Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill

I move, That the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill be now read a first time. It is now a matter of history that on Saturday, 4 September at 4.31 in the morning, Cantabrians were woken by the largest earthquake this country has seen for some time. The scale of damage from the earthquake and the hundreds of aftershocks since is something that New Zealand has not seen in recent times. As a result of the devastation caused by these events, a state of emergency still is in place across Canterbury.

The destruction caused to infrastructure and buildings across the Canterbury region is considerable. The damage is so substantial that the recovery will be one of the most significant events in New Zealand’s history. Estimates of damage vary, but the costs will run into some billions of dollars, and we have to give thanks while we are talking about property damage that there was no loss of life. That miracle makes it easier for us to focus on rebuilding Canterbury and maintaining a positive frame of mind. Cantabrians have shown tremendous spirit to so rapidly reconnect and restore first Christchurch City and then the regions of Waimakariri and Selwyn District. I also thank the people outside the region who have so generously come to the aid of their fellow Kiwis.

There are far too many to mention, but I would like to mention the officials of government who have worked so tirelessly over the weekend to put this bill together.

We have all seen images of homes and schools wrecked by the tremendous force that was unleashed, images of the towns and city centres where large numbers of buildings are damaged or inaccessible, and images of the many churches and historic buildings shattered by the quake. Furthermore, roads have moved, railway lines have been twisted, and farm lands have been so damaged by holes, fissures, and tears that they cannot be used safely for livestock, and some cropping may be endangered. Vital infrastructure such as sewerage work has been disrupted, although that infrastructure has been largely reconnected in the heaviest urban areas.

New Zealand is a country prone to earthquakes. We have known that for some time and we have prepared for an event like this by establishing the Earthquake Commission, by strengthening our buildings, by having emergency contingency plans, and by having emergency kits in our homes. But we can never fully prepare for, or prevent, the damage that an earthquake of this magnitude causes.

I spent a lot of time in Canterbury over the last 10 days, and I saw for myself the damage in my home area. I have seen firsthand the spirit of the people of Canterbury, and I am very impressed by the way that they have worked tirelessly and carried out their responsibilities in the different organisations of the region to get the place reconnected. When we look back over the last 10 days—and it has been only 10 days—we see that the emergency response has been, to say the least, most impressive. All those involved in achieving that result should be congratulated. It should be remembered that those people often leave their own families and homes to help others. I spoke last Friday night to a group of people who had been helping connect water and sewerage in Christchurch City. Many of them left their homes on Saturday at 5 o’clock in the morning, simply leaving their wives, partners, and families while they went out to help others.

They did up to 100 hours’ work last week and achieved an enormous result. The same can be said for the power workers and the communications workers. Their efforts were very impressive.

The task ahead is enormous. The rebuilding and recovery may have begun, but it will take a long time and we will need the rest of New Zealand to lend a hand. The support offered by people from outside the region—the donations they have made to the mayoral and other funds—is evidence of the willingness of this country to help out Cantabrians. I know that the people of Canterbury welcome that support and thank their fellow New Zealanders for that help, but more help is needed.

In 2009, there were about 50,000 building consents, or consents relating to building issues, around the country. If we consider the scale of destruction in Canterbury and apply similar consenting arrangements, we find that every consenting officer in this country could be locked up in the consenting process for a number of years before anything is done in a practical sense. Business as usual will not work. Legislation needs to be adapted to respond to the special circumstances that now exist in Canterbury and, in particular, that will apply when the state of emergency is lifted. So far, we have identified several needs: modifying legislative requirements under the Resource Management Act, such as in respect of heavier than allowable loads being able to be taken to landfills; streamlining Building Act processes to deal with dangerous buildings without delay, and the repair and perhaps replacement of buildings; and flexible welfare support and payments for people in need.

To facilitate the Canterbury recovery, we need a mechanism that allows specific amendments to a range of legislation. This bill will be the House’s expression of a strong desire to remove bureaucracy that could slow down the very necessary work we now have to do. I know this Parliament is united in its desire to assist Canterbury in every way it can, and on behalf of the people of Canterbury I offer thanks for that. Therefore, today I am introducing the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill to help Canterbury get over and get past this disaster. This bill enables the Government to use Orders in Council to facilitate emergency recovery responses. Orders in Council can be used to tailor specific solutions to identified issues as the recovery progresses. Most important, Orders in Council will allow the Government to react quickly with the support of the whole Parliament. Just as Orders in Council can be made, they can also be revoked or replaced as needs change during the recovery process.

The current state of emergency has allowed authorities in Canterbury to get on with the job of ensuring the health and safety of residents while taking steps towards ongoing recovery. Some actions would not be permitted in normal circumstances. A number of those activities need to continue immediately after the state of emergency has lifted. Although retrospective provisions are usually not desirable, they are needed in this case to protect those who have taken necessary action in this period and immediately following the earthquake.

We want to remove impediments to the recovery of Canterbury, but I am mindful that we need to be cautious in our approach. We do not want to remove, suspend, or otherwise modify legislation that protects the people of Canterbury and thus create a perverse outcome. For that reason, I am taking steps to ensure that the Orders in Council are used only for emergency response to, and recovery from, the earthquake event. The first measure I am proposing is that each Order in Council developed in response to the recovery needs to meet the tests of complying with the purpose of the bill. It must facilitate the response to the Canterbury earthquake. The Orders in Council in this legislation will be in place only while they are needed and for no longer than the period up to 1 April 2012. Those Orders in Council will be subject to the House’s normal disallowance provisions.

The bill also establishes the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission, of which the three district mayors of Christchurch, Waimakariri, and Selwyn will be members. Later this week, four other members will be added, including an Environment Canterbury commissioner, to augment that commission.

It is important to recognise the enormous capacity of the regions and districts to know what they need in order to recover. This mechanism will mean that they are easily able to connect with their counterparts in Wellington, and that the Government has a clear path for offering assistance to them as they go through that recovery. I stress again, however, that the people of Canterbury and their elected representatives will be leading the recovery, with the Government standing firmly behind them to give assistance where it is needed.

I close by offering my thanks to other Canterbury MPs, from all parties, who have been very cooperative in getting to this point today. I know that that cooperation will continue as the recovery continues. The resource we have in our local MPs is considerable, and we look to give Cantabrians comfort to go about this recovery by enabling those MPs to be prominent in their communities and to give advice on how those communities might progress. I think that providing the mechanism to modify any legislation hindering the recovery of Canterbury and ensuring that scarce resources are not diverted from that recovery is the clearest demonstration of Parliament’s support for the people in my home district. I commend this bill to the House.

Labour is very pleased to support the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill. When we observe the scale of the disaster in the Canterbury region, I think every member of this House accepts that there is no room for partisan squabbling at central government level or, for that matter, at local government level. This is a time when people in New Zealand expect their legislators to work together to assist the recovery, to help people to get their lives back together, and to do so without unnecessary delay.

I have had the opportunity over 3 days to spend some time with my Christchurch member of Parliament colleagues, looking around at the scale of the disaster. From Kaiapoi in the north and Pines Beach, where I went with Clayton Cosgrove, through to the central business district, St Albans, Avonside, and south into Bexley, I have seen some of the scale of what this earthquake has done to the people of Christchurch. Literally tens of thousands of people have been affected. There have been 2,500 homes rendered uninhabitable, and the people from those homes have been forced to seek alternative accommodation. Thousands more homes have been damaged and, sadly, much of the heritage and the history of this beautiful city has been damaged or, in some cases, destroyed. The human effects are no less real. To see in the shelters the people suffering from the trauma of that night—4.30 in the morning—and to see the stress and the fatigue on the faces of those people makes it very clear that we in this House need to do everything that we are capable of to help them to get their lives back together just as quickly as they can.

