Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise and offer the Green Party's support as well to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I would like to join previous speakers in acknowledging the Minister Nikki Kaye for her work and hope that in the way the discussions progress she can take some sense of satisfaction from that and her role in achieving what has become an important piece of legislation to start with and as has been mentioned by Ruth Dyson who chaired the Government Administration Committee has been improved through the select committee process in partnership and in discussion with the Minister. I would like to acknowledge Ruth Dyson for her role in chairing the committee in that process as well as the officials and all of the submitters. It has been mentioned that it was a small group of submitters but the submissions were of a very high quality. I particularly want to acknowledge Christchurch City Council for its contribution which really helped inform our understanding and it pointed us in the direction of areas that we needed to be wary of and take cognisance of and the bill is much improved from its input.This is about dealing with small and medium sized disasters and civil defence emergencies so it is not dealing with the large-scale events that we saw in Christchurch. It has been raised earlier that initially when this bill first came to the House we were promised that this year we would have legislation to deal with those large emergencies. It does not look to me—I have heard no rumours of that coming to us this year.I do think the point bears repeating—and it is an important one—that we really should be looking at the interconnection between the plans and the legislation at all levels to make sure that everything fits and makes sense. It is quite difficult to do that when you are looking at only one part of the puzzle so I would encourage Government members to speed up whatever process they are going through for us to be able to consider not long after this that next wave of legislation for larger emergencies so that this is still fresh in our minds and so we can make those connections easily. I do just want to point particularly—I would be a bad Green Party MP if I did not—and draw the House's attention again to the importance of this legislation in light of climate change and the increased number of severe natural events that we are seeing all over the world. I point out that there was an average of 78 recorded natural disasters every year through the 1970s. Now there are over 350 recorded natural disasters every year. Some of the figures I read show that 217 million people have been impacted by natural disasters every single year since the 1980s. In New Zealand we have been spending between $1.2 billion and $2 billion a year on cleaning up natural disasters in this country and this is going to become increasingly true as we deal with the level of climate change that has already been locked in. So for us although we absolutely recognise the increasing importance of this kind of legislation and getting our response right it is also a call to action for us all to be able to reduce our emissions to actually save us from worse disasters in the future. It is not right for us to be having this conversation without having that awareness and that compulsion to act because it is about property it is about communities it is about people's lives and the future of this country. As for some of the specifics around this bill it has provided greater role definition for people taking roles in this recovery stage and it is about moving from response in the immediate aftermath of an event and moving into the recovery which is a longer-term transition back to a new reality. We heard through the committee from some of the submissions from past experience where people's roles were not locked into legislation and some people felt that they were not able to do the roles and the jobs that needed to be done. So this legislation gives them that security to know that they can go and do those tasks and they have the legislative backing to do it. We know that some of the people have been doing those roles anyway because they needed to be done but they did not have the backing of any legislation. So it is really great that the House is now providing them with that because it is essential work. It also will improve coordination between the different leaders in that recovery process. Also we heard submissions telling us about how some people were worried that maybe it was somebody else's role to do something so they would not do it and they could not ask them for it and that there was so much uncertainty. It caused time delays and uncertainty in the process and that has a flow-on effect on people's ability to recover and it has a real impact on the ground. This bill sorts out we hope those coordination issues and clarifies people's roles and responsibilities. I would also just like to reiterate the point about how we were initially uneasy—yes—about the increased ministerial roles or powers and are very pleased to have seen significant amendments through the committee process on that. The Hon Ruth Dyson has talked about some of the misuse of those ministerial powers in Christchurch. I also think the point needs to be made that this is not just about preventing a big bad central government from doing terrible things to a local community. Getting this balance right between local and central government is also in large part about getting good decisions and good results in the long term. This is because the knowledge is held at a local level. Resilience is enabled through relationships at a local level. We saw that so clearly in Christchurch as we have in other places and we do know that there were some things that went wrong—after talking to people in Lyttelton and their experience of when they had a time bank that had been operating which enabled that community to know what skills everyone had. So after the earthquake they knew they could call everyone together and they could send people out to do the jobs that needed to be done because they knew who had what skills and what needed to be done and the network was there. It was working well and people felt that they actually were doing something. It was helping them deal with the quake—the aftermath of the quake—as well as responding. Then central government came in and locked them out of the process. It slowed down the recovery and meant all of those people felt like the role and the value they were adding no longer had a value. It really displaced people and it was unnecessary and counter-productive. So I absolutely hope that this piece of legislation gets that balance right but I do think there needs to be constant evaluation and learning from each event to make sure that what we hope is going to be delivered from this legislation is actually realised in practice. Just finally on the point about the permanent legislative authorities which also looked a little bit dodgy when we first got the bill—actually I was totally reassured by the advice that we had from Treasury and the officials that this just gives local authorities the certainty that the money will come and that there is that degree of trust. I think that is the appropriate mechanism. So it is nice to stand up in the House and say good things about a piece of legislation. It is an uncommon experience for me so thank you for that Minister Kaye.