Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill

I do not intend to take a lot of time at this point, but I will speak again during the process of this Committee stage. I want to indicate that there is a document being provided to parties, indicating the Government’s position on a number of recommendations that came through from the Local Government and Environment Committee. That is in addition to a number of recommendations previously considered, which were supplied by Labour prior to the select committee process. I know there are other Supplementary Order Papers coming from members this afternoon. The Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper that gives life to the agreed parts of the document being provided will be with the Committee as soon as possible; officials are working on it at the moment. We are some minutes ahead of where I thought we might be at this stage. There is no intention to try to slow that process. That Supplementary Order Paper needs to be properly written, and that is why that document is being provided, to give those early indications.

I had the opportunity to sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee over the past couple of days as it fulfilled its task, as it was required to do by the House on Tuesday, to hear evidence on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I will make a couple of points in what I take will be a wide-ranging debate, given that all the parts of the bill are being heard and debated together. My first point is to agree with an observation made by Amy Adams in her second reading speech, which was that members on this side of the Chamber agree that the Canterbury situation calls for emergency powers. That was made crystal clear in the minority view set out by the committee and reported back to the House.

But members on this side of the Chamber differ from members of the Government in the following ways: we do not believe that this process merits urgency; we do not believe that the Minister requires powers beyond the reach of the courts; we do not believe that the ordinary rights of New Zealanders to have recourse to the courts by way of appeal need to be abridged; and we do not agree that the powers of Parliament, in particular to extend laws, should be delegated just to the executive, particularly not this executive. That is an unnecessary usurpation of the role of Parliament. It is unconstitutional. It should not have been done after the September earthquake, but it was.

💬 Nicky Wagner: You voted for it.

We have just heard Nikki Kaye in her first interjection during this debate. Let us hope the future interjections, if there are any—

💬 Amy Adams: At least get the name right.

Oh, I am sorry. It was one the generic members on the other side. It was actually Nicky Wagner. My apologies for the confusion, but sometimes they all blur into one. She said “You voted for it.” Well, I tell Ms Wagner that we voted for it because we believe that we need to get on, as has been said, and deal with the emergency in Canterbury. But that does not mean we need, effectively, to elect a dictatorship to do it. The problem that will happen when people look back at the way this Parliament has dealt with this situation is the problem that applies to all attempts at dictatorship. It looks like a great idea to make the trains run on time at the point when the attempt is made. But the precedent is incredibly regrettable.

💬 Amy Adams: Come and live in a broken house over winter and talk about precedents.

Amy Adams should know that; she has a law degree. Maybe she slept through the constitutional law section of that degree. The reality is that it does not pay to disturb constitutional arrangements. We are acting in haste and we will repent at leisure. I am putting that on the record now so that Labour’s position is crystal clear.

If there had been proper process in relation to this legislation, we would have a better bill. It would reflect better practice—better international practice—in relation to recovery. There would be a Crown entity in place, not one completely amenable to the control and direction of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. There would be much better provisions in relation to collaboration with the community. Those are the sorts of things that are paid lip-service to by members opposite, but which they plainly do not mean, given the provisions of the bill.

The Minister has just told us that there is a 21-page summary that has been made available to us. It contains his decisions in relation to which recommendations by the submitters to the select committee are to be accepted, and which are not. I want to be fair in paying tribute to the Minister for that exercise. There are some important matters that have been taken on board, and I look forward to eventually seeing the Supplementary Order Paper that carries them through. Unfortunately, the ones I have drawn attention to in relation to the very wide powers that will go to the executive at the expense of this Parliament, and in relation to appeal rights, are not actioned. That will be a problem going forward.

This, as I have said, is not an optimal bill, but it is better because of the insistence of Labour on some sort of select committee process, so that there could be at least some sort of input from persons other than in this Chamber. It would have been better if there had been more time, more notice, and better public input. It would have been better if we had had officials’ advice, which was not available to us in the process, and if we had the evidence that was presented to us recorded and transcribed. But because of the way this was done, none of that was available. As I said, the bill is better because of some public input. It could have been so much better if we had had a better process.

Having said that, I pay tribute to a number of people who participated in the process to make the bill better than it otherwise would have been. I start with the Clerk of the House. This was an unusual procedure. We were blessed to have her guidance late at night, as it happened, on Tuesday. That guidance was extremely valuable, I think, to all members of the committee in terms of discharging their responsibilities.

I pay tribute to my Labour colleagues for the work they did on the committee. They were diligent and careful in terms of their hearing of the evidence. I reject the very unfortunate comments made by Louise Upston to the contrary. I actually expected better from that member, because she played an important and constructive role on the committee itself. I would have thought she might have recognised that Labour members, in insisting on the process to start with and then participating fully in it, more than discharged their parliamentary responsibilities.

I will say that the chair did a good job in difficult circumstances, and, ultimately, when we came to consider the production of the minority report, National members recognised that their ultimate responsibilities lay with their roles as parliamentarians, and it is appropriate to put that on record.

I also pay tribute to Heather Roy and Kennedy Graham. They were true respecters of such parliamentary process as we could have in the process, and it is valuable to record their contribution. I will say more about the detailed concerns I have at a later point in the Committee stage debate, particularly in respect of the dangers around the delegation of powers to the Minister and to the executive by Parliament. Meanwhile, I will repeat my rejection of the words of Louise Upston in her second reading speech. Members on this side of the House are not playing politics. If we were, we would be voting against the bill. As it is, we are voting for the bill at this point. That is our contribution to ensuring that the right thing is done in Canterbury. Members on the other side of the House should not expect that that means a blank cheque. I conclude my remarks by echoing something that was said earlier by Clayton Cosgrove. This recovery model has been chosen by the Government. We will try to make it work, but if our concerns are realised that the model will not work as well as it might, and if the very wide powers that are conferred by the model are abused, then it is very clear where the responsibility for that failure and that abuse will lie.

I will pick up on some of the process points Mr Chauvel dealt with. I say to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery that I was not here for his explanation as to why we do not have a Supplementary Order Paper from the Government, but I had a short conversation with him. We are here in the Committee stage considering extraordinary legislation and we have no Government Supplementary Order Paper. That is not good enough. It goes beyond just-in-time management.

The people of Canterbury want the bill to work, but for it to work we have to have a basic process. Yesterday in the Local Government and Environment Committee extraordinarily we were denied the right to have officials with us in an advisory capacity. People who are listening need to understand the situation. I suspect, as I have said before to Mr Brownlee, that people want us to get on with the bill, but they also want us to get it right the first time and not be back here in a couple of months, 6 months, or whenever, saying that we have to fix the things that people told us we should fix but we did not. People want us to get the bill right first time. We need officials in the select committee because we do not have a monopoly on all knowledge. Submitters were testing out arguments and making suggestions, and it would have been helpful and strategically smart for all sides to have had officials present for a health check so we could get the bill right.

We did not have officials present, and we had 4 hours and 40 minutes of a select committee process with the public. I agree that the select committee was rightly targeted to key stakeholders. We did not expect, as I think somebody said, that there should have been weeks of a select committee process, but we would have been happy with an extra 24 hours. We would have been happy if the Minister had signalled to submitters on Friday that there would be a select committee hearing, so that they had the weekend to come up with robust submissions. Submitters had less than 24 hours’ notice. They did an extraordinary job. I pay tribute to Chris Auchinvole for his chairing. He did a wonderful impression of Henry Kissinger in trying to diplomatically knit the show together. I accept that there is some robust emotion around the bill, which some people characterise as politics and others of us would characterise as doing our job.

We had 4 hours and 40 minutes for people to discuss their submissions. As I have said before, when Dr Warren Young and Mr George Tanner from the Legislation Advisory Council were asked when they had received the bill they told us that the first time they had seen it was at 4 o’clock or thereabouts when it was put on the website. Why do we want a little extra scrutiny? We want a little extra scrutiny so that we can ensure, as I keep saying, that we get the bill right. There is no politics in that. If I were the Minister in the chair, I would first recognise that I do not have a monopoly on all knowledge, and I would want a reasonable amount of advice from others, even if it was for a political alibi—to say I listened. But even that advice has not been engaged. If I were the Minister, I would want advice to ensure that I could put legislation in front of this Parliament that would give confidence to the people of Canterbury that we will get it right first time.

Here we are now at 5 to 11. We rise for lunch at 1 o’clock. We will come back for question time, which I presume will go from 2 o’clock to 3 o’clock or 3.30, and then we have to vote on the Committee stage. We then have to have the third reading, which has to be concluded by 6 o’clock. We do not have a Supplementary Order Paper sitting here from the Minister.

Members might ask where Labour’s amendments are. Our amendments are sorted, but we cannot put them forward until we know exactly what the Government’s plans are. We have an indication, and I thank Mr Brownlee for that. We asked him for an indication last night, and a short time ago a list arrived of what he agrees and disagrees with in respect of the submitters. But before we can deal to the bill in a proper and professional way we need a Supplementary Order Paper. I say to Mr Brownlee that this is not parliamentary technicalities. For those outside this place who do not know, I tell them that a Supplementary Order Paper is the guts of the Government’s amendments to the legislation—what Mr Brownlee agrees with and will pass, and what he disagrees with and will vote against. We do not even have that.

I say to Mr Brownlee that his approach goes beyond just-in-time management. Normally, Mr Brownlee drops a Supplementary Order Paper 2 or 3 minutes before we are about to debate it, to ensure that the Opposition has virtually no time to see it. We are now in legislative limbo, because Mr Brownlee has not done his job. I do not say so out of any malice or spite. I say to Mr Brownlee that his job, like all our jobs in this place, is to get the legislation right. We are in the Committee stage of the bill and we do not have a Supplementary Order Paper. We do not have the Minister’s intentions as to what he proposes, what the plan is, the detail around the structure of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, and his formal response to submitters—not just to us. We had input through letters to Mr Brownlee.

This process will fill people will fear if this is how we will march on. Submitters were not allowed to have their say and were not given any notice. They were given 4 hours and 40 minutes to discuss their submissions. The committee was prevented from asking technical questions and receiving technical advice, because officials were not available to us in an advisory capacity and we could not engage with them as advisers. The Minister owes the Committee a detailed explanation. If having less than 24 hours to put together submissions is good enough for submitters—councillors, the Legislation Advisory Committee, and the Law Society, which had less than 24 hours to put together a very diligent submission—then I would have thought that with all the Government’s resources and departments at its disposal working overnight to Mr Brownlee’s timetable, he could have turned up at the start of the Committee stage with his plan and his legislative amendments. It is impossible for the House to respond to legislative amendments that we do not have before us. I pay tribute to Mr Graham and the Greens, who have set out their proposals. We have seen the proposals, and I believe that we have shared many of our amendments with the Green member. But we cannot respond until we have the Government Supplementary Order Paper.