That is why we support this legislation. We understand that this situation is not one of business as usual, and that we need to make an efficient and swift response. We welcome the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission as a way of coordinating and facilitating the response to this disaster, and it makes sense that we work to assist the Government in its efforts to achieve that end. I acknowledge the role of Clayton Cosgrove, who is Labour’s shadow spokesperson on the recovery. He has worked very hard not only in his own electorate but also with all of my colleagues and with Jim Anderton to do everything that they can to help the people on the ground.

It is important that we have legislation to streamline the process, but it is equally important that in doing so we do not remove the safeguards that are necessary in order to maintain standards. We do not want to see the cowboys moving in. We do not want to see get-rich-quick merchants moving in and exploiting people in this situation. We do not want to see an opportunity being provided to those who would knock over heritage buildings not because they cannot be repaired but simply because it is convenient for them to wipe out that piece of heritage, which might have been protected. We do not want to see people lose their legitimate rights. When they are affected by a regulation in an adverse manner, they should have the right to respond, and to be heard and listened to. It is important to have those safeguards in place.

I acknowledge the cooperative attitude that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, has shown in this matter. It has been a good example of how the two sides of the House have been able to work together. The Minister’s offer to allow Labour to see the Orders in Council in advance is much appreciated. The changes that were made from the early drafts, allowing those Orders in Council to go to the Regulations Review Committee, where they can be subject to scrutiny and where the committee members can get expert advice and listen to the report of the Office of the Clerk, are an important safeguard. Where something is wrong, to then be able to bring it back to the House and expose it to debate is, I think, very important. I welcome too the announcement by the Minister that the sunset clause that is necessary in legislation of this nature will be brought back, from 2015 to 2012, because, by and large, the substantial work will have been done in that period of time.

Although we are streamlining the process, one thing that we should be rejoicing about in this House is that despite the complaints about red tape, compliance costs, and nanny State, we have building codes in New Zealand that are so effective in preserving human life that we saw not one life lost in our country, although an earthquake of a similar magnitude in Haiti took the lives of 230,000 people. We can be proud of that. So, you know, although on occasions in the 1990s this House got it wrong about the building codes and that led to leaky homes, it is really important that we maintain those high standards and that level of protection.

I acknowledge the work done by many people to alleviate the plight of those who have been affected by this earthquake. It is a bit hard to know where to begin, but I suppose we would begin with the emergency services. We have seen the search and rescue teams coming in from all parts of the country, seen the work done by the police, and seen the soldiers out there at night, doing the work. They have been working alongside the police. The firefighters have been doing what they could to help. All of those things make one proud to be a New Zealander, with those people being prepared to act in a professional and selfless way. I acknowledge the role of the mayor, the council, and the officials of not only the Christchurch City Council but also the Waimakariri and Selwyn districts. They have worked beyond people’s expectations. I have seen the people out there in the streets, working long hours, and doing the jobs. I have seen the Salvation Army and the Order of St John working in the night shelters. They are doing that work in a way that lifts the lives of the people whom they are helping. I have seen the work of the volunteers, the students with shovels over their shoulder, who are ready to muck in and help. All of those things are, I think, very positive in the response.

I have also seen the resilient nature of Christchurch people and the way in which they have often dealt with adversity. They have been prepared to work alongside and help their neighbours first, even when their own situation is also a very difficult one. But there comes a point where the euphoria wears off, and people start to feel the stress and strain. At that point it is really important to provide the support and information that they need. I am really pleased that the Earthquake Commission has started to hold a series of meetings, working alongside my colleagues. Lianne Dalziel convened a meeting of 500 people in Christchurch south with the Earthquake Commission. I think that is really important.

💬 Aaron Gilmore: There weren’t 500.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: You can’t count.

I do not think it is helpful to have that sort of debate across the House. We are talking about something positive that is happening there, where the Earthquake Commission is there to provide advice, along with the geotechnical experts and the loss adjusters.

But I say to the Minister, in a helpful manner, that our members have been getting a lot of questions out there that people need to be given answers to. Some people have built their homes in areas subject to liquefaction, and I have seen the disaster that that has caused. Those people desperately want to know whether they will be able to rebuild their homes. If they cannot rebuild on their sections, they want to know about the level of compensation that there might be for their plight. I want to know why the insurance companies have refused to cover people, for 3 weeks, when they move into new homes. What situation does that create for people who want to sign up to a new home, but who know that they have to have insurance protection? I hope the House will be able to work on that issue with the insurance companies in order to achieve a change in attitude. I want to know what is to happen for those people who are either under-insured or not insured. I know it is easy to condemn people for not having insurance, but I spoke to somebody who is on an invalids benefit, and he did not have insurance because he could not afford it. Obviously, we cannot leave those people to suffer, and to be without any help.

There are people out there who still do not have their sewerage connected. We can see the Portaloos down the street, but there is no way that elderly people should have to go out into the street to use them. I know that the Minister and others will be working hard to get those services put back in place and to help people who are in temporary accommodation. I have spoken to people who are living with family, living with friends, or renting a motel, and who cannot do that for the longer term. Clearly, that is another area where there is a need for help.

I know that everybody—including members of the House—needs to be patient, but we also need to acknowledge that people out there want, and need, to be given full information, and that they need to be given adequate resourcing in order to get the job done. Labour undertakes to assist the Government in meeting those needs, but equally we will be working on behalf of, and advocating for, people who need help and assistance, and we will be doing that in a constructive manner. Thank you very much.

The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill is an appropriate and timely response to Canterbury’s massive earthquake on 4 September. It is an exceptional bill, but these are exceptional circumstances. It is a realistic bill, given the scale of the challenge to rebuild Christchurch and its surrounding communities. The bill is designed to take us smoothly from emergency to recovery. It is important we consider this bill in the context of the Canterbury earthquake being the most costly natural disaster in the history of our country. The release of energy at 4.31 on Saturday morning from this 7.1 magnitude earthquake was the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Engineers prefer to measure earthquakes by ground horizontal acceleration levels because it is these that cause the building damage. The Canterbury earthquake recorded accelerations of 1.26G at Greendale. That is, the horizontal force exerted on buildings was 1.26 times gravity and is like tipping up a building, like Parliament House, on its end and then putting it back again. These are the highest ever recorded on a New Zealand seismograph and amongst only a very few of that size globally.

Yes, we are fortunate that the earthquake occurred at an hour when most people were at home in bed. But the main reason the casualties were so low is that New Zealand, post the 1931 Napier earthquake, implemented building standards that ensured their structural integrity under such an earthquake. Christchurch owes much to two remarkable Cantabrians, Professor Bob Park and Tom Paulay, both now deceased, who set the global standard for the design of earthquake-resistant buildings and bridges in the 1960s and 1970s. That no modern building or bridge built to these standards failed is a huge tribute to the quality of their successful research, the work of their successors, and the hundreds of engineers whom they trained.

Numbers tell a powerful story. It has already been mentioned that the Haiti earthquake at the beginning of the year, of magnitude 7.0, killed 230,000 people; the earthquake in the Sichuan province, in China, in May 2008 of magnitude 7.9 killed 69,000 people; the Kashmir earthquake of magnitude 7.6 in 2005 killed 79,000 people; the San Francisco earthquake of magnitude 6.9 killed 63 people; and the Kobe earthquake of magnitude 6.8 in 1995, in another developed country, killed over 6,000 people. We can be justifiably proud of the design standards that proved their worth last Saturday.

I must also join others in paying tribute to our civil defence and emergency staff, both nationally and locally, for their response over the last 10 days. When in Christchurch at the weekend I caught up with Professor Green from the United States, who has visited the site of almost every major earthquake in the last two decades. He noted that the organisation of the response in Christchurch and Canterbury was the best he had seen, and set the standard internationally. That is a huge compliment to the hundreds of professionals and volunteers who have been working so hard over the past 10 days. Our challenge with this bill is to ensure we continue that excellence as we move from emergency to the recovery phase of this disaster.

