Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill

I am pleased to speak in the Committee stage of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill, which has been through an extensive select committee process, and, I think, has come back to the House improved. We certainly support the intent of this bill, which is to improve the way that communities recover from emergencies, and for there to be a seamless and timely transition from response to recovery. This is a pretty important piece of legislation within an even more important context and I do not think anyone would disagree that having New Zealand better prepared and better able to deal with the aftermath of major events is an important thing to do.

We note that the bill is in the first stage of a wider review that is being undertaken into the legislative framework for recovery. One of the issues that we did raise at the Government Administration Committee was where that wider review was up to. Although this is an important piece of legislation in its own right, it is really just one part of the picture, and so we are raising questions of the Minister at the Committee stage as to the timetable of the wider legislative review, the substance of what that review will involve, whether it will involve more legislation coming to the House, and whether it will be coming to the House within the next 12 months. I think they are pretty important questions to be dealt with.

We raised a number of questions—issues—in the second reading around matters that we had concerns about at select committee. Many of those were actually dealt with at select committee, which is always an important thing to happen. One of those was our unease around the ministerial powers that were being expressed in the original legislation and the imbalance between the exercise of ministerial power and the consultation with local communities in the recovery phase of an emergency. Mostly, those concerns were allayed—to the point where Labour supported the bill as it was coming back to select committee. However, I do want to keep on the record that we do remain concerned and watchful that this imbalance does not diminish the role of local communities in the recovery phase of an emergency. That role is critical on the ground where the local communities and those representing the local communities are empowered to act, and to do so in relationship with the Minister so that there is not an imbalance occurring there.

I also want to put on record the appreciation of the time taken by officials in the drafting office to ensure that these clauses have been written in a way that is acceptable to all parties. I do mean that most sincerely, because I deal with a few select committees and I think that, in respect of this select committee, the officials really did go out of their way to ensure that there was the best outcome possible. It was a very good select committee, very well chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson.

I am signalling tonight that Labour is putting up Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 237 to address an issue that we also raised in the second reading, which was with regard to a provision that was removed at select committee on the inclusion of strategic recovery plans. It was contained in the original version of the bill in new section 57A, inserted by clause 21, which was removed at select committee. We believed that the inclusion of provision for a strategic recovery plan was a vital element to be included in the actual legislation as an important signal from legislation. We believe that those plans were vital for the element of successful recoveries and we noted that although the bill no longer required civil defence emergency management (CDEM) groups to prepare a separate strategic recovery plan, the function of recovery planning was now integrated into the general statutory functions. That was what the proposal was—for it to be taken out of the legislation and it be included in the general function, statutory functions, of CDEM groups and recovery managers. Our concern was that the lack of a specific requirement in the legislation raised the risk of poor planning where those groups were weak.

We know that in respect of the civil defence activity around the country—in the different groups—there are different levels of organisation. Our concern was that there should be a requirement in the legislation for strategic recovery planning so that that could flow down. The argument from some of the submitters was that there was not enough detail, and that, therefore, there needed to be more specific detail as to what should be included. I think the remedy proposed by officials was to remove that function altogether. We remained concerned; so that is what the essence of the SOP before the Committee tonight is. We understand that this is supported by the Government and, if that is the case, then we believe that is very cooperative and a good outcome.

The SOP affects clause 2, clause 7, and clause 19. It inserts a section in clause 19 that requires strategic planning for recovery from the hazards and risks. We believe that, at least, gives a legislative requirement that will address the concerns that we had about that lack of signal coming from the legislation. Our concerns on that have been allayed. We had concerns originally around the ministerial powers—and so that leaves, ultimately, the concerns around what is left out and the bits of the puzzle that have not been dealt with. These are the large-scale events and response readiness. We think that, although this bill addresses important recovery issues, those bits have not yet been addressed, and although there has been a commitment by the Minister to a second stage of the legislative review focusing on large-scale emergencies, there is no evidence of this occurring in the short and medium term. We, therefore, believe that that leaves the country with a problem.

