Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18129] 
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill 
Second Reading 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 I move  
That the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill be now read a second time 
. The House will today deal with this bill through its remaining stages and as we begin the second reading it is after a very short select committee process at which some evidence was able to be gathered from people who have an interest in this bill. 
The reality is that some 400000 people have an interest in this bill those people being the residents of the province of Canterbury. In particular there are those residents who are part of the very broken up areas of Christchurch where life at the moment is not particularly comfortable nor is it easy. There are many others in the city who have uncertain employment futures as the devastation has wrecked workplaces and severely disrupted business activity in many cases. I hasten to add that a great deal of the city is still functioning and a large number of people are still very much gainfully employed and one of the ways in which other parts of the country and indeed our offshore neighbours can help us is to continue trading with businesses that are operating in Christchurch and I would definitely encourage them to do so. 
This bill is designed to create an opportunity to move the recovery along as quickly as possible. Essentially it recognises the fact that if we have widespread community engagement and a whole lot of activity about how things get put back together unless there is a decision-making body that is able to deliver on some of those decisions and some of those desires then not much is achieved. There will be debate about what international literature tell us about these events and the recovery from them but in my estimate the thing that comes through most clearly is that too often a discussion held in a room with a lot of people putting forward ideas is confused for action. I sincerely think that having a structure that allows rapid decision-making that can give effect to decisions that the community is on board with is exactly what is required here. That does require the taking of powers that are somewhat extraordinary. But I think that anybody living in a broken house somewhere in Christchurch dealing with a chemical toilet day by day uncertain about their water supply uncertain about their winter heating uncertain about the condition of the roads outside and uncertain about what a big rain will mean for them will care little for the academic exercise about how powers might be accumulated in order to deliver them a successful result. 
This bill is an enabling framework setting out a range of powers that may need to be exercised during the recovery process. It does have significant checks and balances on the use of those powers and the most clear check and balance is the requirement that all of those powers must be exercised in the recovery process and cannot step outside of that. What we have recognised with this bill is the need to restore social economic cultural and environmental well-being in Greater Christchurch. Further it recognises a need to facilitate coordinate and direct the planning rebuilding and recovery of Greater Christchurch and it places importance on community participation in the planning of the recovery while balancing that against the need for timely focused and coordinated recovery processes. 
I want to address some of the concerns that have been raised about the suggestion that we should not have a Government department running this but instead should create some sort of a new entity that sits at arm’s length from the Government. That is an interesting concept but there is no more direct accountability than a Minister sitting on top of a Government department whereby there can be daily questions in the House select committees can require people to come before them etc. I say that the laughing and joking going on over on the other side of the House shows scant regard for the lives that so many people are living in difficult circumstances at the present time. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I would like your assistance. To date the House has dealt with this bill in a pretty non-partisan way and that is how we continue but we find those comments deeply offensive. One hundred and sixty-six people died and for that Minister to accuse us of being heartless and treating this in a frivolous way is outrageous and I take offence. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I think you are adding some words to what the member said. But I think there was a bit of a reaction going on and I just advise the House that the issue before us is somewhat sombre. I think the will of the House is to progress it and I invite members to show a bit of courtesy across the House. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I take your recommendations on board Mr Assistant Speaker. Actually 181 people are likely to have lost their lives in this event and no one is losing sight of that. I will leave it to the public to judge exactly how members of this House are dealing with such an important issue. What it does eventually lead to though is the question about whether we should go slowly with all this or whether we should move at some pace. The problem is that pace still takes a long time. The decisions that need to be made here are very very dependent upon research about the condition of the land in Christchurch and upon getting enough information to deal with individuals who have those broken properties so that they can be given some choices about what their future is. 
Quite apart from that in the social infrastructure we have schools at the moment showing extraordinary capability to get on with the job by making their facilities available to other schools in the near vicinity. Some schools operate in the morning with another school coming into those premises and operating in the afternoon. One hospital in the city has a major emergency department that is partly damaged but is able to deal with the problem. There are ongoing issues about the infrastructure around the health facilities. One could go on and on about what needs to be done to get Canterbury and Greater Christchurch back into good shape. All of those things will require a series of recovery plans and quite patently obviously there will need to be discussion about how those plans are delivered with those local communities and those affected individuals. 
Over the top of that an overarching strategy which will be gazetted and will be publicly stated needs to formed. I think one of the most encouraging things I have seen in the last few days is the way in which the district councils have said that they accept there have to be those overarching powers and they have committed to working with the Government agency the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority on the recovery of Canterbury. That is a major step in my opinion and I expect that that sort of level of cooperation and collaboration will develop and become stronger over the months ahead. 
I also compliment Ngai Tahu on the way in which they as not only major property owners but very big leaders in the community of a large number of people have come to the party right from the moment the earthquake struck—delivering services to people particularly in the east of Christchurch regardless of their particular affiliation and in the longer sense committing to being part of this recovery and working alongside the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. These are very very encouraging signs because in the end if all of the rancour that might be part of all of this is focused on how something is to be done for people that is great but if it is an argument about whether it should be done for people then I think that will see us all fail quite considerably. 
Over the coming weeks more information will be collated about the land information in Christchurch and that will inform many of the decisions that are made going forward. There are no powers in this bill that are not focused on good results for people who have had their lives disrupted in Christchurch. Each of those powers is subject to considerable check. I look forward to the Committee stage that we will embark on very shortly and I signal at this point that the Government has received recommendations from a number of submitters over the last 24 hours and has made every effort to accommodate recommendations about amendments where they add to the structure of the bill and make it more workable. I thank those people who went out of their way in a short time to deliver on it. I look forward to the rest of the morning and to the afternoon and evening. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 Let me say from the outset despite the comments earlier on from Mr Brownlee I suspect there is not one member of Parliament in the House who does not want to get this right—we all want to get this right. We all want as fast a pace of recovery as humanly possible. No one in putting up amendments to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill whether they be from the political party of which I am a part or yesterday’s submitters has put up amendments with the motivation to slow things down for our community. Mr Brownlee has an obsession with the framework that is I think to use his words “pace versus taking time”. I think Mr Brownlee’s definition of the framework is that if we do not do it his way the people of Canterbury will be delayed. I agree with him when he says people sitting in their houses are digging their lives out of their back lawn without a chemical toilet without the basic provisions of life having been dislocated from their basic routines and having lost their jobs their homes their livelihoods and tragically family members and/or friends. The one thing they want to use the phrase that Mr Brownlee has made a brand of is for us to “get on with it”. I agree with Mr Brownlee in that respect. 
But the other thing the people of Canterbury want—and they do not want this legislation and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority which is already in place through Order in Council so really one could argue that this is rubber-stamping what Mr Brownlee wants because he has already told us he has the numbers—is for us to get this right. If we do not get this legislation right and if the authority that flow from it stuffs it up then who will be the losers? I doubt whether they will be many people on either side of this House who sit here with jobs and with houses. I acknowledge that colleagues on both sides have some munted properties but we can survive because we have a thing called income we have means we have mobility and we have other resources. The big loser will not be Mr Brownlee—although maybe he will be in a political sense—it will be the people of Canterbury. I put this to Mr Brownlee: on many occasions through this process he has broken many commitments he has given to us about acting in a non-partisan way. I say that not out of self-interest; I say that we came to the table before this legislation was put up— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: No politics in this! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Well see there he goes; he just said there were no politics in this. That is a telling comment from Mr Brownlee and I will tell members why: Mr Brownlee has defined playing politics as anybody who disagrees or puts up an alternative idea. Mr Brownlee labels those people as playing politics. Any member of the community who says “Maybe there is a better way.” “Can we be helpful?” or “Maybe Mr Brownlee should do his job slightly better.” he labels as either impeding progress or playing politics. Well shame on that member—shame on that member. 
I say that the people of Canterbury want to get this right. Here is the risk: we have had commitments from him from the start of the formation of the authority. Mr Brownlee asked to see me privately. He wrote on a piece of paper—and I still have it—a short schematic of his embryonic thoughts in respect of the authority. He said he wanted consultation with Labour which is consultation with the communities we represent actually because it not about us and what we think; it is about the feedback we get from our communities and our constituents and that is why we are entitled to the Queen’s shilling—that is our wages. He looked me in the eye and said “We want you on board. This is real consultation; this is non-partisanship.” So we agreed. We asked two things: we asked for input and we asked for advice papers and he agreed to it. He set up two meetings with Mr Goff and me and he cancelled both. We rang Wayne Eagleson the chief of staff of the Prime Minister in the week the legislation was going through a Cabinet committee. We were told that it would not be dealt with at the Cabinet committee—not at all. We got a phone call on the Friday of that week to be told by Mr Brownlee that it was a fait accompli. 
I do not know about playing politics but I used a word about three times in respect of Mr Brownlee at that meeting that I will not use here; I am sure it could be couched in the definition of breaking one’s commitments or word. That is the nature of the process. Then we bounced forward to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Submitters had 4 hours and 40 minutes to provide evidence to that committee—4 hours and 40 minutes. Most of the submitters had not been consulted at all before they received the bill via the Internet—they plucked the bill off the parliamentary website after I asked the Clerk to put it on because the Minister had not provided it. They had 4 hours and 40 minutes; they had less than 24 hours to prepare submissions. The Law Society which as members will know is asked very regularly if not all the time in respect of legislation to participate in the process and to actively submit in the process appeared before us. Its members got the bill at 4 o’clock the day before. They had less than 24 hours to put in a submission. The Legislative Advisory Committee the Government’s own agency made up of eminent legal minds got the bill for the first time it told the select committee at around the same time as it was laid on the Table of this House. 
The people of Canterbury are going to say “So what? As Mr Brownlee says we want our lives back. Why are you guys worried about all the technical detail? Get on with it.” But here is the problem I come back to again: Mr Brownlee has shown scant regard in terms of listening to experts and expert evidence and giving people one extra day perhaps. The only reason we had a select committee hearing was that last Thursday Labour members in a meeting with Mr Brownlee demanded one. We also asked Mr Brownlee if he was going to agree to it to please flag it on the Friday—before this week—so that submitters would have the weekend to put their arguments together and do a robust job. Well he messed about and then he announced it less than 24 hours before. Councils were late to the meeting because they had been told about it only the night before. The Christchurch City Council was given a bill a week before the select committee—a draft; 6.4. The city council’s solicitor was given it and told they were not allowed to show it to any city councillor. So we had this farce of the deputy mayor turning up and giving a submission and having to admit through the city council’s solicitor that no one on the council had even seen the bill because the Government had told them they were not allowed to be shown it. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: No that’s rubbish. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Mr Brownlee calls the solicitor of the city council a liar—that is what he says; he says what the solicitor said was rubbish. I ask Mr Brownlee to say that outside the House and allow the city councillor solicitor to action that. 
Moving on the point I make is this: we want to get this right but Mr Brownlee holds a view that he holds a monopoly on all knowledge on this. OK National has the numbers we are adults—we accept it. But here is the point I make to Mr Brownlee: he holds the pen as the earthquake tsar. He declines to agree with me when he says he has wartime powers. Let me say to Mr Brownlee that if he looks at the history of it he will see that he and his Government have to return to this House to seek the permission of this House to amend only a very small number of Acts. He can do basically what he likes and as Philip Joseph said clause 73(2) is an ouster clause which means that Mr Brownlee or any of his Ministers cannot be challenged by any court in the land for a decision they make in respect of this earthquake. 
So I say to Mr Brownlee that he has chosen his course of action. He has shown throughout this that he would not listen to the business community of Christchurch. That is why they mounted the barricades and took up placards. I have never seen that in Christchurch. He has taken the view that he will not listen to Opposition members and he has broken nearly every commitment he had made for a bipartisan approach. He made the commitment privately; he never made it publicly but he knows he has broken it. I have never seen a politician sit across a table from me and say he or she will do one thing and blatantly break that commitment some days later. Normally certain politicians of that ilk use more diplomatic or surreptitious means to lie—but I will not use that word in respect of Mr Brownlee. But Mr Brownlee said “It is my way or the highway.” 
I tell Mr Brownlee that the people of Canterbury will support this legislation. The people of Canterbury will wait and the acid test of this legislation and of the stewardship of that man over there and John Key—who promised that “no one in Canterbury will be worse off”—will be whether this legislation fails. We have a paper trail a mile long of the assistance we have tried to render privately and publicly. We have a paper trail a mile long of the assistance members of the public and eminent organisations have attempted to render privately and publicly. We will know what the legislation will look like when the amendments come up the amendments that Mr Brownlee will furnish to us as usual minutes—he said to me at 11 o’clock—before this second reading debate concludes and the Committee stage begins and the people of Canterbury will judge whether this legislation will fail. 
But Labour will try to make it work and we will work with Mr Brownlee regardless of the concerns we have. Our concern like his is to make this thing work. But if it comes a gutzer I say to Mr Brownlee that it will be visited on his head on the heads of his Canterbury colleagues and on the heads of his Prime Minister and Government—and on their heads alone. The people of Canterbury will judge that. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I am always interested in the contrast between select committee work and speeches in the House; often one wonders where the marriage is between the two events. We are talking about something that is extremely important to all of us in this House: the rebuilding of Christchurch. I am sure that that is just as important to people in any position in the House. It is the most important thing we can do. We are not rebuilding just the body of Christchurch as we were told yesterday by some of the submitters but also the mind the heart and the spirit of the Canterbury people. 
It was a moving occasion to be part of the parliamentary committee that was established to hear the evidence given. This issue reaches across the South Island to have an effect on the West Coast. It reaches down to have an effect in Southland and Otago and up in Marlborough—everywhere. Christchurch our second-largest city is in desperate need of assistance. The spirit of the people though is strong very strong. 
When the second earthquake occurred I remember getting calls from people overseas who wanted to know what was going on. Some interviewers from the UK said: “We understand it was chaos.” I said: “Well it was a big shake—about 45 seconds.” But they asked: “How long did the chaos last?”. So I said: “Well about 45 seconds.” They said “No no but what about the chaos in the city?”. I said: “Well New Zealanders don’t do chaos very well. They are not very good at chaos. They get organised quickly.” 
After spending an hour in Christchurch yesterday and visiting the places that have been really badly affected one can see the organisation the spirit and the strength of the community coming through. Then we had the opportunity to meet people who wished to give us evidence and contribute to the bill. Collaboration is very important. 
There has been criticism—and I acknowledge the criticism—that the time lines were tight. We have just heard a fairly spirited and political speech from Mr Cosgrove who was a member of the committee and I thank all members of the committee for the way they applied themselves. We were relatively free of partisan comment and activity. Everybody applied themselves heavily to the task and I thank the members from all sides of the House for the way they did their work. 
The evidence we received was we agreed of a remarkably high quality. I think that one of the crucial points that need to be considered in this whole business is that delay does not equate to quality of product. So the suggestion that we should have longer that we should have a further week and all that sort of thing would not I think alter the strength of the submissions we received very much at all because the quality was high—the quality was high and that was agreed. We had a short tight timetable and the committee worked well to meet the requirements of that. The evidence was strong and I understand that it is already being included in possible changes to the bill. 
We heard from people in Wellington and we heard from people in Christchurch. They had a singular quality that came through all the time: sincerity of approach. They were most sincere that they wanted to do the best they could. Even amidst the rhetoric that we heard earlier from a very experienced speaker that message still came through. We all want to do the best we can. For me it is very important that we concentrate on that because this is not just the main Government priority for this year; I suggest that it is the main parliamentary priority for this year. 
When we debated the reform of the Resource Management Act last year we saw the consequences the difficulties and the delays that can occur with legislation that has passed its use-by date. We have seen that normal features of legislation can be disruptive and delaying in making the sorts of changes and decisions that have to be made in order to get Christchurch on the move. 
We see the contrast too and I have to say that although I have never met the gentleman I hold him in very very high regard. I am talking about Roger Sutton the chief executive of Orion. He is the man who got the power back on. He used phrases such as: “It ain’t pretty but it works.” in respect of overhead cables instead of underground ones. I would not suggest at all that he manipulated any permit arrangements or anything but fast-tracking certainly got the work done and this bill is designed to use the Roger Sutton approach to getting things done—which is so much a New Zealand concept that it needs the opportunity to be expressed within the community in Christchurch. 
We have to enable community participation in planning the recovery of affected communities without impeding them in a focused timely and expedited manner. I had an enjoyable time in having brief conversations with people who came to the committee not just to make submissions but to wish us well with the work we were doing to thank us for coming and to express their concentrated appreciation of what was happening. Christchurch is strong Christchurch is well and Christchurch needs the assistance of this bill. 
I appeal to members on all sides of the House to perhaps suppress the understandable rhetoric they feel—because this is very personal and emotional for the people who have representation down there. Let us concentrate on the real need let us concentrate on Christchurch’s need and let us concentrate on getting this bill in place. Thank you. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will begin by acknowledging the member who has just resumed his seat. I have spent a bit of time in Mr Auchinvole’s company over the last 3 or 4 days and I have a great deal of admiration for the way he chaired the Local Government and Environment Committee. There was a lot of tension around the debate and a lot of frustrated submitters—a lot of frustrated members of the committee actually—dealing with an issue that is really important to everyone who was on the select committee. Mr Auchinvole treated us all in a manner that was respectful and I think he engendered better behaviour as a result of his chairing; I want to acknowledge that. 
Members from our side of the House are totally committed to the Canterbury recovery but what the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery has failed to understand and annoyingly despite the best efforts of many submitters what the majority of members on the other side of the select committee table have failed to grasp is that recovery is about more than speedy demolition removal of rubble the rebuild of infrastructure and the rebuild of buildings. Recovery is about ensuring that the residents of Canterbury are part of the vision of the future of their area—of their suburb their community their city their region—and every one of us needs to have a strong voice in that recovery. It is about ensuring that as we look at what is going to happen to streets suburbs and shopping centres we take this opportunity to ensure that the current inequities we have in our city are addressed and that we give everyone a better place to stand as we recover from these earthquakes. 
In my view the Minister does not understand that fundamental difference. The National members of the Local Government and Environment Committee did not appear to understand the difference between rebuild and recovery and therefore this is a tragic wasted opportunity not just to get it right but to get it better. I hope that as we progress this legislation today as we go through the Committee stage the Minister will look seriously at the amendments we produce. I hope he will do as he said he would do when he gave us a commitment and look seriously at the recovery aspects of the submitters’ proposals. 