This will get harder, not easier. There are some very difficult judgments to be made about which heritage buildings should be demolished as they are beyond repair, and which ones must be saved. Tough calls will also need to be made on which areas can be, and should be, built on, which areas need some form of geotechnical ground improvement before rebuilding, and which areas are too unstable to safely reconstruct on. The enormous challenge is in making these important judgments quickly but correctly. Nobody wants people to be unable to live in their homes or unable to resume trade in their businesses for a day longer than is necessary. Yet the decisions made over the next few months will impact on Christchurch and Canterbury for a century or more. Getting the framework right for these decisions is vital.

This bill creates the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission to lead that work. It links the work of central, regional, and local government. It makes sure we work in harmony through this recovery and reconstruction phase. The bill provides the necessary provisions to override current Acts. For instance, we do not want our council staff spending the next several months filling out the many forms required for retrospective approval for the demolition of buildings that have already come down during the civil emergency, nor do we want officials applying for consents for discharges that have inevitably occurred into Canterbury’s waterways. If we are to get through the recovery phase as quickly and efficiently as possible, we need to be very focused on the right priorities, and those are rebuilding the houses and infrastructure of Canterbury as quickly as possible.

As one of the three responsible Ministers listed in the bill, I assure the House that those powers will be used sparingly. In the early stages of drafting this bill we attempted to identify with officials the very specific provisions we would need to amend. We rapidly came to a conclusion that that would be impossible. There were so many issues that we would inevitably get it wrong, and the only practical way forward was this sort of generic empowering bill. In the coming months, it will require trust and goodwill to work, and like the Minister in charge of the bill, Gerry Brownlee, I appreciate the cooperative way in which Opposition parties have approached this bill.

Questions have been raised about the geographic provisions of the bill and why they are deliberately orientated towards the impacts of the earthquake, not just to the geographic area of the districts of Selwyn, Waimakariri, and Christchurch City. That is with good reason. For instance, the landslide that is being dealt with in the northern part of Canterbury is outside those districts but related to the earthquake recovery; equally so, the Kate Valley landfill, which is taking the bulk of the waste, is outside those districts, but the provisions of this bill may be needed. There have also been questions about the specific Acts that are affected. We have attempted to list all those Acts in this bill, but, again, it is inevitable that we will not know all of the issues, so flexibility is provided for in this bill.

I completed my PhD two decades ago in geotechnical engineering at the University of Canterbury. I studied liquefaction, earthquakes, and landslides from a very academic perspective. None of that prepared me for my visit at the weekend to Canterbury and the sight of uprooted houses, wrecked bridges, collapsed buildings, split stopbanks, and fractured pipe systems. The forces at work are indescribable, but this disaster has brought out the very best in people. My favourite story has been about the Facebook-driven droves of young people getting out and helping the people of Canterbury with the clean-up. This bill is about Parliament doing its bit and giving us a commission and the necessary powers to get on with the most difficult part, which is the rebuilding of New Zealand’s second-largest city. With patience, goodwill, and cooperation, and by tapping into New Zealand’s world-renowned engineering expertise, we can rebuild a better, safer, and cleaner Christchurch. I commend the bill to the House.

Before I deal with the substance of my speech on the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill, I extend my thanks to Gerry Brownlee and John Carter, the Ministers who are responsible for the bill. I do so for a number of reasons. Firstly, as my party leader, Phil Goff, has done, I thank them for accepting the two recommendations that we made yesterday on consultation in respect of Orders in Council and scrutiny of those Orders in Council. Additionally, I thank them for the way we, as opposite numbers, have interacted in the last few days in a spirit of cooperation; there are no politics in this issue. People in my province and in New Zealand would hang their heads in shame if they thought there were.

As we go through the debates on this bill, my colleagues and my party will be supporting the bill. I thank Gerry Brownlee for a further commitment he made yesterday. I accept the logistics involved, but given the short notice we have had to look at the legislation, my colleagues have been working on it and may propose some additional ideas and thoughts. As a Parliament we want to ensure that the bill is as robust as possible, so as to deliver as best as possible for the people of Canterbury. I thank Minister Brownlee for his commitment to look, in the spirit of bipartisanship, at any proposals we may put up in all seriousness in order to present to the people of Canterbury a bill that is as high-quality and effective as we can deliver.

As the member of Parliament for Waimakariri, which has incurred damage throughout an area from Belfast and Redwood through to Kaiapoi, Kairaki Beach, and Pines Beach, and through to, in a lesser extent, parts of Woodend, Rangiora, and Waikuku, I join with other members in saying that whether we are religious or not religious, we would have to say that we believe in miracles. It is a miracle that people in Courtenay Drive in Kaiapoi were not killed as a result of this earthquake. I am told that a female police officer was sleeping in her bed when the “shake, rattle, and roll” occurred, after which she got out of bed and walked out of the bedroom. Had she done so a second later, I am advised that she would have been killed as the roof collapsed on top of her.

This event is a tragedy of immense proportions. It has provided huge trauma for people. As I walked around Pines Beach, Kairaki Beach, and Featherston Avenue, I found that it has also brought out, as other speakers have said, the best in the human and Kiwi spirit. I wandered down Hood Street, which basically looks like Beirut in the 1980s on a good day. I do not think there is one house in Hood Street in Pines Beach that is habitable as we speak. There I found two young guys taking to their trailer what was left of their belongings. They were in their 20s, I would have thought, and they said they had a question for me. I asked them what it was. They asked where they could sign up to assist at the civil defence post. I told them that they were entitled to think of themselves, at least for the next few hours, and to get themselves and their families sorted out. They said that they would be finished in an hour, and that people were worse off than them. They wanted to know where they could sign up for the civil defence post.

As I went from house to house, I heard amazing stories. There was an interesting theme. If there was a door, I would knock on it and go into the property. I asked how it was going, how the people were, and whether they were OK. Almost to a house, the response from people would be that they were OK, and that I should go next door to look after “Mrs Smith” or “Mrs Jones”. I would look up at their house, and it would look like somebody had taken to it with a giant can-opener. But they showed incredible generosity of spirit in saying that I should not worry about them—even families who had kids said that—and that I should check next door, where people were worse off than they were.

I also went to Kaiapoi North School, to the civil defence welfare post located at the Kaiapoi Rugby Football Club on Smith Street, and to the civil defence post at Pines Beach, where a lady had lost her home. Her house had gone, but she had gone in to man that civil defence post, day in and day out, as a civil defence worker. She had been brought to tears occasionally when, very rarely, she thought of herself instead of thinking of others, even though she was more than entitled to do that.

I met Michael, the Salvation Army worker who had, with his team, looked after folks by providing hot meals day after day, and I met Dave Pilkington, a vegetable packer whom I called to say that I needed vegetables for the civil defence post. He said he did not own the vegetables—he only packed them—yet 5 minutes later he took it upon himself, in liaison with his customers, to provide a couple of truckloads of vegetables to folks. Those are wonderful examples of the human spirit.

We are now moving to a second phase. We are moving to a phase in which, as a counsellor said to me, the “negative euphoria” and shock are dissipating, and folks are becoming more brittle. We have to respect that situation. One person said to me that they might have to go to the toilet in a bucket for the next 6 months. They are worried that they may not have a house, and about how they will get the kids to school. All of those mundane activities that we take for granted in a normal course of events have now become insurmountable problems for many people of our respective communities in Waimakariri, Christchurch, and Selwyn. Just the day-to-day activities of getting by now present an emotional marathon for folks, and that is creating a higher expectation, and a greater demand for resource, activity, and swift resolution of problems. I say to the Government in goodwill that the challenge it will ultimately face as we move through this emergency will be meeting that demand, those higher expectations, and that need for further resource.

This bill is needed. No one wants to see a delay in returning people to a decent standard of living and giving them their lives back. No one wants to see it delayed, but we make the point—and I am gratified that Ministers have touched on it—that those powers should be limited to the recovery, limited to the emergency, and not used by local authorities or others for surreptitious means, shall we say. I am gratified that there will be parliamentary scrutiny through the normal parliamentary process of the Standing Orders. As I said, the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, Mr Brownlee, has guaranteed that there will be consultation with us prior to Orders in Council coming into force.