So in the Committee of the whole House, tonight, we are hoping that there will be some indication from the Government as to what the next stage will be and when that will occur, because although focusing on recovery is important, so is response readiness. We believe that in every community around New Zealand—some more than others—that response of community responsiveness to large-scale events is critical. This bill makes clear that it is focused on the small to medium sized events. Those small to medium sized events do, ultimately, result in quite massive costs to the country and to communities, so leaving out the issue around where we are going with the large-scale events is pretty important. So we are pretty pleased tonight to be putting this SOP on the Table. We hope that it will receive support across the Committee. It provides an important signal in legislation that all civil defence emergency management groups around the country must be developing strategic recovery plans, and the ministry will be providing guidelines for how those will occur.

I have to say, I had to rush through a bit of dinner because I was not expecting the last bill to go through quite so quickly—there were only a couple of speakers and it was about 30 minutes. So, anyway, I have rushed back and got all my notes and I think I am ready to go. Good news: we will be supporting this bill through this Committee of the whole House stage.

💬 David Bennett: Ha, ha! That’s not a New Zealand first?

Despite what my colleague over there—my less learned colleague over there—thinks, we do actually like to support good, solid, robust discussion and also good bills. To be fair, when we spoke on the second part of this legislation, we said that we were considering a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), and I have to give accolades to Nikki Kaye’s office for contacting New Zealand First and myself directly with regard to a potential SOP from New Zealand First. I tell you what, it is the first time, actually—oh, no, the second time; Amy Adams has also done it. I am very, very congratulatory—if that is a word; I think I might have made that up. It is a good thing, actually. So I actually replied with a “No. We won’t be putting an SOP in, but we will be supporting Clare Curran’s SOP.”, and we did have some discussion around clause 19 in regard to the timing of things and that information that is going to be coming out.

I do have to point out that we would like to see this hurried along. I know it is on the Order Paper, quite high up, and we would like to see it moved through. As much as Gerry Brownlee is probably disappointed that we are not going to continue on all night with this, we would like to see it put through under urgency, because the second phase of this legislation, which is talking about large-scale events, large earthquakes like Christchurch, is really what we need to focus on. And as the climate is changing around the planet, we are certainly seeing a lot more small-scale, localised events and floods and slips and slides and all the other things that create all these problems. So anything that we can do to expedite that through to make sure that we are well prepared for those weather conditions and those civil defence emergencies, the better.

We would certainly like to see the time frames of this—I think it is 180 days after receiving the Royal assent—potentially expedited by the Minister. If the Minister would like to say the reason why the select committee is bringing it out to 180 days after the Royal assent is achieved to actually bring this into force—we have seen this Government putting bills through the House when we have felt that there has been unnecessary speed and haste. We have seen it do that. And on occasions where we can see the necessity for something to be expedited, it seems to go quite slowly. So if the Minister could answer as to why it is going to take 180 days after the Royal assent to come through—if there is a good reason for that as to why we cannot actually push it through.

Obviously, the second part of the commencement date is around that provision in clause 19 and some further clarification required about the civil defence emergency management groups’ responsibilities in building on their plans. I know the Minister has got plenty of experience with civil defence emergencies because he has been heavily involved with that down there in Christchurch. Some may beg the question whether he has or not, but I believe he has probably been working down there day in, day out. That takes me to another part of the bill, which is around transitional notices. My staple fell out of my pages, so I am going to have to sort of dig through them until I can find them, if you can just bear with me for a moment.

Transitional notices are a good thing. The national transitional notice for the 90 days gives provisions to the Minister to extend that quite simply, and, also, to add to that, to make sure that they can actually shorten them if required, if the clean-up gets resolved quickly. And, of course, the Minister has the right to actually cease the civil defence transitional notice period. With local issues where you have got a 28-day transitional period, again, this ensures that the Minister makes it a priority to contact the local mayors or local civil defence emergency management groups or the council etc., to ensure that they are on top of things before they actually call it short on a local emergency. We see it as quite a good provision.