This has been a very unusual process but as members have already stated these are very unusual times. There is no normal any more in Canterbury. We talk about a new normal and I guess the select committee process was a good example of how to do things quite differently. It is quite unusual that we did not have a bill referred to us. We did not have advisers which is very unusual. So when submitters appeared before us we had no officials who could explain why they had put X Y and Z in the legislation to answer the questions from the submitters. We did not have any of the usual technical advice available to the select committee and we have gone through this process frustrated as a result. 
The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery came to the select committee and gave us over an hour of his time. He was able to answer some of the questions. He assured us when he left that he would get back to us with other answers and I am sure he will. I can see that the Minister is nodding. I am very pleased about that because we are not sure which of the unanswered questions will be addressed in the Supplementary Order Paper. Another unusual incidence is trying to give a second reading speech about possible amendments as the Minister is giving out his Supplementary Order Paper responses. 
The point of that comment is to emphasise my concern about this entire process. I think it is better to take a little more time particularly in preparing legislation such as this to get it right rather than to rush it and get it wrong. The politics of that would be entirely borne by Mr Brownlee but in my view the future recovery of Canterbury is far more important than any political muck the Minister might wear as a result of getting things wrong in this legislation. That is why I urged that a little more time be taken so that submitters could consider the bill so that the Minister could consider the submissions seriously and so that more people could have an input into what is a very very powerful new organisation and we as a Parliament could send a message to Canterbury that we have a united voice in supporting the recovery of Canterbury. In my view that would be ideal. But instead we got a hotchpotch last-minute rushed frustrated process without the select committee even having the opportunity to have technical advice. 
We had some high-quality submissions. The submitters looked quite exhausted. Some of them had literally spent the night prior to the select committee hearing in Christchurch preparing their submission. That is not a good process. It is not a good process for people to get a bill at 4 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and be expected to appear at a select committee between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. the following day. That is a very poor process and it reflects badly on this Parliament. It reflects badly on how we view the concerns of submitters. I think it is disrespectful to expect people to prepare a considered and thoughtful submission with that sort of notice. 
Some of the submissions were very serious. In fact the submission from the New Zealand Law Society—a highly regarded organisation—said that one of the clauses clause 70 gives very wide powers for Orders in Council to override enactments contrary to the rule of law and good legislation principles and is therefore undesirable. That is a very strong comment and others were equally concerned. Although the submitters all said that they support a timely process for the strong recovery of Canterbury they all also expressed concern about the rushed nature of this process. 
The other big concern I have alongside my concern about the rushed process is the lack of genuine community engagement. If we do not take the people of Canterbury along the path of recovery then in 5 10 or 20 years’ time the people of Canterbury will not be as passionate about and proud of their region as we currently are. They will not debate vigorously the merits of any adjustment. They will not have the sorts of debates we have about the Square one-way streets different buildings or whether the fountain in the botanical gardens is a certain colour. We will not have that sort of passionate debate because people will not feel part of their city and their region. We can debate more rigorously about details of our city than any other part of our country and I want that passion to remain. Other people are amazed by it. Other people sometimes laugh at it. They find it extraordinary. But it is part of the passion of our city and without community involvement as part of the recovery we will lose that passion. 
Mr Brownlee’s lack of understanding of how fast communities can engage and how seriously people want to do that is demonstrated in the legislation by a clause that says we will have community engagement but it cannot be at the cost of timely recovery. We all know that but it is insulting to the communities to treat them as something that will slow down and hinder a strong recovery. In fact the Waimakariri District Council put it very well in its submission when it said quite clearly that not only had the community’s involvement not slowed down the process but also as the mayor described it it had made the recovery enduring. 
Without the people of Canterbury going along this path of recovery it will not be a sustainable recovery. It may be a recovery where we get buildings demolished and rubble removed quickly and where we get our infrastructure rebuilt—we all want that; we all are committed to that path—but what has to be included in this is the voice of the people. No amount of rubble removal no amount of rapid demolition and rebuild can give Canterbury the spirit that we need for a strong recovery. Only the voice of the people can do that. 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I rise to take a call in the second reading of the all-important Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will begin by adding my own thanks in the first instance to Mr Chris Auchinvole for his astute and sensitive chairmanship of the Local Government and Environment Committee hearings such as we had. I agree with Ruth Dyson that it made a critical difference to the manner in which we were able to get through our work. That was in no small measure due to the personal skills of the chairman and I thank him for that. I disagree with only one thing which he said just a moment ago to the effect that he saw no causal relationship between the time allocated for submitters and the quality of the submissions. Normal human nature makes it very clear there is a close causal correlation between the amount of time one has to make a submission and the quality of that submission. The fact that the submissions were of such high quality was a testimony to the skills of the submitters but not to the integrity of the process and I think we need to draw that distinction. 
But I thank him for his astute chairmanship. 
I also want to pay personal tribute to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. I did so in the select committee and I wish to do so again here. Our criticisms of this bill are in no way intended to attribute any issues of personal trust to the Minister. We recognise the integrity of all members of the House and the Government and also the hard work he has put in to this bill. The issues of trust as I said in the first reading are irrelevant. The Green Party is quite critical of both the process behind this bill and the substance and we will have more to say about that but it does not attend to personal issues. 
Finally I pay a word of thanks to the officials who have backed up the Minister. I have seen them in action in the last 2 weeks or so. I will not name them because they would be embarrassed but they know who they are and I pay tribute to their skill and their perseverance. The Minister has just distributed a very detailed analysis of the submissions. Obviously the officials have worked through the night on this and on a very quick cursory reading it looks very thorough and very professional. It is a tribute to the officials working under the Minister to be able to produce that in a short time. 
As I more or less intimated in the first reading all of this is redolent of our September experience but it is more critical and it is more intense. So our obligation and responsibility to get this right is heightened and I doubt there will be any legislation this year in which there is a greater obligation to get this right for the people not only of Canterbury but of New Zealand as well. 
We said in our minority report that went into the select committee report that we continue to have concerns both about process and substance. The Green Party has never been convinced that the legislation for the recovery of Greater Christchurch needed to be taken under urgency. It is important of course to scrutinise the reasons for any extension of a state of emergency and I take the point by the Minister that he and his Government are under pressure to end the state of emergency. We in fact were querying the criteria for it and so on; that is the normal requirement on our part. Due provision is rightly in place to restrict the scope and period of such civil defence emergencies. But in our view there is a stronger justification for extending the state of emergency for several more weeks to allow the normal passage of this Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill under normal parliamentary scrutiny than there is to circumvent proper public and parliamentary scrutiny of the bill which contains such far-reaching measures. The absence of adequate consultation with the responsible entities or expert input through the proper select committee hearings is to the serious detriment of this draft legislation. 
We acknowledge that the task of recovery in Christchurch is massive. We acknowledge that the purposes of this bill are appropriate. We acknowledge that there is a role for central government an essential role for central government. It does not follow that that role has to be a dominant one. 
We see potentially three phases in the response to the earthquake. There is first the emergency period there is a recovery period and there is a rebuild. In the emergency period central government naturally has the dominant role. During the immediate crisis—the emergency—when the tanks and the soldiers are in the streets the urban search and rescue teams are feverishly retrieving survivors and bodies and the demolition squads are levelling buildings under urgency civil defence under emergency powers are appropriate. That period does not last for ever. It has been extended from 22 February to 16 April. The civil defence controller is in charge. That is appropriate. The representation of central government is through him. Local municipalities such as the Christchurch City Council play a secondary role during that period. The search and rescue period is essentially ended. It has been there for almost 2 months. It is entirely possible for it to continue for say 2 more weeks so this bill can be decently guided through proper parliamentary passage. 
We then move into the recovery period. That involves the reinstallation of utilities: housing power water and sewerage. That is the natural role for the utility operators acting under the authority of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. During this period—let us call it a 9-month period; it is there in the bill—there is the requirement to develop the strategy and the plans. In our view during the recovery period the lead should be taken by the local authorities—Christchurch City Council for Christchurch. 
I recognise that the bill acknowledges that the lead role should be taken by the council but there should be not only the lead role but sovereign authority on decision making in our view. That is where we differ from the Government. Under the bill sovereignty in terms of final sign-off resides with central government. Whatever happened to the principle of subsidiarity? We can suspend subsidiarity during the emergency period; we should not continue that suspension of subsidiarity during the recovery or during the rebuild. 
Finally we would have the period of rebuild itself—the third phase. That will take let us say 4 years under the 5-year period we see here in the bill. Why does the rebuild of Christchurch have to be operationalised under the sovereignty of central government? There is no reason for that. 
We will be submitting a series of Supplementary Order Papers to remedy the deficiencies in this bill as we see them. They derive essentially from the question of who has the sovereign authority during those three phases to sign-off on decision making. We will be submitting Supplementary Order Paper 232 on the issue of public engagement pertaining to clause 6 to make the community forum more representative. We will require that community membership be confirmed by parliamentary resolution that the Minister must heed the advice of the cross-party group and that the Minister will have an obligation under the statute to consult with affected communities. We will be submitting Supplementary Order Papers on the question of powers in respect of clause 15 and clauses 70 71 and 72. Ruth Dyson has already mentioned clause 70 and the Law Society’s concern over the fact that it is contrary to the rule of law and proper principles of legislation and that therefore it is undesirable. For the Green Party it is not simply undesirable; it is unacceptable if that is the case. We will be submitting further Supplementary Order Papers on a variety of clauses clauses 10 30 24 and 27 to ensure the powers currently under the bill are not excessive to the purposes of the legislation. Thank you. 
Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 I rise to take a short call on this second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill on behalf of the ACT Party. I have participated in the process at the Local Government and Environment Committee for the hearing of evidence as we have gone through this bill under urgency. When it comes to principles the ACT Party would not normally be in favour of the broad sweeping powers we see in this bill and under normal circumstances we would raise a large number of concerns. But these are not normal circumstances; we have had a terrible coinciding of principle and circumstance as a result of a terrible terrible natural disaster. We have heard not just as part of the proceedings of this particular bill but since the first earthquake on 4 September of the situation the people in Canterbury are facing and will face for a large number of years yet. Although I was not there for the particular submission one submitter yesterday said that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and that is exactly what this Parliament is faced with in this particular instance. 
The ACT Party is supporting the provisions in this bill. I particularly enjoyed the select committee process when we had robust discussion on a large number of the clauses with varying views being put on the table. I had some concerns as I know that Labour members also did about some process issues. I felt it was unfortunate that technical advice was not quite as forthcoming as it may have been in the first instance. It is difficult to make good decisions when we do not have the availability of all the advice we need. However we worked our way through those issues I believe and I think that it was very good of the Minister to make a submission to the select committee. That certainly helped with our working our way through many of the provisions. I do not want to talk in detail about the clauses. I think there has been plenty of discussion already about them and the Committee stage is the appropriate time to have those discussions and debates. 
But I come back always to broad principles. It is incumbent on us to do our very best for the people of Christchurch. Although this is a little outside the scope of the bill I suppose I tell the House that the ACT Party’s view is that in order to fix Christchurch we will need to fix New Zealand and that we will all look with great interest at what happens in the Budget. New Zealand is facing difficult circumstances quite aside from the natural disasters we have suffered in the last year. The ACT Party will have a lot to say particularly about making wise fiscal decisions for the country in order to be in very good shape to help Christchurch and Canterbury to the best of our ability. 
I say again that the ACT Party supports these measures. Under normal circumstances we would have a lot more to say in a negative sense about them but I come back to the point that extraordinary times do indeed call for extraordinary measures. 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I am very pleased to support the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill at its second reading. The Local Government and Environment Committee has spent the last 2 days listening to evidence on this bill. We listened to 17 oral submissions and received 23 submissions in total and I am very pleased to report that all submitters saw the need for this legislation. It was the general opinion as we have just heard from Heather Roy that the extraordinary events in Canterbury need an extraordinary legislative response. As the New Zealand Law Society stated: “The Canterbury earthquakes and their aftermath justify some sort of emergency legislation to facilitate the speedy restoration of the region. That response however still requires transparency and accountability. The Bill largely meets these objects.” 
The Legislation Advisory Committee referred to previously established principles required in disaster response legislation and commented that this bill ticks all the boxes. Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu is confident that statutory centralisation of powers is necessary in this instance. They said that “International experience in recovering from natural disaster demonstrates the need for dedicated leadership; clear distribution of responsibilities between entities; clear accountabilities to the people and business of Christchurch; funding and resources from central government.” and I agree with them. There is no doubt that the people of Christchurch want to get on with recovering from the last three earthquakes as quickly as possible and the powers of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority are there to help us achieve that. 
But with powers come responsibilities and this bill includes checks that balance those powers. Firstly and most important the powers can be used only for earthquake recovery—only for earthquake recovery. Also the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery is fully accountable to Parliament and that means to all parties in this House. He has to report every 3 months and every year the whole Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority organisation has to be reviewed. There are the Order in Council review panel chaired by a retired High Court judge the community forum and the cross-party forum plus every Christchurch and Canterbury person has their democratic right to speak out personally or in the media to hold the Minister to account and to hold the authority to account and Cantabrians are well-known for their robust passionate debate on anything and everything. So in this extraordinary situation the bill grants extraordinary powers but they are not unchecked. Furthermore it was noted by the Law Society that the previous legislation which was put in place after the 4 September earthquake had not been abused. There is no reason to think legislation will be abused this time. 
Many groups have spoken about the need for public consultation or rather public engagement—that is the public of Christchurch being involved in the decision making—and those of us who live in the area know that the people of our communities are very keen to contribute. They want to contribute all their ideas to the rebuild. This is our home and with the opportunity to rebuild it to rebuild it better to rebuild it safer and to rebuild it more beautifully we all want to have a part in the process. The Minister is very aware of that need. He told us just last night while giving evidence that if we are to achieve anything in Christchurch and Canterbury the people have to be on board. People want and need the rebuilds and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority will help them happen. All the work of the authority is being done in partnership with the existing democratically elected councils and community boards and the central business district recovery plan must be notified publicly. 
I have lived in Christchurch and Canterbury all my life. Right now all my energy like the Government’s is focused on rebuilding the city I know and love. I believe that the bill provides the framework to get our city and our province moving. I am voting for this bill because it will be good for Christchurch good for Canterbury and good for our communities and it will enable us to restore not just the infrastructure of our place but also the heart and soul of our home. Thank you. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I will make two preliminary statements and they are the following. Firstly I reject the assertion that disagreeing with the Government means that we are not treating this matter seriously. We are treating this matter seriously. Secondly I reject the assertion that advocating for my constituents is playing politics. In fact I resent that suggestion as do my constituents who are frustrated by the fact that their MP is treated with such disregard when advocating on their behalf. 
I will reflect on a couple of elements of what occurred yesterday with regard to submissions on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. There was some criticism of the lack of notice and the failure of the Government to provide access to the draft legislation. I believe that that criticism has great merit but that people came to the table with goodwill. 
I will comment though on the Christchurch City Council’s submission. I was disappointed that the mayor and the chief executive of the largest council affected by this legislation chose not to change other commitments that they had in the 4½ hours that we had available. They had the choice of any time within those 4½ hours to come to the Local Government and Environment Committee but they did not choose to rearrange their other commitments in order to come to the select committee. Instead they sent the deputy mayor and an in-house counsel who was quite a good person to have there. They could have brought him anyway but he was in the unique position of having seen the bill about a week before the legislation was introduced. The chief executive had been allowed to show it to one member of staff and he was that lucky member of staff. His contribution was very valuable as a result of that and I place that on record. 
I also place on record how valuable the contributions were from the individual councillors who came to plead for community engagement to be at the heart of the process of Canterbury’s recovery: Chrissie Williams Yani Johanson Helen Broughton and Glenn Livingstone. I say to all four of them well done. They were doing what their constituents elected them to do: to represent their interests in the best possible way that they could under very trying difficult circumstances. In saying that I recognise the fact that not one of those councillors had seen the legislation other than on the website on the previous day. 
But to read in the  
Press  
this morning that Christchurch City Council had no idea of what it had done wrong after the first earthquake beggars belief which is why the chief executive should have fronted to the select committee yesterday. I will be tabling four pieces of correspondence—in fact I will be tabling a number of pieces of correspondence over the next few hours. But in the second reading I will be tabling four letters. 
On 4 February I wrote a letter to Tony Marryatt Chief Executive of the Christchurch City Council and I copied it to every single one of the councillors who sit around that table. I will cover just quickly what I covered in that letter. The first item was recovery planning and I highlighted the fact that “As you are aware local authorities have a leadership role under the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Regime with respect to the recovery effort. I understand that in the case of this event the CCC has had to wait to see what response the government would give to EQC’s recommendations on the ‘Stage 2 report’.” But the council did nothing before that and it did nothing after that. I went through how it was really important that the council use the template for a recovery action plan on the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management website if it did not know how to do such a plan and how our mutual constituents would gain a sense of what is planned and who would be accountable for meeting milestones if it adopted that simple process. 
I then went on to say “I am aware of the email that you sent councillors where you said that the council is participating in the CERC task groups that have been formed as if that absolved you of your responsibility to develop a recovery action plan for the city—the other affected Councils”— Waimakariri District Council and Selwyn District Council—“haven’t adopted this attitude and are getting on with the job.” I then went on to say “I have had an email from a constituent this morning asking why Kaiapoi is proceeding first—I will be replying that the Waimakariri District Council is doing an excellent job of recovery planning. You have said that the CCC is treating the recovery as ‘business as usual’ with the exception that you have geared up to provide both the infrastructure rebuild and resource and building consent extra demand. If the CCC thinks that this is your sole role and that recovery can be treated as ‘business as usual’ then you have read none of the literature you have not considered recovery best practice nor have you looked at how other local authorities have dealt with disasters”. I used the example of Tauranga post the landslip and the fact the Terry Wynyard who was locally engaged with the Earthquake Commission could have been available to lead the recovery effort. He had led the effort in Tauranga and was available in Christchurch to talk to the city council. So I have actually done what I said I would do: I have worked behind the scenes to give the council all the information that it needs. 
I then went on to talk about the fact that the council had made a number of decisions that were predicated on the wrong information and said I felt it should engage with the Earthquake Commission and the insurers in a meaningful way so that we could get on with the rebuild part after the first earthquake. I talked about the council’s rates rebate policy missing the mark. I talked about Variation 48 to the district plan becoming operative on 31 January and I raised several questions about how section 72 of the Building Act would be applied. 
I have done my job as a local representative of the people of Christchurch East and I resent the fact that the city council through its mayor then went public to say we were making political capital out of the situation. I wrote to the mayor on 7 February 2011. I said: “I decided not to be offended by your statements about some city MPs trying to make political capital out of the situation because I am aware that you too have been stressed by the earthquake coupled with the enormity of the task that this city must confront.” I then went on to explain why the council had missed the boat in terms of its obligations regarding the recovery. It seems to me that the fact that the response effort of everyone was absolutely brilliant—it was textbook; it was fantastic; nobody could criticise the response in the wake of either earthquake—masked the fact that the city council has completely failed the ratepayers of its constituency by not doing recovery at all. It did not even start the recovery process after the first earthquake and we have lost valuable time as a result of that. 