There are many competing forces in our respective local authorities: the issue of heritage, the issue of environment, the issue, of course, of getting people back to normality and into a liveable house or other accommodation, and the issue of dealing with trauma. We should not forget those people who have responded to that trauma, the people who have acted like human sponges in soaking up the trauma of others, like the volunteer fire brigade in Kaiapoi, in my patch. Trauma counsellors, too, have dealt with folks who have burst into tears—men, women and kids alike who have been terrified. Those counsellors have sat there and put an arm around their shoulder, and have let those people talk and try to deal with the here and now and the trauma that they feel. Kids, especially have felt trauma with every aftershock, and we are still having aftershocks.

I say as a personal note that Mr Brownlee should be proud of some of his relations. I pay tribute to the Brownlee boys who own the Kāikanui Tavern in Kaiapoi. I do this in all sincerity. As a gesture, they took in the contractors and the volunteers who have worked hours on end—12, 13, 15 hours a day. Many of them have had their own homes destroyed, but have got out there and said “To hell with it, we have to do something.” The Brownlee boys put a bit of a shout on; they did Kiwi thing. They said “For the next hour, boys and girls, the beers are on us.” Not only did they do that, but they have done a number of other social things just to give people a breather. Mr Brownlee should be proud of his distant cousins.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Not distant, first cousins.

Not so distant—first cousins, my apologies.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: That’s not what they say.

Ha, ha! It is a culmination of Government and parliamentary work, of work of local authority politicians and officials, right down to private and public contractors, to St John Ambulance workers, to the fire brigade, to the odd publican who provides a bit of light relief, and to the victim who helps out his or her neighbour. It is culmination of all those things that will get us back on the road to recovery and will start to give people back their humanity. It has been an awful, traumatic event, but I say, as I did at the start, there is one saving grace: houses can be rebuilt, roads can be packed, but we cannot replace human life. Thank goodness we have had no losses thus far!

I begin by paying tribute to the Government and particularly to Ministers Gerry Brownlee and John Carter for their work and their cooperation over the past week. That is much appreciated by all of us.

I believe that all of us in this House today would prefer not to have to address this bill, the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill. It is the product of the ravages of nature and the cause of far-reaching human distress, yet the bill is a symbol of human resilience. It shows a determination to respond to a natural disaster with purpose and resolve, and that our communities can rally together in the face of disaster even stronger than we were before. The Green Party enters this debate in a constructive spirit. At this moment our nation is one, united in a societal sense. The Green Party shares in that and celebrates it. I have suggested to Mayor Bob Parker that Christchurch hold a celebration of life this weekend for the city’s residents to enjoy each other’s company and share in the glory of being alive. In the here and now, down under, just for the moment, we are one world.

Those of us in Parliament also carry an obligation to ensure the political process continues unabated. That includes a requirement to ensure democracy remains intact. That requirement is continuous and non-derogable. So we have no option but to approach this bill with a constructive attitude for the sake of national cohesion, yet with a critical attitude for the sake of political principles that underpin and give meaning to that cohesion, and to do so on the basis of an overnight reading of the bill and one day of debate.

The bill has been described by the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery as a fairly powerful piece of legislation. He has never got it so very right before. It accords enormous powers to the Government and through it to the local authorities. It gives full protection from legal liability for any acts of omission or commission. This is not a normal bill. These are not normal powers. We shall not speak of the nanny State, for this is no time for banter, but let us all acknowledge that this Parliament would be ceding the most far-reaching power to the executive in a generation at least, if not more. I agree with Minister Brownlee it is not business as usual, but it is a question of what type of business we should be doing from now on. The question must be asked—and the Green Party will not shirk the question—of whether the circumstances justify such far-reaching suspension of powers.

Mayor Parker said last night that no building can be demolished without consent. So what will the nature of that consent be? Presumably, the three city councils will receive consent applications as before and process them. So what is this bill changing? As drafted, it allows central government to suspend virtually any piece of New Zealand legislation to enable the three councils to proceed rapidly to demolish and rebuild. The point of consent in times of normalcy is to ensure that the broader public interest is served beyond the immediate private interests involved. So why is that changing? How does an earthquake change that? Where is the emergency? Has there been loss of life? No. Is there an emergency in the recovery and reconstruction period? No. If there is a security threat or a humanitarian disaster, then there is justification for emergency powers of this kind. But emergency powers are lifted when these end, and the recovery period begins. The Government itself makes it clear we are about to exit from the emergency period. This is to end tomorrow. The bill is not titled the “Canterbury Earthquake Emergency Bill” but the “Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill.” If we are out of the emergency and into the recovery, why are we according emergency powers and why are those powers so very sweeping? If all we are seeking to do is expedite reconstruction, then let us find proper ways of doing this that are proportionate to the challenge. We do not have to potentially suspend virtually the entire New Zealand statute book to rebuild Christchurch.

There are many people in the city who are moved by the opposite concern of the Government. They are worried that the city will be rebuilt too damn quickly and that insufficient thought will go into the concept design and the planning work. As I said in the House last week, this setback is an opportunity for us. It is a chance to introduce new methods and techniques of sustainability. We could have green shoots where there is currently rubble. But if we rush headlong into sprouting concrete edifices within months, simply because there is a new and temporary hole in the ground, we shall live to regret some of the decisions we make.

So what exactly does the bill do? The bill establishes a commission. The commission advises the relevant Minister about an Order in Council. The relevant Minister then makes a recommendation to the Governor-General to issue an Order in Council. That recommendation is above the law; essentially, it may not be challenged, reviewed, quashed, or called into question in any court. What is the Order in Council to address? It may grant an exemption or suspend any provision contained in 22 New Zealand statutes. These include the Building Act, the Commerce Act, the Health Act, the Historic Places Act, the Land Transport Act, the Local Government Act, the Public Works Act, the Ratings Valuations Act, the Resource Management Act, the Social Security Act, the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act, and the Waste Minimisation Act. I repeat: any provision of these Acts may be suspended by the head of State because of an earthquake, because of the Government’s desire to respond to, and recover from, the earthquake. But that is not all; the bill allows exemptions not just from these 22 Acts but from any other piece of New Zealand legislation, with the exception of five Acts pertaining to the constitution and some custody and detention provisions.

So the relevant Minister can, because of an earthquake in Christchurch, suspend the application of virtually any legislation in New Zealand. Is that truly what this Government intends? Are we perhaps losing all sense of proportion here? There is even a supremacy clause: no order is invalid in the event it is repugnant to, or inconsistent with, any other Act, with the few exceptions already cited. That means the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act will be, with those exceptions, the supreme law in the land.

A related concern is the jurisdictional application of these sweeping powers. There appears to be no territorial limitation in the bill. Does this mean that in pursuit of recovery in Canterbury there could be a suspension of consent outside the region? Is that far-fetched, perhaps? Then there will be no problem in introducing such a limitation. The point of legislating is to add clarity, so let us do that.

I take the points Minister Smith has made; these need to be pursued and we look forward to doing that. In the response and recovery mode we should be moved by personal plight and communal aspiration, but not by shock and awe legislation. The Government is essentially saying we must trust it not to do anything silly. But trust is not the normal ingredient of the political process. The reason for political principles, legislative acts, and judicial review is so that societal trust can be applied to executive action. This is no disrespect to the Government. Our Cabinet Ministers may be as pure as the driven snow; it would still be irrelevant. Personal trust and societal trust are different creatures. We can all personally trust Cabinet Ministers yet require that they remain within the law and not suspend it.

It appears to the Green Party that the Government has been galvanised in this by its broad economic philosophy: do not let the GDP fall, do not let the tourists become concerned, rebuild as fast as possible, and time is money. Well, time is also wisdom. Time enables people not simply to rush headlong into the coming months, but to reflect—not for ever, but for a decent interval—on what we wish to do.

