Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill

Members, when we were last debating the first reading of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill, the Hon Ruth Dyson was speaking and has 30 seconds remaining if she so wishes.

I most certainly do want to make the most of this opportunity. I want to begin by wishing you and all members of the House a very happy New Year, in this the Year of the Monkey, and say that Labour is supporting the referral of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill to the select committee. I hope that when it comes back to this House and progresses through to the third reading all parties are supportive of it, because in civil defence that would be a very good message for us to give from the whole of Parliament. I am still of the view that there is more room for communities and people in this legislation—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Your 30 seconds has gone so fast. I call Mark Mitchell, who has more than 30 seconds.

It is a real pleasure to stand and take a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge the Minister of Civil Defence, the Hon Nikki Kaye.

We may not think it but this is a really important bill. I just want to hark back to 2007-08, when in another role, in another time, I was involved with an initiative that was born out of a World Economic Forum decision to form, with some of the big logistics companies around the world, what were called “LET” teams—logistics emergency teams. The purpose of those teams was to be able to deploy into areas that had been hit by humanitarian disaster and were in need of first responders to get supply chain solutions and logistics, and medical supplies and food, to the people who had been cut off from that type of support.

I was very lucky that I was involved in logistics emergency teams deploying to places like Lebanon, Indonesia, Pakistan, when they had the earthquakes there, and Haiti. One thing that I really noticed, one thing that became glaringly obvious, is that especially in these remote areas Governments, of course, should be taking the lead in terms of coordinating humanitarian groups and logistics companies in the private sector. The private sector is very efficient. It can get things done, but of course it relies very heavily on Government support to be able to reduce compliance issues and access and transit through airports and ports and things like that, to be able to coordinate and allow teams to actually get on the ground and deliver the aid.

One thing that I really noticed and that became quite apparent is Governments, sometimes, are not really that good at doing that. It highlighted the fact that for them to be able to provide support and respond properly in a civil defence incident there has to be a lot of planning. There has to be genuine strategic planning around how they are actually going to go from a contingency type of environment, where you are dealing with a situation that may be a week to 3 weeks old, and then transitioning into more of a sustainment type operation, where the support may be required for 6 months, 12 months, or anything up to 18 months.

So I just want to highlight the fact that the work that Minister Nikki Kaye has done and the ministry has done around this is actually really important. New Zealand, of course—we are really lucky. We are not necessarily facing the same challenges that you might have in an environment like Lebanon or Pakistan or Haiti, but the fact of the matter is that it is really important that the Government is able to make sure that we have got a very good policy setting in legislation that will allow for that coordination and allow for that transition from a contingency type environment into sustainment and sustainability.

Unfortunately, we are subjected to our own issues when it comes to—we saw, obviously, what happened, the tragedy that we faced in Christchurch with the earthquakes. We have adverse weather events all around the country. I have had them in my own electorate of Rodney and I have also had a couple of tsunami warnings that we have had to deal with. When you have got a peninsula with 30,000 people on it, it is actually pretty important to make sure that we have got really robust civil defence action plans in place.

So what the bill actually does is it “amends the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 to enable better recovery from New Zealand’s most frequent emergencies—those of small to moderate scale.” The Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill will amend the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act to establish a legislative framework for recovery management by providing the mandate for recovery managers and by requiring high-level preparatory recovery planning. This is really important, so that there is a standardised set of policies and guidelines that recovery managers are able to refer to and work to so that we have a standardised programme right throughout New Zealand.

It supports a seamless transition from response and into the initial recovery phase by establishing a transition notice mechanism that will make some emergency powers available for a specified period of time. I will talk about those transition notices a little bit later in my speech, but they are actually very important and a very important part of the overall work that has been done on this. It is to establish a permanent legislative authority, and, of course, that is going to allow some proper focus in terms of appropriation.

The bill is actually the first stage of a wider review into the legislative framework for recovery. The second stage will address the legislative framework required for recovery from large-scale emergencies, and I gave an example earlier of the tragedy in the earthquake that we faced in Canterbury.

Historically, most attention has been given to preparing for and responding to an event. However, as we have seen in the Manawatū-Whanganui region following the severe storm in June, the clean-up and recovery phase can involve a huge amount of work at the front end and then, of course, there is the continued clean-up. The new law will give clarity to those leading this work and will help ensure it can be carried out as swiftly and as effectively as possible. It will do this by providing appropriate authority for those directing, coordinating, and managing the recovery. That is actually really important because there is nothing more frustrating for emergency services and a civil defence team than trying to make things happen and not being clear or sure around the authority that they have under the Act.

