Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Can I thank the Hon David Parker for his kind words earlier in his speech. I just wish that same sentiment had been around at the time that they were actually doing things; it might have made a little bit of a difference. But in general I think the New Zealand Parliament comes together in a way that it should to respond to the circumstances that create a degree of misery in people's lives and in a way that also hopefully gives them a bit of you'd say an opportunity to be optimistic about their future. So we do support this legislation and I'll just make the point that while it is a piece of legislation that builds on initially the Christchurch recovery Act and then the Kaikōura/Hurunui Act which dealt with the dreadful damage along State Highway 1 primarily some people say we should have standing legislation that avoids us having to do these special Acts of Parliament. My own view is that every disaster is different and it's not easy to simply overlay a single template that will be a go-to for every time that you have a large-scale disaster like this. But there are some aspects in here despite our support that we will want to tease out a little bit in the relatively short select committee process that's going to happen. One of them is believe it or not the extent of containment upon ministerial powers because while I accept that if you are going to create so-called Henry VIII" provisions then there have to be some checks and balances but those checks and balances can't become so onerous that a Minister decides not to take a particular course of action that might make a significant difference for either a community or a group of communities and remember that this disaster really has affected New Zealand from the Far North right down to just north of the Wairarapa and through all of that East Coast. So what am I talking about? Well in this legislation a Minister may propose an Order in Council to set aside some particular provision from the law. So let's be practical about it: just in the Hawke's Bay alone there are 28 bridges that need to be replaced—28—and we've already seen in the last few days alternate roads are being put in so that people can spend a lot more time on the road but still get from one place to another. Some of those bridges no longer exist 16 of them are completely gone and 12 are partially damaged to a point where they need to be replaced. Imagine what the Resource Management Act process would be for getting a consent for those bridges? It's simply not possible and so there will need to be Orders in Council that facilitate that infrastructure work. The problem here is that not only does the Minister have to satisfy himself or herself that this is necessary—and I don't think that would be hard and I don't think a Minister would step outside the bounds that are prescribed in the law—but then they take that proposal to the community. Well they get to choose who the community is but because it's in here then there will be bounds for people to feel aggrieved that they weren't consulted and I think that's a mistake. There is also then the panel that this goes to of up to 12 people. I've got to say that in those two previous pieces of legislation we had four people and the reason for that was that they're not there to make decisions about the validity of the work that might be proposed; they're simply there to protect the law. I think that you then look at—I've got to be critical here and say that the idea that the convenor of that panel must be a retired High Court judge misses the point that it's politicians who are on the hook for the decisions that are made using this process and with all the best will in the world it won't be a retired High Court judge who understands the imperatives around that politics. Their job is simply to determine that the Order in Council is necessary and within the prescriptions of the law. That's not going to require 12 people to sit around a table having an argument. It's not going to require 12 people who might have interests in various parts of the recovery to be making judgments that just in the back of their head—I'm not pointing a finger at anyone—might be a little bit jaundiced by the needs that they see in their own part of the disaster-stricken area. So I'm firmly of a view that 12 is far too many and that four is a good number. When we had that four we had a former Prime Minister we had a High Court judge we had a former very very senior civil servant and we had an iwi representative and I appreciate that in this case there are a number of iwi that are affected so the number might need to be more than four. But it certainly doesn't need to be anywhere near 12. Six I think would stop it in its tracks and even that would present its own problems in my view. The one thing that sticks in my head out of all of this is that the orders can only be recommended pretty much for one purpose. There are one or more purposes but when you read through it there is actually quite a number of limits on what might be able to be done in each of those orders and I just question whether or not that is a reasonable thing. Can I just conclude by saying that the need to do this is well understood by this Parliament and that's why there will be such widespread support for it and the one thing that people don't want is anything that is a protracted exercise in trying to do everything right in the decision-making process. There will be mistakes inevitably just because of the nature of the work that has to be done but those mistakes are at least decisions and they will see some progress. So we're very keen to work constructively in the very short select committee process that's going to be taking place and to make some of those recommendations. Whether this committee accepts them or not is a different matter but what is most important is that there is no further delay in getting to a point where more things can be done. Things are being done at the moment but we need more things to be done so we get to a point where there is greater clarity about can people stay comfortably safely living in the location that they are in at the moment—big big decisions that will require changes to the law and in some cases beyond the list of 30 or so laws that are already altered in this bill. My final point is that one of the things that we used in the recovery of Christchurch was a thing called a cross-party forum. It was stated in the legislation and while it might have frustrated some people it meant that no one was in the dark—certainly in this House—about what was going to be happening and why it was needing to happen. There was reasonable feedback into that. It was a body that was taken seriously and I would suggest that because this recovery is not going to be short—sadly—and while the bill itself has a sunset of 2026 it is not a reasonable prospect to expect so many bridges so much infrastructure to be completed in just three years from now. So there will undoubtedly be some kind of extension required and I think it's important that the support of Parliament for the recovery of those affected areas continues well beyond this parliamentary term and well into the next parliamentary term. We'll be participating fully in the select committee process and constructively in the select committee process."