Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I would have to say that 2 minutes past 12 on Monday was quite a moment. I woke up to hear our daughter yelling out from down the house and I said: Well you know just stay there." Actually lying in bed was a pretty good way to respond to it I thought. But anyway that started what has been quite a surreal period.I would like to start by acknowledging one of the first people to send me a text Rino Tirikatene. I would like to thank him for that. I do support him in things such as JP nominations and so on—between ourselves we do work quite well together. But it has not stopped at Rino; there has been much support coming from right across the House and I would like to acknowledge that. It is fantastic.However I am not the person who needs the support; it is the people who are affected by the earthquake. Once I got out of bed—when it finally stopped rocking—I headed down to the Civil Defence Emergency Management headquarters centre in Marlborough. I have to say you know you go right back to the Boxing Day fires in 2000—the response was not that great in Marlborough. It led to a complete review of how things were being operated. Richard McNamara who is the chief there is doing a fantastic job. He is internationally renowned. The systems they have in place are I think laudable and they had a very swift response. Of course we did not know at that stage what the situation was further down.Once I learnt what had happened in Kaikōura I decided to drive down there. I thought I would go as far as I could. When I spoke to the Mayor of Kaikōura—incidently they had a council retreat at Saint Arnaud—a bit after 1 o'clock in the morning they were making their way through Blenheim on their way back to Kaikōura. So I said: "Text me when you know what the road conditions are." Nothing came through. I figured it could not have been that good. So I waited and timed my run so I would be on the coast at first light. I stopped at Seddon and came across the community sitting around and people sleeping on the wooden deck outside the school. They made the right decision. They had assessed their houses as being dangerous and they did what I think was very sensible: they gathered together in a place they knew was safe and sheltered there. It was great to talk to them. I went on to Ward and talked to the people in Ward who had done something similar. I went as far as I could past the police barricade. The policeman smiled at me and more or less said: "Well it's against police advice but away you go." So I went down the road as far as I could and I got to the end and I thought: "Well this is really going to take some fixing." But it was not until a very kind Alan Wilkinson offered me his helicopter and I flew down there yesterday in a Hughes 500 and the pilot told me "That's as bad as it gets." that I realised how bad it was.It was pretty rough when we got down there but to see the damage along the road—I thought I had a good handle on it on the way down but on the way back it really hit me how big a task it is going to be to fix this. But we must fix it. It is part of the vital lifeline of New Zealand and it is a part of Kaikōura's absolute economic survival so we must fix it. It reminds me that the Douglas-Cliffords set up a farm that was New Zealand's biggest farm at Flaxbourne and they built a wharf on the Flaxbourne River. This was in the early or mid-1800s. In 1848 I think—I stand to be corrected on the year—there was a massive earthquake that uplifted the coast much as has happened today. That wharf was left high and dry. The river was no longer navigable and that prompted their shift down to Stonyhurst in Canterbury where they set up a similar operation with a wharf out on the coast to trade with Christchurch which was emerging as a town at that time rather than with Wellington which they were going to do from Flaxbourne.The people of Kaikōura—there has been much said about them today. I have been there twice now in the last 2 days. Tomorrow I am going to North Canterbury. I am flying down there. Someone is driving my car to Christchurch as we speak and I will be driving up into Hanmer Springs Rotherham Culverden Waiau and Cheviot and I will try to get around as much of the area as possible over the next 2 days. Those people who are most isolated are often the worst affected and the most difficult to get to but we will do our best to do as much as we can over the next few days. So my thoughts and sympathies go to the families of the people who lost their lives and to all those who are injured. Thank you."