I will table two other letters. One is the letter I wrote to the Hon Gerry Brownlee on 27 September last year. This is how I concluded the letter and I referenced it in the letter to the mayor: “Thank you for what you are doing to lead the recovery effort. It is a major challenge and I remain committed to assisting you in any way I can.” He wrote back to me on Christmas Eve and said to me that my comments about how we could have community consultation and communication were well made and that he would refer those comments through to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission. I have done everything I can to work behind the scenes to look after the interests of my constituents. 
The Minister talks about the people who are living in damaged houses on damaged streets with limited services and who are uncertain of the future of their properties. He is describing my neighbours. The only reason I do not include myself in that description is that I have some resilience factors that some of my neighbours do not. I am mortgage free. I have a good uninterrupted income. I have the ability to make choices that are not available to others. I can even sneak away for a quake break and pay for it myself. The Minister says that if we do not agree with this model then we are imposing a delay on resolving the future of my neighbours. I reject that. How the land report information is released to my constituents must be respectful and must allow for an opportunity to engage that must be better than the handling of the release of both the stage one and stage two reports. 
I repeat the offer that I have made to the Minister to continue to work with him but I have to say—and I have said this in writing to the Government—that trust has diminished and tolerance levels are much lower than they were after the first earthquake. But I will help. I will help because this issue is too important for politics and too important for us to get it wrong. There is a need to balance speed and deliberation but community participation actually promotes the focused timely and expedited recovery that the Government says in this bill it wants to achieve. That is why the community must be at the heart of the recovery. I seek leave to table the letters that I referred to in my address. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There appears to be none. The member may table them. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker; kia ora tatou katoa. Morena ki a tatou katoa i tenei ata i a tatou e wananga nei i te ahuatanga o tenei o nga pire hou e pa ana ki Otautahi. Ko te wahi ki a au hei whaiwhai haere ko te ahuatanga o te korero o te Honore Gerry Brownlee i a ia e korero ana mo te taha ki a au ki te Ao Maori. Ka mihi ki a ia mo tana whakanui i te wahi ki a Ngai Tahu Kai Tahu ranei i a ratou e whakakorikori nei i a ratou ano e toro atu te ringa ki uta ki tai ki wiwi ki wawa ki te iwi Pakeha ki te iwi Maori ranei na runga i te hiahia ki te awhina tetahi ki tetahi ko te tautoko a tetahi ki tetahi. E tika ana ki a Kai Tahu ko ratou tera i whakapau kaha ki te awhina i te hunga e rongo nei i te ngau o te mamae otira ko ratou i rongo ranei i te ngau o mate. Ko ratou te hunga i toro atu te ringa ki nga iwi katoa o te motu. Tera pea na nga iwi i toro atu te ringa ki a Kai Tahu ki te ki ko nga mamae e pa ana ki a koe Ngai Tahu he mamae ano ra ka pa mai ki a au ki a Te Arawa ki a au ki a Tainui ki a au ki Te Tai Tokerau. No reira ka pai tera ahuatanga o te Ao Maori i roto i nga whiriwhiringa. 
E ai ki nga korero ehara i te mea e tika ana maku a Ngai Tahu e korero engari ko taku e mohio nei ko Ngai Tahu te hunga kainga te hunga ahi ka ara noa atu etahi engari me pera rawa te korero. Ko te hunga e noho mai rara i Otautahi he hitori ano ra to ratou mo te ahuatanga o te noho ki reira. Ara no te korero “Ka Pakihi whakatekateka o Waitaha” ara no te korero “Te Pataka o Rakaihautu” enei ahuatanga katoa he ingoa e mohiotia ana i roto o tera takiwa. E ai ki taku mohio kua roa tetahi iwi e noho mai ana ki reira. E ai ki nga korero o te Ao Maori e 700 tau te roa o ta ratou noho ki reira. A ka eke atu a Kati Mamoe ka eke atu ki reira ano hoki no reira kua noho tahi ratou ki reira mo nga tau e hia ke nei. E ai ki nga korero kua puta mai nga ingoa penei i a “Turakautahi” 
. 
 He rangatira o roto o Ngai Tuahuriri. Ko ia tera i noho nei i te Pa o Kaiapoi tera takiwa. I roto i nga korero kua tae mai ki a au mo Ngati Huikai to ratou rangatira toa nei a Tautahi 
 
 whakatu i tana kainga i tana pa tuwatawata ki tera takiwa o Otautahi. Tae atu ki te wa i puta te korero ko Otautahi hei whaiwhai haere i tera o nga rangatira o Ngati Huikai. 
No reira ko te tikanga o taku korero he ki atu ae he wahi ano to te Ao Maori kei tera takiwa. Kai wareware i a tatou tera wahi. Mai ra ano i ta ratou noho ki reira tae ra no ki nga ra tata kua hipa ake. Ka hoki ra ano ki te ahuatanga o te pakanga nui nei o te ao te pakanga ki tawahi. Ko te Ao Maori ano ra tera i haere ki tawahi ka hoki mai. I awhina ano ra ki te whangai ki te tuku i nga painga ki nga hoia i haere ki te tawahi ki nga pakanga nui o te ao. I reira ano hoki te Ao Maori. 
No na tata nei e ki ana te korero ka mate te kainga tahi ka ora te kainga rua. He kupu korero tera he whakatauki e korero ana mo te ahuatanga o Otautahi tonu. Ka hinga tetahi kainga a kua hunuku atu ki te kainga rua. No reira enei korero katoa ka hoki mai ano ra ki a au i a tatou e korero nei mo tetahi o nga kaupapa i te ata nei. No na tata nei ano hoki kua korero matou o te Pati Maori mo te kaha tautoko o nga iwi katoa tae atu ki nga watene Maori tonu kua tae atu ki Otautahi mai i nga topito katoa ki te tautoko i a Kai Tahu o etahi rohe ke i Takitimu i a au i a Te Arawa i Te Tai Tokerau kua hunuku atu ki reira mo te wa poto. Kua hunuku nga ringa raupa o nga tari hauora ki Otautahi tonu ki te awhina i a ratou. No reira ahakoa kare au i tae atu ki nga korero i nanahi nei i Otautahi ki te select committee 
  
kare au i rongo i nga korero. Kua rongo au i nga korero o tena o tena o tena i te ata nei ki te ki ae i tae atu te hapori ki te whakatakoto i o ratou nawe. I tona mutunga mai kei muri matou i te Kawanatanga Nahinara i roto i nga whiriwhiringa i te mea kei te mohio tonu ara no te iwi o Ngai Tahu e noho nei i roto i te uauatanga. Me pera rawa te korero. 
No reira ko ta matou ko te ki atu kati kua roa a Ngai Tahu me etahi atu e noho ana ki reira. E reka ana ki a matou te ahuatanga o te korero a te Minita a Gerry Brownlie ka whai wahi a Ngai Tahu ki roto i nga korero ka puta a nga ra kai mua i te aroaro me etahi Maori ano ra. Ko Te Runanga tonu ko te tikanga ka noho nei i runga i tenei o nga ropu ka whakahaere take nei hei whakaora ano ra i a Otautahi ka mutu ki taku mohio ka eke ano ra a Rahui Katene to matou mema Paremata mo tera rohe ki roto i te kahui o nga pati o te Whare Paremata ki reira. He mea pai tera. 
No reira he paku korero ki te ki atu kai wareware ko te reo o te Ao Maori ki reira i roto i tera taone o Otautahi me te ki atu kai muri kai mua kai nga taha a Ngai Tahi i nga whiriwhiringa katoa mo te aha? Na runga i te whakaaro i tipu mai ai to ratou whakapapa i reira. Ko te ahi ka ko ratou tera na te ahuatanga o ta ratou here ki te whenua kai reira. No reira me whai wahi ratou ki roto i nga nekeneke o te wa. Kei te tautoko ake i te hiahia o te Minita kia wahi ratou i roto i nga nekeneke o tenei pire me te tumanako ia tera pea ka ata wetewete i te hohonutanga o te pire a ko ake nei i te wahanga komiti. No reira kia ora tatou. 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Assistant Speaker and to us all. Good morning to all as we debate aspects of this new bill relating to Christchurch at this hour. The part of the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s speech that I want to follow is where I and Maoridom fit into the scheme of things. I commend him for acknowledging the part that Ngai Tahu or Kai Tahu has played as they roused themselves by extending a hand in all directions to non-Maori and Maori people in their desire to help and to support one another. For Kai Tahu it was the right thing to do. So there they were hard at work giving assistance to those suffering from injuries and in the case of loss of life. They were the ones who extended a hand to all the people of the nation. Tribes on the other hand extended a hand to Kai Tahu saying: “Pain suffered by you Kai Tahu affects me: Te Arawa Tainui and Te Tai Tokerau as well.” So that aspect of Maoridom is wonderful in the deliberations.  
Customary lore states that it is not for me to speak for Ngai Tahu but I know for a fact that they are the ahi ka the burning fires of occupation. There is much other anecdotal lore that suggests this as well. The ones living in Christchurch can historically vouch for their presence there. Take the reference to “The wetlands and plains of Canterbury: Ka Pakihi Whakatekateka o Waitaha”. Here is another one: “Banks Peninsula: Te Pataka o Rakaihautu”. All these kinds of references are widely known geographical terms in that district. To my understanding a tribe has lived there for a long period of time. According to stories of the Maori World that tribe has been there for 700 years. Kati Mamoe migrated and settled there for a very long time as well. According to stories the place name “Turakautahi” came from a Ngai Tuahuriri chief. He established Kaiapoi Pa in that area. In the stories that came to me about Ngati Huakai their chief—a warrior Tautahi—set up a settlement in that part of Christchurch and Otautahi became the Maori name for Christchurch to acknowledge him. 
So the nub of my address is that yes Maoridom has a historical connection to that place. We must never lose sight of the fact that Kai Tahu has been there a long time and continues to be there right up to the present. The circumstances of this presence go back to the great wars of the world the overseas battles that Maoridom took a part in and returned from. They also helped by providing sustenance to the troops and supported the war effort in the battles of the world. Maoridom was there as well.  
The proverb about a first home being no more and a second one rising up in its place continues to apply to Christchurch. When a house collapses the family shifts to a second one. So all these matters came back to mind this morning when we talked about one of the proposals. It was just recently that we of the Maori Party talked about the strong support provided by all tribes even the Maori wardens who arrived in Christchurch from everywhere to support Kai Tahu; those of Kai Tahu who shifted for a short time to areas in Takitimu and with me in Te Arawa and Te Tai Tokerau. Some health department staff have shifted to Christchurch to specifically help them there. I did not get to Christchurch to hear the submissions to the select committee yesterday and I still have not heard a thing. I heard different members say this morning that yes the community was there to express their concerns. At the end of it all we support the National-led Government in its deliberations because we know that the Ngai Tahu people are living in difficult times if I may say so.  
So the statement being made here is that Ngai Tahu and others have been there for a very long time. We are pleased to hear that according to Minister Gerry Brownlee Ngai Tahu and other Maori are to be included in the community forum that is to be announced shortly. The Runanga of Ngai Tahu is explicitly one of the entities the new authority must work alongside in terms of the recovery of Christchurch. Further to that Rahui Katene our member of Parliament for the Te Tai Tonga electorate will be included in the cross-party forum of Canterbury MPs. That has got to be a good thing. And just a little reminder too that she is the spokesperson for Maoridom there in the city of Christchurch.  
Ngai Tahu is everywhere in the consultation process—front back and sides—and for what reason? Their genealogy evolved from there. “Burning fires of occupation”—they are indeed that and that is the real reason that ties them to the land there. They must be involved in the consultations of the moment. The desire of the Minister to have them involved in every aspect of this bill is endorsed with the hope as well that some of the deeper implications of this bill will be carefully unravelled when we get to the Committee stage in due course. So I acknowledge us 
.] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 This is the first time Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson that I have had an opportunity to congratulate you on your new role. It is very nice to have you in the Chair this morning. 
I rise to take a call in the second reading debate on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I want to start contribution where I left off in my first reading speech and restate that what this bill is all about is stated in clause 3 the purpose clause. This bill is about providing a mechanism and framework of powers that will be sufficient to allow our Canterbury communities to respond to and recover from the two—arguably three or more—devastating earthquakes that have ripped through our province. The bill provides a framework that of necessity sets up a balance between a timely effective and I am not afraid to say quick—although that is a relative term—response while ensuring that we do engage involve and bring our communities with us. 
Through the course of the select committee process since Tuesday night and through yesterday one submitter was very concerned that some people may feel that “quick and timely response” and “involving the community” are mutually exclusive terms. I have never thought that that was the case; and I do not think that anyone does. I have always been of the view that one can have a quick timely and focused response while still bringing the community along and involving them in the process. But we do have to acknowledge and accept if we are going to make our way through this that that involvement will not mean the agreement of everyone. 
If some people go into this process thinking that if they at the end of the day do not get the outcome they wanted then the process has failed or it has not been democratic or it has not listened to the community then we are all setting ourselves up to fail. So my plea to everyone engaged in this process—community leaders the public of Canterbury central government elected representatives or anyone—is that they accept and be very clear from the outset that the necessary and absolutely central process of engagement will leave some people feeling unhappy with the outcome. 
Much has been said about the great work that has been done in the Waimakariri and Selwyn districts since 4 September and I concur; it has been great work. But even in those provinces some people right now still do not think that the process and the agreements that have been reached are right and they will grizzle and say things should have gone a different way. That will happen and in my view the trick to this balancing act is to work out how and when one draws the line under that process of listening and engaging and gets into the “making decisions and making things happen” state. I have no doubt at all that the process of finding when one should draw the line under discussions finding the point where a decision has to be made and acted on will be the crunch point going forward. 
I come back to some of what we heard from submitters over the course of the last 24 hours. I was very heartened that overwhelmingly what we heard from the submitters whom we spoke to—the key stakeholders in this process I guess one could say—was a sense of positivity agreement and collegiality and an acceptance of what actually needed to happen. 
We can see certainly from the Labour minority view and from the tenor of the select committee report that there is a general sense of acceptance that a centralised framework of enhanced powers is absolutely necessary. I do not think I have heard anything from across the House that suggests that that is not the case and I think that is a tremendously important point to get on the record. We do have in this House a very good political consensus around the fact that there needs to be a centralised system of enhanced powers reaching across the Canterbury region if we are to get the sort of recovery the sort of timely focused and involved process we must have in Canterbury. Let us not forget that. 
I am not saying for one minute that every submitter thought everything in the bill was absolutely perfect. They all came with a number of suggestions and comments as to things that could be looked at. I appreciated that and a lot of that was very valid information but the thing I really respected them for was that even where they thought changes should be made they approached the process in a sense of positive collaboration and constructive input. That is the absolute tenor that we will have to stick with all the way through this process. 
A couple of comments from submitters really stuck with me during the select committee process; the truncated process that it obviously had to be. One was the submission from Mark Solomon of Ngai Tahu and he has already been quoted by Heather Roy in her contribution. He talked about the fact that yes these are extraordinary powers but it is an extraordinary and unprecedented situation. The other thing he said that I think is worth repeating in this forum is that these are extraordinary powers but they are not unchecked powers. 
There is a comprehensive system of checks and balances on these powers and to suggest that it is a carte blanche operation is an absolute farce and would be completely leading people down the wrong path. There are considerable checks on the exercise of these powers and what is more we have had a bit of a trial run in the response to the 4 September earthquake where we have seen the use of this sort of open-ended power work remarkably well even to the point where the initial critics of that process have been saying it has been working pretty well. So we are not going into this blind. We have had a dry run. It has worked very well and I think that is why we are seeing so many of the stakeholders engaging with us in a constructive way accepting that this is necessary and wanting to talk with us around the edges of that. 
I will comment on a couple of the points made in the contributions we have heard from around the House this morning. I thank Dr Kennedy Graham for his contribution and the way he approached the select committee process. Obviously we do not agree on a lot of things but I particularly appreciated the fact that Dr Graham approached the debate in a constructive professional and polite manner at all times. I certainly appreciated that from him. As I understood it Dr Graham’s view was that extraordinary powers are needed only in the civil defence response period and I cannot accept that. I cannot accept that because I am seeing in my communities every day situations where lives and families are at risk because of potential delay. 
Just this week I have been working with one constituent in my area whose family has a business that they have run for 35 years in a rural community. They were well insured they had 12 months’ loss-of-business cover but they are now 7 months into that cover and they are still waiting for consent to get their dangerous red-stickered property demolished so that they can begin a rebuild. The owners want it demolished the insurance company wants it demolished and two structural engineers have agreed that it is dangerous and needs to be demolished yet since 4 September they have been battling to get a demolition consent for no other reason than that the resources to deal with this appropriately are simply not there at a local council level. 
That family is 7 months into this process they have 5 months left before they face bankruptcy and the only thing holding them up is the red tape and bureaucracy of the business-as-usual process. I cannot sit by and watch that business that family supporting two generations go into bankruptcy because the bureaucracy is not set up to say: “Clearly the building has to come down so get it done; bring it down.” So I do not accept that we do not need continued extraordinary powers and I do not agree with Dr Graham that we can just leave it to councils to get on with it. 
We have four councils in this region that have to come together and work together. We have to ensure there are centralised coordinated powers and we have to ensure there is a framework of ultimate power that can be exercised if the normal processes do not work. That is what this bill does and that is why I support it. In the words of Mark Solomon from Ngai Tahu: “When we are rebuilding Canterbury we have to remember that we have to get on with this. We have to do it for us and for our children.” What we know from all the international evidence is that a fast rebuild is the best thing for our communities socially environmentally culturally and economically. We have to get on with this. We have to do it well and we cannot afford the delays that business as usual would bring. I commend the bill to the House. 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson; I will commence this contribution by acknowledging your elevation to the Assistant Speaker’s role. I congratulate you on that. I am sure you will serve this House very well. 
I acknowledge the role played by the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee Chris Auchinvole in difficult circumstances over the last 48 hours in chairing that rapid select committee process truncated as it was. I also acknowledge that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee at least allowed us that truncated process. That was a step forward. 