All in all, we certainly will be supporting this through. As I say, our big issue is making sure that this is transferred through this Committee rapidly and is implemented as quickly as practicably possible. We have not heard anything in the way of negativity towards this, and New Zealand First will certainly be supporting positive, good legislation that helps our communities rebuild in times of need. Thank you.

Can I begin my contribution to the Committee stage of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill by acknowledging Minister Gerry Brownlee, who has picked up the responsibility for the passage of this bill, and also by acknowledging the Hon Nikki Kaye, who brought this bill the House and, as the member from New Zealand First who has just resumed his seat, Clayton Mitchell, indicated, has maintained a very close interest in this bill, to the point of contacting the various parties following their second reading contributions and saying: “You mentioned this; I’d like to talk about it. You talked about an SOP.” So thank you, Nikki Kaye, for your ongoing interest, and we look forward to you picking up this responsibility again. In the meantime, you can be assured that we worked hard on it at the Government Administration Committee. You can actually tell that the select committee worked hard on it by the number of amendments that came back and were discussed during the second reading.

I want to primarily focus, though, in my contribution, on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 237, which is in the name of my colleague Clare Curran. You may remember that during the second reading I and others expressed some frustration as we had had in the original legislation the provision about the preparation of a strategic recovery plan. There was a debate about whether it was implicit or explicit. It certainly was not clear; submitters raised that for us. It was Labour’s view that we should make it clear. It was National’s view that because it was unclear we should take it out—we should remove section 57A, in clause 21. Just removing it did not seem like a sensible way of resolving a lack of clarity. As a result of taking out section 57A, we ended up with no provision to require the preparation of a strategic recovery plan.

What Supplementary Order Paper 237 does is, essentially, put that provision back in. So, in clause 2, the words “section 19(3)” are replaced. In clause 7, the phrase “the development of strategic recovery plans for emergencies:” is inserted into section 9, and in clause 19, new subclause (1AB) inserts the words “the strategic planning for recovery from the hazards and risks referred to in paragraph (b):” into section 49(2) of the principal Act. Basically, what my colleague has done is what half the select committee wanted to do in terms of clarifying that original section 57A. Unfortunately, it was the one disagreement that the committee had between National and the Labour-Green members on it, and the National Government decided that it would remove it.

I certainly support this SOP. It is great that National has given an indication that it is going to support it as well. There are lots of legislation where you think it is probably great to have a cross-party agreement, but I do not think there is any more important than civil defence, so that right through from community organisations, to volunteers, to community leaders, through our territorial local authorities, through the civil defence structure, and through to central government we are all on the same page when we are thinking about how we can deliver the best response to a civil defence emergency. This SOP being supported will give a clear message that Parliament has thought about it. We have made a lot of alterations during the consideration, and I think that the Committee stage should go smoothly as a result.

The other point I want to mention is that during the earliest deliberation on this bill there was quite some concern about the use of a permanent legislative authority (PLA). I was not sure whether any members would seek to amend that provision, because it was raised earlier. There do not appear to be any other Supplementary Order Papers on the Table other than Clare Curran’s, to which I have already referred.

I hope that is an indication that everyone is now satisfied that the use of a permanent legislative authority is entirely appropriate in this situation. It was one thing that gave us a little bit of angst, but because there is no SOP on the Table referring to another tool, another mechanism, I hope that everyone is satisfied with that PLA use. We were convinced at the select committee that it was an appropriate use, and it seems that the Committee of the whole House does as well. So thank you for the opportunity to contribute, and I look forward to the progress of this bill.

Can I acknowledge the contributions from Clare Curran, Clayton Mitchell, and Ruth Dyson. I think one of the things that I would reflect on over the last 6 years, when a number of us had have to deal with situations in Christchurch, has been the fact that Parliament itself has been unanimous in providing support to the city, whether it was by way of the initial legislation or the most recent legislation, or, in fact, the number of things on the way between.