I do not know whether this is a portent of things to come. I make the offer to Mr Brownlee, as I have consistently made, that we want to enable the legislation to work. I say to Mr Brownlee that it will go through today, with or without our support. We reserve that right until we see his Supplementary Order Paper, but the bill will go through; the Minister has told us the Government has the numbers. Regardless of our fears and thoughts on the issue, once the bill goes through, Labour members will work diligently to try to ensure that it works, even with the reserverations we have and even with the extreme process.

I say again to Mr Brownlee that it is not good enough to confuse consultation with delay. One does not impede the other. Twenty-four hours, given that the state of emergency is extended until 16 April, would not have altered or delayed the position for Cantabrians one iota. It would have allowed more expertise and for officials to gather their thoughts and provide assistance to the Government, as we have tried to do. Now, we sit here in legislative limbo as the hours tick away until lunch, and we do not have a Government Supplementary Order Paper.

I do not know whether the Government has ground to a halt overnight. I do not know whether it is because of a level of incompetence or fatigue; it could be both. We are willing to cooperate with the Government even at this late stage. Mr Brownlee knows the amendments we wish to make. He has had the letters for a week. Even at this late stage we are still willing to cooperate. I make that genuine offer to him. I would say to the Minister that if this is a deliberate attempt to try to shut us down, or if this is incompetence or mismanagement, he owes it to the people of Canterbury to get on his feet and explain in detail where we are on this.

I reiterate one other point. Mr Brownlee can stand and say that any member who raises a criticism is being political. Well, I say to hell with that. I will stand, like Ms Dalziel, Ms Dyson, Mr Burns, and others have, beside our constituents and raise concerns and ideas until I drop. If others want to characterise that, either in the media or in this place, as being political, well, so be it. I will sleep at night with my conscience clear, because our duty on this side of the Chamber is to assist.

Normally, in the process when a member is upset about something in Parliament, he or she fires off a press statement and has a go. Our modus operandi has been to speak to Mr Brownlee privately, to then write to him if there is no action, and then, if we are deeply concerned, to raise the issue publicly. We have not engaged in piles of parliamentary questions or endless media statements, and we have entered the public arena only when we have been deeply concerned that no action was occurring. We have acted differently. In fact, we have been criticised—I have, and I know Ms Dalziel and others have—for the fact that we have not put the boot in, and that criticism has come from people who are deeply concerned. So I say to Mr Brownlee that he owes us an explanation.

I want to address the immediate practical issue of the Green Party’s Supplementary Order Papers, and in doing so I want to divide my time. I will talk initially to the issue of community engagement. As I said during the first reading debate on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, our concerns revolve around a twofold process: firstly, the lack of adequate community engagement; and, secondly, the extensive powers. I would like to treat our Supplementary Order Papers accordingly. I will focus for the moment only on the community engagement aspect of our concerns. On Supplementary Order Paper 232—members will have it in front of them, I think—we have two amendments: one to clause 6 and one to clause 7. On Supplementary Order Paper 235 we have an amendment to clause 20, and I will address that later, as well.

With regard to Supplementary Order Paper 232, we propose to insert the following words into clause 6(2): “and broadly representative of communities and organisations in Christchurch”. Those words would come after the words “suitably qualified” in the provision as it stands. We submit that amendment because we believe that the people of Christchurch have a right to a say in how their city should be rebuilt. Currently, the proposed community forum will be hand-picked by the Minister, and, in our view, this compromises its independence. Our amendment to clause 6 also requires that membership of it be approved by the House of Representatives. In a similar vein, our amendment to clause 7 would add the following subclause after subclause (2): “The Minister and the chief executive must have regard to any advice that they are given by the cross-party group.”

In putting forward those Supplementary Order Papers we have special regard to some of the comments by a number of recognised lawyers throughout the land—constitutional lawyers and others. Let me quote, if I may, from one, Dean Knight, who says the following—and I remind members that this is not the Green Party speaking; I am quoting a recognised legal authority. I quote Mr Knight: “I acknowledge the gravity of the task facing Christchurch and other districts. The recovery and rebuilding project is a massive one, one that is probably beyond the capacity of present local authorities and other agencies. I accept therefore that central government involvement is essential. However, I question the top-down, rather than bottom-up, model that has been adopted. … The legislative scheme does not build in the usual elements of local democracy and community participation that is traditionally seen and expected in legislation dealing with town planning and management of local resources.”

He further says: “The predominant thinking nowadays is that’’—and this is in rebuttal to the comments that the international experience is that recovery delayed is recovery denied, and that therefore we have to have a timely and expedited recovery. Our understanding of the international experience is that if it not the reverse it is at least balanced by the requirement that there be adequate community engagement, because if we need a timely recovery we also need a legitimate recovery. So I appeal to the Minister and to the Government to have regard to balancing expedition of the recovery and rebuild with the legitimacy from community engagement. I know that the phraseology is there in the Act as it stands; it is a matter how it is enacted and how we observe it once this bill passes. Dean Knight observes that: “The predominant thinking nowadays is that town planning or resource management decisions ought to be made at the local level, in a way that allows the affected communities to have their say in their development. It recognises that they will be best-placed to assess the propriety of the plans and generally enhances the legitimacy of the measures adopted. It is also consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, which says that decisions ought to be made at the lowest possible level within the governmental framework.” Further, he says: “In practical terms, a community-centred model would charge the local authorities themselves with developing the overarching recovery strategy—without the need for ministerial sign-off. CERA would still have a role in assisting local authorities. It could operate as a portal through which governmental assistance could be provided to support these efforts, through cooption of staff to assist the local authorities … and to coordinate central government assistance necessary to convert that vision into action.”

That is the philosophy on which the Green Party rests this particular Supplementary Order Paper. There is a need for community engagement not only to be present in the Act but also to be the dominant theme running through the Act, and for decision making that is to be made by the nation as a whole through the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, the Government, and the Christchurch City Council to be reflective of community input. So I commend our Supplementary Order Paper relating to clauses 6 and 7 to the Committee. I look forward to the response of the Minister.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I seek some clarification. We are in a very difficult situation here, and I wonder whether we could consider invoking Standing Order 173 to suspend the Committee of the whole House. We do not have the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper. It has not been tabled. The Chair quite rightly said we are running ahead of time, but it has now been 25 minutes and we still do not have the Supplementary Order Paper on the Table. There has been some legitimate debate from members about amendments, but we are in a very strange situation without the Supplementary Order Paper before us. I wonder whether we should consider—without invoking disorder—suspending the Committee of the whole House. We think the Opposition is placed in a grave situation. I ask for your clarification.

In reference to the particular situation, I would like to add my comments. We are having a wide-ranging debate in the Committee stage, with no limit on what can be discussed. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill is on the Table before us, and we can discuss what was raised at the Local Government and Environment Committee. We have an indication from members during this Committee stage of what they agree with and what they do not agree with. As is able to happen at any time, a Supplementary Order Paper can be tabled at any stage of Committee without, in fact, the whole Committee having had the opportunity to discuss it.

I want to preface my comments by giving some context to my colleague’s request. There is no delay by the Opposition. The delay here is that the Government has not produced the critical document that is needed for us to proceed. There is no attempt from Labour members to delay proceedings. If the document arrives, we are back on deck. I will raise an issue that the Government whip raised. Yes, we do have an informal document that has no parliamentary standing that gives an indication. It states “agreed” and “noted”—and nobody knows what “noted” actually means—but it has no official standing. In order for the document to proceed to the Committee stage, the Government must produce its amendments to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. We have had commitments on this, and I think it would be illogical and absurd if this debate moved ahead to the point where we were debating Opposition amendments but we were not aware of what the Government proposed to do. I want to say, for those in the press gallery and others, that there has been no attempt by Labour members at any point to delay this bill. Our problem is that we are meant to be debating the Government Supplementary Order Paper and its associated amendments from us, and we have difficulty doing so when it does not exist.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You have made some fair points there, and I invite the Minister to say a few words.

The document that the member refers to makes it very clear what the Government is going to put into the Supplementary Order Paper, and there are people drafting that Supplementary Order Paper at the present time. But let us not go about the pretence that the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper is essential to the business of this House in dealing with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. It is essential that the House look at the aspects of any Supplementary Order Paper once it is laid on the Table. But if the Opposition wants to suspend the debate, then we will simply withdraw the Supplementary Order Paper offer and carry on with the bill.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Point of order, Mr Chairperson—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no. The original point of order was from the junior Opposition whip, who asked that the Committee be suspended because of the absence at this stage of the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper. That cannot happen. The Committee cannot be suspended; it can only report progress. The Minister is the person who can report progress and ask that the Committee sit again presently. That is the Minister’s prerogative. If we go back to Standing Order 173, which the member Steve Chadwick used in the point of order, we see that it states: “(1) The chairperson may temporarily suspend the proceedings of the committee—(a) in the case of any grave disorder arising in committee, or (b) in accordance with a decision of the House or a determination of the Business Committee, or (c) in the event of an emergency situation.” That does not apply. In regard to the tabling of a Supplementary Order Paper—and I hear what the Hon Clayton Cosgrove said—I know that there is some delay, and the Minister has identified that, but it is the Government’s prerogative to table a Supplementary Order Paper at any stage. The Minister identified that it is being worked on. It was agreed at the beginning of the Committee stage that this is a wide-ranging debate on all parts, and there are unlimited calls, which is a departure from the normal process that is adopted. It is an opportunity for all members to participate in a wide-ranging debate, even though we do not have the Supplementary Order Paper. I rule accordingly that the point of order from the junior whip does not stand.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. You have made your ruling. It is your ruling. I would just ask for some indulgence and some advice. Standing Order 173 talks about “grave disorder”, and, clearly, there is not grave disorder and there will not be grave disorder. The difficulty, I suppose, is that you could characterise disorder in a number of ways. The disorder that we find ourselves in—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, we are not debating what “grave disorder” is in respect of Standing Order 173. I have ruled that this debate will continue. We are awaiting the Supplementary Order Paper. Everyone is awaiting it. That does not stop the proceedings of the Committee stage, and we are moving forward on that.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Is this a new point of order?

It is.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): It needs to be; otherwise you are trifling with the Chair.