In his opening comments on the second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill Mr Brownlee asked whether we should go slowly or at some pace. I think that by that he was suggesting that if we had a process for community engagement it would slow the recovery process in Canterbury. I have to say to him that I do not believe that those are mutually exclusive. In the bill at least now the reference to community participation has been moved from the very rear of the bill—at clause 66—to the front of the bill but this is not actually about community consultation; it is about community engagement. It is about letting Cantabrians feel they really have a chance to have a say. 
I need to point out that to date the process for participation has—to use a new word in the Christchurch vernacular—been somewhat munted. If we consider that in the select committee process 12 submitters were invited to offer their views on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill we know that at least half of those submitters had not received copies of the bill before about 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Indeed we saw the farcical situation where it took my colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove’s raising the matter in the House on Tuesday afternoon—after the bill had been tabled in the House but before it was even on the parliamentary website—before members of the Christchurch City Council were able to access copies of the bill. 
The deputy mayor told us in her submission yesterday that she heard about the bill on the radio. That is not satisfactory. The council’s solicitor told us yesterday that he got a draft of the bill 2 weeks ago because he heard about it and put pressure on the Government to ensure that he got a copy which he received late in the afternoon. He had to have it back by 10 o’clock the next morning and he worked overnight on that bill in draft. He had to do that because the chief executive of the Christchurch City Council would allow only him to be the one nominated person who was able to see the draft which raises the question: did the Mayor of Christchurch even see the draft of the bill? This is not consultation. 
The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery has taken out newspaper advertisements proclaiming that he is engaged in wide consultation on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. I say to the Minister that his version of wide consultation may involve looking in his mirror; it does not seem to involve actually engaging with the community. I would have thought that given this is the second crack at Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation and at setting up a body to deal with the issues lessons might be learnt that real gains are to be had from taking the community with us and allowing key stakeholders to be consulted rather than having them learn about it on the radio and rely on members of Parliament to raise the issue of getting the bill on to the parliamentary website so that it can be seen then having people work through the night so that they could make submissions on the process. To me that is not what community engagement is about. 
I note that if we are talking about consultation even since the earthquake itself a school in my electorate Linwood College has had a commissioner installed very very rapidly with no process of consultation. That does not auger well for the process we have in front of us at the moment but we will try to do our very best to make sure that community engagement will actually take place under this bill because it is about making sure that our communities are empowered and are able. Our communities can work rapidly—they can work rapidly. 
Nobody—nobody—wants to impede the progress of our city in recovering from our nation’s worst natural disaster. But as Dean Peter Beck of the Christchurch Cathedral said in his submission to the select committee yesterday this recovery needs to be Christchurch-driven. It needs to be Christchurch-driven and not Wellington-driven. That is why we need the community to be involved; we do not need to have assembled a Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority of Wellington bureaucrats. We need to have the community involved because as Dean Peter noted to the committee yesterday there is much anxiety. This is not the first quake; this is the second quake and many people have been living with the consequences now for 7 long hard months. We are heading into what may be a vicious winter given we have had a long hot summer and that is why we need to make sure the community’s voice comes through loud and clear. 
As the dean also noted we need to engage the heart and spirit of the Christchurch community not just to have the recovery process top-down. It needs to be bottom-up otherwise as he noted finally in respect of his comments cynics might say that the community forum encapsulated in the bill could be just something of a sideshow. It would be a tragedy for us all if that were the case. We must make sure Christchurch people are involved. They are strong-willed they are community-focused and they need to be very much at the heart of this bill. 
I will turn to the issues of the central business district of Christchurch which is at the heart of my community and which is the focus of much of the bill—and appropriately so given that it is the commercial heart of our city and our province. Some very big issues are looming in respect of insurance demolition and those who are to pay for that demolition. Just yesterday the controller announced that another 123 buildings need either full or partial demolition and that most of them are in the central business district. That is on top of 184 other buildings so already more than 300 buildings have been earmarked for demolition. Most of them are outside the red zone. As John Hamilton the civil defence controller indicated that list will grow by several hundred. We may be talking about the thick end of a thousand buildings needing demolition so it is absolutely crucial that this bill gets the issues right. 
I note that one of the parties that submitted on the bill the Insurance Council of New Zealand was among those parties that had not seen the bill until it was tabled in the House yesterday. That council is the representative body of the insurance industry and it has very valid concerns about the issues of who will meet the costs of demolition. Of course huge buildings in our central business district may need to be imploded in order to be brought down or we may need some other rapid process to take them down. I am thinking of the Hotel Grand Chancellor and Clarendon Towers. The signals are that to take them down by conventional process will take months and months and that that will impact on the central business district’s ability to recover. The potential for exploding those buildings and bringing them down also raises issues about buildings in their shadow and potentially of damage being brought down on undamaged buildings. 
We have huge issues and that is why this bill is so important in terms of its complex detail. That is why I made the point that we firstly needed to have some genuine participation in and consultation about the bill and then we needed to ensure that the processes for engagement with the community—the business community and the people in affected suburbs—were genuine and that people were able to have real input into the running of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority from there on. 
I note that organisations such as IconiC Interests in Conserving the Identity of Christchurch which was formed after the bill was drafted are standing ready to be involved and they want to be involved. I will give members an example with which those organisations have already been involved. Anthony Gough owns two buildings in Hereford Street both of which were demolished without any consultation with or reference to him. One of those buildings needed to come down and the status of the other was questionable but both buildings happened to be painted the same colour and both came down. That is why we need this bill to be absolutely precise. We need to be clear about the processes and to make sure that people have input into those processes which will ensure that we do not have further unwarranted demolitions like that. 
I will work as the MP for Christchurch Central to do all I can in the next few hours to improve this bill. I will work for my constituents in both the central business district and the affected suburbs of Christchurch Central. I will do my very best to make the best of this Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation but I will do so with some considerable anxiety given the lack of engagement that the Government has had to date with interested parties. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 This Government is focused on the things that matter. The Canterbury earthquake recovery is top of everyone’s agenda right now. I was very proud to be part of the parliamentary committee that heard evidence over the last few days and it was very ably chaired by Chris Auchinvole. 
We have heard in this House that Labour members will not be playing petty politics but I have to say that I have been enormously embarrassed to be a member of Parliament having witnessed the behaviour of some of those members in the past few days. Their pathetic posturing has been embarrassing to me as a member of this House. When submitters take the time to appear before us and provide evidence they want to know that they are being taken seriously. Members on this side of the House take them seriously. We know that timelines are tight and that is to be expected in a time of emergency. The Prime Minister was in the Taupo electorate last week and the resounding comments when members of the public came up to him acknowledged the Government’s strong leadership in this time of crisis. One submitter yesterday acknowledged the fact that there was a short time frame for public submissions. But that was clearly preferable than having all readings of this bill at once. So instead of the petty politics that some of the Labour members engaged in today I want to bring the voices of those submitters to this House. 
The Christchurch City Council supports the bill. It accepts the need for a single Government-funded agency to coordinate the recovery in Christchurch and it is grateful for the leadership provided by the Government. If we look at Environment Canterbury we see that it is supportive of the direction the Government has taken in setting up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. The Legislation Advisory Committee had some very useful things to say to us. At the start of its evidence it went through a checklist of the principles when emergency laws are being put together and it was able to tick all of those boxes with this bill. The New Zealand Law Society acknowledged that the extraordinary events in Canterbury need an extraordinary legislative response. Ngai Tahu’s words have been brought to this House already and I want to stress the fact that they said that extraordinary powers were in this bill but they are not unchecked. They also talked about the fact that natural disasters demonstrate very clearly the need for dedicated leadership for the clear distribution of responsibilities between entities for clear accountabilities to the people and business of Christchurch and for funding and resources from central government. 
The Canterbury District Health Board also came before us and talked about the importance of the ability to prevent illness and for people to stay healthy largely being determined by how they live their lives. It stressed the importance for us to focus not only efficiently and quickly but also holistically on rebuilding Canterbury. Orion also recognised the efforts that the Government is putting in by responding quickly and effectively. The very able member for Selwyn Amy Adams has spoken about the fact that her district council has worked incredibly well to recover from the first earthquake and it is also supportive of the concept envisaged in the provisions in the bill. Waimakariri is also supportive. 
I think it is very clear that the voices of the submitters who gave evidence yesterday recognise the fact that this is emergency legislation recognise that these are extraordinary times and that extraordinary powers are being given and recognise that we need those powers. I am very proud to be part of a Government that is committed to rebuilding Christchurch and Canterbury. It is a Government that is focusing on the issues that matter and not playing petty politics in this House. We are focused on getting things done. This is what matters to Christchurch. This is what matters to the country. I am very proud to be speaking in support of the second reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 111 
New Zealand National 58; New Zealand Labour 42; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 4; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 11 
Green Party 9; Independents: Carter C Harawira. 
Bill read a second time. 
In Committee 
JO GOODHEW (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I seek leave for the bill to be taken as one question and for members to have unlimited calls. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Clauses 1 and 2 Parts 1 and 2 and schedules 1 and 2 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 I do not intend to take a lot of time at this point but I will speak again during the process of this Committee stage. I want to indicate that there is a document being provided to parties indicating the Government’s position on a number of recommendations that came through from the Local Government and Environment Committee. That is in addition to a number of recommendations previously considered which were supplied by Labour prior to the select committee process. I know there are other Supplementary Order Papers coming from members this afternoon. The Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper that gives life to the agreed parts of the document being provided will be with the Committee as soon as possible; officials are working on it at the moment. We are some minutes ahead of where I thought we might be at this stage. There is no intention to try to slow that process. That Supplementary Order Paper needs to be properly written and that is why that document is being provided to give those early indications. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I had the opportunity to sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee over the past couple of days as it fulfilled its task as it was required to do by the House on Tuesday to hear evidence on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will make a couple of points in what I take will be a wide-ranging debate given that all the parts of the bill are being heard and debated together. My first point is to agree with an observation made by Amy Adams in her second reading speech which was that members on this side of the Chamber agree that the Canterbury situation calls for emergency powers. That was made crystal clear in the minority view set out by the committee and reported back to the House. 
But members on this side of the Chamber differ from members of the Government in the following ways: we do not believe that this process merits urgency; we do not believe that the Minister requires powers beyond the reach of the courts; we do not believe that the ordinary rights of New Zealanders to have recourse to the courts by way of appeal need to be abridged; and we do not agree that the powers of Parliament in particular to extend laws should be delegated just to the executive particularly not this executive. That is an unnecessary usurpation of the role of Parliament. It is unconstitutional. It should not have been done after the September earthquake but it was. 
Nicky Wagner 
: You voted for it. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: We have just heard Nikki Kaye in her first interjection during this debate. Let us hope the future interjections if there are any— 
Amy Adams 
: At least get the name right. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Oh I am sorry. It was one the generic members on the other side. It was actually Nicky Wagner. My apologies for the confusion but sometimes they all blur into one. She said “You voted for it.” Well I tell Ms Wagner that we voted for it because we believe that we need to get on as has been said and deal with the emergency in Canterbury. But that does not mean we need effectively to elect a dictatorship to do it. The problem that will happen when people look back at the way this Parliament has dealt with this situation is the problem that applies to all attempts at dictatorship. It looks like a great idea to make the trains run on time at the point when the attempt is made. But the precedent is incredibly regrettable. 
Amy Adams 
: Come and live in a broken house over winter and talk about precedents. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Amy Adams should know that; she has a law degree. Maybe she slept through the constitutional law section of that degree. The reality is that it does not pay to disturb constitutional arrangements. We are acting in haste and we will repent at leisure. I am putting that on the record now so that Labour’s position is crystal clear. 
If there had been proper process in relation to this legislation we would have a better bill. It would reflect better practice—better international practice—in relation to recovery. There would be a Crown entity in place not one completely amenable to the control and direction of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. There would be much better provisions in relation to collaboration with the community. Those are the sorts of things that are paid lip-service to by members opposite but which they plainly do not mean given the provisions of the bill. 
The Minister has just told us that there is a 21-page summary that has been made available to us. It contains his decisions in relation to which recommendations by the submitters to the select committee are to be accepted and which are not. I want to be fair in paying tribute to the Minister for that exercise. There are some important matters that have been taken on board and I look forward to eventually seeing the Supplementary Order Paper that carries them through. Unfortunately the ones I have drawn attention to in relation to the very wide powers that will go to the executive at the expense of this Parliament and in relation to appeal rights are not actioned. That will be a problem going forward. 
This as I have said is not an optimal bill but it is better because of the insistence of Labour on some sort of select committee process so that there could be at least some sort of input from persons other than in this Chamber. It would have been better if there had been more time more notice and better public input. It would have been better if we had had officials’ advice which was not available to us in the process and if we had the evidence that was presented to us recorded and transcribed. But because of the way this was done none of that was available. As I said the bill is better because of some public input. It could have been so much better if we had had a better process. 
Having said that I pay tribute to a number of people who participated in the process to make the bill better than it otherwise would have been. I start with the Clerk of the House. This was an unusual procedure. We were blessed to have her guidance late at night as it happened on Tuesday. That guidance was extremely valuable I think to all members of the committee in terms of discharging their responsibilities. 
I pay tribute to my Labour colleagues for the work they did on the committee. They were diligent and careful in terms of their hearing of the evidence. I reject the very unfortunate comments made by Louise Upston to the contrary. I actually expected better from that member because she played an important and constructive role on the committee itself. I would have thought she might have recognised that Labour members in insisting on the process to start with and then participating fully in it more than discharged their parliamentary responsibilities. 
I will say that the chair did a good job in difficult circumstances and ultimately when we came to consider the production of the minority report National members recognised that their ultimate responsibilities lay with their roles as parliamentarians and it is appropriate to put that on record. 
I also pay tribute to Heather Roy and Kennedy Graham. They were true respecters of such parliamentary process as we could have in the process and it is valuable to record their contribution. I will say more about the detailed concerns I have at a later point in the Committee stage debate particularly in respect of the dangers around the delegation of powers to the Minister and to the executive by Parliament. Meanwhile I will repeat my rejection of the words of Louise Upston in her second reading speech. Members on this side of the House are not playing politics. If we were we would be voting against the bill. As it is we are voting for the bill at this point. That is our contribution to ensuring that the right thing is done in Canterbury. Members on the other side of the House should not expect that that means a blank cheque. I conclude my remarks by echoing something that was said earlier by Clayton Cosgrove. This recovery model has been chosen by the Government. We will try to make it work but if our concerns are realised that the model will not work as well as it might and if the very wide powers that are conferred by the model are abused then it is very clear where the responsibility for that failure and that abuse will lie. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I will pick up on some of the process points Mr Chauvel dealt with. I say to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery that I was not here for his explanation as to why we do not have a Supplementary Order Paper from the Government but I had a short conversation with him. We are here in the Committee stage considering extraordinary legislation and we have no Government Supplementary Order Paper. That is not good enough. It goes beyond just-in-time management. 
The people of Canterbury want the bill to work but for it to work we have to have a basic process. Yesterday in the Local Government and Environment Committee extraordinarily we were denied the right to have officials with us in an advisory capacity. People who are listening need to understand the situation. I suspect as I have said before to Mr Brownlee that people want us to get on with the bill but they also want us to get it right the first time and not be back here in a couple of months 6 months or whenever saying that we have to fix the things that people told us we should fix but we did not. People want us to get the bill right first time. We need officials in the select committee because we do not have a monopoly on all knowledge. Submitters were testing out arguments and making suggestions and it would have been helpful and strategically smart for all sides to have had officials present for a health check so we could get the bill right. 
We did not have officials present and we had 4 hours and 40 minutes of a select committee process with the public. I agree that the select committee was rightly targeted to key stakeholders. We did not expect as I think somebody said that there should have been weeks of a select committee process but we would have been happy with an extra 24 hours. We would have been happy if the Minister had signalled to submitters on Friday that there would be a select committee hearing so that they had the weekend to come up with robust submissions. Submitters had less than 24 hours’ notice. They did an extraordinary job. I pay tribute to Chris Auchinvole for his chairing. He did a wonderful impression of Henry Kissinger in trying to diplomatically knit the show together. I accept that there is some robust emotion around the bill which some people characterise as politics and others of us would characterise as doing our job. 
We had 4 hours and 40 minutes for people to discuss their submissions. As I have said before when Dr Warren Young and Mr George Tanner from the Legislation Advisory Council were asked when they had received the bill they told us that the first time they had seen it was at 4 o’clock or thereabouts when it was put on the website. Why do we want a little extra scrutiny? We want a little extra scrutiny so that we can ensure as I keep saying that we get the bill right. There is no politics in that. If I were the Minister in the chair I would first recognise that I do not have a monopoly on all knowledge and I would want a reasonable amount of advice from others even if it was for a political alibi—to say I listened. But even that advice has not been engaged. If I were the Minister I would want advice to ensure that I could put legislation in front of this Parliament that would give confidence to the people of Canterbury that we will get it right first time. 
Here we are now at 5 to 11. We rise for lunch at 1 o’clock. We will come back for question time which I presume will go from 2 o’clock to 3 o’clock or 3.30 and then we have to vote on the Committee stage. We then have to have the third reading which has to be concluded by 6 o’clock. We do not have a Supplementary Order Paper sitting here from the Minister. 
Members might ask where Labour’s amendments are. Our amendments are sorted but we cannot put them forward until we know exactly what the Government’s plans are. We have an indication and I thank Mr Brownlee for that. We asked him for an indication last night and a short time ago a list arrived of what he agrees and disagrees with in respect of the submitters. But before we can deal to the bill in a proper and professional way we need a Supplementary Order Paper. I say to Mr Brownlee that this is not parliamentary technicalities. For those outside this place who do not know I tell them that a Supplementary Order Paper is the guts of the Government’s amendments to the legislation—what Mr Brownlee agrees with and will pass and what he disagrees with and will vote against. We do not even have that. 
I say to Mr Brownlee that his approach goes beyond just-in-time management. Normally Mr Brownlee drops a Supplementary Order Paper 2 or 3 minutes before we are about to debate it to ensure that the Opposition has virtually no time to see it. We are now in legislative limbo because Mr Brownlee has not done his job. I do not say so out of any malice or spite. I say to Mr Brownlee that his job like all our jobs in this place is to get the legislation right. We are in the Committee stage of the bill and we do not have a Supplementary Order Paper. We do not have the Minister’s intentions as to what he proposes what the plan is the detail around the structure of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and his formal response to submitters—not just to us. We had input through letters to Mr Brownlee.  