The one thing I think we can be sure of is that even though this bill is before us now—and it has had considerable thought put into it—it will not be the last time that we have to think about the way in which there is a response to any particular civil emergency. So it is, at this point, a best effort, and I do not mean that in any way that is going to downplay the contribution of people; it is just the fact that we work off the experience that has been before us at the present time.

The question that Ruth Dyson raised about the ongoing planning, etc., and the two positions that have been taken was, I think, more semantic than fact. The reality is that prescribing, as Supplementary Order Paper 237 from Clare Curran does, the task that is required in making sure that there is a risk plan—basically, a plan for a recovery of risk—is something that we will support this evening, quite obviously, because it adds to the importance of the work that so many people commit themselves to throughout New Zealand in the absence of any particular civil emergency. So they do need to have an understanding that the whole Parliament supports the work they do. Many of them will go about their training exercises, their long hours of commitment to what might happen in a field, and some of them will never ever see an actual disaster. Although that might be a good thing, the comforting thing is that we do have people out there who are trained to respond and to keep things ticking over.

We had two situations in Christchurch. One, we had the more local emergency—split across three counties in the 4 September 2010 event—when I think you would say the response, although excellent from the individuals concerned, was not quite as good as it could have been because of the structures that were in place at the time. And that is not a bad thing to say that; it is just an indication that you can learn a lot from those situations, and, in many ways, what we have got in front of us today does pick up on that.

Clare Curran mentioned the need to have a big plan for when you have great big disasters. It is going to be interesting to engage in that discussion in the months ahead, largely because everyone will have a slightly different view on what you do. My own view on it, for what it is worth, in response to the issue you have raised, is that if it is a very big disaster, Parliament will want to have, I think, some say, at some point, in what will be the exceptions to any law that might be necessary to recover from that disaster, and that may be different according to different disasters. So although I do not discount the fact that we probably will get a bill that provides a blueprint, I think you can never totally discount the fact that there might be a need for Parliament to come together at those times and to set aside some things that would be usually done in order to make greater progress for a wider number of people.

You cannot anticipate that, and nor should we, but the structures of response, I think, we can get a lot stronger, and I am sure the goodwill that this Parliament has, given the experiences that so many of us have had in local areas with floods and other big weather events, and then coming to understand, as many of us do now, the fact that in New Zealand you essentially live with your risk, is going to mean that we will be much more interested in getting a bill that we can all subscribe to, and giving that support to those people in the field who are required to deliver on it.

It is my pleasure to take a call on this legislation, which, as my colleagues have indicated and given very good reasons for, Labour is supporting. I would like to acknowledge what the Minister in the chair has said—that he is a member of this Parliament that has gone through a lot in regard to a disaster and the immediate recovery phase of that, as have Canterbury MPs from across this House. I would like to acknowledge them all.

In my contribution I want to deal with the powers in new Part 5B of this legislation. This legislation deals with how it is we transition from the emergency phase to the business-as-usual phase. I—like many New Zealanders, I think—before September 2010 understood civil defence very much in terms of that emergency phase. It was the yellow pages at the back of the telephone book that told us all what to do in a disaster. That was very much my understanding of civil defence.

But I will never forget, in September 2010, being down at the Addington Raceway with the then member of Parliament for Wigram, Jim Anderton, trying to do some of the things that the Minister in the chair has just mentioned. And trying to sort out some of the things that were needed that we had not anticipated in a disaster lasting this long: such as where were people going to do washing over a protracted period of time such as this; or how were we going to cater for the ethnic diversity of people who needed to be housed, and for the different kinds of sleeping arrangements that needed to be held at the Addington Raceway. Then, in February 2011, I will never forget being down at the Addington Raceway as people flooded in, thinking that this was, once again, going to be their safe haven in an emergency—that this was the place that they could go to. But, of course, that facility was so badly damaged in that quake that it was not able to be used. The logistics of trying to shepherd people to somewhere safe was something that was quite harrowing to watch, and I would like to acknowledge the many volunteers within civil defence who give so tirelessly of their energy and of their expertise and of their skills to do that.