The Green Party will support this bill through its first reading. In the Committee stage we shall advance amendments designed to turn this extreme law round to be more modest and appropriate to the circumstances. If our concerns are met we shall ultimately vote for the bill. If they are not, our support may not be forthcoming in the third reading.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak on the first reading of the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill. First, I thank the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, for the work he has done to rapidly identify and respond to the issues facing Cantabrians as a result of this horrific disaster. I also acknowledge the Hon John Carter, the Minister for Civil Defence, for the work that he and his team have done, as well as other Ministers of the Government. I also acknowledge the work that all Canterbury MPs have done in representing their constituents and trying to bring some order to the situation in Christchurch.

On behalf of the ACT caucus I start by saying that our hearts go out to the several hundred thousand residents of Canterbury who have been affected by this earthquake. Although we are incredibly grateful that no lives were lost as a direct result of the earthquake, we are sorely aware that this has been a very trying time for the people and communities of Christchurch and Canterbury, and we in the ACT Party wish them every support on the road to recovery that lies ahead. I acknowledge and commend at this time the tremendous work that has been done and the way that central government and local government staff have responded to this emergency. Staff have worked long hours, worked through the nights, and supported those in need during what has been a very upsetting and stressful time.

Just one example to illustrate this work to the House is the staff from Work and Income working throughout the weekend of the earthquake to ensure that over 10,000 superannuitants and pensioners living alone in Canterbury were contacted by phone, offered support, and advised on safety precautions such as boiling water. Of course, it is not just staff of central government and local government; it is all the volunteers, the members of the police, the army, the St John Ambulance, and the Salvation Army, as we have heard this afternoon.

The ACT Party fully supports the Government’s proposed measures to assist the people of Canterbury with their recovery, and completely agrees with the important need to address the statutory requirements that may divert resources from the recovery. I note the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s comment this afternoon about going back to retrospectively seek approval to demolish buildings that have, of course, already been demolished.

The ACT Party supports this bill. However, we have serious concerns about the trend that this Government appears to be setting towards transferring decision-making powers from Parliament to individual Ministers via the Order in Council process. Examples of this development have been seen in the House recently when we have considered legislation that contained special intervention powers for the upcoming Rugby World Cup, and issues relating to the performance of Environment Canterbury.

In each case, as with the bill we are discussing today, there have been specific and very important reasons for the application of special powers that override normal parliamentary processes. However, ACT has serious concerns about the impact this trend will have on New Zealand’s constitutional principles. Our constitutional system depends on a clear separation of powers between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. Parliamentary scrutiny is an essential and vital element of our system of government and constitutional framework, both of which are threatened by this developing trend, which will only be reinforced every time the Government enacts legislation that overrides normal parliamentary or local government process.

The enacting of such legislation must not become the norm. The New Zealand regulatory system should have sufficient flexibility and universality to handle exceptional events like the Canterbury earthquake and the Rugby World Cup. ACT does not support the risk that such legislation poses to our constitutional safeguards in relation to the role of Parliament and local government in making decisions that affect our nation’s communities. We support, however, the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill, which will ensure that the earthquake recovery effort is not compromised.

The bill will go a long way to help the communities of Canterbury recover and will provide much-needed assistance in their time of need. It will provide welcome relief for Cantabrians and enhance the considerable and effective support that has already been provided by Government and local government agencies since 4 September—a week ago last Saturday. The needs of the people and communities affected by the earthquake are paramount and the Government is ensuring that those needs are met. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. There has been one word on my mind in the aftermath of the events of 4 September, and that word is “manaakitanga”. The very core of the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill is about showing manaakitanga by helping the people of Christchurch, including its 30,500 Māori, to recover from the earthquake, to rebuild their homes, to renew their spirits, and—most of all—to restore the quality of their lives and that of their w’ānau around them. Manaakitanga, as defined by Professor Hirini Moko Mead, focuses on positive human behaviour and on encouraging people to rise above their personal attitudes and feelings towards others. The aim is to nurture relationships and to respect the mana of other people, no matter what their standing is in society. Being hospitable and looking after visitors is given very high priority. And so it is that in this bill—and this has been very evident in the days interrupted by hundreds of aftershocks and further disarray—priority is given to looking after the people of Canterbury today and into the future.

The bill enables an effective response to the Canterbury earthquake to be put in place, with the associated statutory powers provided that are necessary to assist with the response. A key priority in the bill is to facilitate the gathering of information about any structure or infrastructure affected by the earthquake. An important note in the fine print is that the information sought through the processes introduced in the bill is defined as that which is “relevant to understanding how to minimise the damage caused by earthquakes.” This is where we come back to the concept of manaakitanga. How much more relevant to the issue of damage can it be than to focus on the well-being of the people?

I will reiterate here what the ACT spokesperson said about the amazing efforts that have been made by Work and Income to make contact with people who are over 65 years of age in order to provide a basic level of contact that can be very appreciated in times of need. The numbers are absolutely remarkable. As at earlier today, Work and Income staff had contacted 16,233 superannuitants by phone, and had visited another 706 elderly people in their homes in the days following the quake. In addition, I commend Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, which has telephoned over 700 kaumātua to check on their well-being. Telephone teams organised by te rūnanga have also been calling w’ānau in other age groups, with the aim of calling all w’ānau in the badly affected areas for whom they have contact details.

I also draw attention to the commitment of the local MP Rahui Katene, who alongside all the other MPs in Christchurch has been doing sterling work. She has spent every moment visiting Māori communities and w’ānau in the worst affected areas of Ōtautahi following the 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

When we talk about infrastructure and the damage that has been incurred, we say it is the human infrastructure that must prevail. I am very pleased that in the Government’s initial response to the earthquake a fund of $2.5 million has been established for trauma counselling, to be drawn from the Community Response Fund. I have to say how saddened I was that in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake on Saturday, 4 September, the police reported that incidents of domestic violence had increased by 53 percent. Such a statistic mirrored the research findings issued by Victoria University earlier this year, which revealed that after a disaster there is up to triple the usual number of reports of domestic violence. The ugly face of violence, the escalating rates of anxiety, and the levels of mental illness, stress, and depression are all casualties of the damage caused by any disaster, including the recent Canterbury earthquake. I welcome the purpose of this bill of gathering information about the extent of the damage, not just to the bricks and mortar but also to the human experience.

The response and recovery provisions outlined in Part 2 deal with some 22 Acts that may be affected by the granting of an exemption from the provisions contained within them. I will focus specifically on two areas that are of special interest to the Māori Party, and they relate to the ongoing provision of public health. The Health Act 1956 and the Health and Disability Services (Safety) Act 2001 are the key means by which legislation ensures that there is adequate drinking-water, sewerage, waste disposal, sanitation, and so on. Although there are no concerns about ensuring that decisions are made quickly in order to ensure that the Canterbury region gets back to normal, there are some concerns that affected parties have no recourse after the responsible Minister makes a decision. We need to ensure that those affected parties or groups, which are already disadvantaged, are not further disadvantaged by any decisions that are made. I am thinking in particular of the tangata whenua, people with disabilities, people on low incomes, refugee and migrant communities, Pasifika peoples, those in poor housing, and other groups that may be more vulnerable in this time of instability. There must be some assurances that all decisions will be consulted on with affected parties and groups before final decisions are made.

In addition, the basic human rights of people and the international conventions such as our United Nations commitments must also be taken into account.

We absolutely support this bill, as it gives those who are involved in the rebuilding effort another tool to aid in the recovery of the people of Christchurch. I want to be clear that clause 6(3) in Part 2 causes us some concern, in that the statement that “The recommendation of the relevant Minister may not be challenged, reviewed, quashed, or called into question in any court.” might suggest that liability and, logically, accountability and culpability are all being removed. We table this concern now in order to enable the Minister to provide an assurance as to how issues of liability can be addressed.