This process will fill people will fear if this is how we will march on. Submitters were not allowed to have their say and were not given any notice. They were given 4 hours and 40 minutes to discuss their submissions. The committee was prevented from asking technical questions and receiving technical advice because officials were not available to us in an advisory capacity and we could not engage with them as advisers. The Minister owes the Committee a detailed explanation. If having less than 24 hours to put together submissions is good enough for submitters—councillors the Legislation Advisory Committee and the Law Society which had less than 24 hours to put together a very diligent submission—then I would have thought that with all the Government’s resources and departments at its disposal working overnight to Mr Brownlee’s timetable he could have turned up at the start of the Committee stage with his plan and his legislative amendments. It is impossible for the House to respond to legislative amendments that we do not have before us. I pay tribute to Mr Graham and the Greens who have set out their proposals. We have seen the proposals and I believe that we have shared many of our amendments with the Green member. But we cannot respond until we have the Government Supplementary Order Paper.  
I do not know whether this is a portent of things to come. I make the offer to Mr Brownlee as I have consistently made that we want to enable the legislation to work. I say to Mr Brownlee that it will go through today with or without our support. We reserve that right until we see his Supplementary Order Paper but the bill will go through; the Minister has told us the Government has the numbers. Regardless of our fears and thoughts on the issue once the bill goes through Labour members will work diligently to try to ensure that it works even with the reserverations we have and even with the extreme process.  
I say again to Mr Brownlee that it is not good enough to confuse consultation with delay. One does not impede the other. Twenty-four hours given that the state of emergency is extended until 16 April would not have altered or delayed the position for Cantabrians one iota. It would have allowed more expertise and for officials to gather their thoughts and provide assistance to the Government as we have tried to do. Now we sit here in legislative limbo as the hours tick away until lunch and we do not have a Government Supplementary Order Paper.  
I do not know whether the Government has ground to a halt overnight. I do not know whether it is because of a level of incompetence or fatigue; it could be both. We are willing to cooperate with the Government even at this late stage. Mr Brownlee knows the amendments we wish to make. He has had the letters for a week. Even at this late stage we are still willing to cooperate. I make that genuine offer to him. I would say to the Minister that if this is a deliberate attempt to try to shut us down or if this is incompetence or mismanagement he owes it to the people of Canterbury to get on his feet and explain in detail where we are on this. 
I reiterate one other point. Mr Brownlee can stand and say that any member who raises a criticism is being political. Well I say to hell with that. I will stand like Ms Dalziel Ms Dyson Mr Burns and others have beside our constituents and raise concerns and ideas until I drop. If others want to characterise that either in the media or in this place as being political well so be it. I will sleep at night with my conscience clear because our duty on this side of the Chamber is to assist. 
Normally in the process when a member is upset about something in Parliament he or she fires off a press statement and has a go. Our modus operandi has been to speak to Mr Brownlee privately to then write to him if there is no action and then if we are deeply concerned to raise the issue publicly. We have not engaged in piles of parliamentary questions or endless media statements and we have entered the public arena only when we have been deeply concerned that no action was occurring. We have acted differently. In fact we have been criticised—I have and I know Ms Dalziel and others have—for the fact that we have not put the boot in and that criticism has come from people who are deeply concerned. So I say to Mr Brownlee that he owes us an explanation. 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I want to address the immediate practical issue of the Green Party’s Supplementary Order Papers and in doing so I want to divide my time. I will talk initially to the issue of community engagement. As I said during the first reading debate on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill our concerns revolve around a twofold process: firstly the lack of adequate community engagement; and secondly the extensive powers. I would like to treat our Supplementary Order Papers accordingly. I will focus for the moment only on the community engagement aspect of our concerns. On Supplementary Order Paper 232—members will have it in front of them I think—we have two amendments: one to clause 6 and one to clause 7. On Supplementary Order Paper 235 we have an amendment to clause 20 and I will address that later as well. 
With regard to Supplementary Order Paper 232 we propose to insert the following words into clause 6(2): “and broadly representative of communities and organisations in Christchurch”. Those words would come after the words “suitably qualified” in the provision as it stands. We submit that amendment because we believe that the people of Christchurch have a right to a say in how their city should be rebuilt. Currently the proposed community forum will be hand-picked by the Minister and in our view this compromises its independence. Our amendment to clause 6 also requires that membership of it be approved by the House of Representatives. In a similar vein our amendment to clause 7 would add the following subclause after subclause (2): “The Minister and the chief executive must have regard to any advice that they are given by the cross-party group.” 
In putting forward those Supplementary Order Papers we have special regard to some of the comments by a number of recognised lawyers throughout the land—constitutional lawyers and others. Let me quote if I may from one Dean Knight who says the following—and I remind members that this is not the Green Party speaking; I am quoting a recognised legal authority. I quote Mr Knight: “I acknowledge the gravity of the task facing Christchurch and other districts. The recovery and rebuilding project is a massive one one that is probably beyond the capacity of present local authorities and other agencies. I accept therefore that central government involvement is essential. However I question the top-down rather than bottom-up model that has been adopted. … The legislative scheme does not build in the usual elements of local democracy and community participation that is traditionally seen and expected in legislation dealing with town planning and management of local resources.” 
He further says: “The predominant thinking nowadays is that’’—and this is in rebuttal to the comments that the international experience is that recovery delayed is recovery denied and that therefore we have to have a timely and expedited recovery. Our understanding of the international experience is that if it not the reverse it is at least balanced by the requirement that there be adequate community engagement because if we need a timely recovery we also need a legitimate recovery. So I appeal to the Minister and to the Government to have regard to balancing expedition of the recovery and rebuild with the legitimacy from community engagement. I know that the phraseology is there in the Act as it stands; it is a matter how it is enacted and how we observe it once this bill passes. Dean Knight observes that: “The predominant thinking nowadays is that town planning or resource management decisions ought to be made at the local level in a way that allows the affected communities to have their say in their development. It recognises that they will be best-placed to assess the propriety of the plans and generally enhances the legitimacy of the measures adopted. It is also consistent with the principle of subsidiarity which says that decisions ought to be made at the lowest possible level within the governmental framework.” Further he says: “In practical terms a community-centred model would charge the local authorities themselves with developing the overarching recovery strategy—without the need for ministerial sign-off. CERA would still have a role in assisting local authorities. It could operate as a portal through which governmental assistance could be provided to support these efforts through cooption of staff to assist the local authorities … and to coordinate central government assistance necessary to convert that vision into action.” 
That is the philosophy on which the Green Party rests this particular Supplementary Order Paper. There is a need for community engagement not only to be present in the Act but also to be the dominant theme running through the Act and for decision making that is to be made by the nation as a whole through the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority the Government and the Christchurch City Council to be reflective of community input. So I commend our Supplementary Order Paper relating to clauses 6 and 7 to the Committee. I look forward to the response of the Minister. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Junior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I seek some clarification. We are in a very difficult situation here and I wonder whether we could consider invoking Standing Order 173 to suspend the Committee of the whole House. We do not have the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper. It has not been tabled. The Chair quite rightly said we are running ahead of time but it has now been 25 minutes and we still do not have the Supplementary Order Paper on the Table. There has been some legitimate debate from members about amendments but we are in a very strange situation without the Supplementary Order Paper before us. I wonder whether we should consider—without invoking disorder—suspending the Committee of the whole House. We think the Opposition is placed in a grave situation. I ask for your clarification. 
JO GOODHEW (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 In reference to the particular situation I would like to add my comments. We are having a wide-ranging debate in the Committee stage with no limit on what can be discussed. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill is on the Table before us and we can discuss what was raised at the Local Government and Environment Committee. We have an indication from members during this Committee stage of what they agree with and what they do not agree with. As is able to happen at any time a Supplementary Order Paper can be tabled at any stage of Committee without in fact the whole Committee having had the opportunity to discuss it. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I want to preface my comments by giving some context to my colleague’s request. There is no delay by the Opposition. The delay here is that the Government has not produced the critical document that is needed for us to proceed. There is no attempt from Labour members to delay proceedings. If the document arrives we are back on deck. I will raise an issue that the Government whip raised. Yes we do have an informal document that has no parliamentary standing that gives an indication. It states “agreed” and “noted”—and nobody knows what “noted” actually means—but it has no official standing. In order for the document to proceed to the Committee stage the Government must produce its amendments to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. We have had commitments on this and I think it would be illogical and absurd if this debate moved ahead to the point where we were debating Opposition amendments but we were not aware of what the Government proposed to do. I want to say for those in the press gallery and others that there has been no attempt by Labour members at any point to delay this bill. Our problem is that we are meant to be debating the Government Supplementary Order Paper and its associated amendments from us and we have difficulty doing so when it does not exist. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: You have made some fair points there and I invite the Minister to say a few words. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 The document that the member refers to makes it very clear what the Government is going to put into the Supplementary Order Paper and there are people drafting that Supplementary Order Paper at the present time. But let us not go about the pretence that the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper is essential to the business of this House in dealing with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. It is essential that the House look at the aspects of any Supplementary Order Paper once it is laid on the Table. But if the Opposition wants to suspend the debate then we will simply withdraw the Supplementary Order Paper offer and carry on with the bill. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Point of order Mr Chairperson— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No no. The original point of order was from the junior Opposition whip who asked that the Committee be suspended because of the absence at this stage of the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper. That cannot happen. The Committee cannot be suspended; it can only report progress. The Minister is the person who can report progress and ask that the Committee sit again presently. That is the Minister’s prerogative. If we go back to Standing Order 173 which the member Steve Chadwick used in the point of order we see that it states: “(1) The chairperson may temporarily suspend the proceedings of the committee—(a) in the case of any grave disorder arising in committee or (b) in accordance with a decision of the House or a determination of the Business Committee or (c) in the event of an emergency situation.” That does not apply. In regard to the tabling of a Supplementary Order Paper—and I hear what the Hon Clayton Cosgrove said—I know that there is some delay and the Minister has identified that but it is the Government’s prerogative to table a Supplementary Order Paper at any stage. The Minister identified that it is being worked on. It was agreed at the beginning of the Committee stage that this is a wide-ranging debate on all parts and there are unlimited calls which is a departure from the normal process that is adopted. It is an opportunity for all members to participate in a wide-ranging debate even though we do not have the Supplementary Order Paper. I rule accordingly that the point of order from the junior whip does not stand. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. You have made your ruling. It is your ruling. I would just ask for some indulgence and some advice. Standing Order 173 talks about “grave disorder” and clearly there is not grave disorder and there will not be grave disorder. The difficulty I suppose is that you could characterise disorder in a number of ways. The disorder that we find ourselves in— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No we are not debating what “grave disorder” is in respect of Standing Order 173. I have ruled that this debate will continue. We are awaiting the Supplementary Order Paper. Everyone is awaiting it. That does not stop the proceedings of the Committee stage and we are moving forward on that. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Is this a new point of order? 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: It is. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: It needs to be; otherwise you are trifling with the Chair. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I will not trifle with the Chair. This is a matter of critical importance. There is no more important piece of legislation that I can recall. The difficulty we are in is this. You are right: proceedings can proceed. The difficulty is that we are in a situation that is slightly illogical. Yes it is a wide-ranging debate but I cannot recall a time—certainly not in my time but there are people here who have been here for longer than I—when we have had a Committee stage like this. The central point of the Committee stage is to debate the Government’s changes to the legislation. We are now almost 45 minutes in and we do not have the ability to do our job which is to scrutinise those changes. I say to you that this is an illogical situation. I appeal to your good nature and your good sense. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I hear the member. There is nothing to stop the continuation of the debate on the bill because the bill is before us. When the Supplementary Order Paper is lodged that is a matter for individual debates on certain aspects of what the Supplementary Order Paper may contain. That does not interfere with the process of the Committee stage of the bill. On that basis we are continuing. [ 
Interruption 
] I am not taking any more points on this. We are moving on. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: If this is not a new point of order— 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I ask through you then Mr Chairperson whether the Minister could please out of courtesy contact whomever he needs to and advise us approximately when the Supplementary Order Paper will be available. I raise this because at 1 o’clock as you know we will have to stop for the luncheon adjournment. When we come back after question time there is likely to be about half an hour before the agreed time to proceed to the third reading. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: You have asked for the Minister to respond to that question. I will ask the Hon Gerry Brownlee to comment. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 I think with all due respect to the concerns that are being raised by the member Clayton Cosgrove that nothing will be in the Supplementary Order Paper that is not in the bill other than the rewritten compensation clause which he knows was part of a discussion at a committee last evening. The amendments are simple they are straightforward and there is no attempt to come up with anything that is outside what is stated in the document I have here. Given the fact that officials worked through until the late hours of this morning putting this document together and checking it as they went with opinion from the Government it is outrageous to suggest that they should be able to take a 21-page document— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Mr Chairperson you asked me to explain. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No you are getting into debating points. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: No I am not; I am explaining what is happening because we have had a lot— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I ask the Minister to sit down. The question was about the timing of this. We are now getting into debating the merits of the points. This is not a debate; this is a point of order. The Minister explained the situation and what is happening; we have taken that that is what the position is and that is where we will leave it. We are moving on with the debate. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I had asked a question and I thank you for facilitating that. The question was whether the Minister could give us an indication of the timing given that we will have— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No you cannot demand a response to that. The Minister— 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I am asking; I am not demanding. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No. The Minister had indicated the process. You cannot demand or ask when the Supplementary Order Paper will be tabled. He has given a very clear indication of what the process is and that is where we are leaving it. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I wish to ask the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery to reflect on the purpose clause of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I want him to look at clause 3(b) and I want to make this point to him. I know that the Minister will have to accept that I have tried to engage with him on issues of community participation right from the outset. I tabled a letter that I wrote to him on 28 September last year and his reply on 24 December suggested that we had reached some meeting of the minds about how important community engagement was. Yet I read in the bill that one of its purposes in clause 3(b) is “to enable community participation in the planning of the recovery of affected communities without impeding a focused timely and expedited recovery:”. But therein lies the problem. The problem is that the Minister does not understand what the Waimakariri District Council told us at the Local Government and Environment Committee yesterday which was that community participation in its recovery actually promotes “a focused timely and expedited recovery”. It does not impede it. The use of the negative expression “without impeding” implies that community participation could impede recovery when in fact it could promote it. In fact it will promote it but what will impede progress for our communities’ recovery is the failure to acknowledge the essential critical role that our communities have in their recovery. The purposes of the Act include community participation only in the planning of the recovery which is nonsense. Of course communities have to be involved in the planning but they have to be involved in the delivery as well. Otherwise we will not have meaningful engagement. That is what I want this debate to be about—not just about up and down backwards and forwards batting to and fro. I would like meaningful engagement with the Minister. I have tried to engage in that right from the very outset and I have found on instances that we I thought reached a meeting of the minds particularly on this issue. Yet I read this bill with great disappointment. 
The Minister stated that anyone who disagreed with the proposal that is before us was somehow holding up progress. Well I do not want that to be the implication and I am glad that the Minister is shaking his head because he is suggesting— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Where did I say it? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well the Minister used the expression earlier on that if we were in any way holding people back we were not thinking about the people who were living in the damaged houses and on the damaged streets. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I didn’t say that. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yes I heard the member say that because I was thinking that he was referring to me. The Minister was talking about my neighbours. But this is the issue and this is the lesson. 
When the Minister put out the statement about what the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority was going to be he talked about the fact that the Government had looked very carefully at what had happened overseas. The Government quoted the particular disasters that this authority was having reference to. It said that it had “looked at international experience of recovery from natural disasters including Cyclone Tracey … Hurricane Katrina … Black Sunday bushfires … and Floods Queensland Australia 2011.” I find it interesting that the Minister’s reference to when he started looking at recovery included something that had happened in 2011 because the need for recovery planning was actually derived from the first earthquake in 2010 and was exacerbated by the second earthquake. 
Nobody disagrees that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission was put in place to do the regional coordination that would normally have been done under the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management regime. We understand that the commission would have required additional powers in order to take over the role that is now placed with this Government department the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. This is where I think the Minister has gone wrong. He has not studied any of those examples because all of those examples have arms-length Crown entities which are separate from the Government. They are not Government departments. They are separate from but connected to the Government with a board sitting between the political animal that is the Government and the organisation that has to develop the recovery model. 
People are saying that there is a need for an organisational culture and that is why we on this side of the Chamber are saying that we will make this work—because it has to work. There is no alternative. But the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is not the structure we would have chosen because the organisational culture we require has to translate the intention into reality—that is there has to be an understanding of and a commitment to shaping the recovery process as a process that engages and empowers local communities. I think that the words “engagement” and “empowerment” are fundamental to understanding any of the lessons that are learnt from any of those natural disasters. So when we take that we have to build an organisational culture that translates that into reality which I believe and the Minister has been advised is a challenge of gargantuan proportions given the tendency to think that minimal consultation can substitute for authentic community engagement. I know that that advice has gone to Government members and they have to think about what it means. A commitment to authentic participatory recovery involves significant resource and timing implications that need to be explicitly recognised. That is why there is an imperative about this engagement process and participation of the community has to be at its heart. This is where I think the Minister again misunderstands the lesson of Hurricane Katrina—and I made this point the day before yesterday—that we need to reconcile the need to marshal the authority of the State and the entrepreneurship of the market to rebuild quickly. They are important and we have to take that into consideration. Yes this organisational structure will do that but there is an organisational structure that would do it better. But that is by the by; we cannot debate that now because the structure was put in place 2 weeks ago. But the balancing requirement with that is the necessity to plan in an inclusive deliberative innovative and transformative manner. 
One of the issues that came out of Hurricane Katrina was the fact that unless we identify what was called the missing story in the Katrina debacle and unless we look at the historic choices that were made and address those—physical development public risk community resilience and sustainability—the lesson we learn is that the recovery process is to see pre-event vulnerability simply re-entrenched and therefore the opportunity to reduce disaster risk is lost. Who knows about what those pre-event vulnerabilities are? It is the community itself that knows the answer to that question and unless communities are at the heart of this process there will be a serious risk that we will not see the benefits of the deliberative innovative and transformative processes we are encouraged to adopt through Hurricane Katrina’s mistakes. We need to lock those into the legislation and I have some amendments that I will be putting forward in the House that I hope the Government will look at. They will bring that to the fore. 
The Government has also talked about the community forum as its representation of the importance of engagement with local community interests through the recovery process referencing international experience. Can I say that a hand-picked group of people does not meet international best practice at all; in fact it runs the serious risk that the Government will re-entrench all of the pre-existing problems we have. If the Minister seriously looks at the experience of Hurricane Katrina he will see that it was discovered that the vulnerable populations in New Orleans had all of their interests superseded by those who already had the power the status and the ability to engage with the Government at every level. That is the problem. Unless the Minister understands that he has to enable and empower the communities that have those pre-existing vulnerabilities then he himself will be responsible for what occurs. 