I will not trifle with the Chair. This is a matter of critical importance. There is no more important piece of legislation that I can recall. The difficulty we are in is this. You are right: proceedings can proceed. The difficulty is that we are in a situation that is slightly illogical. Yes, it is a wide-ranging debate, but I cannot recall a time—certainly not in my time, but there are people here who have been here for longer than I—when we have had a Committee stage like this. The central point of the Committee stage is to debate the Government’s changes to the legislation. We are now almost 45 minutes in, and we do not have the ability to do our job, which is to scrutinise those changes. I say to you that this is an illogical situation. I appeal to your good nature and your good sense.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hear the member. There is nothing to stop the continuation of the debate on the bill, because the bill is before us. When the Supplementary Order Paper is lodged, that is a matter for individual debates on certain aspects of what the Supplementary Order Paper may contain. That does not interfere with the process of the Committee stage of the bill. On that basis we are continuing. [Interruption] I am not taking any more points on this. We are moving on.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): If this is not a new point of order—

I ask through you, then, Mr Chairperson, whether the Minister could please, out of courtesy, contact whomever he needs to and advise us approximately when the Supplementary Order Paper will be available. I raise this because at 1 o’clock, as you know, we will have to stop for the luncheon adjournment. When we come back after question time there is likely to be about half an hour before the agreed time to proceed to the third reading.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You have asked for the Minister to respond to that question. I will ask the Hon Gerry Brownlee to comment.

I think, with all due respect to the concerns that are being raised by the member Clayton Cosgrove, that nothing will be in the Supplementary Order Paper that is not in the bill, other than the rewritten compensation clause, which he knows was part of a discussion at a committee last evening. The amendments are simple, they are straightforward, and there is no attempt to come up with anything that is outside what is stated in the document I have here. Given the fact that officials worked through until the late hours of this morning putting this document together and checking it as they went, with opinion from the Government, it is outrageous to suggest that they should be able to take a 21-page document—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Mr Chairperson, you asked me to explain.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, you are getting into debating points.

No, I am not; I am explaining what is happening, because we have had a lot—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I ask the Minister to sit down. The question was about the timing of this. We are now getting into debating the merits of the points. This is not a debate; this is a point of order. The Minister explained the situation and what is happening; we have taken that that is what the position is, and that is where we will leave it. We are moving on with the debate.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I had asked a question, and I thank you for facilitating that. The question was whether the Minister could give us an indication of the timing, given that we will have—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, you cannot demand a response to that. The Minister—

I am asking; I am not demanding.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. The Minister had indicated the process. You cannot demand or ask when the Supplementary Order Paper will be tabled. He has given a very clear indication of what the process is, and that is where we are leaving it.

I wish to ask the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery to reflect on the purpose clause of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I want him to look at clause 3(b), and I want to make this point to him. I know that the Minister will have to accept that I have tried to engage with him on issues of community participation right from the outset. I tabled a letter that I wrote to him on 28 September last year, and his reply on 24 December suggested that we had reached some meeting of the minds about how important community engagement was. Yet I read in the bill that one of its purposes, in clause 3(b), is “to enable community participation in the planning of the recovery of affected communities without impeding a focused, timely, and expedited recovery:”. But therein lies the problem. The problem is that the Minister does not understand what the Waimakariri District Council told us at the Local Government and Environment Committee yesterday, which was that community participation in its recovery actually promotes “a focused, timely, and expedited recovery”. It does not impede it. The use of the negative expression, “without impeding”, implies that community participation could impede recovery, when in fact it could promote it. In fact, it will promote it, but what will impede progress for our communities’ recovery is the failure to acknowledge the essential, critical role that our communities have in their recovery. The purposes of the Act include community participation only in the planning of the recovery, which is nonsense. Of course communities have to be involved in the planning, but they have to be involved in the delivery as well. Otherwise we will not have meaningful engagement. That is what I want this debate to be about—not just about up and down, backwards and forwards, batting to and fro. I would like meaningful engagement with the Minister. I have tried to engage in that right from the very outset, and I have found on instances that we, I thought, reached a meeting of the minds, particularly on this issue. Yet I read this bill with great disappointment.

The Minister stated that anyone who disagreed with the proposal that is before us was somehow holding up progress. Well, I do not want that to be the implication, and I am glad that the Minister is shaking his head because he is suggesting—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Where did I say it?

Well, the Minister used the expression earlier on that if we were in any way holding people back, we were not thinking about the people who were living in the damaged houses and on the damaged streets.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I didn’t say that.

Yes, I heard the member say that, because I was thinking that he was referring to me. The Minister was talking about my neighbours. But this is the issue, and this is the lesson.

When the Minister put out the statement about what the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority was going to be, he talked about the fact that the Government had looked very carefully at what had happened overseas. The Government quoted the particular disasters that this authority was having reference to. It said that it had “looked at international experience of recovery from natural disasters, including Cyclone Tracey … Hurricane Katrina … Black Sunday bushfires … and Floods, Queensland, Australia, 2011.” I find it interesting that the Minister’s reference to when he started looking at recovery included something that had happened in 2011, because the need for recovery planning was actually derived from the first earthquake, in 2010, and was exacerbated by the second earthquake.

Nobody disagrees that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission was put in place to do the regional coordination that would normally have been done under the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management regime. We understand that the commission would have required additional powers in order to take over the role that is now placed with this Government department, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. This is where I think the Minister has gone wrong. He has not studied any of those examples, because all of those examples have arms-length Crown entities, which are separate from the Government. They are not Government departments. They are separate from, but connected to, the Government, with a board sitting between the political animal that is the Government and the organisation that has to develop the recovery model.

People are saying that there is a need for an organisational culture, and that is why we on this side of the Chamber are saying that we will make this work—because it has to work. There is no alternative. But the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is not the structure we would have chosen, because the organisational culture we require has to translate the intention into reality—that is, there has to be an understanding of, and a commitment to, shaping the recovery process as a process that engages and empowers local communities. I think that the words “engagement” and “empowerment” are fundamental to understanding any of the lessons that are learnt from any of those natural disasters. So when we take that, we have to build an organisational culture that translates that into reality, which I believe, and the Minister has been advised, is a challenge of gargantuan proportions, given the tendency to think that minimal consultation can substitute for authentic community engagement. I know that that advice has gone to Government members, and they have to think about what it means. A commitment to authentic, participatory recovery involves significant resource and timing implications that need to be explicitly recognised. That is why there is an imperative about this engagement process, and participation of the community has to be at its heart. This is where I think the Minister, again, misunderstands the lesson of Hurricane Katrina—and I made this point the day before yesterday—that we need to reconcile the need to marshal the authority of the State and the entrepreneurship of the market to rebuild quickly. They are important and we have to take that into consideration. Yes, this organisational structure will do that, but there is an organisational structure that would do it better. But that is by the by; we cannot debate that now, because the structure was put in place 2 weeks ago. But the balancing requirement with that is the necessity to plan in an inclusive, deliberative, innovative, and transformative manner.

One of the issues that came out of Hurricane Katrina was the fact that unless we identify what was called the missing story in the Katrina debacle, and unless we look at the historic choices that were made and address those—physical development, public risk, community resilience, and sustainability—the lesson we learn is that the recovery process is to see pre-event vulnerability simply re-entrenched, and therefore the opportunity to reduce disaster risk is lost. Who knows about what those pre-event vulnerabilities are? It is the community itself that knows the answer to that question, and unless communities are at the heart of this process, there will be a serious risk that we will not see the benefits of the deliberative, innovative, and transformative processes we are encouraged to adopt through Hurricane Katrina’s mistakes. We need to lock those into the legislation, and I have some amendments that I will be putting forward in the House that I hope the Government will look at. They will bring that to the fore.

The Government has also talked about the community forum as its representation of the importance of engagement with local community interests through the recovery process, referencing international experience. Can I say that a hand-picked group of people does not meet international best practice, at all; in fact, it runs the serious risk that the Government will re-entrench all of the pre-existing problems we have. If the Minister seriously looks at the experience of Hurricane Katrina, he will see that it was discovered that the vulnerable populations in New Orleans had all of their interests superseded by those who already had the power, the status, and the ability to engage with the Government at every level. That is the problem. Unless the Minister understands that he has to enable and empower the communities that have those pre-existing vulnerabilities, then he himself will be responsible for what occurs.

All of the international literature tells us that recovery is an opportunity for reconciliation, restoration, and renewal, and that it is not just a rebuilding project. The literature tells us that practical, political, and moral challenges are required to be balanced with deliberation and speed through leadership and collaboration, and it must involve local people because it is their recovery. There is one expression that I have learnt from reading the literature: “The wisdom of the community always exceeds the knowledge of the experts.” I think we need to learn that lesson, and we need to learn it fast.

It is a great pleasure to rise and speak on this exceptionally important bill, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. I had the pleasure to be a member of the parliamentary committee that journeyed to Christchurch yesterday to hear evidence and worked into the night last night to progress this legislation. We took a very early morning flight, and we arrived in Christchurch with time up our sleeves before our hearings began at Addington Raceway.

As members of the Local Government and Environment Committee, we took time to make ourselves aware of the devastation in the central business district. Many of us had spent only a little bit of time in Christchurch before, at the very moving memorial service, and at that stage we saw the devastation in the eastern suburbs. Therefore, we took the opportunity to see some of the devastation visited upon the central business district.

It was exceptionally sobering to see Colombo Street, where for a whole block the façade of shops along one side had been completely torn off, exposing the sobering reminders of domestic life within—tables set, chairs around, and pictures on the wall—untouched for some months. In the distance we could see the lean on the Hotel Grand Chancellor. In other parts of the city we saw the old and much-loved Stone Chamber, which was surrounded by a network of fallen scaffolding where the repairs that had been undertaken after the effects of earlier quakes had suffered and the whole façade had tumbled down. It certainly underlined the need for this legislation, the need for strong governance, and the need for a united and effective response to this long-term tragedy.

I want to acknowledge the select committee process and the very able chairmanship of Chris Auchinvole. As Charles Chauvel has attested, it was a challenge, and Chris did an exceptional job. I acknowledge Kennedy Graham, whose contribution was measured, considered, and very positive to the end result, and, of course, the submitters. I also want the Government to give itself, and the Minister, a pat on the back.

The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, has taken the recommendations on board, the select committee members have listened, and we have here a huge number of recommendations that the Government has taken on board from the hearing of evidence. It is interesting that we have had a certain amount of vituperation from the Opposition benches because a Supplementary Order Paper has yet to be tabled. The reason it is yet to be tabled is, of course, that the Government has been listening to the evidence and to the debates within the select committee, where there has been a certain amount of banter and passionate evidence. The Government has listened to that and taken those things on board. I want to make that point and to come back to some of the other points raised shortly.

We realise that this bill is crucial. It is crucial because it is setting out appropriate measures to enable the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery and/or the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to facilitate and direct, if necessary, Greater Christchurch and its communities to respond to, and recover from, the impact of the Canterbury earthquake. This bill is founded on, and recognises, the need for community participation. That is something that a number of submitters commented on, as have a number of speakers in the Chamber today, and if I get a chance to speak later in the debate I will come back to that point.

We want community involvement in the decision-making process, but we must balance that against the need for a timely and coordinated recovery process. We need strong governance and leadership for the rebuilding and recovery of the Greater Christchurch area, for the benefit of all those living there and for all New Zealanders.