I said I would speak about the transition notices, so I will just touch on them very quickly. The transition notices will enable civil defence emergency management officials to carry out works, clear roads and other public spaces, and remove, dispose of, secure, or make safe dangerous structures and materials. Again, Christchurch and Christchurch City highlighted the importance of being able to do this quickly. They can enter into premises, for example, to save a life, to prevent an injury, or to rescue and remove injured or endangered persons. These powers will ensure that what was achieved during the response is not destabilised when moving into that contingency and sustainability phase, putting life and property back at risk and/or derailing an effective and timely recovery.

It is proposed that these powers could be used only during a defined transition phase. Their use must be proportionate, reflecting the consequences and scale of the emergency, and they must only be exercised to the extent reasonably necessary for the public interest. A declaration of a state of emergency is not necessary for the issuing of a transition notice. That is actually quite important to highlight because some emergencies will generate impacts of sufficient severity that the recovery may be very challenging initially but the safety of the public and property is not in immediate danger, meaning that maybe a state of emergency was not declared but it is still quite important to be able to issue a transition notice. I am very happy to stand in support of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise to take a call on the first reading of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. The Green Party is supporting this bill. We acknowledge the need to resolve some issues that have been identified through reviews and we recognise this bill as part of that process. This bill relates to recovery from small to moderate disasters, and we have been told to expect legislation later in the year for larger-scale disasters on the scale of Canterbury, which we hope never to see again.

There is a lot of work going on in this space. There has been the review of the response to the Canterbury earthquake, management of natural hazards through the Resource Management Act, and the building emergency management. Of course, all of this sits—hopefully—within a framework of the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Strategy and relates to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 and the 2015 plan, which this legislation sits within, or over. It is important to point out that part of what this bill seeks to do is legalise guidelines and processes that are already in the existing plan but are not formalised through legislation. So we may be a little bit behind the eight ball in doing this, but it is probably good that it is coming to the House now.

The 2002 legislation, which this all sits within, focuses on the four Rs—reduction, readiness, response, and recovery—and this bill specifically focuses on the recovery aspect. This is an appropriate area of work for the Government, and I do not think anyone in Canterbury or with links to Canterbury would argue that this is not a critically important area of Government concern and Parliament’s concern.

The Green Party will be interested in the discussion through the select committee of any issues relating to the oversight and consistency of this bill with other work that is happening, as well as the existing frameworks and experience on the ground, because that we have a lot to learn from. It is undoubted that we know we have an increasing need for civil defence emergency management planning. As a result of improved reporting but also climate change, increased population pressure, and building on land that was never meant to be built on, we have seen a massive increase in natural disasters over the last few decades. Globally, there was an average of 78 recorded national disasters every year through the 1970s. Now there are over 350 recorded natural disasters every year, and some of the figures I read showed that 217 million people have been impacted on by natural disasters every single year since the 1980s. In New Zealand we have been spending between $1.2 billion and $2 billion—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying before the bell interrupted me, there is no doubt that the number of natural disasters around the world and in this country is increasing, and in recent years New Zealand has been spending between $1.2 billion and $2 billion a year in cleaning up natural disasters in this country. This bill is dealing with those things in terms of emergency management and it is dealing with natural disasters, although it is also dealing with issues beyond that. A state of emergency may also be triggered by an epidemic, an actual or imminent attack, or a warlike act, so we are not talking exclusively of natural disasters in this legislation. As we know, though, natural disasters—and it does seem some days, when you are looking at the world, that terrorism is also increasing around the world.

Clearly, despite our existing legislation’s focus on reduction, preparedness, and prevention, we need to be doing more as a society around that. We need to be building strong, interconnected communities to prevent terrorism. We need to be ensuring strong biosecurity measures around public health at our border. We need to invest in public health in this country and to have strong regulations around where people are allowed to build, and we need to put plans in place and support our councils to deal with rising sea levels and the flooding that we know is coming. And, critically, we need to ensure that we reduce our carbon emissions and take some leadership on preventing even worse climate change.