If I could make one final suggestion, it would be to recommend—indeed, to strongly advise the Minister—that mana whenua must have representation on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission. There are 30,500 Māori living in Selwyn District, Waimakariri District, and Christchurch City. We want to ensure that Māori have a guaranteed voice on the recovery commission, and that the unique needs of marae, w’ānau, hapū, and iwi are actively respected within it. We strongly urge the Government to reserve a place for Ngāi Tahu amongst the four appointed persons on the seven-person commission.

I return once more to the expression of manaakitanga. While we debate the bill in this House today I want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for the offers of assistance that have been made by many other iwi and, indeed, by the papatipu rūnanga to support Kai Tahu and other iwi living in the rohe of Ōtautahi, and to all the other people who have made significant contributions. Volunteers from right throughout Aotearoa have devoted themselves to the task of supporting the people of Canterbury. All of us in this House have been touched by the generosity of spirit that has been demonstrated by social service providers, non-governmental organisations, Government agencies, and members of the greater public alike. They have spared a thought for their kith and kin in Canterbury, and have reached deep to show their support. This is also an opportune time to make acknowledgments to all of the hard-working local MPs from all sides of the House who have been working to support the people of Canterbury. He mihi atu nei ki a koutou. This bill will be all the better for all of their efforts. Nā reira, tēnā koutou katoa.

I rise to support the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill. I particularly thank Minister Gerry Brownlee and Minister Nick Smith for preparing this bill so quickly and so effectively since the Canterbury earthquake on 4 September.

It is indeed a miracle that all Cantabrians have survived one of the worst earthquakes in our country’s history. Canterbury people have responded magnificently to the emergency. As I have knocked on doors in some of the worst areas in Christchurch Central I have found that I seem to have the same conversation. One asks people first how they are, and they say they are OK or all right, and within a few seconds they are saying things like they are so lucky. They all have a reason why they are so lucky. It might be something as simple as the cat having turned up, or that their bedroom has only one crack in it. The most amazing, courageous elderly people that I came across had a house that was absolutely destroyed. The garden was torn up, there were cracks in the driveway, and every room was almost impassable. They said they were so lucky because they have a campervan in the drive and they can drive away any time they like.

That is the sort of spirit that has been coming from the Canterbury people. It warms one’s heart to hear of it. Every Cantabrian, every family, and every organisation has been affected. We are all licking our wounds but also we are all counting our blessings. We are all absolutely resolved to restore and rebuild our great region with vigour and with speed.

Christchurch and Canterbury are full of can-do Cantabrians, and the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill will enable us to move swiftly to begin the long, hard work of restoration and rebuilding so we can all get back to that everyday comfort of business as usual. The bill will allow the region to move seamlessly from the present state of emergency to recovery mode, and it will provide a mechanism to coordinate reconstruction.

Thousands of New Zealanders from all over the country have rallied to support Canterbury, and have worked side by side with us. Thousands of people have worked tirelessly over the last 10 days, and we have made great progress; I thank each and every one of them. We have already heard mention of young people who have been out there giving their time and energy to the clean-up effort. A large group of about 1,000 students have taken turns digging out some of the worst areas. There has also been a group of students from Mairehau High School. Those students have been out there in their neighbourhood, doing their bit.

The interesting thing about this is that it has raised the spirits of the whole community. I have talked to elderly people and they have asked me whether I have heard about the students. They feel so much better now that they know that the students are out there. The interesting thing about those students is that they have caught the imagination of the world. The story of those mostly university students has actually gone out globally, and it has even been in newspapers in places as far-flung as Pakistan.

We have seen a real rallying of spirit in Christchurch. We now have a really good feeling for the future of our city, and we want to move forward. I have always been a one-eyed Cantabrian, but after the last 10 days I am very happy to identify as a one-eyed New Zealander as well. Thank you.

I acknowledge the previous speakers who have contributed to the debate on the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill, and say that this is one of those rare occasions when many parties are praising each other. That is an indication of how severe the earthquake was, and of how much it has affected all of us. Very soon I am going to praise two Cabinet Ministers, which I am not wont to do very regularly. But I am doing it because they deserve the praise.

I begin by acknowledging Gerry Brownlee, who has been appointed by the Government to be in charge of the earthquake response. He has worked hard and constructively with all parties in this House, and I commend him for that. I was very distressed to learn that his home had been damaged in the earthquake. I know that he deliberately chose not to raise that matter in public, but it has been in the media and I just give him an extra commendation. When one feels like getting on with sorting out one’s own life and gets a big new job, it makes it much harder. But he has done it magnificently. I also commend John Carter for what I think is a genuine effort to understand the issues from our perspective in Canterbury. He has helped to work alongside us to resolve those issues. I urge both of those Ministers to continue with that attitude as we progress this legislation in the House.

A number of us have concerns about the process and some of the specifics in the legislation. We would like to have those concerns at least considered, and preferably addressed. We certainly have questions to be answered. We have a few hours to do it. I do not generally like legislation being put through all stages without the opportunity for a select committee consideration, so I ask the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, who is leading this debate—assisted by John Carter—to take seriously during the Committee stage the issues that have been raised. That will continue the spirit in which they are raised in this House.

I will move on, just briefly, and digress from the specifics of the legislation to talk about some of the damage in my electorate. My electorate is called Port Hills. It got away lightly compared with much of the rest of our region, but people would not think so when they drive around it. There have been two earthquakes in Canterbury. I put on record that we had a second one on Wednesday, 8 September. It was not an aftershock; it caused a lot of people to say: “Bother!”, and some shorter words as well. It was very sharp, and it was centred quite close to Lyttelton in my electorate.

Lyttelton and Heathcote Valley, particularly, bore the brunt of that second earthquake. The port itself in Lyttelton was much damaged in both the Saturday quake and the Wednesday quake, but fortunately it was able to continue operating, which is a great relief. But many homes in Lyttelton have been substantially damaged, as have been many commercial buildings. Two historic buildings in Lyttelton, the Harbour Light and the Empire Hotel, are both still under threat of demolition. I understand that the Harbour Light will be saved, which will be a great relief to the many people who have enjoyed evenings there, and I hope that the same will be true of the Empire Hotel.

The whole of our province has seen significant damage to many churches, and it was amazing to see the response to the cross-faith service that was held on Sunday outside the Christchurch Cathedral. In Lyttelton the Holy Trinity Church was extensively damaged, and I certainly hope that it is able to be restored. In Sumner there are no chimneys left, to speak of. Fortunately, not many of them were in use prior to the quakes. Also we have had significant damage to the Sumner Borough Council building, which again is a historic building. In Heathcote Valley there has been a lot of damage to houses—primarily as a result of the second quake, as I said—and we have also lost the Valley Inn, which was the centre for social evenings and drinking in the valley. It was the home of many good conversations, and the host of our Anzac Day dawn parade services. It was over 130 years old; that building is no longer there. In Woolston historic buildings such as the Ferry Road Law Centre and the community library are under threat of demolition, and many of the businesses will have to move. In Sydenham, many historic buildings that are used as commercial premises and residential facilities are still cordoned off, and are quite literally teetering.

Many other parts of my electorate, our city, and our region have suffered significant damage, and every single person who was there on Saturday, on Wednesday, and in between has suffered huge stress. For some, that stress has been nearly overwhelming.

A community can be judged by its reaction to bad times. The earthquakes on Saturday and Wednesday, and the hundreds of aftershocks since, were big and scary, but from every corner of our communities people got out of their homes and businesses and asked what they could to help someone else. The response has been extraordinary. The response from around the country has been extraordinary. I expect you, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy, and others, who in the past have not been able to do so, to really go the final step and back the Crusaders next time they play—such has been the strength of support from around the country. I seriously—

💬 Brendon Burns: Give us the shield.

We will have the shield back; that would be a very generous donation to our region. It would certainly lift our spirits.

People have helped by checking on their own families, their neighbours, and their work colleagues—just checking that people are OK. They have cooked and baked; they have shovelled and sweated. Students have changed their image for ever by volunteering in their hundreds to help with the clean-up. They cancelled the Undie 500—that was a big joy to many people in the South Island—to help.