Some concern has been expressed about the location of powers regarding the approval of the recovery strategy and the recovery plans. There was some concern that those powers should not be held by Ministers but be implemented by local government structure. We did not agree with this. We believe a recovery process is beyond the capability of current institutions and that new institutional arrangements with specific powers are required. There will be opportunities for significant community participation in the recovery plan.

A submitter expressed some concern, which was taken on board and looked at carefully, that the purpose provision was too wide and that it preconditions the exercise of executive and coercive powers. We do not agree with this. We do not think it is necessary to outline criteria for when and why the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority or the Minister can exercise powers. Significant checks and balances have been built into the legislation to ensure that powers are exercised only in accordance with the purpose of the legislation, and only if reasonably necessary. Also, the exercise of a statutory power can be subject to judicial review.

The bill also contains other significant protections. Some of these are that the power to require information can be used only when the information can be provided without unreasonable difficulty or expense. Before disseminating information, the chief executive must consider the privacy principles under the Privacy Act and the need to protect confidential and commercially sensitive information.

The person exercising the power of entry must produce evidence of authorisation and, where practicable, this power must be exercised at a reasonable time and prior notice of entry must be given. Before exercising a survey power the chief executive must consult the Surveyor-General, and, where there is a dispute, a mechanism will be put into place whereby landowners can disagree with the definition process.

In undertaking building works a notice is required to be served on owners, occupiers, and other persons with an interest in the land. The exercise of powers of direction and step-in rights regarding councils and council organisations does not include the ability to collect rates or to take any other action or powers affecting rates. There are many other checks and balances but I will finish at this point. I commend the bill to the Committee.

It was interesting to hear the member opposite Cam Calder talk about what was the first visit to Christchurch for him, and maybe for some other members of the select committee, since the 22 February quake, and to hear from him how different it is to see, even if one has seen it on television and in the newspaper, the scale of destruction that has been wreaked on our city by that awful disaster. But I have to say that living in Christchurch throughout the last 7 weeks, and, indeed, over the last 7 months, is another layer of experience. That is why I took great exception to the comments made by Louise Upston earlier, about Opposition members supposedly engaging in petty politics in respect of this bill and these issues. If it is petty to advocate for my constituents who have no running water, who in many instances have no toilets, and who have broken homes, then I plead guilty to being petty. If it is political to advocate for businesses that have faced enormous frustration in the Christchurch central business district to get access to their premises so that they can get hard drives and stock, and have some hope of continuing their businesses and keeping people in jobs, then I plead guilty to being petty. If it is petty to say that thousands of Cantabrians will be cold this winter because they will not have new heating units installed, or they will not have insulation installed to try to make sure they get through winter without getting sick and ill, then I will plead guilty to being political and petty. If it is petty or political to say that it is not satisfactory the way the deputy mayor of the city council of my city learnt about the bill that will for 5 years take control of the city of Christchurch, with huge impact on the city council and every other organisation, institution, and person across Christchurch, then I am guilty of being petty.

But, along with my colleagues, I have been active and I have stepped in to assist thousands of constituents who have been affected by the quakes. I acknowledge that that has been the case across the Chamber. I am not trying to be petty and political about it. I have worked with my political opponent opposite, acknowledged her in meetings I have chaired, and given her speaking rights. If that is being petty and political, I am guilty as charged. It is absolutely critical that we take every opportunity, in the very short time frame that this bill provides, to get it right.

Our experience, and the experience of this Parliament, is that rushed legislation is poor legislation. Almost inevitably, rushed legislation requires some return to Parliament to make amendments and to correct faults that were there and not seen as the rush went through. That it is why it is so important we maximise the opportunities of the select committee, and that submitters to the select committee are actually given drafts of the bill—not one lawyer at the Christchurch City Council, but councillors who turned out yesterday and spent nearly half the day sitting and waiting to make their submission and hearing other submissions: councillors Yani Johanson, Helen Broughton, the deputy mayor Ngaire Button, Glenn Livingstone, Chrissie Williams, and community board member Paul McMahon. They gave up their time, they wanted to be there representing their constituencies, they wanted to know how this bill would impact upon them, but they were reduced to having to ring my colleague Clayton Cosgrove and beg for the bill to be put on the parliamentary website so they could actually see what was intended for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and what it meant for them as councillors and community board members. That is not acceptable, and we have to point that out. If that is being petty, I will plead guilty to that. The submitters learnt of the bill only from media and other sources. That is not appropriate. If members want to talk about pettiness within the select committee, then I think members opposite might need to look at one of their own members, who caused the chair some frustration through the course of the select committee.

We are now in the Committee stage and we still have no Government Supplementary Order Paper, which was indicated to us by a summary of the submissions in the Government’s response as being quite extensive. That is not satisfactory. That is not satisfactory when wide changes are being signalled. We need to know precisely what the Government is intending so we can avoid the risks that are there through rushed legislation. We need to maximise the chance for members of this House to give scrutiny to those Supplementary Order Papers and ensure they are going to do the best thing for our city, and to make sure we actually have the best chance for real, genuine, community engagement in the process.

I shall talk about that just for a moment. In Marlborough about 10 years ago, as editor of the local paper, I saw a very real issue around the fact that that province had the lowest wage rates in the country. I looked for a model, a template, to see what I could do to try to get the community behind an initiative that ended up forming the Marlborough Economic Development Trust. I got a book just printed from an American academic called Dr Michael Briand. It was a summary of how the most successful communities in the United States had rebuilt themselves and had re-engineered themselves to take up economic and other opportunities. The first and overriding principle of that book, and I think of any community engagement process, was inclusion. If people do not feel a part of a process, they will not buy into it, they will not accept its outcomes, they will be cynical about it, and no matter how much top-down soothing and stroking is done, they will not buy into the process. That is why it is so important for the Minister to acknowledge that in the processes he is putting in place under his community forum he will allow genuine public engagement.

It is not something that anyone wants to drag their heels on; nobody wants to see that, but we must have a process that allows engagement with those with a real, genuine commitment—and there are many people across Christchurch with a passionate commitment to their city who want to be involved. Businesses have had much heartache already over the last 7 weeks in terms of access. They must be represented on that panel in number. People with an interest in the heritage of our city want to be involved. They are not advocating to save every building—that is gone. I can speak from personal experience on this. My electorate office lost its entire front on 22 February, in 22 seconds. I will not even dream of asking for any rescue of that building. I will not even dream of asking people to go into that building and rescue goods out of it. I acknowledge that that building is gone; it is history. But we need to maintain the maximum amount of our infrastructure in Christchurch because we will not be able to rebuild rapidly if we have every second building knocked over. We must keep a viable infrastructure—be it heritage or not—repair it, strengthen it, and put it back in service as soon as possible. That will assist the recovery of our city, because if we only have a central business district full of cranes we will have green space across it for a generation and that will not assist those businesses that want to get back into business and are able to restart relatively quickly.

I am immensely proud and supportive of the initiative from inner-city businesses that want to get some sense of life under way by show weekend at the beginning of November. That is a fantastic time frame, but it will require the demolition—yes—of those buildings that cannot be saved, but I would suggest the propping up of some buildings that can be saved, and the restoration and repair of other buildings that need to be saved. We need people who can advocate on those things, who can have a word in the Minister’s ear, who can sit at that forum, and who can say to him that these are things that need to be taken on board. Also, I think, represented on that forum there need to be members of the community boards that dot themselves across the city of Christchurch. It is an underused forum at the moment but it has deep connective roots into the community.

CanCERN has sprung up in the last 6 or 7 months. It has networks right the way across just about all of the affected communities. It should be part of that forum, as well. Those affected communities not represented by CanCERN deserve to have their voices also heard at that forum. We should be seeing representatives of the councils on the forum, as well. We should also see members of the education and health communities there. They are hugely affected by the quake. We have dozens of schools still not fully operative. We have damage to our major hospital site and we have some damage at Princess Margaret Hospital. Those voices must be heard as we come through. There will be major public health risks in the months that follow from the quake, in terms of many thousands of damaged homes. Many homes will be damp, people will be overcrowded in many instances; the health voice must be represented.

I want to see the Supplementary Order Paper to see whether there is any indication in it of what the processes are going to be in respect of the real opportunities the Minister might provide for community engagement, and for community participation, so we are assured that Christchurch’s voices will be heard as we all engage rapidly in the recovery of our city. Everybody wants to see it move quickly. Everybody wants to have their sector represented through a voice for them, and we need to see the Supplementary Order Paper, I say to the Minister, as soon as possible, so we can all be assured that it contains some of the changes we are advocating for.

I rise to make a contribution in this Committee stage on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill to push back on what I keep hearing from members on the other side of the Chamber. Mr Chauvel said there was no need to be doing this in urgency. Mr Burns, the speaker who has just resumed his seat, was pushing back on the concept of rushed legislation, implying somehow that we should be taking this much more slowly.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: No, no, “considered”.

That is what they said. No, no, that is what they said, I say to Ms Dalziel. I am not sure how Brendon Burns can, in the same contribution, talk about the very valid fear we all have about people being out of their houses and facing winter with no heating, yet say we should not be rushing this. I do not know where Mr Chauvel is coming from when he says that this bill does not deserve urgency. It does deserve urgency, and the way we have developed and delivered this legislation is exactly what needed to happen, and I commend the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery for doing it.

This final draft of the legislation was approved, as I understand it, through the Cabinet process only on Monday, and it was in this House and released on Tuesday. That is when I first saw it; that is when everyone first saw it. As someone living in Canterbury, living with this and dealing with people—as I know that all Canterbury MPs are—I say that this is urgent. This is urgent and there is a rush. I cannot accept anybody saying we should slow down. We should not slow down. We need to do this as well as we can, but as quickly as we can. I am no apologist for getting this done quickly. On the contrary, we have to do it fast. We have to move fast, and for anybody to stand in this Chamber and say it is not urgent is a complete insult to the people of Canterbury.

The other thing I want to push back on is the comment we have heard a couple of times now from the other side of the Chamber about comments made at the Local Government and Environment Committee by the Christchurch City Council when they saw the final copy of this bill. I have no doubt they are right, as to when they saw the final version of the bill. But let us not confuse that with the suggestion they were not involved in discussing the concept and the framework from the outset—they were; they absolutely were. In fact, the first thing the deputy mayor said at the select committee was that we had a council commitment, an acceptance, and an agreement to the framework and to the concept. Council members may not have seen the final version of the bill before Tuesday—neither did I—but every one of those organisations has been involved in these discussions from the outset. I do not think the Minister could have done more to talk with them along the way, as this process developed, without holding it up.

To suggest that councillors first heard of the bill at 4 o’clock on Tuesday is a complete nonsense. They have been involved, as Selwyn District Council, Waimakariri District Council, Environment Canterbury, and Ngāi Tahu have acknowledged they have, so let us not buy into this suggestion that Christchurch City Council did not know about the bill until late on Tuesday. That is a nonsense. It has been involved from the outset. It has bought into it and supported it, and the deputy mayor confirmed that as a council it supports the concept, and has done so all the way through. I think that needs to be made very clear and put on the record.