We need to do much more on all of these measures, but the reality is that we already have communities living in at-risk areas. One degree Celsius of warming has happened and more is already locked in, so we will have an increasing number of increasingly severe storms and droughts in this country as climate change evolves. We also know that we live in a country with fault lines, which we cannot control. There are limits to our ability to control nature and other people, so no one—especially not the Greens—is arguing about the importance of having good emergency management.

This bill is focused on the recovery aspect of the four Rs, which are reduction, readiness, response, and recovery. Specifically, the main provisions of this bill are to introduce group and local recovery managers and the requirement to put in place a recovery plan in the event of an emergency. Currently, the Act does not establish these roles or clarify the mandate for these people, even though they are in the plan that was put in place and agreed on last year, I understand. As I mentioned earlier, we are actually a little bit behind the eight ball in bringing this to the House, and I would have thought that if there was a need for legislation, it perhaps would happen concurrently with that decision or before locking that plan in. So existing roles and processes set out in the documents that exist do not have legislative mandates.

Legalising these roles intends to ensure that these people can do their jobs, and that seems to be a good thing. I would note as a caveat, though, that we certainly will be interested in hearing the perspectives from people at a local level, because I certainly know that in some communities where you have got really strong, good community networks there is the possibility that a more formalised structure may override and negate those networks. We saw that happen in Lyttelton, where its time bank meant that they had a list of contacts for everyone in that community and it listed their skills. They were able to jump in after the earthquake and connect, act, and build community as well as being engaged in that response and recovery, and then the formal structures came in and shut those people out. That, from what I have been told by the people there, was not a positive experience for them.

I have also seen the same in Paekākāriki after a flooding, where there was an amazingly innovative response of matching people who were affected with those who were not, so that the people who were not affected could go and deal with Work and Income and all the other institutions, which may not necessarily be very easy to deal with even in the best of circumstances. I would hate to see a system that locked out those very strong community responses, so we will be listening to hear from people to make sure that that does not do that.

What this also does is allow the Minister to declare a 90-day transition period after a national state of emergency and to extend this for another 90 days. The Minister can override normal legislation and continue to exercise emergency powers for up to 6 months in this legislation. The regulatory impact statement noted that the public may see this 90-day period as too long, even if it was most administratively efficient. So although we are certainly supporting this legislation at this stage, we will be listening very carefully to make sure that this is not another centralised Wellington attempt to impose the views of this Government on to local communities.

Good emergency management response utilises the knowledge and skills of communities; it does not override them. We would hate to see any legislation that furthered that type of approach. Thank you.

It is great to be back after our summer adjournment and great to see everybody’s smiling faces back in the House, and, of course, our newest member on the other side there. It is lovely to have a new face to get to know. It gives me great pleasure also to look around this House.

Again, I see quite a collegial approach to this piece of legislation. In fact, I think, from memory, the last piece of legislation that we were discussing before we went into the adjournment we actually had a cross-party accord. It is great to see parties coming together when it comes to common-sense thinking. I can say that New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through to the select committee, and we look forward to pulling that apart and seeing how we can tidy it and titivate it to make it even better.

This is largely an innocuous piece of legislation. We see it as tidying up some areas that really help to communicate better with communities to actually help those affected communities get back on their feet very quickly, effectively, and in a timely fashion. I think every party has clearly said that that is the intent and that they are going to be supporting that through. This bill, the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill, is designed to affect just small and medium sized events that happen around the country. As the Greens have pointed out, those events, weather events largely, are happening more and more frequently and costing the country and communities a lot in lost profits and revenues, and, of course, jobs, etc. So everything that we can do to help those civil defence organisations and the local tertiary authorities to get themselves back on their feet, I think, has to be absolutely commended.

The bill basically does four things. Firstly, it identifies who does what and mandates roles of responsibility to that effect. Secondly, it works out how we do it and strengthens the recovery planning, establishes recovery management roles, and recovery coordination. Thirdly, it goes through transition management planning to establish transition notices, which gives the Minister, as we have just heard, 90 days and a further 90 days to make sure that the recovery is on track to get the area affected back on its feet quickly and effectively. Fourthly, it creates legislative authority allowing Crown funding, which comes back to the “Who pays?”.

I guess out of all those four things, the top three are absolutely fantastic, but there is a question mark around the “Who pays?”, because we have seen this Government get into a debt situation—over $100 billion now and rising—and it really is a question of how we are going to manage the “Who pays?” effect. I think Christchurch is a fantastic example where we have seen budgets being blown out, cumulative costs working into billions of dollars, and largely the insurance companies have not been able to cover the bill or have not actually been legally obliged to cover some of those bills. So the “Who pays?” is a big question that we are looking to have identified and worked through.

The transition notices, I think, are a great piece of legislation to go into here, giving the mandate of the Minister to identify this area, whether it be the whole country, whether it be a part, an area of the country that needs to have special attention provided, and it works through the groups, the civil defence emergency groups—what are they called here? I have got it written down. They are the groups that actually provide the services to make sure that it happens. So if we have got a transition period and a transition notice is given, then we can actually make sure that if a road needs to be shut down, if a property needs to be entered into, and if there are works that need to be done, we can get on with the job, we can close down that area, we can close it off to the public and it will not inhibit the recovery of one of those medium or minor infringements.

As I said earlier we are seeing more and more of these incidents around. We have had floods in the Wairarapa, we have had floods in Matatā, and Northland has been flooded. They seem to be happening at least annually, sometimes biannually, and it is a huge cost to the communities at large and particularly to those councils that are largely left to pick up the bill. Again, we would like to see a framework put into place describing what the amount of money is that is put aside for something as large as a medium-scale issue, such as flooding whether it be weather, whether it be high seas with king tides coming with high winds. Cyclone Bola is another example of where we needed civil defence to step in and help out.

It comes back to those five P’s: perfect preparation prevents poor performance. I know that we talked about the risk reduction, the readiness response, and recovery, but what we are really talking about is preparing ourselves for the worst-case scenario and ensuring that our communities can get back on to their feet as quickly and less onerously as possible.

The area that I have some concern with—and it came out in the regulatory impact statement—is with regard to the Order in Council. It says here: “For constitutional reasons, Orders in Council are generally only provided for where there exceptional circumstances. For this reason, they would be more appropriate to large-scale emergencies that (fortunately) are extremely rare—and which are not the focus of Stage One of the review and hence the analysis summarised in this [regulatory impact statement]. Any options for Orders in Council might fall in the ambit of the second stage of the review.” It would certainly raise some eyebrows in New Zealand First to have that brought into effect and anything where you have got an Order in Council I think we need to look very, very closely at as well.

We do support this bill through to the select committee. We think it actually addresses a number of issues that happen when you have a weather event or a civil defence emergency event, and we look forward to see whether we can break it apart more closely, look at it, and hear from submitters at the select committee. Thank you.

It is wonderful to be back after the summer adjournment. It is good to see you again in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am looking forward to speaking on this, the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. This is a bill that addresses better recovery from New Zealand’s most frequent emergencies, which are those of a small or moderate scale. It is part of a wider review. This is the first phase. The second phase will address the legislative framework required for recovery from large-scale emergencies such as the Christchurch earthquakes. But, as acknowledged, this is addressing those emergencies that are most frequent in New Zealand—those emergencies that are of small-to-moderate scale. What it is doing at the heart, if you will, is establishing a legislative framework for recovery management, providing a mandate for recovery managers and requiring high-level preparatory recovery planning.

What we have seen, and we have continued to see, with most of the smaller or moderate emergencies that we experience in New Zealand is a very, very heightened focus, as you may very well expect, on response. But the transition from response to recovery has not always operated as smoothly and as effectively as we and those who have suffered loss and injury and other issues may expect.

So this bill will seek to address that by supporting a seamless transition from response to the initial recovery phase. It establishes a transition notice mechanism that will make some emergency powers available for a specified period of time. It is those emergency powers that will enable those recovery managers to move swiftly and effectively into that most important next stage, which is when the response has been addressed but it is now time to recover and to address some of the major damage that may have happened, even in only a moderate-scale emergency.

We have got a really good example, actually, in the Manawatū-Whanganui region following the severe flooding there. It was an event that was classed as a moderate emergency but actually showed us that the clean-up and the recovery work involved a huge amount of work, something that, perhaps, we were not quite as prepared for in the transition as we should have been.

