Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): I've been to Christchurch only a few times since the earthquake mostly to the outskirts and only once to Cathedral Square where with my family we rode the tram around and saw the broken cathedral. It was heartbreaking even for someone who has not come from that part of the country. All I could think was that that building needed to be repaired. But as we all know there was an impasse—litigation discussions back and forth and no one could quite agree what to do with the cathedral.It was what sometimes gets called a wicked" problem. Typically wicked problems end up on the Government's desk. The interesting thing about this particular wicked problem though is that although Government was involved in helping to sort the problems out ultimately the solution that was arrived at was driven by the people of Christchurch themselves—by the people that the Hon Nicky Wagner has talked about who are involved in the Cathedral Working Group. They were the people who found the solution. That was people like the Church Property Trustees Heritage New Zealand the city council the mayor the bishop—all the people who had a stake in that building whether they were members of the cathedral community itself or members of the wider Christchurch community—that's how much the cathedral means. It is a symbol of Christchurch itself. The solution they came up with is very much a collaborative solution.I think this collaborative approach was very much echoed in the select committee process we just worked through in the Environment Committee and here I would like to pay particular tribute to the Hon Nicky Wagner who with her local knowledge and her local commitment to that cathedral contributed that knowledge and expertise so willingly to help us come up with a good solution and what is I think a good piece of legislation.What this particular bill does is it puts in place a legislative framework by which work on the cathedral can go ahead. What it does is it gets the process going. In particular it does that because what we have in Christ Church Cathedral is an emergency. It's a slow-moving emergency one that has grown over years and years and now needs a fix. The fix that is come up with is a particular process of using Orders in Council—Orders in Council that set aside some of the normal mechanisms of the law set aside some of the normal protections we have on the say-so of the Minister in order to get the cathedral rebuilt.Now that's a dangerous power to give to a Minister that the Minister may set aside some portions of the law. We have a necessity for that because of the slow-moving emergency and what we have in this bill is a series of protections—the sorts of protections that are vital to a democracy.The Minister may request that the Governor-General issues an Order in Council and that Order in Council can set aside some Acts and say that those Acts don't need to be complied with. But here's the first protection: it's only some Acts and only Acts that are specific to the rebuilding of the cathedral. And here's the second protection: it's only in a very limited area—the cathedral area which is the cathedral buildings itself and the land immediately around it and the roads immediately around that. So straight away we've got restrictions on the power of the Minister. Some of the restrictions that the Minister can't set aside are of course health and safety provisions. All this so that the building can get going.The Minister may recommend an Order in Council but only for the purpose of the bill and the purpose is very clearly specified—it's about reinstating the cathedral. When the Minister issues an Order in Council the Minister must engage with the relevant local authorities and with the public and—importantly—there is a review panel. That review panel is not a representative panel. It's an expert panel—people with the knowledge the skills and the experience to be able to make a judgment as to whether what the Minister is requesting is appropriate and needed.So this is a series of checks on the power of the Minister to ensure that whenever the Minister recommends an Order in Council that Order in Council is actually needed for the purpose of reinstating the cathedral. These are the sorts of checks and balances we like to see in our democratic system. And even then when there are all these checks and balances anything that the Minister orders is still subject to judicial review. Now it's a limited judicial review—only 28 days—but with the amount of collaboration and consultation and the ongoing discussion that has gone on around the cathedral all the consultation has already happened and we have nevertheless provided for this judicial review. It's a final check on the Minister.The Minister must report to the Parliament every year on the operation of these Orders in Council and of course the Minister is subject to the ultimate review of our triennial elections. In other words all the checks and balances are in place to enable this cathedral to be reinstated using Orders in Council so that the job can get done and so that that broken building can be reinstated because we want to help the community of Christchurch to find a way forward.As this Parliament we are here to help our community in New Zealand. This bill does that for the community of Christchurch and for the wider community of New Zealand which cares about this cathedral. We want to help rebuild this cathedral and that is why I commend this bill to the House."