I will not accept that there is any way to approach this matter except as a matter of urgency. We have to get it right, and the mere fact that the Minister and his officials have been working through the night to keep making sure that anything that is picked up is fixed is commendable. Far from not doing his job, he is doing his job for the people of Canterbury to the utmost of his ability, and absolutely to the level we require. He is getting this done quickly, but he has ensured that any person who makes a sensible suggestion is having it fed through into the legislation, right up to the last minute. I think that should be commended, and this Committee should be supporting it. Rather than looking for excuses to slow down this process, members should be doing what they say they will do, which is to get in behind it and make sure it works.

If we want to know what playing politics will look like, it will look like sitting on the sidelines and throwing stones, from day one. Anybody who will do that is not part of the solution; they are looking for a way to make this Government look bad. I know that the people of Canterbury know that this Government is working hard to get their problems fixed as a matter of urgency.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: You should be ashamed of yourself.

I am not ashamed of myself, I say to Ms Dalziel, because I want to see this dealt with as a matter of urgency.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: That is outrageous.

What, is it outrageous to suggest we deal with this urgently? That is a nonsense.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: How dare you? I have written to every Minister on the Cabinet Committee with decent, sensible suggestions.

I have worked with this Minister on my issues from my constituents, and they have been dealt with every time. I do not need to go to the media. I deal with it, I work with the Minister, and I work hard for my constituents, and I will continue to do so as a matter of urgency, because this is urgent.

I just want to—

💬 Paul Quinn: Oh, a soothing influence!

A moment’s pause. I want to pick up an issue I raised earlier—and so did Brendon Burns, who has just been maligned, and others. It pertains to community engagement. I will make just one further point on community engagement, and I wish to then address the issue of powers as well. On the issue of community engagement the Green Party has a further Supplementary Order Paper to offer. It is Supplementary Order Paper 235, and it would address clause 20(3), which currently reads: “Neither the Minister nor any responsible entity has a duty under this Act to consult any person about the development of a Recovery Plan, except as provided under this section or in section 17.” That is one example of the difference, I think, between the Government and the Green Party in its perception of the philosophical thrust of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. The Government, in weighing the so-called balance between an expedited, rapid recovery and community engagement, opts for the former. The Green Party maintains that the balance is not struck in the bill and that there should be a greater involvement of the community, to balance that expedited recovery without unnecessarily delaying it.

I ask why the Minister has to have a complete escape clause that excludes him from any duty to consult with any person, other than through clause 17. We look to clause 17 and find that it pertains only to the recovery of the central business district—just the central business district of Christchurch, not elsewhere. In consulting on that we look at clause 17(5) and find that it covers the process for the development of the recovery plan. Of course, the Minister is obliged to consult with the Christchurch City Council, Environment Canterbury, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, and others, and, indeed, the Christchurch City Council takes the lead. But where is the community engagement in that? Clause 17(5) states: “The process for the development of the proposed Recovery Plan for the CBD must include 1 or more public hearings, as determined by the Christchurch City Council, at which members of the public may appear and be heard.”

Setting aside—well, not setting aside—the drafting issue of whether we can have a mandatory “must include” provision that stipulates “either/or”, which does not, I think, make drafting sense, the substantive issue is that there is to be only one public hearing. Under clause 20(3) the Minister has a duty to consult on the recovery plan only in the context of one public hearing pertaining to the central business district. That is demonstrably insufficient, and that is why we are proposing that clause 20(3) be deleted and replaced with the words “The Minister and the responsible entities have an obligation to consult affected communities.” That imposes an obligation on the Minister to ensure that all affected communities are involved in the recovery plan. Clause 17(5) states that the process “must include 1 or more public hearings”, but it should perhaps be “must include a series of at least 4 public hearings.” We commend Supplementary Order Paper 235 on public engagement, pertaining to clause 20, to the Committee.

I bring the Committee’s attention back to one of the statements made in the explanatory note of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. It states: “The Bill is founded on the need for community participation in decision-making processes while balancing this against the need for a timely and coordinated recovery process.” It was interesting to hear Opposition members suggesting that some of the significant parties received the bill with very little notice. Some of the submitters whom we had in front of us commented on the fact that they were pleased to see the significant improvements in the final version of the bill as opposed to earlier versions that they had seen. Members opposite cannot have it both ways. They cannot say there has been no involvement in the bill and people have only just seen it for the first time, yet hear submitters comment that, in particular, the area where they notice improvement is in the strengthening of the provisions on involving the community in decision making.

I want to draw the Committee’s attention to further aspects of the bill highlighted in the explanatory note, particularly about the long-term recovery strategy that will be developed by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority in collaboration with key stakeholders. I think it is fantastic to have the word “collaboration” stated so early in the bill, so it is very clear that the community and key stakeholders will be involved in the creation of that very important, overarching, long-term recovery strategy. We heard from submitters, particularly Ngāi Tahu, that they could see that by acting in good faith with the Government there was a real opportunity for partnership in this dialogue during the creation of very important documents.

One of the things that disturbed me a little was the fact that there seemed to be a lack of awareness among Labour members about the notification requirements of the long-term strategy, so I thought it might be worth drawing their attention to that provision in the bill. It is stated in clause 13, which talks specifically about it and is entitled “Public notification of draft Recovery Strategy.” It states: “The chief executive must ensure that a draft Recovery Strategy is publicly notified.” If that is not a process of direct dialogue with the members of the community and key stakeholders, whereby any member of the public will have the opportunity to make written comments on the strategy, I am not quite sure what would be.

One of the earlier speakers talked a lot about the community forum, and I think the provisions on the forum are a really important part of this bill, in terms of assisting that very important decision-making process. I do not think anyone disagrees that the community has the needs of Christchurch and Canterbury at heart. They know it that because they live it and breathe it. That is why it is very important that this will be—and I will use that word again, for the sake of the Opposition—a collaborative process. I commend the Minister for being so upfront, and blatantly putting the words “community involvement”, “community forum”, and “collaboration” all throughout this bill. I think that is a fantastic step forward.

We recognise the fact that this is extraordinary legislation; I hope that in my time as a member of Parliament we never have the need to do legislation like this again. But also we recognise that this Government is making tough decisions in tough times. It is fantastic to see the support of the majority of the Committee is behind this bill, although unfortunately some of the people who are listening to this debate might not actually appreciate that fact, given some of the negativity of the comments from the Opposition members. This Government is listening to the community. It is listening to the submitters and the evidence they raised with us. It is taking action right now—right at this very minute—to make changes in order to make sure that this legislation is lasting and delivers the results for Christchurch and Canterbury that it needs to deliver.

First I restate that the contents of the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper was put together in a document that was provided to members before the House sat this morning. The process that we have gone through over the last couple of days is one that the Opposition asked for and the Government agreed to. I think we are heading towards some regret over that. Although the information that came through from submitters in many parts was valid and useful, and we have agreed to those things, it took until the very early hours of this morning—some time after 4 a.m.—for this particular bit of work to come together. It then needed further consideration before it was made available to those who would be drafting the Supplementary Order Paper.

Throughout the morning we have heard of the need to get things right and not make mistakes. We have tabled a bill that we are happy with. We are obviously allowing those people who have made solid submissions to have their concerns reflected in the finished copy of the bill. But I have to say that it will be about another hour before that Supplementary Order Paper is completed. That is not unreasonable in these circumstances. The sort of jumping up and down and beating of the chest that we have seen over this is utterly ridiculous in the circumstances.

I have before me at least 100 amendments put forward by the Opposition, which have been declared valid by the Clerk. I will take the time now to go through those amendments one by one and explain the Government’s position, over and above the document that was provided to the members of the Committee this morning. The first amendment is in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson. It deals with an interpretive matter. Six changes are proposed in this amendment. To make the process a little shorter, I simply say that these amendments would extend the powers of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to a much greater area of Canterbury than is currently the case. The amendments deal with putting the words “Canterbury District Health Board” into the legislation as one of the bodies that is consulted.

It is implicit in the legislation that recovery plans for health will be developed with the Canterbury District Health Board; the board does not need an additional representation in the bill. Most certainly, the area caught by the bill’s provision does not have to be as large as that covered by the Canterbury District Health Board. The situation is similar with regard to the issues around the disability strategy. That is a guide for how local authorities should plan for the development of new buildings and facilities in their district, and it will remain so.

The second amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson proposes that there be some exclusions and exceptions of exclusions to appeals. The Government’s response to this amendment is that we will not support it. It puts appeals into the wrong place. If we were to go through this process, then we would accept this amendment, engaging the Environment Court in the process. That would defeat the purpose of the bill, which is to move swiftly to get good recovery for Canterbury.

The next amendment is in the name of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove: “Part 2 Clause 21 is amended by inserting the following subclause (5) No recovery plan shall be approved without an impact assessment being completed to assess the social, cultural, environmental and community impacts.” From our perspective, we believe that this bill is an enabling framework, and that that response in some cases for recovery plans would be implicit. Where there is a need to do something expeditiously, where there is a need to do something even if it is a temporary arrangement, this amendment would be an impost that would, in fact, slow things down. Frankly, I think that is the intention here today.

The next amendment from the Hon Clayton Cosgrove proposes that “Clause 27 is amended by replacing subclause (7) with the following new subclause: ‘Compensation is payable under this Act for any loss suffered as a result of an action taken under this section’ ”. This is where the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority will have the ability to work with local councils to suspend some aspects of Resource Management Act plans. It would mean, for example, that people with air space currently available to them who own property in Christchurch excluded from a new central business district plan by the Christchurch City Council would end up being liable for compensation from the Government. That is an unacceptable position, and we will not be supporting that amendment.

The next amendment proposes that “Clause 83 is amended by omitting subsection (1).” The effect of omitting subsection (1), without reading what it currently says, is that urban search and rescue workers who were engaged in the rescue of people—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Do you mean you haven’t read it?

Well, I will read it then. Shall I read it to the member, who clearly is not familiar with this particular part of the bill? Subsection (1) of clause 83, which Clayton Cosgrove wants to take out, states: “Every action taken or decision made under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 by the National Controller, the Director, or any person acting under the authority of the National Controller or the Director, if taken or made while the state of national emergency was in force in respect of Christchurch in 2011, is declared to be and always to have been valid.” He wants to take out the bit that says: “Subsection (1) does not apply in respect of any action or decision that is taken or made in bad faith”, etc. I think it should apply in those circumstances, and I do not want to see urban search and rescue teams suddenly confronted with bills for the damage that may have been done to enter buildings looking for bodies. So we will not be supporting that amendment.