All of the international literature tells us that recovery is an opportunity for reconciliation restoration and renewal and that it is not just a rebuilding project. The literature tells us that practical political and moral challenges are required to be balanced with deliberation and speed through leadership and collaboration and it must involve local people because it is their recovery. There is one expression that I have learnt from reading the literature: “The wisdom of the community always exceeds the knowledge of the experts.” I think we need to learn that lesson and we need to learn it fast. 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to rise and speak on this exceptionally important bill the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I had the pleasure to be a member of the parliamentary committee that journeyed to Christchurch yesterday to hear evidence and worked into the night last night to progress this legislation. We took a very early morning flight and we arrived in Christchurch with time up our sleeves before our hearings began at Addington Raceway. 
As members of the Local Government and Environment Committee we took time to make ourselves aware of the devastation in the central business district. Many of us had spent only a little bit of time in Christchurch before at the very moving memorial service and at that stage we saw the devastation in the eastern suburbs. Therefore we took the opportunity to see some of the devastation visited upon the central business district. 
It was exceptionally sobering to see Colombo Street where for a whole block the façade of shops along one side had been completely torn off exposing the sobering reminders of domestic life within—tables set chairs around and pictures on the wall—untouched for some months. In the distance we could see the lean on the Hotel Grand Chancellor. In other parts of the city we saw the old and much-loved Stone Chamber which was surrounded by a network of fallen scaffolding where the repairs that had been undertaken after the effects of earlier quakes had suffered and the whole façade had tumbled down. It certainly underlined the need for this legislation the need for strong governance and the need for a united and effective response to this long-term tragedy. 
I want to acknowledge the select committee process and the very able chairmanship of Chris Auchinvole. As Charles Chauvel has attested it was a challenge and Chris did an exceptional job. I acknowledge Kennedy Graham whose contribution was measured considered and very positive to the end result and of course the submitters. I also want the Government to give itself and the Minister a pat on the back. 
The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery the Hon Gerry Brownlee has taken the recommendations on board the select committee members have listened and we have here a huge number of recommendations that the Government has taken on board from the hearing of evidence. It is interesting that we have had a certain amount of vituperation from the Opposition benches because a Supplementary Order Paper has yet to be tabled. The reason it is yet to be tabled is of course that the Government has been listening to the evidence and to the debates within the select committee where there has been a certain amount of banter and passionate evidence. The Government has listened to that and taken those things on board. I want to make that point and to come back to some of the other points raised shortly. 
We realise that this bill is crucial. It is crucial because it is setting out appropriate measures to enable the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery and/or the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to facilitate and direct if necessary Greater Christchurch and its communities to respond to and recover from the impact of the Canterbury earthquake. This bill is founded on and recognises the need for community participation. That is something that a number of submitters commented on as have a number of speakers in the Chamber today and if I get a chance to speak later in the debate I will come back to that point. 
We want community involvement in the decision-making process but we must balance that against the need for a timely and coordinated recovery process. We need strong governance and leadership for the rebuilding and recovery of the Greater Christchurch area for the benefit of all those living there and for all New Zealanders. 
Some concern has been expressed about the location of powers regarding the approval of the recovery strategy and the recovery plans. There was some concern that those powers should not be held by Ministers but be implemented by local government structure. We did not agree with this. We believe a recovery process is beyond the capability of current institutions and that new institutional arrangements with specific powers are required. There will be opportunities for significant community participation in the recovery plan. 
A submitter expressed some concern which was taken on board and looked at carefully that the purpose provision was too wide and that it preconditions the exercise of executive and coercive powers. We do not agree with this. We do not think it is necessary to outline criteria for when and why the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority or the Minister can exercise powers. Significant checks and balances have been built into the legislation to ensure that powers are exercised only in accordance with the purpose of the legislation and only if reasonably necessary. Also the exercise of a statutory power can be subject to judicial review. 
The bill also contains other significant protections. Some of these are that the power to require information can be used only when the information can be provided without unreasonable difficulty or expense. Before disseminating information the chief executive must consider the privacy principles under the Privacy Act and the need to protect confidential and commercially sensitive information. 
The person exercising the power of entry must produce evidence of authorisation and where practicable this power must be exercised at a reasonable time and prior notice of entry must be given. Before exercising a survey power the chief executive must consult the Surveyor-General and where there is a dispute a mechanism will be put into place whereby landowners can disagree with the definition process. 
In undertaking building works a notice is required to be served on owners occupiers and other persons with an interest in the land. The exercise of powers of direction and step-in rights regarding councils and council organisations does not include the ability to collect rates or to take any other action or powers affecting rates. There are many other checks and balances but I will finish at this point. I commend the bill to the Committee. 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 It was interesting to hear the member opposite Cam Calder talk about what was the first visit to Christchurch for him and maybe for some other members of the select committee since the 22 February quake and to hear from him how different it is to see even if one has seen it on television and in the newspaper the scale of destruction that has been wreaked on our city by that awful disaster. But I have to say that living in Christchurch throughout the last 7 weeks and indeed over the last 7 months is another layer of experience. That is why I took great exception to the comments made by Louise Upston earlier about Opposition members supposedly engaging in petty politics in respect of this bill and these issues. If it is petty to advocate for my constituents who have no running water who in many instances have no toilets and who have broken homes then I plead guilty to being petty. If it is political to advocate for businesses that have faced enormous frustration in the Christchurch central business district to get access to their premises so that they can get hard drives and stock and have some hope of continuing their businesses and keeping people in jobs then I plead guilty to being petty. If it is petty to say that thousands of Cantabrians will be cold this winter because they will not have new heating units installed or they will not have insulation installed to try to make sure they get through winter without getting sick and ill then I will plead guilty to being political and petty. If it is petty or political to say that it is not satisfactory the way the deputy mayor of the city council of my city learnt about the bill that will for 5 years take control of the city of Christchurch with huge impact on the city council and every other organisation institution and person across Christchurch then I am guilty of being petty. 
But along with my colleagues I have been active and I have stepped in to assist thousands of constituents who have been affected by the quakes. I acknowledge that that has been the case across the Chamber. I am not trying to be petty and political about it. I have worked with my political opponent opposite acknowledged her in meetings I have chaired and given her speaking rights. If that is being petty and political I am guilty as charged. It is absolutely critical that we take every opportunity in the very short time frame that this bill provides to get it right. 
Our experience and the experience of this Parliament is that rushed legislation is poor legislation. Almost inevitably rushed legislation requires some return to Parliament to make amendments and to correct faults that were there and not seen as the rush went through. That it is why it is so important we maximise the opportunities of the select committee and that submitters to the select committee are actually given drafts of the bill—not one lawyer at the Christchurch City Council but councillors who turned out yesterday and spent nearly half the day sitting and waiting to make their submission and hearing other submissions: councillors Yani Johanson Helen Broughton the deputy mayor Ngaire Button Glenn Livingstone Chrissie Williams and community board member Paul McMahon. They gave up their time they wanted to be there representing their constituencies they wanted to know how this bill would impact upon them but they were reduced to having to ring my colleague Clayton Cosgrove and beg for the bill to be put on the parliamentary website so they could actually see what was intended for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and what it meant for them as councillors and community board members. That is not acceptable and we have to point that out. If that is being petty I will plead guilty to that. The submitters learnt of the bill only from media and other sources. That is not appropriate. If members want to talk about pettiness within the select committee then I think members opposite might need to look at one of their own members who caused the chair some frustration through the course of the select committee. 
We are now in the Committee stage and we still have no Government Supplementary Order Paper which was indicated to us by a summary of the submissions in the Government’s response as being quite extensive. That is not satisfactory. That is not satisfactory when wide changes are being signalled. We need to know precisely what the Government is intending so we can avoid the risks that are there through rushed legislation. We need to maximise the chance for members of this House to give scrutiny to those Supplementary Order Papers and ensure they are going to do the best thing for our city and to make sure we actually have the best chance for real genuine community engagement in the process. 
I shall talk about that just for a moment. In Marlborough about 10 years ago as editor of the local paper I saw a very real issue around the fact that that province had the lowest wage rates in the country. I looked for a model a template to see what I could do to try to get the community behind an initiative that ended up forming the Marlborough Economic Development Trust. I got a book just printed from an American academic called Dr Michael Briand. It was a summary of how the most successful communities in the United States had rebuilt themselves and had re-engineered themselves to take up economic and other opportunities. The first and overriding principle of that book and I think of any community engagement process was inclusion. If people do not feel a part of a process they will not buy into it they will not accept its outcomes they will be cynical about it and no matter how much top-down soothing and stroking is done they will not buy into the process. That is why it is so important for the Minister to acknowledge that in the processes he is putting in place under his community forum he will allow genuine public engagement. 
It is not something that anyone wants to drag their heels on; nobody wants to see that but we must have a process that allows engagement with those with a real genuine commitment—and there are many people across Christchurch with a passionate commitment to their city who want to be involved. Businesses have had much heartache already over the last 7 weeks in terms of access. They must be represented on that panel in number. People with an interest in the heritage of our city want to be involved. They are not advocating to save every building—that is gone. I can speak from personal experience on this. My electorate office lost its entire front on 22 February in 22 seconds. I will not even dream of asking for any rescue of that building. I will not even dream of asking people to go into that building and rescue goods out of it. I acknowledge that that building is gone; it is history. But we need to maintain the maximum amount of our infrastructure in Christchurch because we will not be able to rebuild rapidly if we have every second building knocked over. We must keep a viable infrastructure—be it heritage or not—repair it strengthen it and put it back in service as soon as possible. That will assist the recovery of our city because if we only have a central business district full of cranes we will have green space across it for a generation and that will not assist those businesses that want to get back into business and are able to restart relatively quickly. 
I am immensely proud and supportive of the initiative from inner-city businesses that want to get some sense of life under way by show weekend at the beginning of November. That is a fantastic time frame but it will require the demolition—yes—of those buildings that cannot be saved but I would suggest the propping up of some buildings that can be saved and the restoration and repair of other buildings that need to be saved. We need people who can advocate on those things who can have a word in the Minister’s ear who can sit at that forum and who can say to him that these are things that need to be taken on board. Also I think represented on that forum there need to be members of the community boards that dot themselves across the city of Christchurch. It is an underused forum at the moment but it has deep connective roots into the community. 
CanCERN has sprung up in the last 6 or 7 months. It has networks right the way across just about all of the affected communities. It should be part of that forum as well. Those affected communities not represented by CanCERN deserve to have their voices also heard at that forum. We should be seeing representatives of the councils on the forum as well. We should also see members of the education and health communities there. They are hugely affected by the quake. We have dozens of schools still not fully operative. We have damage to our major hospital site and we have some damage at Princess Margaret Hospital. Those voices must be heard as we come through. There will be major public health risks in the months that follow from the quake in terms of many thousands of damaged homes. Many homes will be damp people will be overcrowded in many instances; the health voice must be represented. 
I want to see the Supplementary Order Paper to see whether there is any indication in it of what the processes are going to be in respect of the real opportunities the Minister might provide for community engagement and for community participation so we are assured that Christchurch’s voices will be heard as we all engage rapidly in the recovery of our city. Everybody wants to see it move quickly. Everybody wants to have their sector represented through a voice for them and we need to see the Supplementary Order Paper I say to the Minister as soon as possible so we can all be assured that it contains some of the changes we are advocating for. 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I rise to make a contribution in this Committee stage on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill to push back on what I keep hearing from members on the other side of the Chamber. Mr Chauvel said there was no need to be doing this in urgency. Mr Burns the speaker who has just resumed his seat was pushing back on the concept of rushed legislation implying somehow that we should be taking this much more slowly. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: No no “considered”. 
AMY ADAMS 
: That is what they said. No no that is what they said I say to Ms Dalziel. I am not sure how Brendon Burns can in the same contribution talk about the very valid fear we all have about people being out of their houses and facing winter with no heating yet say we should not be rushing this. I do not know where Mr Chauvel is coming from when he says that this bill does not deserve urgency. It does deserve urgency and the way we have developed and delivered this legislation is exactly what needed to happen and I commend the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery for doing it. 
This final draft of the legislation was approved as I understand it through the Cabinet process only on Monday and it was in this House and released on Tuesday. That is when I first saw it; that is when everyone first saw it. As someone living in Canterbury living with this and dealing with people—as I know that all Canterbury MPs are—I say that this is urgent. This is urgent and there is a rush. I cannot accept anybody saying we should slow down. We should not slow down. We need to do this as well as we can but as quickly as we can. I am no apologist for getting this done quickly. On the contrary we have to do it fast. We have to move fast and for anybody to stand in this Chamber and say it is not urgent is a complete insult to the people of Canterbury. 
The other thing I want to push back on is the comment we have heard a couple of times now from the other side of the Chamber about comments made at the Local Government and Environment Committee by the Christchurch City Council when they saw the final copy of this bill. I have no doubt they are right as to when they saw the final version of the bill. But let us not confuse that with the suggestion they were not involved in discussing the concept and the framework from the outset—they were; they absolutely were. In fact the first thing the deputy mayor said at the select committee was that we had a council commitment an acceptance and an agreement to the framework and to the concept. Council members may not have seen the final version of the bill before Tuesday—neither did I—but every one of those organisations has been involved in these discussions from the outset. I do not think the Minister could have done more to talk with them along the way as this process developed without holding it up. 
To suggest that councillors first heard of the bill at 4 o’clock on Tuesday is a complete nonsense. They have been involved as Selwyn District Council Waimakariri District Council Environment Canterbury and Ngai Tahu have acknowledged they have so let us not buy into this suggestion that Christchurch City Council did not know about the bill until late on Tuesday. That is a nonsense. It has been involved from the outset. It has bought into it and supported it and the deputy mayor confirmed that as a council it supports the concept and has done so all the way through. I think that needs to be made very clear and put on the record. 
I will not accept that there is any way to approach this matter except as a matter of urgency. We have to get it right and the mere fact that the Minister and his officials have been working through the night to keep making sure that anything that is picked up is fixed is commendable. Far from not doing his job he is doing his job for the people of Canterbury to the utmost of his ability and absolutely to the level we require. He is getting this done quickly but he has ensured that any person who makes a sensible suggestion is having it fed through into the legislation right up to the last minute. I think that should be commended and this Committee should be supporting it. Rather than looking for excuses to slow down this process members should be doing what they say they will do which is to get in behind it and make sure it works. 
If we want to know what playing politics will look like it will look like sitting on the sidelines and throwing stones from day one. Anybody who will do that is not part of the solution; they are looking for a way to make this Government look bad. I know that the people of Canterbury know that this Government is working hard to get their problems fixed as a matter of urgency. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: You should be ashamed of yourself. 
AMY ADAMS 
: I am not ashamed of myself I say to Ms Dalziel because I want to see this dealt with as a matter of urgency. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: That is outrageous. 
AMY ADAMS 
: What is it outrageous to suggest we deal with this urgently? That is a nonsense. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: How dare you? I have written to every Minister on the Cabinet Committee with decent sensible suggestions. 
AMY ADAMS 
: I have worked with this Minister on my issues from my constituents and they have been dealt with every time. I do not need to go to the media. I deal with it I work with the Minister and I work hard for my constituents and I will continue to do so as a matter of urgency because this is urgent. 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I just want to— 
Paul Quinn 
: Oh a soothing influence! 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM 
: A moment’s pause. I want to pick up an issue I raised earlier—and so did Brendon Burns who has just been maligned and others. It pertains to community engagement. I will make just one further point on community engagement and I wish to then address the issue of powers as well. On the issue of community engagement the Green Party has a further Supplementary Order Paper to offer. It is Supplementary Order Paper 235 and it would address clause 20(3) which currently reads: “Neither the Minister nor any responsible entity has a duty under this Act to consult any person about the development of a Recovery Plan except as provided under this section or in section 17.” That is one example of the difference I think between the Government and the Green Party in its perception of the philosophical thrust of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. The Government in weighing the so-called balance between an expedited rapid recovery and community engagement opts for the former. The Green Party maintains that the balance is not struck in the bill and that there should be a greater involvement of the community to balance that expedited recovery without unnecessarily delaying it. 
I ask why the Minister has to have a complete escape clause that excludes him from any duty to consult with any person other than through clause 17. We look to clause 17 and find that it pertains only to the recovery of the central business district—just the central business district of Christchurch not elsewhere. In consulting on that we look at clause 17(5) and find that it covers the process for the development of the recovery plan. Of course the Minister is obliged to consult with the Christchurch City Council Environment Canterbury Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu and others and indeed the Christchurch City Council takes the lead. But where is the community engagement in that? Clause 17(5) states: “The process for the development of the proposed Recovery Plan for the CBD must include 1 or more public hearings as determined by the Christchurch City Council at which members of the public may appear and be heard.” 
Setting aside—well not setting aside—the drafting issue of whether we can have a mandatory “must include” provision that stipulates “either/or” which does not I think make drafting sense the substantive issue is that there is to be only one public hearing. Under clause 20(3) the Minister has a duty to consult on the recovery plan only in the context of one public hearing pertaining to the central business district. That is demonstrably insufficient and that is why we are proposing that clause 20(3) be deleted and replaced with the words “The Minister and the responsible entities have an obligation to consult affected communities.” That imposes an obligation on the Minister to ensure that all affected communities are involved in the recovery plan. Clause 17(5) states that the process “must include 1 or more public hearings” but it should perhaps be “must include a series of at least 4 public hearings.” We commend Supplementary Order Paper 235 on public engagement pertaining to clause 20 to the Committee. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I bring the Committee’s attention back to one of the statements made in the explanatory note of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. It states: “The Bill is founded on the need for community participation in decision-making processes while balancing this against the need for a timely and coordinated recovery process.” It was interesting to hear Opposition members suggesting that some of the significant parties received the bill with very little notice. Some of the submitters whom we had in front of us commented on the fact that they were pleased to see the significant improvements in the final version of the bill as opposed to earlier versions that they had seen. Members opposite cannot have it both ways. They cannot say there has been no involvement in the bill and people have only just seen it for the first time yet hear submitters comment that in particular the area where they notice improvement is in the strengthening of the provisions on involving the community in decision making. 
I want to draw the Committee’s attention to further aspects of the bill highlighted in the explanatory note particularly about the long-term recovery strategy that will be developed by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority in collaboration with key stakeholders. I think it is fantastic to have the word “collaboration” stated so early in the bill so it is very clear that the community and key stakeholders will be involved in the creation of that very important overarching long-term recovery strategy. We heard from submitters particularly Ngai Tahu that they could see that by acting in good faith with the Government there was a real opportunity for partnership in this dialogue during the creation of very important documents. 
