Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): It is good to be back in one sense but I am spending as much time as possible in my electorate and will be returning there tomorrow. I think one of the pleasures" of being an electorate MP at a time like this—and I use the word advisedly—is getting around and talking to your constituents; not only finding out what issues they have got and attempting to deal with them if you can but also to be there on the ground and be the eyes and ears of this Parliament because we have a lot of people coming and going but I am the constant really. It is a large area to get around and the differences between the Rai Valley and D'Urville Island all the way down to say Amberley or the Ashley Gorge are quite marked. Each of those areas has had its own experience—particularly from the Awatere River further south to the middle of the Hurunui which is where the concentration of the damage from this particular earthquake is. I do mention the Awatere River because a creek in the Awatere Valley with the rather unfortunate name of Isis has a very large slip. If anyone has seen the photograph on Facebook of what looks like a little yellow smudge on the top of the slip—when you zoom in on it it is a rather large digger sitting up on top of the slip—you get an idea of the challenge of clearing that slip.I will come back to the bill in a minute or two but there has been a lot of talk today about having alternative routes to State Highway 1. One that has been mentioned is the Molesworth route. What I think people forget is that Molesworth sits right on top of the Awatere Fault and if you have driven up that road—and I know some members in the House have—you will know that that road gets rather challenging and rather tight in the valley as it approaches Molesworth. So the cost of getting that as a State highway would be enormous and I think far greater than fixing the road that we have. Also Rainbow Valley has been mentioned: a wonderful road if you have got a four-wheel drive. It would be hugely expensive to get that up to the level of a road. Both of those aforementioned roads are very high and the significant snow challenge during the winter would be far greater than that experienced on the Desert Road. So I just thought I would put that in at the beginning. The earthquake and getting around I think is quite different to a Christchurch earthquake. It is quite different to the damage that has occurred here in Wellington. I do not want to minimise that at all—it certainly has not been good for the people involved in it—but this is an earthquake that is really about communication. It is about effectively cutting off a part of New Zealand. It gives me no pleasure in being right. I wrote a column some time ago where I had actually imagined the main Alpine Fault going and the whole of the top of the South Island and the West Coast being cut off from the lower East Coast and that has partly come true with this particular earthquake. But what we have now found as a result of that earthquake is that we have farmers in a situation where they have had to take immediate action to get stock water to their animals to avert an animal welfare disaster—and they have done that without going in and filing the necessary consents. As you would imagine the earthquake also did tremendous damage without filing the necessary consents so I think we need to be flexible on that and having the retrospective clauses in this bill which allow those things to be tidied up for everybody to actually be able to follow the law as it were—even in a retrospective way—is absolutely right and proper. I had a rather good conversation in Kaikōura with Kauahi Ngapora who is the general manager of Whale Watch Kaikōura about the problems they are going to have there. Interestingly I have written a letter—this is around the port—I wrote a letter in support of the Kaikōura District Council applying to the tourism infrastructure fund to do some blasting in the port entranceway because there is a rock sticking up proud in there and to also put in some beacons for boats to get in there safely. It is amazing to see it approaching high tide and the Whale Watch boats not having a chance of getting out there until right on high tide. So it is a phenomenal force that has lifted that ocean bed up there. It is something you actually have to see to understand what has actually happened there. So for the lifeblood of this town—not just for Whale Watch but for all sorts of communication—this is a vulnerable piece of coastline and always will need access to have a possibility of getting boats in to get supplies and things off. As for air traffic as we all know getting supplies in and out of Kaikōura is quite challenging at a time like this and an air bridge—as we attempted to do and did very successfully—is not going to be the only means of transport. The navy getting in there needed to be able to use that port so it is great that that dredging will be able to be made possible by the passing of this bill. I do want to acknowledge the work that has been done by the lead Minister here the Hon Gerry Brownlee and the support he has had from other parties across the House to get these very much-needed bills in front of the House is fantastic. I acknowledge that and I think that when the going gets tough the tough certainly do get going. It is great to see that the House has come together to support the communities in the way that it has and so I wanted to acknowledge that. The communities and the councils: the Kaikōura District Council is actually our second-smallest council if you count those on Chatham Islands and I do not mean to leave them out in any way but it is a different set of circumstances for the Chathams than it is for the Kaikōura District Council. Most of the area in the Kaikōura area is actually owned by the Crown—something like 70 percent of the land—and of course the Crown does not pay rates so it is quite a resource-poor I would say council. I actually do acknowledge how well it has stepped up to deal with the issue but it is really stretched and this legislation with some of the clauses in it will be very helpful for that council. The Hurunui District Council further south also if my memory serves me correctly has the most kilometres per ratepayer of any council in the country. So again it is a quite rural council and we have an area that the legislation will help to cover: north of Ōhau Point up to Tirohanga Flat which is an area including the Clarence Valley which is effectively in no man's land now—it is cut off from Kaikōura and it is not part of Marlborough. So this legislation and subsequent pieces of legislation will actually help to deal with those issues and will be very gratefully received. I do note that there has been some work done on riverbeds that has rediverted without resource consents rivers that the earthquake had put over farmland but these will now be able to be applied for retrospectively. Ironically had they waited the required period to do that work—which of course was not ever going to happen in this situation—it would be a much more difficult task because the river would have cut in and cut its path much more deeply that it had in the past. I think I probably should end it just about there but I would really like to go and circle back to the people who are most involved in this. The people in Kaikōura are watching—they may not be able to watch it on television but they will be hearing what is going on here today. It is very important that we move quickly as a Parliament—and we have. If we do not move these things quickly we will not get the result that we need. We had some of the highest levels of traffic on State Highway 1 south at this time of the year—it could not have been a worse time—and we do need to move things as quickly as possible and so I commend the bill to the House. Thank you."