They have been brilliantly led by our civil defence, our fire brigade—professional firefighters and volunteers—our police, our ambulance officers, our health professionals, and our workers in Orion and City Care. There are so many highly competent, hard-working people—all the staff in our Government departments and agencies. All of these people were helping others in both their professional and private capacities—because many of them have worked well outside of their paid hours—when I know for a fact that many of them needed help themselves. Those people deserve a huge thanks from this House and from our nation.

I move back to the specifics of the bill itself. It is a reaction to extreme events, and to the consequences of those quakes. The bill itself is an extreme measure. It basically suspends 22 Acts and replaces them with an Order in Council without any parliamentary scrutiny or agreement for the actions that would normally come within a legislative framework. That is a big step for the House to take. The establishment of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission provides an opportunity for a collaborative approach and clear leadership, but there is no accountability to the public for its decisions, and no specific skill set for the commissioners is outlined in the bill. There does not appear to be any provision for a robust registration process for the activities undertaken through this new process.

We cannot afford to have another 1990s leaky building scenario, with local government and central government pointing the finger of blame at each other, while the homeowner is surrounded by wet, rotten boards and ends up carrying the burden. Minister Turia herself noted this very point and I agree with her. In this legislation, the Government is exempted from all responsibility. That is a very big step for Parliament to take.

The final point I make is to ask where this bill will take us. I ask members to look at Napier and the clear vision the city had for life after its earthquake. We in Canterbury have not yet had such an opportunity. It is not surprising after only 10 days. We have spent all our time looking after each other; getting sewerage, water, and power connected; and providing food for people—literally, the essentials of life. We need an opportunity to have a say in the shape of our future. The legislation must not be used in a way that will block our voice being heard in determining the shape of our future.

I end by inviting all my parliamentary colleagues from outside our region, and their friends and families, to come to Canterbury. I do not want people to come to rubberneck. I do not want them to ghoulishly look at the misfortune of others. I want people to come and spend their good money in our town, and to do as much as they can to help with the rebuilding of Canterbury. Thank you.

I will start by acknowledging the special atmosphere in the House today. As all who have contributed to the debate acknowledge, and as Clayton Cosgrove said, we need to deal with this emergency without politics getting in the way. I have to say that I knew we were in for a special time when I came up to the Cabinet meeting on the Monday immediately following the quake to learn that the Labour Opposition in particular were prepared to cooperate by allowing all Canterbury members to remain in Canterbury and still have their votes count in the parliamentary process. I thank very much all the MPs who contributed to that idea. It was great for MPs to be able to be away last week in their home region. MPs from all political parties had that opportunity and Parliament was able to function.

In my opinion, Saturday, 4 September delivered the greatest disaster New Zealand has ever seen. I acknowledge that if it were measured in terms of loss of life, we were lucky. There was no loss of life and that in itself is an absolute miracle. When we consider the scale of the event and the fact that it hit Christchurch, the second largest city in New Zealand, and its surrounding regions, in dollar terms there is no doubt the disaster is of immense proportions and is something that we have never seen before.

I was not at home in Teddington on the night of the earthquake; I was in Auckland. It was a pretty scary experience to receive a phone call from home at 5.30. The terror and fear in my wife’s voice is something that I will never forget. The issue for me was to get down to Christchurch as quickly as possible. I walked into the emergency centre that had been established in the art gallery—I guess we got there about 3 or 4 o’clock with the Prime Minister—and immediately realised how the city had responded. It was quite incredible. One might see civil defence exercises and question the worthiness of them, but to see an established civil defence emergency team working in such a coordinated fashion was a pleasure to behold. I congratulate everybody who was involved in that. I am talking about the major centre in Christchurch, but other centres were established in Kilmore Street by Environment Canterbury, and centres were also established in the Selwyn District and the Kaiapoi District.

I spent my time on Sunday in the Selwyn District, and, again, I say that I will never forget the resilience of the farmers who have been affected by this disaster. They cooperated to ensure that, first of all, they, their families, and their animals were OK, and then they immediately looked to their neighbours, whom they automatically assumed would be worse off than them. It showed the spirit of Canterbury and the spirit of farmers throughout New Zealand. We saw some tremendous examples. A dairy shed designed for 400 cows milked 3,000 cows in a 24-hour period. I ask members to bear in mind that even without the earthquake, for those involved in dairy farming this is the most stressful time in their annual calendar as they are in the midst of calving season. So I think the emergency stage worked particularly well, and I congratulate everyone who was involved in that.

We are now moving to the recovery stage, and that is exactly what the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill is about. It is extraordinarily powerful legislation, and for it to be used correctly involves an act of faith from all of us who will vote for it. If we develop the spirit of political cooperation, which I feel in the House today, I have no doubt that as we move through the next stage of the recovery and deal with issues that we have not even thought of yet, we will find a way for the bill, being flexible as it is, to work to help the recovery.

How long will it take for Canterbury to recover? I do not think any of us know that. I thank and congratulate those who have been involved in the immediate recovery. Seeing Christchurch on Saturday, 4 September, and going back there a little over a week later, one has to acknowledge the huge amount of work that has already been done to clean up our city. I do not suggest that every part of this recovery will be easy. It will not be. But to return to my original point, and as Clayton Cosgrove said, we have to keep politics out the recovery. If we do that, I have no doubt that the recovery process will be a lot quicker, and, equally, that we will build a stronger, more beautiful, and more vibrant part of New Zealand out of this disaster. I wish all Cantabrians well as we embark on that endeavour.

Ten days ago, before dawn, life changed for me, my family, my city, my electorate, my province, and, I think, probably our country. Our story is not unfamiliar and is not unusual. We were thrown around in our beds, we managed to get downstairs with our daughter to crouch under our dining table, and waited for the aftershocks to subside. As light came through, the scale of the damage became apparent. There was a slash a metre deep, and half a metre wide, across our backyard, a chimney through our bathroom only metres away from where we had been sleeping, and damage across the house. That is not unusual across Christchurch or Canterbury. Many people have been through it and many people are in much worse situations than we are. My first thought after we got out was for my poor sister in Wellington. I thought that if the earthquake was as big as this in Christchurch, how big could it have been in Wellington? I called her, and was reassured to know, in fact, that although they had felt it, Wellington had not been damaged.

The damage across my electorate of Christchurch Central has been well featured in the media, and much of that has been on the central business district, which, of course, has been hard hit. I will talk a little more about some other parts of the electorate. We have lost several community shopping centres in St Albans, and a community centre has lost a wall and may be facing demolition. The Coptic Christian church on Edgeware Road has lost its entire façade, both for the church and the community hall behind it. In Avonside, which is probably the part of my electorate that has been hit hardest, it is like a war zone. Many houses have been abandoned. When I wandered through on Monday talking to people, a chap showed me his pristine house. It was as neat as a pin, but basically its back had been broken by the quake. There was a huge, jagged slash through his backyard, and his heart was broken. He had lived in that house since 1963, when he was a boy.

The good news was that out in the street a dozen or more students and other young people from Rolleston were moving the sand with spades and wheelbarrows, and by the time I came back to Avonside a day or two later with more volunteers, who had rung me begging for work, all of the sand in Avonside had been moved out on to the street and carted away by the council. That is an indication of how rapidly some of the recovery efforts swung into action.

It has been harrowing sometimes to hear the stories in Avonside and in other parts. Men of a certain age do not often burst into tears, but that has happened more than once as I have taken my caravan out to try to provide a base to give advice to constituents who have been affected by the quake. Stories come through about houses broken in half and about people with no water and no power, but I have to acknowledge the response of the emergency services. The restoration of water and power was truly remarkable. By the end of the first week just about everybody had their power and water back on, and, given the scale of the emergency, that is a truly, truly remarkable achievement.