One of the things that disturbed me a little was the fact that there seemed to be a lack of awareness among Labour members about the notification requirements of the long-term strategy so I thought it might be worth drawing their attention to that provision in the bill. It is stated in clause 13 which talks specifically about it and is entitled “Public notification of draft Recovery Strategy.” It states: “The chief executive must ensure that a draft Recovery Strategy is publicly notified.” If that is not a process of direct dialogue with the members of the community and key stakeholders whereby any member of the public will have the opportunity to make written comments on the strategy I am not quite sure what would be. 
One of the earlier speakers talked a lot about the community forum and I think the provisions on the forum are a really important part of this bill in terms of assisting that very important decision-making process. I do not think anyone disagrees that the community has the needs of Christchurch and Canterbury at heart. They know it that because they live it and breathe it. That is why it is very important that this will be—and I will use that word again for the sake of the Opposition—a collaborative process. I commend the Minister for being so upfront and blatantly putting the words “community involvement” “community forum” and “collaboration” all throughout this bill. I think that is a fantastic step forward. 
We recognise the fact that this is extraordinary legislation; I hope that in my time as a member of Parliament we never have the need to do legislation like this again. But also we recognise that this Government is making tough decisions in tough times. It is fantastic to see the support of the majority of the Committee is behind this bill although unfortunately some of the people who are listening to this debate might not actually appreciate that fact given some of the negativity of the comments from the Opposition members. This Government is listening to the community. It is listening to the submitters and the evidence they raised with us. It is taking action right now—right at this very minute—to make changes in order to make sure that this legislation is lasting and delivers the results for Christchurch and Canterbury that it needs to deliver. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 First I restate that the contents of the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper was put together in a document that was provided to members before the House sat this morning. The process that we have gone through over the last couple of days is one that the Opposition asked for and the Government agreed to. I think we are heading towards some regret over that. Although the information that came through from submitters in many parts was valid and useful and we have agreed to those things it took until the very early hours of this morning—some time after 4 a.m.—for this particular bit of work to come together. It then needed further consideration before it was made available to those who would be drafting the Supplementary Order Paper. 
Throughout the morning we have heard of the need to get things right and not make mistakes. We have tabled a bill that we are happy with. We are obviously allowing those people who have made solid submissions to have their concerns reflected in the finished copy of the bill. But I have to say that it will be about another hour before that Supplementary Order Paper is completed. That is not unreasonable in these circumstances. The sort of jumping up and down and beating of the chest that we have seen over this is utterly ridiculous in the circumstances. 
I have before me at least 100 amendments put forward by the Opposition which have been declared valid by the Clerk. I will take the time now to go through those amendments one by one and explain the Government’s position over and above the document that was provided to the members of the Committee this morning. The first amendment is in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson. It deals with an interpretive matter. Six changes are proposed in this amendment. To make the process a little shorter I simply say that these amendments would extend the powers of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to a much greater area of Canterbury than is currently the case. The amendments deal with putting the words “Canterbury District Health Board” into the legislation as one of the bodies that is consulted. 
It is implicit in the legislation that recovery plans for health will be developed with the Canterbury District Health Board; the board does not need an additional representation in the bill. Most certainly the area caught by the bill’s provision does not have to be as large as that covered by the Canterbury District Health Board. The situation is similar with regard to the issues around the disability strategy. That is a guide for how local authorities should plan for the development of new buildings and facilities in their district and it will remain so. 
The second amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson proposes that there be some exclusions and exceptions of exclusions to appeals. The Government’s response to this amendment is that we will not support it. It puts appeals into the wrong place. If we were to go through this process then we would accept this amendment engaging the Environment Court in the process. That would defeat the purpose of the bill which is to move swiftly to get good recovery for Canterbury. 
The next amendment is in the name of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove: “Part 2 Clause 21 is amended by inserting the following subclause (5) No recovery plan shall be approved without an impact assessment being completed to assess the social cultural environmental and community impacts.” From our perspective we believe that this bill is an enabling framework and that that response in some cases for recovery plans would be implicit. Where there is a need to do something expeditiously where there is a need to do something even if it is a temporary arrangement this amendment would be an impost that would in fact slow things down. Frankly I think that is the intention here today. 
The next amendment from the Hon Clayton Cosgrove proposes that “Clause 27 is amended by replacing subclause (7) with the following new subclause: ‘Compensation is payable under this Act for any loss suffered as a result of an action taken under this section’ ”. This is where the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority will have the ability to work with local councils to suspend some aspects of Resource Management Act plans. It would mean for example that people with air space currently available to them who own property in Christchurch excluded from a new central business district plan by the Christchurch City Council would end up being liable for compensation from the Government. That is an unacceptable position and we will not be supporting that amendment. 
The next amendment proposes that “Clause 83 is amended by omitting subsection (1).” The effect of omitting subsection (1) without reading what it currently says is that urban search and rescue workers who were engaged in the rescue of people— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Do you mean you haven’t read it? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Well I will read it then. Shall I read it to the member who clearly is not familiar with this particular part of the bill? Subsection (1) of clause 83 which Clayton Cosgrove wants to take out states: “Every action taken or decision made under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 by the National Controller the Director or any person acting under the authority of the National Controller or the Director if taken or made while the state of national emergency was in force in respect of Christchurch in 2011 is declared to be and always to have been valid.” He wants to take out the bit that says: “Subsection (1) does not apply in respect of any action or decision that is taken or made in bad faith” etc. I think it should apply in those circumstances and I do not want to see urban search and rescue teams suddenly confronted with bills for the damage that may have been done to enter buildings looking for bodies. So we will not be supporting that amendment. 
The next amendment is in the name of Brendon Burns. It amends matters to do with the community forum. The community forum will be the subject of some negotiation I think between political parties and of course the elected representatives but in the end it is about giving a voice to people in the community who do not have an elected responsibility but emerge from those communities as leaders as a result of this particular event. Saying that there should be more than six meetings a year when we have a bill that will run for 5 years shows a failure to understand that at the start of this process there may be a need for many more meetings at the front end but due to the success of the recovery—I hope—fewer meetings at the back end. 
The next amendment is also in the name of Brendon Burns with regard to the recovery plan for the central business district. He proposes that “in developing the Recovery Plan for the CBD the Christchurch City Council must not propose the full or partial sale of any assets which it or any of its subsidiaries hold.” So where does that leave them with the Henderson properties? The Labour Party has spent the last couple of years telling the world that those properties were a bunch of dead-duck properties that the council should never have invested in. So on the one hand Labour is saying that the council should never have done it should not have touched it it was outrageous but now it is saying: “Don’t sell them; they’re precious local assets. Don’t touch them.” Most of those properties are busted and broken. It would be a good thing if the council does have the flexibility to enter property transactions for property that is held by ratepayers particularly where those properties are now a significant burden on an already stressed rating base. 
The next amendment from Brendon Burns relates to clause 27 “Suspension of plan etc”. What Mr Burns wants to do is implicit in subclause (1)(c). I will not go into the detail because it is so obvious and it would be an embarrassment to point it out. Mr Burns also proposes amendments to clause 87 “Quarterly report on operation of this Act”. For clarification purposes he wants the description to list the instances in which each power was exercised and whether notification and/or consultation was required and carried out. Well where there are requirements for disclosure in legislation there are very few prescriptions about that requirement. We could for example disclose Ministers’ expenses as a bulk figure and then let everybody go and work it out. But no one finds that acceptable so there is a line-by-line attitude taken to it. It is implicit in this bill that the same process will be followed. 
The Hon Clayton Cosgrove wants to amend the public notification of draft recovery plan for the central business district. This is an amendment that we will not support largely because in the end the legislation prescribes that the Minister—therefore the Cabinet committee—and Cabinet itself approves that plan. The Hon Clayton Cosgrove also wants to amend the development of recovery plans. He proposes that the process for the development of a recovery plan must include one or more public hearings as determined by the chief executive at which members of the public may appear and must be heard. Let us say it is a recovery plan for the lower reaches of the Avon River as it enters the estuary. We know at the moment that 65 percent of the 94 percent of toilet discharge that gets flushed in the city does not make its way to the sewerage works. We know there has to be a suspension of the requirements of the Resource Management Act to allow unacceptable discharge into those areas. If there is a better way of doing it and it can be done quickly do we really need to have a publicly notified process that allows people to come along and express their view about whether we should stop sewage running into an open waterway? It is an utterly ridiculous suggestion and we will not be supporting it. 
The next amendment from the Hon Ruth Dyson is to clause 22(2) to omit subclause (2) and insert a new subclause (2). For the member—I know that the request will be made in a few minutes—let me read the current subclause (2) so that people can be in no doubt about what is in it. I do not want to be accused again of not knowing what is in it. Clause 22 talks about changes to a recovery plan. Subclause (2) states: “Action may be taken under subsection (1) using the processes the Minister considers appropriate.” Ms Dyson wants us to refer to subsections (4) and (5) of section 11 as set out in clause 22. Section 11(4) is prescriptive. It does not set out that clause 22(2) sets aside anything; all it does is make sure that there is some flexibility that can be exercised according to the size of the plan that is being dealt with. Once again the Labour Party wants to put in place as many hold-it-up slow-it-down roadblock arrangements as possible. 
We then come to more amendments by the Hon Clayton Cosgrove. He wants to insert new clause 7A “Relationship with Local Authorities”. The amendment says: “The Minister must meet at least quarterly with Council Mayors and the Chair of the Regional Council.” That assumes there will be a massive arm’s-length lack of collaboration arrangement coming out of this bill. The amendment attacks the very very heart of this bill which is about having cooperation and collaboration. We will not support that amendment. It would be a matter of bad faith to do so. 
The member also wants to amend clause 48. For those who are uncertain about clause 48 please turn to the relevant page so that we can be clear about this and we cannot be accused of getting things wrong or going to the wrong place in the bill. Clause 48 is about directions that can be issued by the organisation. A direction is a simple thing. It could be whether a council would mind holding up a decision because more information was coming. I can tell members that that has happened in the last few weeks. It has been done cooperatively without the need for any reference to any legislation or law but it simply formalises what can be done. So what we get is that the Minister would be required to— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I call Charles Chauvel. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Oh do they not want responses to their SOPs? 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 In reply to that last aside from the Minister I tell members that we have just had the extraordinary sight of the Minister in the chair the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery during the only time this legislation will have any effective scrutiny from the Committee—because his own amendments will not be ready for another 45 minutes partway through the debate or in fact toward the conclusion of the debate—reading through amendments that the Opposition has put forward to try to improve this legislation and then rejecting them all. Well the Minister needs to reflect on the adequacy of the process here. 
This legislation will allow the Minister to overturn any planning decision revoke or amend any resource consent force councils to allow any resource consent compulsorily acquire property without any public interest test demolish any house even if it is undamaged and dissolve elected bodies if they fail to do what he says. So this Opposition makes no apology for wanting to make sure that the legislation is properly scrutinised and I will not have it said by any member in this Parliament that it is unpatriotic or irresponsible to do so. Our job—the thing that the people pay us to do—is to work out whether the laws that this House is passing are properly made. It is not an inappropriate exercise of anyone’s time in this Parliament to make sure that that is done and this current process does not comply on any view with that test. 
I am the chair of the Regulations Review Committee. We are the committee that has had the job of scrutinising the Orders in Council that were made under the 2010 emergency legislation and I will acknowledge a point that Amy Adams made. It is true that the Orders in Council that have been made to date recommended by the officials and by the Minister in the chair have been moderate. That is an appropriate thing to put on the record. There has not been an attempt to date to overreach the powers that the Minister has had conferred on him by this Parliament. I will put that on record happily and freely. 
I will also put on record that the Minister did not have to agree to a select committee process. He could have just rammed all this through under urgency. Thank goodness he did not because I think that all members on that committee would agree that we have managed to make some improvements to the legislation. It is a good thing that we have had that process. I wish we were not now at the point of a logjam where we are 40 minutes away from even seeing the detail of further amendments that are to be proposed by the Government but I accept that we have had a summary of those amendments. That is what I will take the time to respond to in relation to a couple of detailed points. 
First of all I come to clause 70 and this concerns a matter that was pointed to by the Legislation Advisory Committee. The test for the making of the Orders in Council is not that the orders are necessary. It is not that we can suspend the law extend the law or do away with the provisions of the law because the orders are necessary for the purposes of dealing with the emergency; under this clause the orders can be expedient. Parliament is saying to the executive: “We are going to do away with our right to make laws. We are going to delegate that to you if you think it is a nice idea.” That is what—in layman’s terms—“expedient” means. 
That cannot be a wise thing to do. The Legislation Advisory Committee cautions against it and I add my voice to its caution. I would urge the Minister even though that is the test in the existing legislation and even though he has not abused it—and I have put that on record—to tell us why we have the “expedient” test there. Why do we not only do away with Parliament’s right to legislate exclusively and confer it on him but then say that he can use it whenever he thinks it is “expedient”? That is unwise; it is too broad. We will regret this precedent in the future. 
The second point relates to clause 73(2). This relates to a submission made by Professor Joseph. The Minister can make recommendations about what an Order in Council should say and the legislation states that no one can take a judicial review of that recommendation no matter how wrong it might be no matter whether it is based on incorrect considerations and no matter how unwise it might be. I will say two things about that and again they echo concerns from the Legislation Advisory Committee. 
First of all no one will bother to judicially review a recommendation. People will wait until the Order in Council is made and then judicially review that. So the power is unnecessary. It is also provocative—that is the second thing. The courts are jealous of their powers and they are jealous of those powers for good reason. The powers exist as a bulwark against tyranny and encroachment on people’s liberties by the executive by the legislature and by other parts of Government. Why should we provoke the courts by telling them they cannot even review a recommendation that the Minister makes? The provision is foolish; it should be deleted. 
Linked to this recommendation from the Legislation Advisory Committee is the matter that once a regulation is made there is an attempt to also put it beyond judicial review. This absolutely disturbs a fundamental principle that we have in our laws—that any activity by the executive is able to be looked at by the courts in order to consider whether that action is lawful. The courts cannot review statutes but they can review regulations and Orders in Council. There is a very very good reason for that. Orders in Council are made without parliamentary scrutiny—or without much parliamentary scrutiny—and certainly not with scrutiny beforehand. A fundamental check and balance in our system is that the courts should be able to look at the legality of executive action. 
Again two things need to be said here. First of all I ask why we are seeking to oust that jurisdiction. If we are confident that the Minister will use his powers wisely then why do we not let the courts have the option of agreeing or not? Secondly I ask why we are using the clumsy language we see in this bill. There is an attempt to oust the jurisdiction of the court but it is being done badly. It is ineffective. The worry I have here is that we have a line of cases already in this country enunciated mainly through statements from the late Lord Cooke of Thorndon a former President of our Court of Appeal and a former law lord that if this Parliament seeks to put in place revolutionary arrangements about our constitution then the courts will have to think carefully about enforcing those arrangements. If they agree for example that executive action should be put beyond the scrutiny of the courts or if they agree that Parliament should just delegate its lawmaking power to Ministers then the courts would have to think carefully in the words of Lord Cooke about whether they were acquiescing pro tanto to a revolution. I ask whether we really want to provoke the courts in this way particularly with badly drafted privative clauses. I say no because there is no need for it. It is provocative and the provision should come out of the legislation. 
The next point I will make relates to clause 29 and also to clause 30 which echo a concern from the New Zealand Law Society. It relates to information privacy principles and the way that information will be shared between agencies. The bill will basically require the chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to consider applicable privacy principles but not to protect privacy interests. This again is going too far. The Privacy Commissioner has already relaxed the information privacy principles in the way that they apply to Canterbury during the emergency. That is the proper way to do it. The expert who is charged with administering the Privacy Act should be the expert who decides whether a relaxation is justified in a certain time and a certain place and that is what she has done. This matter came to the Regulations Review Committee; we said that yes that is a practical thing to do in the circumstances and we have supported it. There is no need also to let the chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority off the hook in terms of the privacy of individual citizens. I ask why that person and by extension the Minister should be able to ignore all our privacy laws in respect of the people of Canterbury and the current emergency without any regard for the expert opinion of the Privacy Commissioner herself. 
The next point I will make relates to clause 83. This clause would retrospectively validate any action taken in respect of the emergency. Again there is just no need for this sort of broad provision. At the moment under the state of emergency that exists there is wide validation of actions taken on an official basis under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act so there is no need to duplicate—Mr Chairman I am aware that you gave the Minister in the chair the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery three calls. I have just one more point and I would ask your indulgence to make it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The member makes it hard. The member has now had exactly the same number of calls that the Minister has had and we have not yet had Mr Locke who is seeking the call. But I will give the member the call in the spirit of generosity. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I applaud your wisdom as always Mr Chairperson. I want to make only two more points; one relates to finishing my earlier point. I say that there is no need for retrospective validation. The power exists already so I ask why there is this headlong rush to do things that will create bad precedent for the future. It is just inexplicable. The power is not necessary and it should not be given by this Parliament. 
The final point relates to appeal rights in respect of clauses 67 and 68. Clause 67 provides that there is to be no right of appeal on decisions of the Minister except as provided for by the legislation. Clause 68 then goes on to provide a very circumscribed way in which appeals are to go through the court system. They are to go to the High Court and then—snap snap snap—with time limits put in place by the statute they are to go to the Court of Appeal. 
Again I have two things to say about that. First of all in respect of a lot of these matters the Environment Court is the expert court that should be hearing these issues not the High Court. Ruth Dyson has put forward an amendment that would provide for that to occur. The Environment Court could sit with expert assistance from a valuer for example if it were deciding issues of compensation. Why should we not let the expert court do its job? It could probably do it more quickly than the High Court could. I know a little bit about the staffing of the High Court in Christchurch at the moment and the personnel in the court. Probably the Environment Court could do it quickly if that is what we are concerned about; the High Court is I think in a more difficult position. But then we have the right of appeal to the Court of Appeal anyway so there is no need for concern about the law not being applied in anything other than an orthodox way. 
The final point relates to the restriction that the bill would put on appeal rights. There is no need for this restriction. Again Parliament should not be interfering with the way that the rules of court are set out. If we want to tell people not to appeal vexatiously and prolong matters through litigation then we should simply rely on the powers of the courts that exist already to do that. We could bolster those powers through this legislation itself but there is no need to blot out appeal rights in a way that could actually negate many people’s rights to go on and have legal matters tested because there are complex legal matters in this bill. I will be very disappointed if clause 68 survives in its current form. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 It is rather sad in my opinion to have to rise in the Committee stage in this body which is the highest body in our democracy the most representative body and to give what is in effect a primer on the nature of democracy and democratic decision-making. Democracy is fundamentally violated by this bill. Democracy is not about giving a Minister the power to override the decision making of local bodies and that is exactly what the explanatory note of this bill states. It states that the Minister has: “the ability to suspend amend cancel delay any council plans and policies.” It is very definitive and sums up the bill in that respect. 
