Webb DuncanHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's actually quite tricky to speak on this bill because there are a few members in this House who have had firsthand experience of an earthquake and the alarming thing is that the earthquake that I experienced and some others in this House experienced was a little one. Andy Foster mentioned that he's been in the emergency management bunker and has seen the projections. It doesn't give enough emphasis to the devastation that will hit New Zealand—probably a real possibility that it will be this city—and the catastrophic damage that will occur. Tracey McLellan mentioned that we're all biased to kind of project our own experiences historically into the future and therefore if we've lived for 30 or 60 years and have never really seen a major disaster we assume we won't see one in the rest of our lifetime. We know it's coming so the question is this: how do we strike the balance between life and prosperity? I heard the member before me talk about the need to fill up vacant buildings and have bustling inner cities. That's all very nice but when this earthquake strikes if a building is earthquake-prone and we have a genuine earthquake—a serious earthquake—then some of those buildings will fall over and people will die. I know and have spoken to people who talk of the financial pressures the stress the anxiety and the constraints on their lifestyle that earthquake strengthening causes but if we leave people to entirely make their own decisions about the safety of buildings there is never a good time. So we're not going to be obstructive on this bill; we're going to be constructive when it comes to looking at it in a select committee. But we can't accept when we live where we do and we have the science that we have before us and we know the quality of the building stock that it's a good idea to defer remediation of these buildings. We agree that a review of the relevant earthquake regulations and building codes is a good thing—absolutely endorse that—and with the somewhat binary nature of these questions where it's either a dangerous building or it's not it may be that we do need to look at that. But if we sit on our hands we've been here before. The Christchurch earthquake was more than a decade ago. We know the problem. We've been nudging people to do the right thing and the Minister for Building and Construction himself—and I've a lot of respect for the work he's doing—has said that We encourage people to do this remediation work." but on this side of the House our view is that we can't just encourage; we've got to compel. We might want to assist as well and that's certainly the approach that the Labour Party had put in place with financial assistance. But this is a really serious question for this House: where are you going to strike the balance between risk to life and prosperity—and let's not fall into the trap of thinking that it probably won't happen because when it does happen it will be catastrophic. It will be beyond anything we could imagine. So let's take advice from our scientists seismologists and engineers but most of all let's get on and make our buildings safe. Kia ora."