I think that is the phase that we can understand, but what I have come to understand more over the last 6 years is how it is that we transition. As the Minister said, there are certain powers that do need to be put in place so that we can deal with an emergency: how it is that we clear roads, how it is that we put in place—as we had to in places such as in the Hon Ruth Dyson’s electorate—barriers to stop rock falls coming down, and how we do that at the kind of speed at which we need to do it with, to keep people safe.

But how, then, do we transition back to business as usual? That is the bit where new Part 5B in clause 28 of this legislation—that transitional period—becomes so critical. I would like to acknowledge here the work of the Government Administration Committee, chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson, the work that all members of that committee have done, and Supplementary Order Paper 237 that Clare Curran has put forward here. This is because what is absolutely vital in this transitional phase is to make sure that we strike the right balance between trying to do things in an expedited fashion to keep things moving along, but making sure that locals have a real say in their recovery—that they are absolutely part of this transitional phase—and that they feel that they are part of it and they, once again, have some control over their lives. As people come out of an emergency phase, the adrenalin starts to wear off. That emergency phase starts to dissipate and things seem to be returning to normal, and people very much want to be part of their destiny.

The other thing that I think we have learnt is that this is not a linear process. Emergency recovery and transition overlap, and that for different people in different communities at different stages, we need to have the flexibility to do that. One of the things that I would like to talk to was the suggestion, from the Canterbury District Health Board, that was put up under this new Part 5B, which was that greater power would be given to the medical officer of health and there would be the ability to do that. I think we were very lucky in Christchurch not to have had a public health outbreak. We did not suffer from the communicable diseases problem that people anticipated was going to happen because of the kinds of situations people in Canterbury were living in, in the emergency phase and beyond the emergency phase, and I would like to see that as something that this House kept an open mind to. That is a critical thing that we do need to consider when we are considering those things, so I would like to see that. But I think that this is legislation we are happy to support. I do acknowledge the comments that have been made about how this is legislation that is set up to deal with the small and medium sized disasters and that we will be coming back to revisit larger disasters. But Labour is happy to support this piece of legislation.

I too want to acknowledge the work of the Government Administration Committee, and Supplementary Order Paper 237put up by my colleague Clare Curran. I acknowledge that that has wide support, and I am happy to support that.

I am going to confine my discussions to clause 4, and a little bit of clause 5. In particular, I want to look at clause 4(7), which looks at “recovery activity”. I just want to quote from the bill, where recovery activity is defined as “the assessment of ongoing monitoring of the needs by the community affected by the emergency;” it is “the co-ordination and integration of planning, decisions, actions, and resources”; it is about measures to support “the regeneration, restoration, and enhancement of communities; … the cultural and physical well-being of individuals and their communities; … government and non-government organisations and entities working together; … [new measures] to reduce risks from hazards; and … to build resilience”.

In this regard, I want to actually quote the activity that took place in the community of Aranui as an example of how a community deals with a situation, and how it actually works to build that resilience into a community for later disasters. What happened in Aranui in the February earthquakes was—it was a community that was largely cut off from the rest of the city. There was poor communication in and out of Aranui, of course the roads were fairly damaged, and for a few weeks the community there had limited access to water, and no access to functioning toilets. As a community—it is one of our lower socio-economic communities—what they did was they decided to doorknock every single house in that community and talk to the people there, find out who was living there, who had mobility issues, who had health concerns, and where there were children; so every house was mapped in that community. What they did was they ensured that those who needed to be prioritised were prioritised. As communication was fairly limited, they ensured that the resources went to those who needed them first.