Councils it is true have a consultative role under this bill and the Supplementary Order Papers being put forward by the Green Party try to extend the extent of consultation and community engagement required under this bill. But consultation cannot substitute for people at the local level actually making decisions through their local representatives about their future as a community and as a city in this case in Christchurch. 
The reason why local bodies should have this power apart from the fact that we would like to be democratic is that local people know better than any bureaucrat from Wellington or anywhere else what is important to their future. There are absolutely vital decisions to be made over the next while particularly over the next 5 years in the currency of this bill that will shape the future of Christchurch—their city not our city; as we are sitting here in Wellington. Those decisions must be made by the people of Christchurch not by a Minister or a bureaucrat residing here. 
Does central government have a role? Absolutely. It has a role to assist the people of Christchurch not to control the people of Christchurch. Our assistance is to give the resources to help speed and streamline the process of recovery rebuilding etc. and yes to enable shortcuts to be taken through certain bits of legislation. The Greens do not oppose that. We agree with the parts of the bill where modifications are allowed to particular Acts to achieve a more rapid recovery than would be normally the case through existing statutes. But to achieve that we do not need to give power to the Government to override most of the laws on our statute book. 
Some of the submitters to the Local Government and Environment Committee including David Bullock and Daniel Jackson said that the legislation overrides a whole range of Acts including the Human Rights Act the Crimes Act the Habeas Corpus Act the Official Information Act the Ombudsmen Act and I could go on and on. There is absolutely no reason for those Acts to be overridden. The overriding of Acts is not effectively constrained either by the law courts or by Parliament. Although there is some right of review it is not effective in a legal sense and of course the Law Society in its submission to the select committee wanted much more reference to Parliament whenever laws were overridden. Some of the Green Party amendments to this legislation try to put the power back into Parliament to a greater extent. 
Is having a tsar in the form of a Minister to direct the recovery of Christchurch more efficient? Is this sort of state of emergency justified? It is true that with emergency powers sometimes things can be better streamlined and we have had a series of weeks of a state of emergency which has helped in the recovery of Christchurch to this point. The Green Party has supported those orders. But even when we look back at the history of that although there are advantages we see that there are disadvantages. 
We note the complaints as late as this morning on  
Morning Report 
 of business owners who have not been able to get into their offices in the red zone in the central business district to recover basic items like computers files etc. Day after day there have been complaints like that. Outside the red zone where there is not the same application of constraint people have been entering dangerous buildings taking calculated risks and retrieving their files etc. from inside buildings. But the bureaucrats in the red zone have been ultra-conservative in their risk assessment just taking no risks whatsoever of any danger and have caused in the process a great amount of angst and depression amongst business people and workers. All sorts of things like that are the result of this avoidance of risk which is characteristic of people who have absolute power and are not necessarily in touch with the local situation. 
Communities have huge resources and abilities to address those problems and they are being underestimated in the bill. In the suburb of Sumner for example it has been fantastic to see people getting together all sorts of subcommittees to deliver services social events you name it. The Student Volunteer Army has also been fantastic. It shows that the capacities of local people can be unleashed if we allow them the initiative. I think the people of Canterbury have the capacity to come forward with plans to implement with the assistance financially and in terms of resources put in from the central government level. 
We have had a lot of discussion here about the constitution and constitutional restraints etc. It is useful to refer to why we have them. Often we hear that so far we have not done too badly and we should trust the Minister Gerry Brownlee. We hear that he is a good bloke and that he would not unnecessarily override constitutional provisions in Acts etc. But that is not how democracy works. We have these constitutional restraints because we do not trust anyone in the executive as such and because people do not always do the right things. 
It may be that we have a dream run with Gerry Brownlee for the next whatever but we should write laws not according to the trust in a particular person the particular Government of the day or whatever but according to what is constitutionally right and what is basically democratic. Writing off the appeals to courts and the validation of actions by Parliament is not the way to do that. I think that the process of urgency here is another illustration of the problem with this bill. We did not need to go to this rapid process of dealing with the bill over 2 days not knowing what the bill was until a couple of days ago and not knowing what the Government’s amendments are even now part-way through the Committee stage. 
All we needed to do—and the Green Party proposed and stressed this—was extend the state of emergency a bit longer and have a few weeks to have a proper select committee process. It could have been done it should have been done and there is absolutely no reason why it was not done. Now we are in probably the biggest mess I have ever seen in my time in Parliament discussing a bill without the Government’s amendments—which are probably fairly numerous—before us when we are most of the way through what is claimed to be the Committee stage. That is absolutely unacceptable. 
The fact that the Government would force this urgent process and not allow people in the community proper time to come forward with their amendments and changes just shows the need for constitutional restraints and the need not to just trust this Government or any Government on such matters. The select committee process is vital in our democracy. 
Chrissie Williams made a submission; she only just managed to get hold of the bill before the select committee process. She did a handwritten criticism of certain aspects of the bill. She is a city councillor and we have a process where even the city council the body technically responsible for recovering Christchurch—although that is now being overridden by the Government—did not have access to the bill to be able to properly work out a response to it. It is just unacceptable. As Dean Knight one of the submitters said the legislative scheme is drawn in command and control terms. Dean Knight’s submission was a very good submission actually. He is a law lecturer at Victoria University. Thank you. 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 The need to rebuild Christchurch and Greater Christchurch is urgent I tell the previous speaker Mr Locke. We need to do it quickly and we need to do it efficiently. Keith Locke wants to take more time but circumstances just do not allow it. I have just received news that a major sewer has collapsed on Ferry Road. That is another setback that emphasises how fragile our sewer system is and now more people have to use chemical toilets and Portaloos for longer. That just underlines the urgency of how important it is to get the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority up and running. The managing of the rebuild of Christchurch needs that sort of support. 
There are two major debating points in relation to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. The first is whether the bill allows enough community participation. I listened to my colleague Louise Upston and I would have to say yes. The second point is whether there are enough checks and balances in relation to the extraordinary powers provided by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill which are needed to deal with this extraordinary situation. I say yes to that as well. 
This is balanced and well-thought-out legislation. It is unique legislation. It is Kiwi-style but it is informed by overseas experience in managing disaster recovery. According to the Legislation Advisory Committee it meets all the tests of the principles of disaster recovery legislation. It is designed for New Zealand conditions and to get our city and Greater Christchurch moving. It does not preclude the recovery work that is already happening especially in Kaiapoi. But with a dedicated authority in place there will be a quicker more efficient process for the communities that still have to begin the rebuild process. We are all very aware that some people have been living in broken houses with damaged infrastructure and in dislocated communities since 4 September. Much of our city is munted. 
There is a series of checks and balances in the legislation and as the New Zealand Law Society says the bill largely meets the objectives of transparency and accountability. 
To recap the details: the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is working in partnership with existing councils and stakeholders. The powers of this legislation can be used only for earthquake recovery within the Greater Christchurch area. The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery is accountable directly to Parliament which includes all parties in this Parliament and he must report every 3 months. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority itself must be reviewed every year. All Orders in Council will be reviewed by the review panel chaired by a retired High Court judge. There are also the advisory committees a community forum and a cross-party forum. I am sure both those forums in true Cantabrian spirit will be robust and active. 
Finally as always in New Zealand every citizen has the opportunity of free speech to hold the Minister and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to account. This is a well-balanced well-thought-out bill and I look forward to seeing it coming into force. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I will go back and deal with the process we are in. I will make a couple of points because I heard the rebuttal from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. Here is where we find ourselves in an absurd way. No one on this side of the Chamber is holding up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill—no one. We are now finding filibustering from Government members; the Minister took three consecutives calls which is rather unusual—normally it is two. The members opposite are getting up and speaking to the legislation to allow time for the Government Supplementary Order Paper— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have confined my comments entirely to dealing with amendments proposed by the Opposition. If they do not want those given serious consideration guess who is filibustering? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: That is not a point of order. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I note that this is a wide-ranging debate. We find ourselves in a holding pattern waiting for the Government at a quarter to one 15 minutes before the luncheon adjournment to provide a Supplementary Order Paper. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: It will be 1 o’clock. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: The Minister says it will be 1 o’clock. Let us do the calculation. We have been in a holding pattern all this morning. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Probably 2 o’clock. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: The Minister says it could be 2 o’clock. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Yes it could be or it could be 3. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: It could be 3 o’clock. That is very interesting. I thank the Minister. The interesting thing is that if we hold to the timetable as specified by the Minister then after the lunch break the Committee will come back at 2 o’clock and then there will be question time for roughly an hour or an hour and 30 minutes. Let us assume that we get back to the Committee stage at half-past 3 with 30 minutes to run in order to allow time to vote. We will then have a 2-hour debate from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. unless the Minister wants to work overtime—and we stand charged and ready to go. Getting the bill through by 6 p.m. which was the Minister’s timetable and was stated publicly would allow less than 30 minutes to debate a Supplementary Order Paper. 
The Minister has used an alibi that the timetable is cramped and his officials have worked all night. I acknowledge that; I am sure the officials have worked all night—people like Mr Palmer and eminent lawyers and others who briefed us who have worked all night to try to get this thing out and who are working and writing the Supplementary Order Paper as we speak. The responsibility for that lies in the Minister’s own hands. He set the timetable for the bill. Had he allowed another 24 hours given that the state of emergency is in existence until 16 April then the officials would have been under less pressure and we would have time to scrutinise the Supplementary Order Paper. We are now in the absurd situation that if the House rises at 6 o’clock as scheduled there will be virtually no scrutiny of a Government Supplementary Order Paper. It is embarrassing for the Minister to sit in the chair and not have a Supplementary Order Paper available. That is not our fault. It is not the fault of his officials. The Minister set the time frame. He finally acceded to a request for a select committee which heard public submissions for 4 hours and 40 minutes. 
The Local Government and Environment Committee which was well chaired by Mr Auchinvole delivered on this timetable as rapidly as it could in order to get the report back here at 9 a.m. And we delivered; we on this side of the Chamber furnished Mr Brownlee ahead of time with our amendments—as I believe did the Green member Kennedy Graham—so that there was no ambush and so he had time to scrutinise them. Having listened to the Minister’s debate I take it that he has trashed the lot. We note that. We are prepared and we stand ready to scrutinise a Supplementary Order Paper. It is a portent of disorganisation mismanagement and incompetence—they are not political words; they are facts—that the House is treated with such contempt that we are not allowed to see the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. 
Journalists have even told me they asked for the so-called summary sheet and the Minister’s office refused to give it to them. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s not true. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Yes it is. I will not name the journalists. I have been to see a few. The issue about the summary sheet is that Mr Brownlee says he has given us a summary but we requested it. He had no intention of giving us a summary sheet until I requested it in a private session with him last night. With generosity he provided that summary sheet but there a couple of problems with it. It does not provide the technical wording we need in order to scrutinise the legislation. It does not provide any of the technical definitions. It basically states what the officials agree on disagree on or note and a few colloquial words about what that means in essence. We are here—I say to Mr Brownlee as a former Leader of the House—to scrutinise the technical detail of the legislation. The bill is one of the most important bills to go through this Parliament and the Minister sits there not having furnished us with a Supplementary Order Paper. He set the deadline not us. He set the programme. He could have allowed another 24 hours. I would like the Minister to answer the question of what a delay of 24 hours—so he could get his act together and get his officials to draft a Supplementary Order Paper for proper scrutiny—would have done to the people of Canterbury. It would have done nothing. Another 24 hours would have had no effect and caused no delay at all. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairman for the opportunity to contribute further to the debate. I will refer back to the international experience. I talked in an earlier contribution to the Committee stage about the Hurricane Katrina story. I want the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery to listen because the story is extremely relevant to why we are talking about the essential nature of getting the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill right. There has been international literature on Hurricane Katrina but this story comes from Massey University. We have in New Zealand one of the world experts in this particular field. In fact he is in Christchurch on Monday and he is addressing a seminar on recovery which I certainly have signed up for and I hope others in this Chamber do so too. The first thing he talked about was the issue of who defines the character of recovery. He said that pre-event politics frames the recovery process and I want to come back to that because people have said some pretty harsh things about this side of the Chamber. Yes we do take them personally but they will not stand in the way of making this work. 
The second issue in respect of the New Orleans story was this—and I want to make this point very very clearly. The relationship between local states and the Federal Government meant chaotic planning and that is what this bill is designed to address. It is designed to ensure that there is not chaotic planning. 
The third thing was that in New Orleans vulnerable populations were marginalised from the recovery process and I will not let vulnerable communities that I was elected to represent be marginalised in this recovery process regardless of what the bill says. The expert talked about domination by urban elites and corporate interests and experts from outside the city and region. Finally and most important he said that pre-event vulnerabilities were re-entrenched in a post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. We must not let that happen. 
Members of this Government have stood in this Chamber and accused me and my colleagues of playing politics with this legislation. Well I want to read to the Committee an email that I sent to John Key and every member of the Ad Hoc Cabinet Committee on Canterbury Earthquake Recovery and then I will table it. When I sent this email I did so behind the scenes. There was no intention other than to get the Government to focus on what mattered to my constituents. I sent it on 1 March 1 week after the 22 February earthquake. It stated: “TVNZ  
Close Up 
 ran a story tonight about a Tale of Two Cities - the east west divide is real and it has major implications for our city. I live in Bexley which means I have a very personal and emotional link to what I’m about to say. I have tried to strip this email of that influence and share with you what I know about the people I’ve been privileged to represent for 10 years now.” I will not read out the entire detail but I want people to know that what I raised with the Government was the fact that “tolerance levels are lower than they were before because people felt they had been overlooked after the first earthquake. This has implications for law and order and also for mental health.” 
Secondly there was fear that people are vulnerable to the criminal element after dark. I asked for some night curfews around areas that had no electricity. This request was supported by the local police but was not listened to. The other fear was about more serious earthquakes and about the tsunami risk for offshore quakes. I wanted answers that I could share with the people I have the privilege to represent. 
On the issue of health I spoke to the people at the tactical medical centre that was set up by the Queensland mobile army surgical hospital unit. I said: “The problem is that we are treating ourselves as a First World city when the east is experiencing Third World conditions …”. That is what I was told by the doctor who was running the unit and who had very special expertise to bring to the table because he had been to disasters in Australia and all around the world. 
I went on to talk about access to services and about how difficult it was to spend a cash grant when all the supermarkets and petrol stations are closed. I then talked about Portaloos but I will not talk about Portaloos here because I am still very upset that the powers that be would not listen to the concerns that were raised genuinely privately and behind closed doors over and over again until finally I had to speak out on behalf of those who elected me to do so. 
I went on to talk about the resources of people who live in the badly affected areas and who do not have the resources that are available to me. I am talking about things like a steady income mortgage-free living and having family on the other side of town. I could have gone over to my sister’s place and had a shower at any time over the 16 days that my house was without electricity but I did not do that because we were being told to stay off the roads for non-urgent purposes. Besides I was a Girl Guide and I know how to keep myself clean and smelling OK even though I did not have access to a shower for that period of time. 
Some of the people I represent—not all of them—have no savings. This is not a rich versus poor divide between east Christchurch and west Christchurch either. We have some beautiful houses that have been smashed up on the riverside on the Bexley wetlands looking out over Horseshoe Lake Reserve. So it is not a case of east versus west and rich versus poor; it is just east versus west in terms of where the earthquake did its damage. But a lot of people did not have 3 days’ worth of food in the cupboard they did not have 20 litre water containers they did not have transistor radios with batteries and they did not have torches that were working. 
I went on to talk about engineering and Variation 48 but I will not go into that again because the council has not listened to me and I know that the Government is getting Tonkin and Taylor to work up some realistic solutions there. I am grateful for that and I want to place on record my admiration for Tonkin and Taylor and the fantastic work that it is doing. It is working so hard on behalf of our constituents. 
Finally I talked about recovery. Everything I have read about recovery post 4 September relates largely to the disappointing efforts after the establishment of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission which was believed by the city council and the Minister to absolve the council from its Civil Defence Emergency Management responsibilities. Post the 4 September earthquake international best practice kicked in with four task groups established—economic environment social environment built environment and natural environment. Most of these structures fell apart after the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission was established. I had ridiculous emails from the city council saying that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission was better because it had seven task groups as opposed to four. The truth is that we need to engage with the communities of the east and with the central business district and we have to set aside politics. Politicians should not be the face of recovery. We need someone in charge. I have taken out the rest of the email because it gave some indication as to who I thought should be in charge and it is not fair to that individual for me to say so. So I have taken that person’s name out of the email before I table it. 
The reason I wanted to put that on the record is that we have worked tirelessly on this side of the Chamber to engage with the Government to engage with the council to engage with our communities and to represent them. In my maiden speech to Parliament I said that I wanted to be the face of the people who could not be seen and the voice of the people who could not be heard. I never realised for 1 minute that that would have some meaning after an event such as this but it does have meaning for me because that is the job that we have all been doing. Clayton Cosgrove Ruth Dyson Brendon Burns Jim Anderton and I have worked so hard as constituency MPs elected by our constituents to represent them and I really resent the fact that we are being criticised by people who have not been elected to represent constituencies in the way that we have. 
I know that the Hon Gerry Brownlee has been affected and I know that his constituents have been affected as well and he has taken up those concerns as a genuinely elected representative of those people as has Amy Adams on the other side of the Chamber. Amy Adams has also been personally affected and I think we have to acknowledge the fact that we are all personally affected in some way shape or form and that there is work that we need to do and we need to do it together. 
The Prime Minister told the Leader of the Opposition that I had been emotionally affected by the earthquake. Well I would like to know who was not emotionally affected by the earthquake. The emotional effect might be real but I tell members that it has not stopped my utmost commitment and driven desire to make sure that this legislation works for the people who elected me to represent them and to be their voice and I will continue to do so 
I know that the Minister is upset with some of the things that have been said but all I am asking is for him to please set those aside for the sake of making sure that we get this right. That is all I really want to say in this debate. I seek leave to table the email. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Leave is sought to table the papers the member outlined in her speech. Is anyone opposed to that course of action? There is no objection. Leave is granted. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I pay tribute to Lianne Dalziel’s very impassioned speech just a moment ago on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill and I want to record my admiration for what she has done in the eastern suburbs. 
Debate interrupted. 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.