The next amendment is in the name of Brendon Burns. It amends matters to do with the community forum. The community forum will be the subject of some negotiation, I think, between political parties and, of course, the elected representatives, but in the end it is about giving a voice to people in the community who do not have an elected responsibility, but emerge from those communities as leaders as a result of this particular event. Saying that there should be more than six meetings a year when we have a bill that will run for 5 years shows a failure to understand that at the start of this process there may be a need for many more meetings at the front end but, due to the success of the recovery—I hope—fewer meetings at the back end.

The next amendment is also in the name of Brendon Burns with regard to the recovery plan for the central business district. He proposes that “in developing the Recovery Plan for the CBD the Christchurch City Council must not propose the full or partial sale of any assets which it or any of its subsidiaries hold.” So where does that leave them with the Henderson properties? The Labour Party has spent the last couple of years telling the world that those properties were a bunch of dead-duck properties that the council should never have invested in. So on the one hand Labour is saying that the council should never have done it, should not have touched it, it was outrageous, but now it is saying: “Don’t sell them; they’re precious local assets. Don’t touch them.” Most of those properties are busted and broken. It would be a good thing if the council does have the flexibility to enter property transactions for property that is held by ratepayers, particularly where those properties are now a significant burden on an already stressed rating base.

The next amendment from Brendon Burns relates to clause 27, “Suspension of plan, etc”. What Mr Burns wants to do is implicit in subclause (1)(c). I will not go into the detail, because it is so obvious, and it would be an embarrassment to point it out. Mr Burns also proposes amendments to clause 87 “Quarterly report on operation of this Act”. For clarification purposes he wants the description to list the instances in which each power was exercised, and whether notification and/or consultation was required and carried out. Well, where there are requirements for disclosure in legislation there are very few prescriptions about that requirement. We could, for example, disclose Ministers’ expenses as a bulk figure, and then let everybody go and work it out. But no one finds that acceptable, so there is a line-by-line attitude taken to it. It is implicit in this bill that the same process will be followed.

The Hon Clayton Cosgrove wants to amend the public notification of draft recovery plan for the central business district. This is an amendment that we will not support, largely because, in the end, the legislation prescribes that the Minister—therefore the Cabinet committee—and Cabinet itself approves that plan. The Hon Clayton Cosgrove also wants to amend the development of recovery plans. He proposes that the process for the development of a recovery plan must include one or more public hearings, as determined by the chief executive, at which members of the public may appear and must be heard. Let us say it is a recovery plan for the lower reaches of the Avon River, as it enters the estuary. We know, at the moment, that 65 percent of the 94 percent of toilet discharge that gets flushed in the city does not make its way to the sewerage works. We know there has to be a suspension of the requirements of the Resource Management Act to allow unacceptable discharge into those areas. If there is a better way of doing it, and it can be done quickly, do we really need to have a publicly notified process that allows people to come along and express their view about whether we should stop sewage running into an open waterway? It is an utterly ridiculous suggestion, and we will not be supporting it.

The next amendment from the Hon Ruth Dyson is to clause 22(2), to omit subclause (2) and insert a new subclause (2). For the member—I know that the request will be made in a few minutes—let me read the current subclause (2) so that people can be in no doubt about what is in it. I do not want to be accused, again, of not knowing what is in it. Clause 22 talks about changes to a recovery plan. Subclause (2) states: “Action may be taken under subsection (1) using the processes the Minister considers appropriate.” Ms Dyson wants us to refer to subsections (4) and (5) of section 11, as set out in clause 22. Section 11(4) is prescriptive. It does not set out that clause 22(2) sets aside anything; all it does is make sure that there is some flexibility that can be exercised according to the size of the plan that is being dealt with. Once again, the Labour Party wants to put in place as many hold-it-up, slow-it-down, roadblock arrangements as possible.

We then come to more amendments by the Hon Clayton Cosgrove. He wants to insert new clause 7A, “Relationship with Local Authorities”. The amendment says: “The Minister must meet at least quarterly with Council Mayors and the Chair of the Regional Council.” That assumes there will be a massive arm’s-length lack of collaboration arrangement coming out of this bill. The amendment attacks the very, very heart of this bill, which is about having cooperation and collaboration. We will not support that amendment. It would be a matter of bad faith to do so.

The member also wants to amend clause 48. For those who are uncertain about clause 48, please turn to the relevant page so that we can be clear about this, and we cannot be accused of getting things wrong or going to the wrong place in the bill. Clause 48 is about directions that can be issued by the organisation. A direction is a simple thing. It could be whether a council would mind holding up a decision because more information was coming. I can tell members that that has happened in the last few weeks. It has been done cooperatively, without the need for any reference to any legislation or law, but it simply formalises what can be done. So what we get is that the Minister would be required to—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I call Charles Chauvel.

Oh, do they not want responses to their SOPs?

In reply to that last aside from the Minister, I tell members that we have just had the extraordinary sight of the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, during the only time this legislation will have any effective scrutiny from the Committee—because his own amendments will not be ready for another 45 minutes, partway through the debate, or in fact toward the conclusion of the debate—reading through amendments that the Opposition has put forward to try to improve this legislation, and then rejecting them all. Well, the Minister needs to reflect on the adequacy of the process here.

This legislation will allow the Minister to overturn any planning decision, revoke or amend any resource consent, force councils to allow any resource consent, compulsorily acquire property without any public interest test, demolish any house even if it is undamaged, and dissolve elected bodies if they fail to do what he says. So this Opposition makes no apology for wanting to make sure that the legislation is properly scrutinised, and I will not have it said by any member in this Parliament that it is unpatriotic or irresponsible to do so. Our job—the thing that the people pay us to do—is to work out whether the laws that this House is passing are properly made. It is not an inappropriate exercise of anyone’s time in this Parliament to make sure that that is done, and this current process does not comply, on any view, with that test.

I am the chair of the Regulations Review Committee. We are the committee that has had the job of scrutinising the Orders in Council that were made under the 2010 emergency legislation, and I will acknowledge a point that Amy Adams made. It is true that the Orders in Council that have been made to date, recommended by the officials and by the Minister in the chair, have been moderate. That is an appropriate thing to put on the record. There has not been an attempt, to date, to overreach the powers that the Minister has had conferred on him by this Parliament. I will put that on record happily and freely.

I will also put on record that the Minister did not have to agree to a select committee process. He could have just rammed all this through under urgency. Thank goodness he did not, because I think that all members on that committee would agree that we have managed to make some improvements to the legislation. It is a good thing that we have had that process. I wish we were not now at the point of a logjam where we are 40 minutes away from even seeing the detail of further amendments that are to be proposed by the Government, but I accept that we have had a summary of those amendments. That is what I will take the time to respond to, in relation to a couple of detailed points.

First of all I come to clause 70, and this concerns a matter that was pointed to by the Legislation Advisory Committee. The test for the making of the Orders in Council is not that the orders are necessary. It is not that we can suspend the law, extend the law, or do away with the provisions of the law because the orders are necessary for the purposes of dealing with the emergency; under this clause the orders can be expedient. Parliament is saying to the executive: “We are going to do away with our right to make laws. We are going to delegate that to you if you think it is a nice idea.” That is what—in layman’s terms—“expedient” means.

That cannot be a wise thing to do. The Legislation Advisory Committee cautions against it, and I add my voice to its caution. I would urge the Minister, even though that is the test in the existing legislation, and even though he has not abused it—and I have put that on record—to tell us why we have the “expedient” test there. Why do we not only do away with Parliament’s right to legislate exclusively, and confer it on him, but then say that he can use it whenever he thinks it is “expedient”? That is unwise; it is too broad. We will regret this precedent in the future.

The second point relates to clause 73(2). This relates to a submission made by Professor Joseph. The Minister can make recommendations about what an Order in Council should say, and the legislation states that no one can take a judicial review of that recommendation, no matter how wrong it might be, no matter whether it is based on incorrect considerations, and no matter how unwise it might be. I will say two things about that, and again they echo concerns from the Legislation Advisory Committee.

First of all, no one will bother to judicially review a recommendation. People will wait until the Order in Council is made and then judicially review that. So the power is unnecessary. It is also provocative—that is the second thing. The courts are jealous of their powers, and they are jealous of those powers for good reason. The powers exist as a bulwark against tyranny and encroachment on people’s liberties by the executive, by the legislature, and by other parts of Government. Why should we provoke the courts by telling them they cannot even review a recommendation that the Minister makes? The provision is foolish; it should be deleted.

Linked to this recommendation from the Legislation Advisory Committee is the matter that once a regulation is made, there is an attempt to also put it beyond judicial review. This absolutely disturbs a fundamental principle that we have in our laws—that any activity by the executive is able to be looked at by the courts, in order to consider whether that action is lawful. The courts cannot review statutes, but they can review regulations and Orders in Council. There is a very, very good reason for that. Orders in Council are made without parliamentary scrutiny—or without much parliamentary scrutiny—and certainly not with scrutiny beforehand. A fundamental check and balance in our system is that the courts should be able to look at the legality of executive action.

Again, two things need to be said here. First of all, I ask why we are seeking to oust that jurisdiction. If we are confident that the Minister will use his powers wisely, then why do we not let the courts have the option of agreeing, or not? Secondly, I ask why we are using the clumsy language we see in this bill. There is an attempt to oust the jurisdiction of the court, but it is being done badly. It is ineffective. The worry I have here is that we have a line of cases already in this country, enunciated mainly through statements from the late Lord Cooke of Thorndon, a former President of our Court of Appeal and a former law lord, that if this Parliament seeks to put in place revolutionary arrangements about our constitution, then the courts will have to think carefully about enforcing those arrangements. If they agree, for example, that executive action should be put beyond the scrutiny of the courts, or if they agree that Parliament should just delegate its lawmaking power to Ministers, then the courts would have to think carefully, in the words of Lord Cooke, about whether they were acquiescing pro tanto to a revolution. I ask whether we really want to provoke the courts in this way, particularly with badly drafted privative clauses. I say no, because there is no need for it. It is provocative, and the provision should come out of the legislation.

The next point I will make relates to clause 29, and also to clause 30, which echo a concern from the New Zealand Law Society. It relates to information privacy principles and the way that information will be shared between agencies. The bill will basically require the chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to consider applicable privacy principles but not to protect privacy interests. This, again, is going too far. The Privacy Commissioner has already relaxed the information privacy principles in the way that they apply to Canterbury during the emergency. That is the proper way to do it. The expert who is charged with administering the Privacy Act should be the expert who decides whether a relaxation is justified in a certain time and a certain place, and that is what she has done. This matter came to the Regulations Review Committee; we said that, yes, that is a practical thing to do in the circumstances, and we have supported it. There is no need also to let the chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority off the hook in terms of the privacy of individual citizens. I ask why that person, and by extension the Minister, should be able to ignore all our privacy laws in respect of the people of Canterbury and the current emergency, without any regard for the expert opinion of the Privacy Commissioner herself.

