Robertson GrantGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I want to add Labour's endorsement to this piece of legislation. I thank the Minister who has just resumed his seat—the Acting Minister of Civil Defence Gerry Brownlee—for his work in bringing forward the legislation to the House and for being accommodating with changes that have been sought from around the House throughout the process both in the days before we came here today and indeed on the floor of the House today. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the officials who worked very hard to put this piece of legislation together and indeed the other post-earthquake legislation that will come before the House. Those officials looking at their faces yesterday many of them are very senior officials who have clearly been putting in a lot of time over the last few days to make sure that we get this legislation right. It is not easy to do that work quickly. Just as a small and not at all meant to be negative aside I do enjoy it when there is a spelling mistake that can be found and I know my colleague Peeni Henare is a great fan of these particularly in Te Reo Māori versions of bills. In fact you might like this for another reason because the word for" has become "fro" and who does not like a good fro on a good day? But I do in all seriousness want to say to the officials that they have done a magnificent job in putting this together. I also want to continue to emphasise the fact that what we are doing in this House is trying to pass the legislation that will help communities transition from their initial response to the recovery phase. On paper that can look like an exercise that is relatively simple. In reality for the communities that have been affected by this quake that is far from simple and in Kaikōura in Hurunui and even here in Wellington we have people who are going to take some significant time to rebuild their lives. I do not think there is any doubt at all that in Kaikōura there are darker days ahead in terms of the economy in terms of the way that people feel because we are not going to see the summer season of tourism that we were. Hopefully we will be able to make something work for the people of Kaikōura but as a country we need to gather together to support those communities in this recovery phase. This is the limited thing that as parliamentarians we can do: bring forward the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act and have that come into force for those communities and for the processes under that to be advanced.Most of the discussion around the bill has focused on the new provisions around the requirement or the ability for a direction to be made to owners of structures or types of structures to obtain an assessment on the effect of an emergency and any related subsequent events on those structures. This does represent I believe the beginning of some changes that will need to take place around these assessments. I think this is a particularly useful development for the small number of building owners who are not prepared to go as far as they should in assessing the safety of their buildings. We have had the talk about the various Acts that exist—the Health and Safety at Work Act and the Residential Tenancies Act—and they provide some assurance for people but this clause will mean a much greater degree of assurance. I hope the officials in the next phase of their work in this will look to make sure that this is absolutely clear—not only that assessments must be done when there is a risk to public safety but that the information from those assessments is made available. To pick up my colleague Jan Logie's reference before also bear in mind that I suspect these assessments will be available through the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. So I actually think there would be a way of requesting the assessments if it were to come to that.But I want to highlight the case of a person in my electorate who when told by the owner of their building that their building was safe then asked to see the assessment and was told they could not see it. That person made a very good point to me that as an individual tenant they had no ability to pay for an engineer to come in. They barely had the ability perhaps to even get the engineer in in terms of being allowed to bring them into the building. If we look down the road here at the Asteron building that building was seen the owner brought an engineer in and the engineer cleared the building. The Inland Revenue Department as a tenant was able to afford to bring in its own engineer who then came up with a different conclusion—that the building or the stairwell was not safe. So because the Inland Revenue Department could afford to do that and being a good employer did it a different outcome occurred. There is no one working in that building today and remediation has been required. That could easily have happened in that residential apartment that I just talked about. Had the tenant been able to afford to bring an engineer in the engineer may well have come to a different conclusion. So this piece of legislation is important. It is urgent. The use of urgency is something that we need to be very careful about in this House but on this occasion I believe that this bill is exactly the kind of thing we do need to use urgency for: to give assurance to those communities who have been affected by these earthquakes that we care that we understand the things that need to be done quickly and that we are prepared to take action on that. I want to reiterate what I said in my first-reading speech which is that I have read the press release today from the Mayor of Wellington Justin Lester who has said he will use this legislation as soon as it is passed. That is the importance of passing it so that we can in the small number of cases where there have not been appropriate building checks done ensure that those assessments are done.I want to acknowledge as the Minister did David Parker for his amendments that we have just passed in the Committee stage. These are to make clear that in a situation where someone believes that the requirement to undertake an assessment is not reasonable—and it does have to be reasonable; if they believe it is not reasonable—they have the ability to go to the District Court to challenge that but that assessment still needs to happen. If it is found in the District Court that it was unreasonable they will get the costs for that paid back. That is an important clarification and one that I think gives the whole House a lot more certainty and security that the assessments that need to be done will be done but if authorities have overstepped the mark in doing so then they will be held to account for that.The final point I want to make on this matter is to just be absolutely clear that there are rules around requesting these assessments. The purpose of the assessment has to be specified the time frame within which it has to happen has to be specified and the requirement for the owner to give a copy of the assessment to the council is also there—and that in deciding to undertake an assessment the council must look at the structure of the building the type of structure its circumstances the risk of injury the risk to life or the safety of other property. Those are important caveats that make me absolutely confident that we are doing the right thing here tonight—that there are enough checks and balances that councils will not go over the top with the use of these provisions and that we will actually get a better and a safer assessment and provide a bit more security and certainty to those people who feel in a situation like this that they have not had a proper assessment done on their building.I want to again thank the Minister and all parties in the House for their cooperation on this bill and to reiterate that from Labour's point of view we remain committed to cooperating with the Government on the next phase of changes to make sure that we have a proper national-level disaster management system that we have a proper warning system that we work out exactly what is best in terms of tsunami warnings and that we do not wait any longer. The Government cannot leave that work on the back-burner. It has spent half a million dollars on the possibility of a national disaster warning system. Let us make the best use of that work. Let us see the next phase of changes brought in as soon as possible so that we can hold our heads high and say to New Zealanders that we have done everything we can to ensure that they are not only safe in an emergency but supported in the recovery from it."