California they know how to build houses and we could simply adopt their building standards in New Zealand if people wanted to order building materials. And of course we suggested if local government's going to have enough revenue to rebuild that central government should be prepared to share half of the GST that it takes from building activities—back with local government and local communities who are facing the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure—instead of keeping all of that GST money for itself and demanding that local councils and communities come begging on one knee saying "Please sir please ma'am can we have some money to rebuild?"Now I want to come to the problems with this bill the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. It's a truncated process—one day. And who knew—clearly the ACT Party must be quite effective at stopping the Government doing dumb stuff because they referred this bill to a committee that ACT does not have permanent representation on. But we'll be doing our best to rectify that in the next few hours. Then we've heard from the transport Minister about his new-found discovery that roading resilience is important. This comes just a few days after he's cancelled the "cash for clunkers" scheme that half-a-billion-dollar scheme that would have paid people $12000 on average to hand over a cruddy used car in exchange for taxpayer—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I am very cognisant of the fact that this piece of legislation is going through the House under a truncated process. However I have been listening to the member's contribution and I will ask him to come back more closely to the subject matter of the bill in front of us.SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Speaker. So let's just focus on roading resilience which is a point that the transport Minister Michael Wood brought up—how important roading resilience is because lifeline routes in places like Hawke's Bay and Northland and so on are important. In the National Resilience Programme Business Case in 2020 it points out that roads like the Brynderwyns are in extreme risk of failure and that Waka Kotahi should upgrade the alternate routes. And what's happened since then? Absolutely nothing. So this new-found admiration for the role of engineers and roads that are resilient and resistant to floods and damage—well it's welcome but crikey it's three years late at least Minister.Then we understand that one of the problems that this bill seeks to address is that local councils who want to rebuild their water infrastructure—whether it's waste-water treatment plants whether it's stormwater culverts drinking-water supplies reservoirs—won't be allowed to make those investments because the Water Services Entities Act says they're not allowed to propose any investment in three waters assets between the time that Act comes into force and the time of the transition to the water service entities on 1 July 2024. The ACT Party opposes the three waters reforms because it makes no sense whatsoever to take those assets out of local council hands and centralise them. And of course again the ACT Party has proven to be prescient to have foresight and vision in that we said that would be a bad idea. Turns out it's such a bad idea that even the Labour Party introducing this bill here this evening recognises that the three waters transition cannot proceed—cannot proceed—and meet those time frames if at all because if you take control for the delivery for the funding and for the operation of three waters assets away from people who are responsible for land-use planning—local government—you lose all the coherence you lose all the links and of course you lose that link between funding financing and delivery of water services assets.So what would ACT do? Well what we've said is here's an alternative and we look forward to debating this at select committee and of course at the committee of the whole House. We're really looking forward to that opportunity on Thursday the committee of the whole House stage. We hope all of the other members of Parliament are looking forward to debating with us on Thursday afternoon 15 urgent ideas for recovery which are not included in this bill but should be—such as a special economic zone for the people of Hawke's Bay so they can rebuild and recover without undue Government interference. For example imagine this bill says that you'll have to apply for consents to do stuff within 60 to 160 days but you'll only be allowed to carry out that work—emergency recovery work is a permitted activity whether it's clearing a slip whether it's fixing a culvert or standing up your barn that got knocked over—as long as you ask for permission between 60 and 160 days afterwards. And as long as it's immediate—you do something immediately. But of course what we've already heard from Minister Michael Wood is that some of these slips and some of these geotechnical processes take months to develop. And so what the ACT Party says is that look we shouldn't have to worry about getting consents for any of this stuff—if you're fixing up roads and infrastructure making your property safe again. In fact that ties in very nicely with our long-term solutions to reform the RMA which we published in November.So the ACT Party will be supporting this bill to first reading. We have significant reservations. It goes a fraction of the way to helping Hawke's Bay and the rest of New Zealand recover but we will be supporting it."