So the new law will give clarity to those leading the work. It will help ensure that it can be carried out as swiftly and effectively as possible. It will give them the appropriate authority they need to undertake works. Things that that may enable, for instance, are carrying out works to clear roads and other public places, removing and disposing of dangerous substances and materials, and actually entering into premises. One of the things that was heightened, I think, in that particular Manawatū-Whanganui event was the issue with seeking to have people leave their residences for their own safety and a lack of authority for those leading the recovery to actually ensure that that could happen.

So these amendments will seek to address that, and if it is to save life, prevent injury, or to rescue or remove injured or endangered persons, those recovery managers and teams will have the due authority that they would require to enforce those relocations. But it is important when we are considering granting some quite considerable powers that we make sure that we have pragmatic steps to make sure that they will not be extended or abused. For instance, one of the things that we will be doing is stipulating that the powers can be used only for a defined transition phase and that they must be proportionate, reflecting the consequences and scale of the emergency. So they must be fitting and they can be only for a defined period of time.

Another part that I see in this, which has not perhaps been canvassed that strongly but I think is important as we are giving these additional authorities and powers to recovery managers, is that the Act has compensation provisions for such emergencies, particularly when damage is caused by emergency management officials in undertaking their actions. There was, I believe, a small gap in that during the transition phase the Act, as it currently stands, might have prevented such compensation being payable to land and property holders. That is being addressed in these amendments so that if the officials do cause loss or damage during the transition phase, those property owners can be recompensed for that.

So I think it is very pragmatic and sound. It is a very smart thing for us to be doing. It is part of a wider review that will also address larger-scale emergencies, and I commend this bill to the House.

I call Eugenie Sage—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe; tuarua, ki ngā mema o tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Mr Deputy Speaker, greetings to you. Secondly, to the members of our House, greetings, salutations, and acknowledgments to you all.]

I am pleased to take a short call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. The Green Party is supporting this bill because we believe that we do need to strengthen the law to help communities recover from small or moderate-scale emergencies and to make that transition from responding to the emergency to focusing on the recovery. We recognise that the principal Act, the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, does not provide adequately for the planning and management of recovery.

When this bill was introduced in December, my thoughts were with the thousands of families in places like Cumbria in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. They were being flooded, sometimes for the second or third time in a decade. We had the floods in Chennai in Tamil Nadu in India, where at least 280 people died. They were facing the risk of water-borne disease after those severe floods and 17 straight days of rain. That is precisely the kind of weather that we are experiencing more of and it is likely to become more common with a warming world.

That is because warmer air holds more moisture. If we have global temperatures rising by 1.5 to 2 degrees, this risk of extreme weather events becomes much more severe and we will have legislation like this being triggered more often. We have seen the misery of that here in New Zealand with the extensive flooding in South Dunedin in June 2015 and in Whanganui, where there was record flooding. The river overflowed its banks and people were evacuated. In the rural catchments there was large-scale damage to farmland.

We need to take action to reduce our emissions so that we reduce the threat of these severe weather events that we are getting with climate change. We need to prevent these emergencies by having a much more ambitious target to reduce our emissions—to have the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom.

We are certainly supporting this bill, but we will be very interested in submissions because of the way in which the emergency powers that override normal law operate. Under the current legislation when a state of emergency ends, the extraordinary powers that override normal law end as well. But the bill allows the Minister at the national level and mayors at the territorial level to direct that emergency powers continue beyond the emergency period, through the mechanism of this transition notice. It allows the Minister to declare a 90-day transition period after the national state of emergency or, if the transition phase warrants the use of extraordinary powers to stabilise the response and the transition into recovery, to extend this for another 90 days.

That means that the Minister or mayors can override normal legislation, such as the Resource Management Act, and can continue to exercise these extraordinary powers for up to 6 months. These powers include carrying out works, preventing people from entering public places, closing public roads, and giving directions to stop any activity or to take any action. They are very broad powers. We have seen in Christchurch that residents were prevented from going into the central city, where there was widespread demolition, by the extraordinary powers that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority used that overrode the Resource Management Act, which prevented people from getting involved and having a say on demolition.

The powers in this bill, as the regulatory impact statement recognises, are potentially too long, in terms of the 90-day period, before a reassessment needs to be made. We will be very interested in the submissions and in seeing what checks are needed on these powers, how they are going to be reported on, and what sorts of constraints there should be on the extraordinary powers. We recognise the defects that require the legislation to be amended, but we think that the provisions for the transition notices and the extension of the extraordinary powers are not sufficiently constrained. We will be very interested in the submissions. Thank you.