The next point I will make relates to clause 83. This clause would retrospectively validate any action taken in respect of the emergency. Again, there is just no need for this sort of broad provision. At the moment, under the state of emergency that exists, there is wide validation of actions taken on an official basis under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, so there is no need to duplicate—Mr Chairman, I am aware that you gave the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, three calls. I have just one more point and I would ask your indulgence to make it.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The member makes it hard. The member has now had exactly the same number of calls that the Minister has had, and we have not yet had Mr Locke, who is seeking the call. But I will give the member the call in the spirit of generosity.

I applaud your wisdom, as always, Mr Chairperson. I want to make only two more points; one relates to finishing my earlier point. I say that there is no need for retrospective validation. The power exists already, so I ask why there is this headlong rush to do things that will create bad precedent for the future. It is just inexplicable. The power is not necessary, and it should not be given by this Parliament.

The final point relates to appeal rights, in respect of clauses 67 and 68. Clause 67 provides that there is to be no right of appeal on decisions of the Minister, except as provided for by the legislation. Clause 68 then goes on to provide a very circumscribed way in which appeals are to go through the court system. They are to go to the High Court and then—snap, snap, snap—with time limits put in place by the statute, they are to go to the Court of Appeal.

Again, I have two things to say about that. First of all, in respect of a lot of these matters, the Environment Court is the expert court that should be hearing these issues, not the High Court. Ruth Dyson has put forward an amendment that would provide for that to occur. The Environment Court could sit with expert assistance from a valuer, for example, if it were deciding issues of compensation. Why should we not let the expert court do its job? It could probably do it more quickly than the High Court could. I know a little bit about the staffing of the High Court in Christchurch at the moment, and the personnel in the court. Probably the Environment Court could do it quickly, if that is what we are concerned about; the High Court is, I think, in a more difficult position. But then we have the right of appeal to the Court of Appeal anyway, so there is no need for concern about the law not being applied in anything other than an orthodox way.

The final point relates to the restriction that the bill would put on appeal rights. There is no need for this restriction. Again, Parliament should not be interfering with the way that the rules of court are set out. If we want to tell people not to appeal vexatiously and prolong matters through litigation, then we should simply rely on the powers of the courts that exist already to do that. We could bolster those powers through this legislation itself, but there is no need to blot out appeal rights in a way that could actually negate many people’s rights to go on and have legal matters tested, because there are complex legal matters in this bill. I will be very disappointed if clause 68 survives in its current form.

It is rather sad, in my opinion, to have to rise in the Committee stage in this body, which is the highest body in our democracy, the most representative body, and to give what is, in effect, a primer on the nature of democracy and democratic decision-making. Democracy is fundamentally violated by this bill. Democracy is not about giving a Minister the power to override the decision making of local bodies, and that is exactly what the explanatory note of this bill states. It states that the Minister has: “the ability to suspend, amend, cancel, delay, any council plans and policies.” It is very definitive and sums up the bill in that respect.

Councils, it is true, have a consultative role under this bill, and the Supplementary Order Papers being put forward by the Green Party try to extend the extent of consultation and community engagement required under this bill. But consultation cannot substitute for people at the local level actually making decisions through their local representatives about their future as a community and as a city, in this case in Christchurch.

The reason why local bodies should have this power, apart from the fact that we would like to be democratic, is that local people know better than any bureaucrat from Wellington or anywhere else what is important to their future. There are absolutely vital decisions to be made over the next while, particularly over the next 5 years, in the currency of this bill, that will shape the future of Christchurch—their city, not our city; as we are sitting here in Wellington. Those decisions must be made by the people of Christchurch, not by a Minister or a bureaucrat residing here.

Does central government have a role? Absolutely. It has a role to assist the people of Christchurch, not to control the people of Christchurch. Our assistance is to give the resources to help speed and streamline the process of recovery, rebuilding, etc., and, yes, to enable shortcuts to be taken through certain bits of legislation. The Greens do not oppose that. We agree with the parts of the bill where modifications are allowed to particular Acts to achieve a more rapid recovery than would be normally the case through existing statutes. But to achieve that, we do not need to give power to the Government to override most of the laws on our statute book.

Some of the submitters to the Local Government and Environment Committee, including David Bullock and Daniel Jackson, said that the legislation overrides a whole range of Acts, including the Human Rights Act, the Crimes Act, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Official Information Act, the Ombudsmen Act, and I could go on and on. There is absolutely no reason for those Acts to be overridden. The overriding of Acts is not effectively constrained either by the law courts or by Parliament. Although there is some right of review, it is not effective in a legal sense and, of course, the Law Society, in its submission to the select committee, wanted much more reference to Parliament whenever laws were overridden. Some of the Green Party amendments to this legislation try to put the power back into Parliament to a greater extent.

Is having a tsar in the form of a Minister to direct the recovery of Christchurch more efficient? Is this sort of state of emergency justified? It is true that with emergency powers sometimes things can be better streamlined, and we have had a series of weeks of a state of emergency, which has helped in the recovery of Christchurch to this point. The Green Party has supported those orders. But even when we look back at the history of that, although there are advantages, we see that there are disadvantages.

We note the complaints as late as this morning on Morning Report of business owners who have not been able to get into their offices in the red zone in the central business district to recover basic items like computers, files, etc. Day after day there have been complaints like that. Outside the red zone, where there is not the same application of constraint, people have been entering dangerous buildings, taking calculated risks, and retrieving their files, etc. from inside buildings. But the bureaucrats in the red zone have been ultra-conservative in their risk assessment, just taking no risks whatsoever, of any danger, and have caused, in the process, a great amount of angst and depression amongst business people and workers. All sorts of things like that are the result of this avoidance of risk, which is characteristic of people who have absolute power and are not necessarily in touch with the local situation.

Communities have huge resources and abilities to address those problems and they are being underestimated in the bill. In the suburb of Sumner, for example, it has been fantastic to see people getting together all sorts of subcommittees to deliver services, social events, you name it. The Student Volunteer Army has also been fantastic. It shows that the capacities of local people can be unleashed if we allow them the initiative. I think the people of Canterbury have the capacity to come forward with plans to implement, with the assistance financially and in terms of resources put in from the central government level.

We have had a lot of discussion here about the constitution and constitutional restraints, etc. It is useful to refer to why we have them. Often we hear that so far we have not done too badly, and we should trust the Minister, Gerry Brownlee. We hear that he is a good bloke and that he would not unnecessarily override constitutional provisions in Acts, etc. But that is not how democracy works. We have these constitutional restraints because we do not trust anyone in the executive as such, and because people do not always do the right things.

It may be that we have a dream run with Gerry Brownlee for the next whatever, but we should write laws not according to the trust in a particular person, the particular Government of the day, or whatever but according to what is constitutionally right and what is basically democratic. Writing off the appeals to courts and the validation of actions by Parliament is not the way to do that. I think that the process of urgency here is another illustration of the problem with this bill. We did not need to go to this rapid process of dealing with the bill over 2 days, not knowing what the bill was until a couple of days ago, and not knowing what the Government’s amendments are, even now, part-way through the Committee stage.

All we needed to do—and the Green Party proposed and stressed this—was extend the state of emergency a bit longer and have a few weeks to have a proper select committee process. It could have been done, it should have been done, and there is absolutely no reason why it was not done. Now we are in probably the biggest mess I have ever seen in my time in Parliament, discussing a bill without the Government’s amendments—which are probably fairly numerous—before us when we are most of the way through what is claimed to be the Committee stage. That is absolutely unacceptable.

The fact that the Government would force this urgent process, and not allow people in the community proper time to come forward with their amendments and changes, just shows the need for constitutional restraints, and the need not to just trust this Government, or any Government, on such matters. The select committee process is vital in our democracy.

Chrissie Williams made a submission; she only just managed to get hold of the bill before the select committee process. She did a handwritten criticism of certain aspects of the bill. She is a city councillor, and we have a process where even the city council, the body technically responsible for recovering Christchurch—although that is now being overridden by the Government—did not have access to the bill to be able to properly work out a response to it. It is just unacceptable. As Dean Knight, one of the submitters, said, the legislative scheme is drawn in command and control terms. Dean Knight’s submission was a very good submission, actually. He is a law lecturer at Victoria University. Thank you.

The need to rebuild Christchurch and Greater Christchurch is urgent, I tell the previous speaker, Mr Locke. We need to do it quickly, and we need to do it efficiently. Keith Locke wants to take more time, but circumstances just do not allow it. I have just received news that a major sewer has collapsed on Ferry Road. That is another setback that emphasises how fragile our sewer system is, and now more people have to use chemical toilets and Portaloos for longer. That just underlines the urgency of how important it is to get the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority up and running. The managing of the rebuild of Christchurch needs that sort of support.

There are two major debating points in relation to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill. The first is whether the bill allows enough community participation. I listened to my colleague Louise Upston, and I would have to say yes. The second point is whether there are enough checks and balances in relation to the extraordinary powers provided by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, which are needed to deal with this extraordinary situation. I say yes to that, as well.

This is balanced and well-thought-out legislation. It is unique legislation. It is Kiwi-style, but it is informed by overseas experience in managing disaster recovery. According to the Legislation Advisory Committee, it meets all the tests of the principles of disaster recovery legislation. It is designed for New Zealand conditions and to get our city and Greater Christchurch moving. It does not preclude the recovery work that is already happening, especially in Kaiapoi. But with a dedicated authority in place there will be a quicker, more efficient process for the communities that still have to begin the rebuild process. We are all very aware that some people have been living in broken houses, with damaged infrastructure, and in dislocated communities since 4 September. Much of our city is munted.

There is a series of checks and balances in the legislation, and as the New Zealand Law Society says, the bill largely meets the objectives of transparency and accountability.

To recap the details: the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is working in partnership with existing councils and stakeholders. The powers of this legislation can be used only for earthquake recovery within the Greater Christchurch area. The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery is accountable directly to Parliament, which includes all parties in this Parliament, and he must report every 3 months. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority itself must be reviewed every year. All Orders in Council will be reviewed by the review panel chaired by a retired High Court judge. There are also the advisory committees, a community forum, and a cross-party forum. I am sure both those forums, in true Cantabrian spirit, will be robust and active.

Finally, as always in New Zealand, every citizen has the opportunity of free speech to hold the Minister and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to account. This is a well-balanced, well-thought-out bill, and I look forward to seeing it coming into force.

I will go back and deal with the process we are in. I will make a couple of points, because I heard the rebuttal from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. Here is where we find ourselves in an absurd way. No one on this side of the Chamber is holding up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill—no one. We are now finding filibustering from Government members; the Minister took three consecutives calls, which is rather unusual—normally it is two. The members opposite are getting up and speaking to the legislation to allow time for the Government Supplementary Order Paper—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I have confined my comments entirely to dealing with amendments proposed by the Opposition. If they do not want those given serious consideration, guess who is filibustering?