There were organisations—and I happened to work for one of them—who, at that time, opened their doors to ensure that there was a hot meal prepared for people at lunch time, that they could have access to showers, and that they could do their washing. They were simple things that actually meant that a community could continue to function, even in a limited capacity, through those times when it was difficult to get even the basic services through.

What that did for that particular community of Aranui was it actually set within them the opportunity to ensure that their community was not going to be affected in the same way again. Every year, they continue to do that door-to-door mapping of the community: they find out who has the health concerns, who is elderly, and what kind of support they might need. They have actually, through their own fund-raising, put together a container that has generators, supplies, and blankets—it has enough supplies to keep that community going for a few weeks, should it be cut off again. That is at the heart of what this clause 4 talks about—building resilience. That community has done it on its own. It should be something that, as communities across the country, we actually use as a model. These people realised that in order to get through a significant event, you have to take measures yourself, so they have done it themselves. I want to commend them for doing that.

Like my colleague Dr Megan Woods and the submission from the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), I also want to question why, within the definitions of those key roles, we have not included the health response and recovery manager. As my colleague said, this is a significant role within the civil defence roles and responsibilities. It is something that I think the Minister could perhaps answer—why that was not considered. It is a very good submission by the CDHB, and it certainly is a vital role that should have a place within the civil defence and emergency management profile. Thank you.

I am pleased to be able to take a short call on behalf of the Green Party in the Committee stage of this bill. I too want to add my voice to others in this debate in support and in particular acknowledge the members of the Government Administration Committee and the members of the House, and particularly the chair of the committee, Ruth Dyson, and possibly Minister Brownlee, who have both had more recent experience of a civil defence emergency.

I have got to say that, on the committee, the chair’s experience was incredibly informative, and that she knew what questions to ask and she knew what areas of tensions have arisen in the past between local activity and the more formalised systems. Going into looking at this bill, that was a particular area of concern for us. The previous speaker, Poto Williams, talked about the recovery activities in Aranui. We heard some amazing stories in Lyttelton as well. More recently, and on a small-scale event, during some of the recent flooding up in Kāpiti, I know how the community there came together to be able to support people who were affected by the flood, who maybe were suffering financially as a result of the impacts of the flood, and people would take turns to go with somebody to Work and Income to manage the formalised systems. It was actually the relationships and community that were essential to people’s sense of well-being in that recovery process.

It is really critical that we get legislation that facilitates and aids that local connectedness and that local response, but just monitors and fills in the gaps, and provides the more formal systems if a community is unable to provide them itself. I do feel that this kind of legislation should probably always continue to be evaluated after events to make sure that we have got it right. You can never, I do not think, stand up and say “Yes, we’ve got it 100 percent right.” before you have had it in practice. But I am feeling that we made really good progress in the committee, and there were a lot of changes made through that process of questioning and testing it through discussion against the experience of some of the members and the submissions.

I am really pleased that the Labour member Clare Curran is adding Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 237 to reinsert the strategic recovery plans into the legislation, and that the Government, indeed, is supporting that. The rationale from the Government members on the committee, as well as, I think, some of the advice, was that we did not need it because within the legislation there is a function of planning that is built into the legislation for civil defence and emergency groups and recovery managers, so there was no need to put a plan into the legislation as well, and it might create confusion. When submitters had raised concerns about the lack of clarity and specificity, and the thought was like: “Oh, well, we’ll take it out so we don’t get confusion.” But I think it is much better to put it in and to get the support of the Government with the guidance to provide the specificity.

We have heard stories from different places around the country of very different levels of knowledge and experience around planning. So to actually put in the legislation—and to put the guidance behind with it—the codes, technical standards, and guidance for timing and longevity, as examples, I think will help the local, on-the-ground organisers work through those steps of recovery that we want them to work through. The Green Party will be very happy to support that SOP.

I would also, just really briefly, like to touch on the initial concern—which was raised earlier by the Hon Ruth Dyson—that we had around the permanent legislative authority. I spoke for the Greens as we interrogated that and the officials gave us some very clear advice, and I have absolute confidence in the validity of that as a tool for giving councils surety of funding.

Just taking another call in the Committee stage of this bill, first of all I would like to thank Minister Brownlee for his words and for the signals he has given for the next piece of work that needs to be done. On this side of the Chamber we would express eagerness for those discussions to start being held and for there to be as much community involvement as possible in those.

I am certainly aware of some pieces of work being done around the country into various scenarios. One of those is a piece of work being done into a major alpine event, down in the southern part of the Southern Alps, and the impact of that. It is something that we have to bear in mind. Another issue, of course, is the impact on New Zealand of a tsunami following a major earthquake event somewhere else. I do want to put on record here in the Chamber tonight that we have got some real concerns about the ability of New Zealand’s coastal communities to be able to respond to such an event. I think we had an instance of this at the beginning of September, when there was a definite delay in the time period before there was an alert provided to the community, and the manner in which that alert was provided was called into question.

In 2016 it is time that we grappled with the fact that we need a national alerting system and that there are means to do that. This Government seems to have been going around in circles on that. Perhaps it could be the subject of another debate. There has been a considerable amount of money spent on looking into various models, but we still do not seem to be any further ahead. I am just alerting to the Committee that that is something we really should not be sitting on our hands about.

I would also like to make some comments about the absolute importance of this legislation, with direct reference to a medium sized event—it could have been described as a small to medium sized event—in Dunedin last year, with the 2015 floods in South Dunedin. Certainly for the people who were affected it was a major event, and the response from Civil Defence to that was dire. In fact, it was better described as a non-response. That night, Civil Defence personnel were not even aware that there was an issue in South Dunedin and actually had gone home to bed. They were not even looking at South Dunedin.

To this day we still do not know just how many homes and businesses were affected by sewage-laden water during that night. Elderly people with dementia in rest homes had to be moved into the middle of the rest home, or moved out of the rest home, in a rather chaotic manner. Two elderly people who had water up around their thighs got back into bed because they did not know what else to do. Two families with small children were left feeling quite desperate and had to move out of their homes for months, and battle with insurance companies on their own.

I guess the point I want to make tonight is that—it is a plea, really—through what this legislation is part of, through a legislative review, we should address the civil defence organisations around the country that really just are not up to scratch and are operating as fiefdoms, with Dad’s Army types of organisations behind them. I know that that is changing, but there are still remnants of those. In my part of the country there have been some changes made, but it has taken nearly a year and a half for that to happen. I look forward to ensuring that that is not replicated anywhere else in the country, and that anyone else does not have to go through that kind of situation.

Just finally, I want to make a few comments about the permanent legislative authority. I will echo the comments from the Green member—that it is a sensible mechanism—and also from Ruth Dyson. We did think when we had the first reading of this bill that we were going to have a bit of an argument about that, in that this all looked a bit unusual. I think we all learnt something in the select committee about a measure and a mechanism that is actually being used for other things and is quite sensible. It is used as a way of funding New Zealand’s contributions to international forums, such as the IMF and the OECD—payments of tax credits, and search and rescue costs. Those are just a few of the different kinds of examples.

We certainly did receive sound advice from a Treasury analyst, who, helpfully, appeared before the select committee and reassured us that the permanent legislative authority was a flexible mechanism for reimbursement of expenses during an emergency and for providing ongoing authority for such expenditure. So we were comfortable. There has not been any debate on that throughout this discussion on this bill. There were not any real concerns about that. I think that, ultimately, we do have a reasonable piece of legislation. It is a pretty good piece of legislation that has been helped by good cooperative relations across the select committee and good advice from officials.

I thank the Government for its support for the Supplementary Order Paper on the Table tonight. I look forward to the next discussion that happens around the bigger picture and how we deal with major events in New Zealand. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 237 in the name of Clare Curran to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 237 in the name of Clare Curran to clause 2 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.