I call Adrian Rurawhe—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Labour Party.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te W’are, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Greetings to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but at the same time to all of us.]

I am pleased to take a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. As my colleagues have already stated, we will support this bill to the select committee. I look forward to the submissions to the select committee. I will be encouraging my constituents in Whanganui and in Whangaehu. The village at Whangaehu has been flooded four times in the last 11 years. So when we talk about recovery, we are talking long term. This bill addresses part of that issue, but it does not look at the long-term effect of flooding in an area on an ongoing basis. The Whangaehu village is a very small village. There are only about 12 houses there and about 10 of them get flooded every time the Whangaehu River floods. As I said, it has flooded four times in the last 11 years. The issue around recovery is real for those people. Transitioning from response to recovery should be done as soon as practicable. This bill addresses that. But there are some things that the bill does not address, which my colleagues have already raised, that I want to highlight as well. In particular, there is risk reduction. When you look at places like Whangaehu and Whanganui, risk reduction has a direct impact on the response and the recovery. I think that my constituents will be very interested in this piece of legislation, so that is why we are supporting it to go to the select committee.

But I also recognise—this is quite anecdotal—the feedback. One of my constituents lives only a couple of hundred metres away from me, and her house has flooded four times. She is in her nineties. She is determined to stay on her papa whenua, on her land. So we have to do something long term for some of these people. Recovery for some people in this instance, in instances that do not happen very often in a particular area, is one thing, but I think we also need to look at where incidents like this, events like this, happen to residents over and over again. Something more permanent needs to be done, whether it is relocation or it is raising their homes so that they do not flood. These are things that could be easily remedied, I think. I had a conversation with the Mayor of Rangitīkei, who really wants to address that issue with the residents in the Rangitīkei who are continually being flooded. In the Act itself, of course, we do support the inclusion of the transition periods. I think the implementation, though, needs to be carefully thought out. There have been some valid issues that have been raised in this debate already. I think that is something that the select committee needs to grapple with, to make sure that this legislation can be the best that it can be. Thank you. That is all I have to contribute to this debate. Kia ora.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would just like to acknowledge you and wish you a happy New Year. I look forward to seeing you down in sunny Gore on Friday. Thank you for your efforts down there. It is a privilege to speak on the first reading of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge, at the start of this contribution, a guy in my electorate called Craig Sinclair, who was a police officer in Mataura for a good couple of decades. He has just recently transitioned to the civil defence area. He is the civil defence management adviser for Otago and Southland. One of the moves that made him want to transition to that was to be part of the transformation that we have been seeing in civil defence. The Southland area that he mainly covers is quite diverse. It is largely rural, but there are also considerable risk areas with regard to Milford Sound, whether it be through flooding, tsunami, or landslide risks.

One of the things that he was saying is that when you are dealing with risks, no matter how big or small, there is a lot of emotion involved. You are dealing with a lot of volunteers in the recovery aspect as well, which made me think that the relevance to this bill is that it is good that we are providing a bit more clarity with regard to the transition between the civil defence issue and into the recovery phase because, obviously, associated with the processes that you need to go through in a risk—and every issue that you are dealing with is different—there is a lot of emotion involved as well. That is picking up the point of one of the previous members about the need for extraordinary powers in that regard because no two events are the same, I think that what this legislation does is frees things up a little bit more. Instead of having such a stringent legislative process that each event has to follow to the letter of the law, it provides much more flexibility but, by the same token, a lot of direction. With that, I just wanted to offer my support, and I look forward to following the bill through the select committee. Thank you.

Can I just join the member who just took his seat, Todd Barclay, in wishing you a very happy New Year, and to the rest of the Speaker’s team, and also to all the members from around the House. I can guarantee that we will argue, bicker, and get to the stages where it got to at Seddon Park in Hamilton last night, but I do wish you all the best for the year.

As some members on this side of the House have said, we will be supporting the changes that are contained within the civil defence legislation. There are some reservations, which we will take to the select committee, where we will take the opportunity to ask some of the officials some questions. But on my first look at this piece of legislation, I think it will be very useful, especially to those people who do the hard graft when the small to medium events happen in our community to be able to, I think, as the previous speaker says, give them more options as to what to do when you are moving from the response stage to the recovery stage.