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is not a point of order.

I note that this is a wide-ranging debate. We find ourselves in a holding pattern, waiting for the Government at a quarter to one, 15 minutes before the luncheon adjournment, to provide a Supplementary Order Paper.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: It will be 1 o’clock.

The Minister says it will be 1 o’clock. Let us do the calculation. We have been in a holding pattern all this morning.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Probably 2 o’clock.

The Minister says it could be 2 o’clock.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes, it could be, or it could be 3.

It could be 3 o’clock. That is very interesting. I thank the Minister. The interesting thing is that if we hold to the timetable as specified by the Minister, then after the lunch break the Committee will come back at 2 o’clock and then there will be question time for roughly an hour or an hour and 30 minutes. Let us assume that we get back to the Committee stage at half-past 3 with 30 minutes to run, in order to allow time to vote. We will then have a 2-hour debate from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., unless the Minister wants to work overtime—and we stand charged and ready to go. Getting the bill through by 6 p.m., which was the Minister’s timetable and was stated publicly, would allow less than 30 minutes to debate a Supplementary Order Paper.

The Minister has used an alibi that the timetable is cramped and his officials have worked all night. I acknowledge that; I am sure the officials have worked all night—people like Mr Palmer and eminent lawyers and others who briefed us, who have worked all night to try to get this thing out, and who are working and writing the Supplementary Order Paper as we speak. The responsibility for that lies in the Minister’s own hands. He set the timetable for the bill. Had he allowed another 24 hours, given that the state of emergency is in existence until 16 April, then the officials would have been under less pressure, and we would have time to scrutinise the Supplementary Order Paper. We are now in the absurd situation that if the House rises at 6 o’clock as scheduled, there will be virtually no scrutiny of a Government Supplementary Order Paper. It is embarrassing for the Minister to sit in the chair and not have a Supplementary Order Paper available. That is not our fault. It is not the fault of his officials. The Minister set the time frame. He finally acceded to a request for a select committee, which heard public submissions for 4 hours and 40 minutes.

The Local Government and Environment Committee, which was well chaired by Mr Auchinvole, delivered on this timetable as rapidly as it could in order to get the report back here at 9 a.m. And we delivered; we on this side of the Chamber furnished Mr Brownlee ahead of time with our amendments—as I believe did the Green member Kennedy Graham—so that there was no ambush and so he had time to scrutinise them. Having listened to the Minister’s debate, I take it that he has trashed the lot. We note that. We are prepared and we stand ready to scrutinise a Supplementary Order Paper. It is a portent of disorganisation, mismanagement, and incompetence—they are not political words; they are facts—that the House is treated with such contempt that we are not allowed to see the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper.

Journalists have even told me they asked for the so-called summary sheet and the Minister’s office refused to give it to them.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s not true.

Yes, it is. I will not name the journalists. I have been to see a few. The issue about the summary sheet is that Mr Brownlee says he has given us a summary, but we requested it. He had no intention of giving us a summary sheet until I requested it in a private session with him last night. With generosity, he provided that summary sheet, but there a couple of problems with it. It does not provide the technical wording we need in order to scrutinise the legislation. It does not provide any of the technical definitions. It basically states what the officials agree on, disagree on, or note and a few colloquial words about what that means in essence. We are here—I say to Mr Brownlee as a former Leader of the House—to scrutinise the technical detail of the legislation. The bill is one of the most important bills to go through this Parliament, and the Minister sits there not having furnished us with a Supplementary Order Paper. He set the deadline, not us. He set the programme. He could have allowed another 24 hours. I would like the Minister to answer the question of what a delay of 24 hours—so he could get his act together and get his officials to draft a Supplementary Order Paper for proper scrutiny—would have done to the people of Canterbury. It would have done nothing. Another 24 hours would have had no effect and caused no delay, at all.

Thank you, Mr Chairman, for the opportunity to contribute further to the debate. I will refer back to the international experience. I talked in an earlier contribution to the Committee stage about the Hurricane Katrina story. I want the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery to listen, because the story is extremely relevant to why we are talking about the essential nature of getting the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill right. There has been international literature on Hurricane Katrina but this story comes from Massey University. We have in New Zealand one of the world experts in this particular field. In fact, he is in Christchurch on Monday, and he is addressing a seminar on recovery, which I certainly have signed up for, and I hope others in this Chamber do so too. The first thing he talked about was the issue of who defines the character of recovery. He said that pre-event politics frames the recovery process, and I want to come back to that, because people have said some pretty harsh things about this side of the Chamber. Yes, we do take them personally, but they will not stand in the way of making this work.

The second issue in respect of the New Orleans story was this—and I want to make this point very, very clearly. The relationship between local states and the Federal Government meant chaotic planning, and that is what this bill is designed to address. It is designed to ensure that there is not chaotic planning.

The third thing was that in New Orleans vulnerable populations were marginalised from the recovery process, and I will not let vulnerable communities that I was elected to represent be marginalised in this recovery process, regardless of what the bill says. The expert talked about domination by urban elites and corporate interests and experts from outside the city and region. Finally, and most important, he said that pre-event vulnerabilities were re-entrenched in a post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. We must not let that happen.

Members of this Government have stood in this Chamber and accused me and my colleagues of playing politics with this legislation. Well, I want to read to the Committee an email that I sent to John Key and every member of the Ad Hoc Cabinet Committee on Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, and then I will table it. When I sent this email I did so behind the scenes. There was no intention other than to get the Government to focus on what mattered to my constituents. I sent it on 1 March, 1 week after the 22 February earthquake. It stated: “TVNZ Close Up ran a story tonight about a Tale of Two Cities - the east west divide is real and it has major implications for our city. I live in Bexley, which means I have a very personal and emotional link to what I’m about to say. I have tried to strip this email of that influence and share with you what I know about the people I’ve been privileged to represent for 10 years now.” I will not read out the entire detail, but I want people to know that what I raised with the Government was the fact that “tolerance levels are lower than they were before because people felt they had been overlooked after the first earthquake. This has implications for law and order and also for mental health.”

Secondly, there was fear that people are vulnerable to the criminal element after dark. I asked for some night curfews around areas that had no electricity. This request was supported by the local police but was not listened to. The other fear was about more serious earthquakes and about the tsunami risk for offshore quakes. I wanted answers that I could share with the people I have the privilege to represent.

On the issue of health, I spoke to the people at the tactical medical centre that was set up by the Queensland mobile army surgical hospital unit. I said: “The problem is that we are treating ourselves as a First World city when the east is experiencing Third World conditions …”. That is what I was told by the doctor who was running the unit and who had very special expertise to bring to the table because he had been to disasters in Australia and all around the world.

I went on to talk about access to services and about how difficult it was to spend a cash grant when all the supermarkets and petrol stations are closed. I then talked about Portaloos, but I will not talk about Portaloos here, because I am still very upset that the powers that be would not listen to the concerns that were raised genuinely, privately, and behind closed doors over and over again until, finally, I had to speak out on behalf of those who elected me to do so.

I went on to talk about the resources of people who live in the badly affected areas and who do not have the resources that are available to me. I am talking about things like a steady income, mortgage-free living, and having family on the other side of town. I could have gone over to my sister’s place and had a shower at any time over the 16 days that my house was without electricity, but I did not do that, because we were being told to stay off the roads for non-urgent purposes. Besides, I was a Girl Guide and I know how to keep myself clean and smelling OK even though I did not have access to a shower for that period of time.

Some of the people I represent—not all of them—have no savings. This is not a rich versus poor divide between east Christchurch and west Christchurch either. We have some beautiful houses that have been smashed up on the riverside, on the Bexley wetlands looking out over Horseshoe Lake Reserve. So it is not a case of east versus west and rich versus poor; it is just east versus west in terms of where the earthquake did its damage. But a lot of people did not have 3 days’ worth of food in the cupboard, they did not have 20 litre water containers, they did not have transistor radios with batteries, and they did not have torches that were working.

I went on to talk about engineering and Variation 48, but I will not go into that again, because the council has not listened to me, and I know that the Government is getting Tonkin and Taylor to work up some realistic solutions there. I am grateful for that, and I want to place on record my admiration for Tonkin and Taylor and the fantastic work that it is doing. It is working so hard on behalf of our constituents.

Finally, I talked about recovery. Everything I have read about recovery post 4 September relates largely to the disappointing efforts after the establishment of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission, which was believed by the city council and the Minister to absolve the council from its Civil Defence Emergency Management responsibilities. Post the 4 September earthquake, international best practice kicked in, with four task groups established—economic environment, social environment, built environment, and natural environment. Most of these structures fell apart after the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission was established. I had ridiculous emails from the city council saying that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission was better because it had seven task groups as opposed to four. The truth is that we need to engage with the communities of the east and with the central business district, and we have to set aside politics. Politicians should not be the face of recovery. We need someone in charge. I have taken out the rest of the email because it gave some indication as to who I thought should be in charge, and it is not fair to that individual for me to say so. So I have taken that person’s name out of the email before I table it.

The reason I wanted to put that on the record is that we have worked tirelessly on this side of the Chamber to engage with the Government, to engage with the council, to engage with our communities, and to represent them. In my maiden speech to Parliament I said that I wanted to be the face of the people who could not be seen and the voice of the people who could not be heard. I never realised for 1 minute that that would have some meaning after an event such as this, but it does have meaning for me because that is the job that we have all been doing. Clayton Cosgrove, Ruth Dyson, Brendon Burns, Jim Anderton, and I have worked so hard as constituency MPs, elected by our constituents to represent them, and I really resent the fact that we are being criticised by people who have not been elected to represent constituencies in the way that we have.

I know that the Hon Gerry Brownlee has been affected, and I know that his constituents have been affected as well, and he has taken up those concerns as a genuinely elected representative of those people, as has Amy Adams on the other side of the Chamber. Amy Adams has also been personally affected, and I think we have to acknowledge the fact that we are all personally affected in some way, shape, or form, and that there is work that we need to do and we need to do it together.

The Prime Minister told the Leader of the Opposition that I had been emotionally affected by the earthquake. Well, I would like to know who was not emotionally affected by the earthquake. The emotional effect might be real, but I tell members that it has not stopped my utmost commitment and driven desire to make sure that this legislation works for the people who elected me to represent them, and to be their voice, and I will continue to do so

I know that the Minister is upset with some of the things that have been said, but all I am asking is for him to please set those aside for the sake of making sure that we get this right. That is all I really want to say in this debate. I seek leave to table the email.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Leave is sought to table the papers the member outlined in her speech. Is anyone opposed to that course of action? There is no objection. Leave is granted.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

I pay tribute to Lianne Dalziel’s very impassioned speech just a moment ago on the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, and I want to record my admiration for what she has done in the eastern suburbs.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.