Motions — Earthquake and Tsunami—Japan

I seek leave to move a motion without notice on the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course being followed? There is none.

I move, That this House express its condolences to the people of Japan for the losses they have suffered as a result of the recent earthquake and tsunami. A magnitude 9 earthquake struck northern Japan on Friday, 11 March at 6.46 p.m. New Zealand time. The earthquake caused a huge tsunami, which has devastated parts of Japan’s north-eastern coast. It was also felt, to a lesser extent, around the Pacific. Thousands of people in Japan’s north-east are dead or missing. The extent of the number of casualties is only just becoming clear. There are no reports, so far, of New Zealand casualties, but our authorities are continuing to work hard to establish whether any New Zealanders have been caught up in this disaster. Aftershocks of a magnitude greater than 5 are continuing, and there are concerns related to damage at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

As the extent of this terrible tragedy unfolds, I wish to express to Japan the deepest sympathy and condolences of the New Zealand Government. Our hearts go out to all those affected, especially those who have lost loved ones or are waiting to hear news of loved ones. I particularly acknowledge all New Zealanders who are in Japan. We are thinking of them.

New Zealanders have watched in horror and disbelief the scenes of destruction in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami. We have recently experienced our own deadly earthquake, so it was with very raw emotion that we heard of the devastation and loss in Japan. Unfortunately, we know all too well the pain, stress, and heartbreak that can be caused by a natural disaster such as this.

Last night I spoke to the Prime Minister of Japan. I have met Prime Minister Kan on a number of occasions, most recently at the APEC summit in Yokohama last November. It was good to speak to him on the phone and personally convey my sympathies. I asked Prime Minister Kan to pass on to the people of Japan the thoughts and condolences of New Zealanders. He explained to me the enormous devastation that Japan is facing, and he said that the Japanese Government and people are united in dealing with the situation. He passed on Japan’s sincere appreciation for New Zealand’s support, including the swift dispatch of a New Zealand urban search and rescue team, which is in Japan now. Prime Minister Kan also renewed his condolences for the people of Christchurch, following the February earthquake.

New Zealand and Japan are great friends. Japan is our fourth-largest trading partner. Many New Zealanders have lived in or visited Japan, and many Japanese people have lived in or visited New Zealand. We value the strong relationship between our two countries, and I know the recent tragedies here and in Japan will bring our people even closer. When Christchurch was devastated by an earthquake just 3 weeks ago, Japan was one of many countries that offered immediate assistance. We were delighted to accept Japan’s offer of urban search and rescue personnel to assist in our rescue and recovery operation.

New Zealand will help in any way we can as Japan seeks to overcome this tragedy. Japan stood by us in our time of need, and we will stand by Japan in its time of need. Our urban search and rescue team is now deployed in the field in Japan, alongside the Australian team. We are grateful to Japan and the United States for supporting this deployment. In addition to this team, we will be happy to provide whatever assistance we can in the days and weeks ahead.

Our heartfelt thoughts are with the people of Japan as they come to terms with this disaster, and mourn the loss of so many lives.

Since Friday night all of New Zealand has watched in horror and with dismay the consequences of the huge earthquake in Japan, of the tsunami that followed it, and now of the three explosions in nuclear reactors and the threat of meltdown of those reactors. It is a disaster on a massive scale: some 20,000 people are now thought to have died. Whole communities and villages have been wiped out. People are homeless, and millions of people are without basics such as heating, water, and power supply at a time when temperatures are freezing.

We know that Japan’s earthquake standards were higher than those of any other country in the world. Japan had the ability to withstand the earthquake, but there was no way that it could protect its citizens against a 10-metre wall of water in the form of a tsunami, which was the consequence of the quake. We know that nuclear radiation has been released into the atmosphere. The American naval ships have moved 160 kilometres offshore because they are detecting radiation there, and half a million people have been evacuated. No nation understands better than Japan the lethal consequences of nuclear radiation.

We join together in the House today to express our concern and our condolences to the people of Japan and to offer them whatever help we can. Just 3 weeks ago we suffered the tragedy of the Christchurch earthquake. Among the people affected were Japanese students. Japan immediately rallied to our support and dispatched an urban search and rescue team. I am pleased that we have been able to reciprocate with our own team of 52 urban search and rescue workers, and I know that our country would be pleased to offer any other assistance that might be needed by Japan in its time of need.

To the people and the Government of Japan, New Zealand offers our sympathy and our support, and we offer our hopes and prayers for the rescue and recovery operation and for Japan’s efforts to prevent further release of nuclear radiation.

I will first acknowledge how terrible it is to have to stand for the third time in 6 months to acknowledge again the loss, the fear, and the destruction caused by an earthquake—the third time in 6 months. That destruction has affected not only our people; globally, across the world, we are seeing people suffer in the same way. The Green Party, too, sends all our aroha to the Japanese people for the devastation that they have suffered at the hands of the earthquake and the terrible tsunami that followed it. We want to send our support to the workers from the nuclear power plant and the families located nearby in northern Japan, who are undergoing their own form of terror there, as well.

After the terrible events in Christchurch in February, the Japanese people were very quick to respond to our needs and sent a team of some 66 rescue personnel to help us when we needed it in Christchurch. The Green Party is very supportive of Government moves to respond in kind to their need now. After the Christchurch earthquake we saw a great outpouring of goodwill from the international community as a whole, and it is fitting that we should do our best to support the Japanese people and Japanese Government in their hour of need, as well. It is good that in times like these, when communities and nations are faced with devastation on such a huge scale, we see people from around the world working together to help each other out.