As a number of speakers have said, no two events are similar, and you can find yourself moving from the response stage to the recovery stage very, very quickly. In some instances you may be doing those two functions at the same time.

I have certainly had the privilege of being within civil defence emergency centres when events have been happening where I think this piece of legislation will help. I do not think there was confusion—because I think that would look unkindly upon the people who are running the operations—but I think that they have got some constraints upon them that say “We can do one thing here, but we can’t do one thing in another area.” I think the proposals that are made in this piece of legislation will, I guess, give those people the options now, and some flexibility to be able to do what they need to do when they are moving from one phase to the other.

I just wanted to make a couple of practical examples of things that have happened in my area in Porirua. If we can cast our minds back to June 2013, there was an almighty storm. A number of households were cut off with their power. I think that some were also cut off with their water because trees were down. At first, we thought things would be returned back to normal pretty quickly, and certainly the response was: “OK, most people have got their power back.” But there was a group of about a 150 to 200 people in and around pockets of Porirua who could not get their power back for days. Certainly, as an MP, and working with our local mayor Nick Leggett and some of his councillors in his civil defence emergency team, there was uncertainty as to who could push in which directions and how hard to make sure that those people got their power back.

There is one story I remember very vividly. We turned up to an area of Titahi Bay, which is the community that I live in. These people had been without power for 2 to 3 days. Thankfully, the council had made its arena available so they could have showers or charge their phones, but many did not take up the opportunity because they simply did not know when their power was going to come back on. So they stayed, just hoping that their power would come back on—an absolute vacuum of information.

So we turned up, and, as you can imagine, the locals were not happy. It did not matter whether or not we were from the power company or from the council or were the local MP, we were a target. It did not matter that we had no authority or ability to get their power back on; we were there, we were the target, and we got it in the ear as to why their power was not on. And fair enough; I think that is fair.

But I think this piece of legislation will enable those who are dealing with these incidents a little bit more leeway and a little bit more influence to deal with the likes of power companies and to be able to say: “OK, 2 to 3 days is enough when there are 200 or so households that haven’t had any power.” In the end, we went and spoke to the linesmen who were working down the road and said: “If you don’t get this power back on before the end of the day, there is going to be, potentially, some violence on the street, and, potentially, targeted towards us if we stick around much longer.” Thankfully, the power did come back on, but I think that was an instance where those people who were responding and moving to the transition of recovery, especially for those families, could have done with a bit more power.

I think that this piece of legislation does that, because, as other speakers have mentioned, the proposed recovery powers that are within this legislation will allow those who are dealing with incidents to carry out works, clear roads and other public places, and remove, dispose of, secure, or make safe dangerous structures and materials. Some of that may already be happening, but it may be on an ad hoc basis. It will also provide for the conservation and supply of food, fuel, and other essential supplies, such as water.

It will also allow the dissemination of information and advice to the public, which, in the instance I have just talked about, did not happen very effectively. So it ended up being myself and the mayor with a loud hailer on the street corner, which was the only information that some of these residents had had in the last 2 or 3 days. It will also allow agencies to evacuate premises and places; exclude people and vehicles from certain areas; to get on to premises, which is also very important to perform assessments of any damage that might have been done; to close roads and public places; give directions to stop activity or to limit the consequences of emergency, potentially for the purposes of coordinating recovery efforts; and require information for the recovery, e.g., from lifeline utilities such as power companies in the instance that I mentioned there.

So, all in all, I think this piece of legislation does deal practically with a number of practical issues that the people who are dealing with the small to medium emergency issues face when they are asked to respond. I do not think it takes care of some of the major issues that we saw come out of Canterbury, and I think that will come in the wider part of the review of civil defence legislation that is to come, which is one of the criticisms that we have with this piece of legislation—that maybe, perhaps, it could have been part of a catch-all review of civil defence legislation as reviews happen. In this instance, it has not happened, and I guess something is better than nothing. We will have the opportunity to also question the merits of the approach in the select committee hearings.

I guess it will make a positive difference. It will give, hopefully, those people, like Trevor Farmer in my area, the power to do some things that they have not been able to when we do have flooding or storms, which we also saw up on the Kāpiti coast late last year. Hopefully, that will make the lives easier for the people who are affected and also for the people who are responding and helping with the recovery to some of these incidents.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Government Administration Committee.