Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to take a call on the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Emergency Relief Bill. I have seen the twisted bridge over the Ōtākaro/Avon River the massive slumping and cracks beside the Avon in Christchurch the liquefaction the sand volcanoes and I have heard the cliffs tumbling down in Lyttelton Harbour but that still did not prepare me for seeing firsthand the massive damage that the earthquake has wrought in the Kaikōura area—the size of the slips and the major uplift that has occurred in the seabed which is quite unprecedented. When we hear of our island moving centimetres north as a consequence of the earthquake the scale of the response needs to be similarly significant.That is one of the reasons why the Green Party is supporting the bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee because we know that in emergency situations like this the Government does need to act quickly. We certainly appreciate the discussions across Parliament that Minister Brownlee has convened and his willingness to accept the suggestions of some of the Opposition parties. We would suggest that if he could commend that approach to some of his colleagues particularly where it comes to the Resource Management Act and the changes we are seeing there that actually will result in better legislation. So we would like to place on record our thanks to the Minister for the collaborative way in which he has gone about developing this legislation and we are pleased that even as late as at last night's meeting some of the changes that were suggested there have been developed by officials and included in the bill. So we also acknowledge the huge amount of work that public servants have been doing on this legislation.Kaikōura had grown from a small and pleasant coastal town to a thriving nature tourism destination before the earthquakes and we hope that it will be again. This is because of its natural geography because of that spectacular wild and distinctive coastline and its marine environment. The feature of the Kaikōura Canyon going offshore just north of Goose Bay and staying quite close to shore for a couple of kilometres—it is that deep canyon and the very biologically rich waters of the canyon that attracts a lot of the marine life particularly the whales and the dolphins. That is fundamental to why people come to Kaikōura.So of course with the seabed uplift preventing boats accessing the pontoons that the whale watch vessels the dolphin encounter vessels and other vessels use meaning that those can be accessed only at a much more limited range of the tide there is a need to ensure that boats can get back into the harbour by doing some rehabilitation works. The concerns that the Green Party has around changes to the Resource Management Act are where they override processes that allow the community to contribute the information that they have about places that they value and care about and places that they often know a lot about.So this bill in terms of the provisions around South Bay and also the north harbour at Kaikōura around the Ingles Bay wharf does override the Resource Management Act. It provides for a truncated process: one where there are no appeals and one that is considered as a controlled activity which of course means that the blasting the dredging and the work associated with that must be given consent to by the councils but conditions can be added in terms of how that activity is carried out.We are pleased that there was a small change made to the bill because at the moment under the truncated process there is a range of organisations that are consulted with—Te Rūnunga o Ngāi Tahu and any relevant Papatipu Rūnanga and the Kaikōura Coastal Marine Guardians who were appointed with the establishment of the whale sanctuary and Hikurangi Marine Reserve—but there was originally no provision for notification to the public. Now there is the possibility of councils actually notifying it. So we would encourage the councils Kaikōura District Council and Environment Canterbury to do that because people like fishers and residents can often contribute a lot of valuable information that assists in ensuring that the decision is a good one and that appropriate conditions are attached to avoid remedy and mitigate any potential effects.With blasting work particularly some are talking of significant rocks being blasted as part of this work and that will have impacts on the marine environment. They will reduce marine habitat there will be sediment and of course there is the critical issue of where the blasted and dredged material is deposited. The bill as I understand it provides for that to occur on land rather than at sea and then where that happens because of the large volumes of material that will probably come out is also important because it is the natural character of the coast and those distinctive landscapes that people enjoy about Kaikōura. We do not want to see this urgent activity undermining the attractiveness of the coast and the town for the thousands of visitors who we hope will be coming back to Kaikōura in future when the transport links are restored.The bill as well as allowing the rehabilitation of the harbour also as others have noted overrides the Resource Management Act in allowing farmers who need to do works in riverbeds to do earthworks and other associated work in response to the earthquake to do that as a permitted activity without the need to get a retrospective consent from the relevant district council. It also extends the time frames for people who have done emergency works using the existing provisions under the Act to actually notify the councils of those works. So this bill does go some way to reassuring those who have done work urgently that they do not have to go through the resource consent process. We have more concerns about the legislation that will be brought to this House later this week where Ministers are likely to get quite significant powers to override not only the Resource Management Act but a number of other pieces of legislation.We are pleased that in this bill there have been some safeguards put in but there is a range of organisations to be consulted with around the Kaikōura Harbour works. We will also be looking very closely at the bill that is introduced later this week in order to look at the extent to which there are further safeguards as suggested by members of the cross-party group. We are pleased that the bill that is coming later in the week has got additional safeguards compared with the legislation that was introduced in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes.It is a major task for everybody in Kaikōura. The community there is responding in the way one would expect. People recognise I think that it is a long hard road to recovery. This bill with the changes around the harbour does take a step to ensuring that those nature tourism trips—for the whale watch to work and for the dolphin encounter people to take visitors out—are able to happen in the most expeditious way possible. Thank you.