The Green Party’s thoughts and our prayers are with the Japanese community here in Aotearoa, for the fears that they have and the losses that have been suffered in their own country, and with all of the whānau living here who have friends and whānau in Japan, and who are so very concerned about what is happening to those people. Kia ora.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Prime Minister’s motion. Here in New Zealand we have suffered a terrific tragedy and have had to deal with its aftermath, so as a people we empathise enormously with the people of Japan: the families who have lost loved ones and the families whose children and family members are missing—who knows where—presumably never to be found. We also know that the Japanese people are now struggling with what it all will mean for them in the months and years ahead.

We are also very conscious as a nation that Japan was one of the first countries to send aid to this little country down at the bottom of the Pacific for our fair city of Christchurch. More particularly, we are conscious that the Japanese urban search and rescue teams quickly won our hearts through the care, professionalism, and diligence with which they went about their work, risking their own lives to save Kiwi lives. We now realise that there is so little between us, in our humanity. With this tragedy we feel very close to the people of Japan. I know from Japanese efforts here in New Zealand, in Christchurch, what high regard they hold us in, and I know that the thoughts and the prayers of the New Zealand people, in this troubled time, will bring some comfort to them. Thank you.

Tēnā tātou katoa. The poet Henry Longfellow once said: “There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.” The Māori Party stands today to support the Prime Minister’s motion, and to join in the grief that has overshadowed the world in the light of the disasters that have taken place in Japan over the last 5 days. As others have said before me, the horrific spectacle of the wall of water swallowing whole towns in its path left us all without words. How can we provide an explanation or comfort at a time of such horror?

As a Parliament we stand united today, offering our most sincere condolences to the people of Japan, to the Japanese citizens who live here in Aotearoa, and to those New Zealanders far from home who have made a life for themselves in Japan. We express our deepest sympathies to the families who have lost loved ones, and to the people who have lost so much—their homes, their businesses, and their sense of security.

I was extremely moved by the sight of those brave search and rescue teams from Japan who flew to our land standing side by side with us in Christchurch in the rescue and recovery mission after our recent earthquake. We are humbled by their generosity and we express our utmost appreciation and aroha to them as they now return to their homeland, some of them knowing the extent of their own personal loss, yet committing to take up the vital work of search and rescue. In the true expression of manaakitanga, New Zealand has quickly responded to the disaster in Japan by sending a team of 52 New Zealand urban search and rescue personnel, some having had only a matter of hours’ rest after 3 weeks of searching through the rubble in Christchurch.

This event, hot on the heels of our own disaster in Ōtautahi, is a powerful reminder of the devastation that can be wreaked by natural disasters. As with any such crisis, it has provoked many searching questions about the impacts of the way in which humanity interferes with nature.

I looked at the incredible footage of Saito, the village that was virtually obliterated from the map by the tsunami that swept up close to 300 people and 70 or so houses in its wake. The barren landscape now littered with debris provides a gruesome image of the phenomenal destruction that this earthquake has caused.

Of course, the terrifying aftermath of nuclear disaster is another tragic factor in this event. It is far too early to consider what impact, if any, the nuclear blasts will have had, and it would be inappropriate to do that without the full information before us. But there is one salutary lesson to be taken from these last few days, and that is to highlight the significance and integrity of the decision by the Lange Government for a nuclear-free Aotearoa.

The disasters we have endured in Christchurch and Japan have immediately been part of our every waking thought through the power of modern media. They have been in our hearts, our minds, and our prayers. The Māori Party expresses our deepest sympathies, and at this time we join together with our global neighbours to provide the support we all need to rebuild and restore lives. Kia tū tahi, kia kaha, kia manawa nui.

[Stand together, be strong, be stout of heart.]

When we gathered in this Chamber 3 weeks ago in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake, we were all filled with a sense of shock and disbelief at the destruction that had been wrought in that city and with the incomprehensibility of what had taken place. Over the last 3 weeks, as we have started to come to grips with that reality and the process of recovery has got under way, we have begun to understand a little more about nature’s forces and the circumstances that give rise to these events. But nothing could have prepared us to imagine that last Friday evening an earthquake 8,000 times more powerful than Christchurch’s would inflict such horrendous damage, and that its accompanying tsunami would obliterate so much of north-eastern Japan.

Although we properly mourn for the people who died in Christchurch and those who have suffered loss, we find it hard to comprehend the scale of the figures being talked about in the Japanese case—tens of thousands of people potentially killed, landscapes devastated, and thriving cities and towns turned into wastelands very reminiscent in their appearance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after 1945. Then there are the things that really bring it home to us—the fact that the urban search and rescue teams who struggled so valiantly in Christchurch are now, without respite, doing precisely the same task in Japan. I remember reading many years ago a book by a country general practitioner in Central Otago that had the evocate title Growl You May But Go You Must. It is about people being called out at all hours of the day and night to respond to patients. I thought of that title in the context of these urban search and rescue personnel, who have had no chance to recover from their exigencies in Christchurch but who are now facing a much graver situation in Japan.

I join with others in expressing sympathy to the Government and the people of Japan in their sad loss, expressing gratitude to the Government of Japan for its help to New Zealand in our hour or need, and expressing the hope that our personnel who are now helping in Japan can effect some small area of progress in what will be a massive battle to restore normality and the usual way of life to the people of Japan. Our thoughts are very much with them at this tragic time.

Motion agreed to.