There was a poll quite recently that acknowledged that New Zealanders were amongst the most generous people on the planet. I think that the last 10 days in Christchurch and Canterbury have been absolutely underscoring of that. We just have to look at the students and at the turn-outs at the welfare centres as an example. The welfare centres are staffed by volunteers—generally local, yes, but I bumped into a Red Cross crew at the Linwood welfare centre that was from Whangarei. Others had come from Timaru, from Nelson, and from Blenheim. There were St John members from all over the city and beyond. Government departments had staff there providing advice on accommodation, on welfare, on trauma, and on stress. They have all done an amazing job, and we need to acknowledge just what a generous people we are. It has been truly impressive to see how quickly help swung into action, the depth of it, and the support that people have provided to other New Zealanders.

I wanted to talk for a moment about liquefaction, which is a new word that everybody now has discovered, and probably 10 days ago most of us would not have known exactly what it meant—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Aaron would have.

Yes. I acknowledge a very good summary on liquefaction by Environment Canterbury from a couple of years ago. One of the things the report from Environment Canterbury said was that liquefaction has the potential to strike just about anywhere across Christchurch. It is very dependent on the level of groundwater. We have had a very wet winter, so we paid a heavier price than we might have because of the fact that it has been a very wet winter. Also we need to be careful when we start talking about suburbs and potentially not rebuilding them, given the fact that much of the city is subject to potential liquefaction, other than the good rock of Port Hills, and, of course, so is much of New Zealand, if we think about it. Many of our cities are built on the coast and on the river fringes, which seem to be the most at risk from liquefaction. So I think that rather begins to dissipate any notion that we will not be rebuilding in most areas of Christchurch, because liquefaction is nothing particularly new. It has been there, and there are building techniques that can deal with the worst parts of it, so there is certainly no case for abandoning suburbs.

I think there is a message in all of this for every New Zealander. We are all at some risk from earthquakes. We all need to prepare. Every family needs to have a plan, a civil defence kit, some stored fresh water, and food. I say that as somebody who grew up in Wellington and then moved to Marlborough, which are rather more quake-prone areas, one thought, than Christchurch. I think we know now that a quake can strike anywhere at any time. I think we have also shown over the last 10 days that given the nature of our buildings, our building codes, and the regulation we have in place, we can come through these things with absolutely minimal, if any, loss of life, as we have shown, because we are so much better prepared than many nations are for these things.

In the central business district part of my electorate it is the heritage buildings that very much make our city. Extraordinarily, not a lot has been done—and I am talking pre-quake—to protect them. Much of what has been badly damaged by last weekend’s quake, and the aftershocks since, have been those unreinforced, double-storied—sometimes higher—brick buildings from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Yet some of the more iconic buildings have come through extraordinarily well, such as Christchurch Cathedral, which seems to have come through without much damage. I thought until last night that our iconic Arts Centre had come through pretty lightly. But at a meeting last night, Dr Ian Lochhead, one of our eminent architectural lecturers, said that he thought, with a “suck of the thumb” figure, that the damage might be $10 million on that one site alone. I think that rather illustrates some of the challenges we will face in the central business district of Christchurch Central. The Arts Centre chair, Ken Franklin, at another meeting last night identified 25 buildings—just 25, and many of those heritage buildings across the central business district were assessed quite recently—and the estimate was that there would be the thick end of $1 million each to earthquake-strengthen those buildings. That is, of course, not counting any repairs.

So we will have to take stock of some our damaged infrastructure. We will have to decide what can be saved, what needs to be saved, and what must be saved, and make some decisions on that. Obviously this legislation is assisting and facilitating with that. My big question is: if we replace buildings, which we will do in many instances, what will we do to ensure that those buildings that will replace those wonderful heritage buildings that cannot be saved will be built with some grace and with some sympathy to what has been lost? I think that is an important challenge ahead of us as a Parliament and as a region and city.

This Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill is about the rebuilding in infrastructure terms, but there are many other issues we face. We have issues about jobs. There has been a commendable bipartisan effort by unions and employers in Canterbury that has been wonderful to see, and I think we need to acknowledge how well they have been working together. It is an example to us in this House that they have worked so darn well.

I finish by saying that my mother went through the Blitz in Liverpool, and I now feel like I have some understanding of what she went through. Of course, that city was rebuilt, sometimes not in the best fashion, I would have to acknowledge, and certainly the scale of damage was much bigger than what Christchurch faces. But we now have the chance to rebuild our city. Let us get the support of New Zealanders. We will come through this. The best thing, as my colleague Ruth Dyson said, is that New Zealanders can now plan a holiday in Christchurch. The city is almost all operational, apart from the occasional building sites. We would like people to come and visit and pay respects to our city, enjoy themselves, and know that Christchurch, the “city that shines”, will continue to shine throughout.

About 350 hours ago Christchurch was a calm, beautiful place. It is the place of my birth and the province of Canterbury has been home to my family for at least seven generations. That changed about 350 hours ago. I will read a little bit about how the world sees Christchurch in the latest Rugby World Cup advertising. “Christchurch the Garden City is surrounded by natural wonders, a sparkling Pacific Ocean, majestic Southern Alps, and an ancient volcanic peninsula. The South Island’s largest city has an Alps to Ocean horizon, a heritage heart and a sense of adventure. Visitors discover 19th century stone buildings, a network of hillside walking tracks, contemporary galleries, and open-air markets.” That is how the world sees Christchurch, and that is how I saw Christchurch up until 10 days ago.

Since that time, over 350 aftershocks have hit our city and our region. For me, that was a pretty remarkable time. My five-year-old daughter went from being a wonderful happy-go-lucky little girl to spending 24 hours in sheer terror that the world was going to open up and swallow her. It was only yesterday that she resorted to drawing pictures of houses falling down and the men digging up holes, and she has got back to normality.

I live in the north-east of Christchurch, where there has been significant damage. About 1,000 homes have been seriously damaged or destroyed. Houses in Brooklands, Dallington, Burwood, and Bexley, including my brother’s house in Bexley, have been heavily damaged, if not destroyed.

The people’s response has been remarkable. On Saturday I went through the whole process of denial of what happened to my home city and what will happen. But the people of Canterbury, like they always do on the rugby field or anywhere else, stuck together. The civil defence and the fire service came out. Students came out of the woodwork and stuck together, for no reason other than wanting to help. We saw in Mayor Bob Parker an unbelievable reserve of courage and constitution to get the city back to normal. The Prime Minister came down on the Saturday hours after the quake hit, and showed New Zealand that he cares and that the Government intends to rebuild my home city.

I want to mention quickly people who helped, such as the students. Sam Johnson organised over 1,000 university students to help dig out the city. Sam, Gina, Jade, Tommy, and over 1,000 others took their time and effort over hundreds of hours to clean up people’s back gardens and the streets of my city.

The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill has far-reaching potential consequences. It has the potential to make Christchurch not just as good as it was, but great. Earlier speakers on the other side of the House pointed out that Napier rebuilt itself after the 1930s earthquake to become the art deco capital of New Zealand and, potentially, the world. I think Christchurch has the potential to do that, as well.

This earthquake has impacted my city in terms of not only buildings, roads, and bridges, which we will rebuild, but also scars on people’s minds that will take much longer to heal. I organised a meeting that drew 600 people in Brooklands on Saturday and I saw grown men cry about what will happen to their homes. It will take a long time to heal. This bill will not heal the hurt, but it will go a long way to helping rebuild our city faster and better than it was before.

There have been some concerns about the powers that the bill legislates for. There are avenues in this bill to take into account via the Regulations Review Committee in terms of the Orders in Council. Being a member of that committee, I will take a strong active interest in making sure that is right. Minister Turia pointed out some issues about making sure mana whenua are taken into account, and I think that it is good to make sure there are wide-ranging views and opinions as we rebuild our city. There are 2,500 homes that need to be rebuilt, and that will take the efforts of everybody together. This bill will allow our city to be rebuilt bigger, better, and stronger. I am proud to be part of a Government that is putting it in place. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading