Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill

I move, That the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill be now read a first time. This bill, effectively, amends a bill that was passed through the House with unanimous support just 4 days before the Hurunui/Kaikōura event occurred. One of the features of the bill is that it brings in to existence a thing called a transition period, which means that after a state of civil emergency has largely dissipated in an emergency sense there is a need to continue with recovery. While that might take some years, there is a transition to that recovery, as well. What this enables is the establishment of the transition period and of transition managers under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016. We have, effectively, brought a provision forward that was going to come into effect on 14 May 2017; this amendment bill would bring it into effect on 28 November 2016. I do not think I need to speak too much more about that, because these matters have been well discussed by the House and, in fact, have received unanimous support, as I said.

I do want to talk about a new little aspect to this bill, which was considered broadly by the cross-party discussions of the last week or so, and that is to give the power to civil defence controllers and recovery managers to require building assessments. Unfortunately, it is just a gap in our law, but it is unacceptable—building owners do not always have to assess their buildings after a big earthquake. Their obligations stop at the health and safety legislation, which requires them to provide a safe workplace for either employees or tenants. What this bill does is to say that if one of those managers has a reason to request an assessment of the building, then the assessment must be done. There is an appeal against that, but the expectation in that circumstance would be that responsible landlords will act responsibly. I have to say that there is no particular group—of landlords or others—that has prompted this; it is simply the gap in the law that has prompted it.

I would note that there is one very prominent landlord in Wellington who said that he had, of course, inspected his buildings and had engineering reports, but did not believe he was required to hand them to the council. I think that what happened there was that there was a protocol with the engineering profession that they would hand them on—but it is just not clear. What we are doing here is making it absolutely clear that if it is asked for it needs to be provided. I do not want to sound like we are coming after landlords at all—that is not the case. It is just a gap in the law that we are filling in.

There were a number of concerns raised about this at the cross-party forum, as you would expect, and I think that the wording that we have finally settled on is going to ensure that we do get sensible behaviour around this. First, there are tests that would require that it is in the public interest and proportionate to the circumstances. If we had a minor shake here in Wellington, where it has quite clearly not caused the sort of damage that you get with something that is much more major—as big as the shake on 14 November—then, of course, you would not expect the same degree of response. Second, there are some requirements that the decision makers must have regard to whether the structure—or type of structure—that they are looking at may, in the circumstances, pose a risk to the safety or the lives of individuals, or to other property. We do not want a situation where a local community hall that is used periodically and which is a single-storey timber building—this was raised by the New Zealand First Party, and, I think, appropriately—ends up having to go to a committee that is cash-strapped to find a lot of money to tell them what they can know at a glance.

It is, therefore, a bill that is necessary in the circumstances, and I think I would similarly like to say that I appreciate the way in which it has been dealt with by that cross-party forum. It has left us in a very comfortable position about bringing forward legislation that is already law, albeit not quite timely at the moment.

I want to thank the Acting Minister of Civil Defence, Gerry Brownlee, for that. I stand here today as the acting Labour Party spokesperson on civil defence—it is like the Oscars here today with the amount of acting going on, but it is important that we are here today to pass this legislation.

The Labour Party is generally fairly reluctant to see bills go through all their stages under urgency and without any select committee process, but we looked at this bill and realised, firstly—as the Minister has stated—that we have just very recently passed this legislation. It has been through a very thorough select committee process and was unanimously supported by the House, and so the provisions of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act, which the substantive part of this bill brings into force, are ones that have been thoroughly worked through.

The other part of the bill—as the Minister has indicated—around the requirement for building assessments, is urgent in our view. I will come to talk about why that is the case, both in this speech and in some other calls as we go through the stages of the bill.

To begin with, the Act that has recently been passed here was supported across the House because it was seen as the first stage in a series of changes that would give New Zealand a much more robust civil defence and emergency management regime. In particular, as the Minister has said, the Act that has been passed—and will now come into force more speedily—is about that transition from response to recovery. We are learning lessons in New Zealand—quite tragic lessons—about the importance of that transition, about the balance between ministerial powers and the powers of local communities, and about the importance of consultation with local communities about what happens in that phase. It is difficult—no one will underestimate that, now that we have been through the Canterbury experience, and we are already beginning to see it with the Kaikōura earthquakes.

We feel that, as the first stage of the review of the legislative framework, the amendment Act is good. There was good cross-party work when the Act went through. A Supplementary Order Paper around the importance of a national civil defence and emergency management plan—which Clare Curran, I know, backed—was accepted. We are pleased to see that coming in more speedily. There is some flexibility built into this bill, which means that local authorities that are not affected by the sequence of earthquakes that we have seen can choose whether or not they adopt the provisions now or wait until the original date that they were to be put in place. That is appropriate, but it is, obviously, in the areas where the quake has had the most effect that we want to see the provisions of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act come into force right away, and so we are very supportive of that part of this bill.

I do want to raise, as we come to the second part of the bill, the whole question of the gaps that are in our law and the importance of our closing them now. In doing so, I do not want to diminish any of the incredible work that has gone on in the last couple of weeks in responding to the quake by Civil Defence staff, by local council staff, or by the emergency services. They have worked remarkably, as they always do in these circumstances, in responding—in the middle of the night; in times of stress—and so I want to put on record that those people providing those services are truly valued by this side of the House and by New Zealanders generally.

But what a lot of New Zealanders have been asking since the Kaikōura quake is whether we are adequately prepared as a country. Do we have a robust civil defence response plan? Gaps have been found. The absence of a proper national disaster warning system, the confusion that arose with the tsunami alerts, and also, I have to say, the lack of clarity and transparency around building assessments here in Wellington—which is being dealt with in this bill—are of real concern to New Zealanders. The fact that modern buildings like Statistics House could fail in the way they did is of real concern to New Zealanders, and I credit the Minister for starting an inquiry. I hope that that inquiry, when it comes back, will talk to us about all of those modern buildings that have not survived in the way that we would like. New Zealanders are rightly asking those questions now.

I think that something the Government needs to consider is the next stage of changes that are coming. They need to be put on the fast track as well. We have got to get through this stage of immediate recovery now, but on this side of the House we want to work with the Government to bring the next stage forward, to make sure that New Zealanders can have real confidence and that we avoid the confusion that has been caused. Although I respect the fact that local civil defence groups—the 16 of them that we have around New Zealand—play a really important role in being close to their communities and being connected with what is going on, the absence of a national disaster management system and the absence of good, clear, Government-led alert systems around tsunamis is not on. We have got to do better than that. The Government put about half a million dollars into developing a system and then shoved it on to the back-burner. It has to come forward now, to build confidence for New Zealanders.

In terms of the specific element of this bill—the power to require an assessment—I strongly support that. In my own electorate here, Wellington Central, I have now had several examples of people who are in buildings where they cannot find the assurance they need that proper work has been done. I was approached only on Monday by a group of tenants in a building who were told by their building owner that their building was safe and had been assessed. They asked to see that assessment and were told that they could not see it because of privacy reasons. There is scepticism among those tenants that that assessment exists. The idea that after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, building owners could do a visual inspection themselves and decide that a building is fine is not good enough, so the powers that are in this bill will mean that city councils and other offices will be in a position to require those checks and then see that assessment.

It is hard to believe, in many ways, that that is not the case now. I suspect that many New Zealanders have been operating under the assumption that it is the case—that on the Monday after the quake, when the Wellington CBD was shut, there was a formal, legislated process that was being worked through, where buildings were being assessed to a consistent set of criteria. That was not necessarily the case. It was, in most cases. Most building owners were responsible and did the right thing: they got an engineer in and did the checks they needed to do. But there are always some who will not, and we must pass a law that gives New Zealanders an assurance that there is a proper, consistent process. This legislation is the first step in that process. There is more work to do, but, at the very least, this will give the authorities the ability to require those inspections.

It is important to note that the nature of New Zealand is changing. There are 15,000 to 20,000 people whose homes are in the central Wellington CBD—not businesses, not places they go to to work, but their homes. We have to do much better by those people, in terms of the rules and regulations around them and knowing that they are safe. Just leaving it to the health and safety legislation—which is what we have at the moment—is not good enough, and the Government has clearly recognised that by proposing this law.

There are big concerns among people in Wellington about certain buildings, and I am heartened to read today that the Mayor of Wellington, Justin Lester, has said that the moment this legislation is passed it will be used. It will be used to undertake the inspections that the council is concerned about. That is why we have to pass this bill under urgency. But I want to lay on the record, in this first reading, that this is only the beginning for New Zealand getting a robust regime in place to ensure that we have the warning systems, the recovery systems, and the assessment systems that we need.

Having said that, I want to thank the Acting Minister of Civil Defence for the way he has gone about including parties across the House in the development of this legislation. I want to thank the officials, who have worked incredibly hard to put it together in a short time frame. I acknowledge to the House that the Labour Party will certainly be supporting this bill.

It is a pleasure to speak on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill. It seems somewhat ironic that we are amending an Act that has only really just come in, but it is also good to acknowledge that things are missing and to sort them out quickly.

Certainly, seeing civil defence organisations operating both in Kaikōura and in Marlborough itself, and seeing how those people organise themselves and operate, it is fantastic—the people who are on the ground, and the dedication they have to that job. But I think we have to acknowledge that in the first instance, in any emergency, what will reign is confusion. It may not reign in the headquarters, but it certainly does out on the ground, and it takes some time to get things in order and get them under way. Having a real clarity around how the Act that they operate under is to be implemented will be welcomed by all of those people, I am sure.

I think what has been highlighted in these recent events—to me, anyway—is that the civil defence campaign urging everyone to plan to get through an emergency is something that I am quite sure most people are not taking enough notice of. I would take this opportunity to remind people that you could be cut off for 5 days, and if you are in a rural environment, it could be for weeks. What I have noted is that the people in the rural environment are more than capable, most often, of getting through for 5 days, at least, because that is just the nature of how they go about their daily lives. If every one of us sat down for a moment today and imagined how we would be able to get through for 5 days with what we have in our houses and without electricity, I think a few people would be in for a shock.

This bill is making things crystal clear for those people operating in this area, and I think that will be very welcomed by them. I know certainly in the Marlborough area, they relooked at their whole system after the Boxing Day fires in 2000 because that was not handled very well, and they have ended up with a system now that runs fantastically well. It stood the test through this earthquake period, although the significant challenge was really in Kaikōura itself, where people were cut off in lots of ways, and they have managed to deal with that very well. I think that although they have managed well, they do need some more clarity in this area.

It is really with great pleasure that I commend this much-needed piece of legislation to the House. Thank you.

Often I begin my contributions in this House by saying it is my pleasure to take a call on a piece of legislation. But it is not my pleasure to take this call, acknowledging that we are here only such a short period of time after this primary legislation was passed. We are back here, amending it, to bring it into force earlier than any of us ever hoped it would have to be used. I would like to extend my condolences to the family and friends in the communities of the people who died in the recent earthquake. These are very difficult times for communities to get through, and it is our job as lawmakers to make sure that the right laws are in place to make this as easy a time as possible for local communities.

I would also like to extend our sincere thanks and support to the emergency workers and responders, and the members of the public, who have been working tirelessly in the communities impacted by these earthquakes. We know that so much of the civil defence emergency response is around those people in communities working at that very local level, making sure that people are looked after. I would also like to acknowledge the cross-party work that has got us into the House so quickly to pass this amending legislation. The Acting Minister of Civil Defence, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, has worked well across parties to bring people together and to talk about this legislation, and I think this is an example of this Parliament working well.

Other speakers have traversed that what we are doing with this law is bringing a bill into play earlier and getting Royal assent for a bill that was passed on—I think it was—10 November. But, in addition to bringing that legislation forward, some other very important provisions have been made—and I think that is something that has been, once again, brought to light by an earthquake sequence. We certainly saw it in the experience in Canterbury, in terms of the need to make sure that the buildings that people are living and working in are safe.

At present, the only real legislative levers that we have to ensure that buildings are inspected are health and safety laws. What this legislation does is to bring into play an additional clause, clause 11, which inserts the transitional provisions for the bill that make it optional for territorial authorities to implement the mandatory requirements of the bill around recovery managers. It is the need to inspect properties that is absolutely paramount here. Labour has previously called for these powers to require assessments to be undertaken, and we are very pleased to see this put into this bill. We have a patchwork of local government trying to cope with a disaster when it happens. How is it that it can inspect its own properties—its own public spaces and its own public buildings—but the ability for it to require private properties to be inspected has not been there? So it was very pleasing to see that provision. We know that we have seen here in Wellington, with the effects of the quake, that there is going to be a need for this. There have been a number of government buildings that have been shown to need cordoning off and to not have the public enter them. Now the public needs reassurance that all buildings are going to be safe.

Really, the only power that local authorities have been able to have beyond inspecting their own buildings is to use the cordon, and the cordon is something that a council can put in place, keeping the public out of whole areas. But it would be much more satisfactory that we would go in and do the assessments of those buildings. I, like many people who sleep at night in an apartment building here in Wellington, would like to see the safety inspection certificate for the building that I am spending time in and to know that building is safe. I am sure that is not something that I am alone in.

It is not only in the buildings that we have seen here in Wellington where we can see that there is real risk—and some of those buildings have been worked on—we also have the findings of the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission on what went wrong with buildings in Canterbury, most notably the CTV Building and what happened there. That is where we saw the failure of a building and there was the cost of lives. What we are talking about here is of the most serious nature. We are not talking about red tape and bureaucracy; what we are talking about is our role as lawmakers to ensure we are putting the right rules in place so that people’s lives are not unduly lost in the case of a disaster. We have this opportunity here with this bill to do that.

So Labour is very happy to support this legislation—bringing into force legislation that we had already passed. It is pleasing to see that that work had already been done, that the Parliament had already grappled with those questions, it had gone through and had a good consultation in the select committee process, and now we have the opportunity to add to that to ensure that, here in Wellington, the buildings can be made safe. So Labour is happy to support this bill.

I am delighted that there is broad cross-party support for this Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill—it is quite a mouthful—because, as the previous speaker, Megan Woods, referred to, it received Royal assent only a couple of weeks ago.

It is a very simple piece of legislation. It does two things. First, it brings forward the commencement of some of those provisions—which, though they received assent from the Governor-General a couple of weeks ago, were not due to come into place until later down the track, or even next year—so that we can apply them urgently to the situation that is unfolding in Kaikōura, but also here in the capital, in Wellington.

The second main provision of this bill is the power to require building assessments. This is not a power that is given lightly because we do not want to, for instance, put building owners in a position of being required to do something that is impossible. For instance, after an emergency, if you were to require every building owner to go and do this, obviously, with the shortage of engineers and qualified people, it could be some months before they were in a position to get that expertise. So this bill very carefully provides that a controller or constable under a state of emergency, or a recovery manager under transition notice, may require the owner of a structure—particularly apartment buildings, as has been referred to—to arrange for a suitable assessment of the effect of that emergency on the building.

We have seen around Wellington some instances of buildings where, certainly, there were people where there should not have been. The building I live in is an 80-year-old apartment block, and it is reassuring to know that our apartment block manager has actually gone in and had that assessment done. I think everyone has that right to know that the building that they are staying in is safe to live in. So this is a very sensible and pragmatic provision. I commend it fully to the House.

I am pleased to rise and take what, I suspect, will be my first call of several today and offer the Green Party’s support for this bill, along with the other parties in the House. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the people who lost family and friends in the quake, and those who are no longer able to live in their houses or their apartments, or whose lives have been turned on their heads and who are unable to resume their lives as they are used to them. We, in this House, clearly take your situation seriously, and want to do our best by all of those people. I too want to add my thanks to the Acting Minister of Civil Defence for the process that we have been going through up to this point. There have been two meetings across parties where we have had a chance to consider drafts of the legislation in detail and amendments have been made up to this point. It is a really good process, and it is Parliament working as, I think, most people would hope we worked more often.

It is very rare for us in the Green Party to support legislation passing through all stages under urgency, because we value the select committee process and public scrutiny and are very aware that a small group of heads is never as good as all the wise minds in this country. In this instance, our members are comfortable seeing it pass through under urgency, partly because a significant part of this bill is just bringing forward the commencement of a piece of legislation that we have so recently considered and debated. It was only, you know, 10 November when I was standing in the House talking to this bill at its third reading, saying that we were very concerned—we realised how critical this legislation was and that it was about the balance between central power and local power and enabling communities—and we would be listening in the event of any event to communities very carefully to find out whether we had got the balance right or whether we had missed anything.

I am, on one hand, gutted that we are back so quickly after having had an event, but I am really pleased that, actually, part of bringing this back is that the Minister seems to have listened to those local councillors who told the Minister that there was a gap in the legislation that we needed to address—and that that is what we were doing. I was hoping it would be a longer time frame and we would not need to be doing this so quickly, but here we are. That is the reality, and we have identified a gap. I think that is the nature of disasters—we cannot think ahead of time what is going to happen and what we need—there does need to be process of constant iteration to make sure that our settings and policy and legislation are right.

The key part of this piece of legislation is addressing and providing the legal certainty and backup for councils or recovery managers to be able to request or require a building assessment to be done, and given and presented to them, so that they can see that a building has been properly assessed. We do know that there are several benefits in that, but first of all I will speak to some of the checks that were added to that through the cross-party discussions, and acknowledge New Zealand First for one of the amendments that has come through around strengthening the requirement for that manager to have regard to whether the structure may cause harm. I think that does add a little bit more understanding of the purpose of these provisions in the bill: we want to prevent harm and provide kind of a chain of accountability to prevent harm.

It is also for people to know that if an assessment is required and the building owner or structure owner thinks that is unreasonable they can go to the District Court and appeal that assessment. It will not stop them having to get the assessment done, but if the court upholds their concern that it was unreasonable and did not meet the legislative requirement to ask for the assessment, then they would get the costs back for that work. So that is also another check that is in this legislation—if any building or structure owner was concerned about that, then we have thought through that balance of power.

I would also just like to mention that there has been quite a bit of discussion in the debate so far about buildings and residential properties. Of course, so many of us know people who are worried about sleeping at night in their residential properties. That is going to be an immediate concern, but this also applies to structures that people may not be living in, and so the owner of that structure may not have such an immediate prompt to get an assessment done. Maybe the council, if it has that oversight of our areas, would be more likely to identify whether there may be need for an assessment of a particular structure. So I think that is important for people to think about: that this is buildings, it is homes, and it is structures. The whole point is about preventing harm.

I note that it is really good to hear, too, that Justin Lester, the Mayor of Wellington, has been in the media saying that this legislation, when passed, will be used by the council immediately—that it sees a very clear need for it. I assume that is where the desire for this clause has come from—and I think that is good. It has been traversed that some people are feeling unsure—which is a natural reaction after any significant event. An earthquake creates instability and uncertainty.

We do know that this provision will also create a baseline, where the council will know that these buildings have had an assessment and will know the standard of them. Some of the feedback through the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission was that we should be seeking to have that baseline and standard so that if there are significant aftershocks then that can be our measure of the stability of those buildings at that time, and then—if there is another aftershock—we will know the impact of that event on that baseline. So it is about the immediate safety of those buildings, but it also helps us assess that over time in a way that, I think, is quite critical for those involved in the recovery to be able to manage. As I said, the Green Party is very happy to support this legislation.

I would like to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to also join in the chorus of sympathy for the people affected by the Kaikōura earthquake, particularly those people who have lost loved ones. I want to acknowledge Minister Gerry Brownlee for giving the Opposition parties the opportunity to go down there on the Thursday prior to the adjournment to go and meet with some of those people, to see first-hand the effect that the earthquake is having on the local community but also to see first-hand how they are dealing with it, and they really are dealing with it in spectacular fashion. Although we were down there for only the best part of a morning and the early afternoon, we were as busy as bees with bums full of honey as we went from place to place to talk to the people with regard to their situations.

The comment coming out of Kaikōura is: “We just need support.” Obviously, they were having difficulty with water. A big part of that was removing the burden, I guess, of the tourists, whom they wanted to get out of the area. Food was, obviously, a concern and, of course, fuel. But they have a number of issues that they need to contend with, and they just want to get on with it and get the support from able-bodied people to be able to assist with getting themselves into the recovery mode and back on their feet. So I would like to thank the Minister for that opportunity. It really was very much appreciated.

I would also like to go further by saying the cross-party meetings that have been held both last Wednesday and again yesterday afternoon were fantastic, and it just shows a very, very cordial approach. I know we sometimes squabble over what some people might think is quite trivial, but, really, when the rubber meets the road and things get very serious, then we certainly do bond together to come up with very, very pragmatic, sensible, common-sense approaches to legislation, and I think we are showing here today in the House that we too want to get on with this and make it very, very easy for the people of the affected areas to also get back on their feet.

I have to say that only 2½ weeks ago, or nearly 3 weeks ago, we were sitting in this House speaking in the final reading of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill and putting that through. In fact, in every stage we had, I spoke to that bill and said we should have been putting it through under urgency because it is not a matter of if we have a civil defence emergency in this country, it is a matter of when. We are still in the situation right now, here today, with the possibility of another big shake and with tsunami warning systems that we do not have in place, which we have been continually speaking about.

We are saying that this is the sort of thing where you have got full support across the House, with all the parties involved, and that we should be putting urgency into these discussions to make sure that we are prepared and ready for action in the event of something unforeseeable happening. We are here now, today, discussing exactly that. We said we would like to see the 180 days taken out of the last bill to be brought in after the Royal assent, and that is exactly what the first part of this bill is doing. There is nothing more antiseptic in life, I guess, than when you have the opportunity to say “We told you so.”, and we have been banging on about that.

We would also like to say, as we have been saying, and, seemingly, sometimes banging our heads against the lectern, that part 2 of the Christchurch earthquake review, which was to look specifically at large-scale events such as the one that happened only literally 2 weeks ago—we need to get that part 2, which is dealing with those large events, under way. Part 1, which we put through the House 2½ weeks ago, was dealing with small-scale events, and we are using that legislation—pan it up a little bit—to make it at least fit for purpose for this current situation.

But it begs the question as to when this second part, the important part, of this review, is going to be taking place and when that legislation, in its entirety, is going to be brought to this House for discussion, because I do believe, Minister, that you have seen today how the parties have come together and are working together to come up with sensible legislation, and I think once that legislation comes to the House it can also be put through under urgency.

This bill is about public safety, first and foremost, but it is also about understanding the importance of peace of mind, because like Paul Foster-Bell, I too live in an apartment during the week, down here in Wellington. I was here on the Monday night, post the earthquake 2 weeks ago, and I felt very uncomfortable staying in an eight-storey apartment block, with lifts that did not work, and cracks up the stairwell. It did make things feel very, very uncomfortable. To be fair, it gave me some comfort the next day when of course the corporate body came forward and said: “No, we’ve done our checks. We are good to go.” That peace of mind you cannot put a value on. I mean, I checked the fire escapes and I would be off like a robber’s dog out that door if that ground started shaking, because that is very important.

It is also very important to know that we currently have 11 ministerial offices in the centre of this city that have now been condemned and shut down, and some of them have already had the demolition clauses applied. There are others—we have got shopping centres, we have got car-parks, and of course we have had some movie theatres that closed themselves down as well, after getting those assessments done. But how many businesses and buildings in this city have not had those assessments done? Is it just the ministerial offices that are the most unsafe buildings? It begs the question. I would say that there are a lot more businesses in buildings in this area that are not fit for purpose, that have not been checked, and this bill addresses that situation very, very clearly, and, as has already been mentioned, Justin Lester has said he will enforce this almost immediately because that is a practical step.

So what this bill does is two things. It brings the enforcement date forward to today, so this bill at the end of tonight will be in force immediately, so people can get on with their jobs tomorrow and use the transition notices about the recovery periods that we can get happening to tidy up these areas. The second part is that it puts into legislation, into law, the fact that if a constable or an officer gives notice to a building operator or owner or the said person, they must get a seismic assessment done on that building.

I will have some questions for the Minister when we get to the Committee of the whole House. I am sure he will be able to answer them, and we have signalled what those questions will be. They are around a situation where we have a building owner or an absent owner who (1) cannot afford to pay for a seismic assessment or (2) just flatly refuses to do so. I know there is some legislation that could potentially be used, but certainly having an idea—forward planning—should that incident occur, as to what are the right protocols to take place, because of course those assessments will need to be done regardless. Does a council take a charge over that structure or does it get on and get the assessment done and then take a civil action against the building owner or operator? I think that needs to be looked at and addressed. I did say we have signalled that, so I am sure that has come up.

We are very, very appreciative of the cross-party meeting that has taken place, and some pragmatic solutions towards some of our concerns from New Zealand First relating to the practical criteria around what buildings will be expected to be assessed. For example, you may have a pergola out there in Waikanae and an overzealous officer decides that we need to get that pergola checked, and that is obviously a cost, and an unnecessary one, on some of those organisations, people, businesses, etc. It could be a wooden structure that is on wooden piles, it is 150 years old, and is a hall. We would not expect some of those structures to be expected to come up with a seismic assessment, which is an unnecessary cost.

It does then come back to letting the people of New Zealand know, because as the Minister has made it very clear, this is not an attack on the landlords of New Zealand, and New Zealand First is very, very strongly in support of that ideology. But it is about making sure that they are better prepared, and it does beg the question for those people involved in owning buildings and structures, etc. that they make sure with their insurance company that (1) they have cover and (2) if they do not, then that would certainly beg the question that they should start thinking about what sort of cover they may need to ensure that they are covered when a seismic assessment is done. Thank you for your time, Mr Assistant Speaker. We will be watching this through the bill and supporting it through all stages. Thank you.

Well, it was a scary night 2 weeks ago on Sunday. I was doing some emails about 3 past 12 when a shuddering like I have never really felt before came through our house in Pētone, and I will freely admit to being pretty frightened. As a Wellingtonian growing up, a born and bred guy from the Hutt and living in Wellington for all but 3 of my 33 years, you do get used to earthquakes and you get used to the small jolts and the shudders, and you sort of ride them out. But this was like something no one has ever felt before, and I guess I have a new appreciation for the people of Christchurch, for all their hardship in the 2010 and 2011 quakes. It was a sort of roiling, thunderous cacophony of noise and sound at our place and it was a pretty frightening experience.

We have been affected out in the Hutt. One of the by-products of the earthquake has been the Queensgate shopping complex—the Event Cinemas there and the carpark underneath have been pretty badly affected and, as members will know, are having to be pretty urgently demolished. Of course, the surrounding shops, particularly New World and the Angus Inn next door are within the cordon and have been evacuated, and people are not allowed to be in there or work in there because of the potential danger that if another quake strikes that building will fall down. It is being demolished reasonably quickly, probably sometime before Christmas. My office actually is just literally right outside the cordon and the house is probably about 60 metres as the crow flies from a couple of those stores—from the Angus Inn and from New World.

So I have, I guess you would say, an acute appreciation of some of the issues that are happening. It is great to see the Government’s support package being extended to the Hutt Valley and I want to place that on the record for the House. It is extended to the Hutt Valley and to Wellington as well. I know my colleagues Paul Foster-Bell and Brett Hudson are very appreciative of that as well—as I know Grant Robertson is and Labour colleagues across the House.

That is the other point I would make—that this is really Parliament at its best, I think. We have already heard the fulsome tributes from Mr Mitchell to the Acting Minister of Civil Defence, Gerry Brownlee, and the wider Government team for the spirit of collegiality and camaraderie that pervades this issue that we are dealing with and the bills that have been placed before the House—and that is great to see. It is great to see that MPs can put aside party political differences, and, probably, members of the public would argue that we should put aside party political differences on more occasions than just dealing with earthquake recovery legislation, or, in this case, civil defence emergency management legislation, and they would probably be right. But it is good that on this really important issue we can put aside those politics.

This is a very simple bill. Members opposite and on this side of the House have canvassed its simple provisions. It is a sensible piece of legislation and I do not have anything much more to add than to endorse the comments of my colleagues so far, from both sides of the House actually, and endorse this bill to the House.

The Hon David Parker—5 minutes.

I rise to take a call in support of the amending legislation that is an amendment to the 2016 amendment to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. I agree, and, in fact, I was somewhat surprised, as I am sure a lot of members would have been, to learn that there is no power to require the owner of a building that may be in need of repair or assessment as to whether it is safe—there is no regulatory power easily available to the Government to require that that building be inspected. So I agree that it is necessary.

It is a somewhat small step in that I think we are going to have to have a serious look in New Zealand as to whether the building code has been up to a high enough earthquake prevention standard, given the relatively young age of some of these building that are no longer occupied. I think we should also—and this is addressed to Minister Brownlee—be looking at whether some of the warnings given by occupants of buildings following the 2013 earthquake off Seddon, where there was damage to buildings or defects had shown up in buildings at that time, were not properly looked into by landlords or, I would suspect on other occasions, by Government departments. I am aware of at least one of the buildings that are now unoccupied, Mr Brownlee—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I’m listening.

—oh, thank you—where I am told that, in 2013, staff raised concerns as to the integrity of the building, and they were not taken seriously. I do not know whether those accusations are correct. The people whom I had that information from are not reckless people; they are people whom I know quite well, and I place some trust in their word. I think we should have a look at whether some of the buildings that are occupied by Government departments were showing flaws in 2013 that the management of those organisations did not respond to adequately. They are actually not buildings that were built during the tenure of the National Government; they were built during the tenure of the prior Labour Government, but I have had some suggestion that there were concerns raised in 2013 that were not looked into properly. We did not need a new power under the civil defence legislation to require Government departments to do what they should have done. We do now sometimes need a power of compulsion in respect of private building owners and private building occupiers, and that is what this amendment bill does.

In respect of the Government, and the civil defence authorities, which are, effectively, an agent of Government in times of emergency, when they go too far and make an onerous or unreasonable request of a building owner, there is protection set out in clause 7 of this bill, which inserts the new clause 26A into the principal Act—sorry, which inserts new section 26A into the amendment Act, which changes section 91 of the underlying Act. It is a bit confusing, but, effectively, this new power is to be found after this amendment goes through in section 91 of the underlying Act. It is subsection (6) that says: “The owner (or the owner’s agent) may appeal to the District Court on the grounds that the direction is unreasonable.” So I presume, and we will ask the Acting Minister of Civil Defence this during the Committee stage—because I have been racing around trying to follow this through in the underlying amendment, which was just passed in 2016, and in the 2002 Act—that the effect of subsection (7) is to say that they have still got to do the review, they just have the ability to get back the cost of that review if the District Court later finds that the request made of them was unreasonable.

So I think that is a fair enough check and balance. I think that the emergency powers of the civil defence people ought to be able to say “You need to get a report now.”, and if they do not, there needs to a consequence, and that consequence, presumably, would enable the recovery manager to direct someone else to have access, if the owner or the agent has refused to do so. That is another matter we should be checking at the Committee stage of this, because if you have got an unreasonable owner, then I think the State should be able to do the report itself and recover the cost from the building owner.

I call Eugenie Sage—5 minutes.

I am pleased to take a short call in support of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill. Like the Hon David Parker, I was a little surprised that there is this gap in the law, given that the principal Act, which was before Parliament only recently, allows a huge range of powers during the transition period to carry out works, to clear roads, to evacuate premises and places, to close roads and public places, to give directions to stop any activity or take any action, and to limit the consequences of the emergency, yet it did not have this power to direct an owner of a building to carry out a building assessment to ensure that the building was safe after an emergency, or if things changed after the emergency, such as there was another aftershock.

So it is a very sensible change to the principal Act, because at the moment the only obligations, really, are under the health and safety legislation for owners of buildings that are places of work to have to identify and manage hazards in a place of work, and under the Residential Tenancies Act so that landlords must check the premises that they own after an earthquake to ensure that it is safe for tenants to remain. The building owners may not be aware of the detail and the type of the assessment that is needed, and there is no centralised register that gives authorities an understanding of whether buildings have been assessed or not. So this bill has a major advantage in allowing the controller during the transition period, such as a council, to actually require these assessments to be done and then to collate this information.

That is quite critical, because the council may be very aware of certain types of buildings, like buildings of a similar design to the CTV Building in Christchurch, that are quite vulnerable and more prone to collapse. The bill will enable councils, particularly here in Wellington, to actually require that these more detailed assessments are done if they are aware that there may be systemic issues in certain types of buildings that make them liable to partially or fully collapse in an earthquake. In terms of property owners, they may see this as a slight encroachment on their rights, but no one wants on their conscience owning or managing a building that causes death or injury in an earthquake.

So Parliament is acting collectively to ensure that we fill this gap in the law and that we do everything that we can to protect ourselves, all citizens, in the event of continued earthquakes and other natural hazards. The Green Party supports this bill, and, as my colleague Jan Logie explained, although we do not normally support bills going through under urgency, the continued sequence of aftershocks after the Kaikōura earthquake means that there is an urgency—a real urgency—in filling this gap in our law.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill, a bill that has unanimous support in the House. There are many things that have been learnt from disasters such as the Christchurch quake and, indeed, the smaller incidents such as the Whanganui floods. One of those is that there is a need for greater provisions, rights, and authorities as we move from a response and transition towards full recovery mode.

The Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016, which passed with unanimous support in this House just a couple of weeks ago, was scheduled to come into force some months away, in 2017. I think it is highly appropriate, as I believe all members here do, that we bring forward those commencement dates so that we can make use of the authority and provisions of that amendment Act in the recovery from this event around Kaikōura and Hurunui and, indeed, in Wellington City.

We will have the opportunity in subsequent readings to talk about the provision for assessment of buildings, which I think is a very worthy provision. But at this stage I would just like to commend this bill to the House.

I am pleased to take a call on this Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Bill. I do not want to traverse the territory that has already been covered. We know the background as to the introduction of this legislation—albeit missed by about 4 days, so we are activating the transition period now.

But I want to pick up on a point that Mr Parker raised, and this is just in relation to the rights to appeal. I am sure we will be able to pick this up in later stages, but I just want to flag the House’s attention to section 77 of the principal Act, which is amended by clause 8(7) in the bill. When a building owner is required to deliver a building certificate—and there are various tests that are laid out in that section—there are rights of appeal, for the building owner to appeal to the District Court on the grounds of unreasonableness.

I just want to flag—and I am sure it will be picked up later on—that in section 77(4) in the principal Act it states that “An appeal against a requirement to give information operates as a stay of the requirement.” Surely, on the face of it, although a building owner may appeal, the obligation for them to provide the information should still stand. They should still, in spite of the appeal, be required to deliver that information. And so, I just wanted to raise that briefly, and I know that might be a matter that will get further attention as we progress through the later stages.

Apart from that, I do want to focus on the directions to building owners to provide safety inspection certificates and building assessments, which has been the focus so far. When we look back to the Christchurch earthquake, one cannot help but think of all of the victims who were in the CTV Building—75 percent of the fatalities in that quake occurred in that one building. I believe it was 117-odd Kiwis and international students—people lost their lives. So I think safety should be front and centre, in particular safety of our buildings, just purely in light of that shocking statistic, which we have come through with the Christchurch experience.

I do not want to bring a sombre tone to the debate, but I think that for the safety of tenants—those who occupy—if building owners are not supplying information or giving that reassurance when the controllers in an emergency situation or an in-transition situation require that information to be delivered, they should deliver that information. They should get the work done, regardless of the cost.

I know that there are tests that are prescribed in this legislation, so there are the checks and balances. It must be proportionate, so I think great care has been taken. But I do believe that we need to focus on the rights of appeal and whether the provisions match up with the actual primary bill itself. But apart from that, this is a very good piece of legislation. We are just accelerating the introduction of legislation that has already been fully debated just a few short weeks ago. The addition of the requirements for building owners to provide that assurance, to provide those extra reports, is very important when we look at Wellington City. It is evident that if a building is not safe, and if a building owner is shirking their responsibilities, they should be compelled to do the right thing and deliver up that information. I will conclude there, and I commend this bill to the House.

I am very pleased to stand in support of this bill, and I think that every New Zealander would be encouraged to see the speed of the response from this Government—from Minister Brownlee and the Prime Minister—and this Parliament to their situation of need. And it gives great encouragement to this country to see a Government so responsive. This legislation is going through a process of urgency, and that is because we want to enable our Government to respond adequately to this time of need. So I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading