Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill (No 2)

This is a very simple bill—literally two pages, and one clause that is being changed. The actual provision that is being changed is the requirement that the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Strategy, which took effect on 10 January 2008, unless it is earlier amended or replaced, remains current until the close of 9 July 2019. That was to be closed early next year—in January next year—and the reason for the extension, as we have heard, is to allow for an extended consultation period following the findings of the technical advisory group (TAG), which is undertaking some very important work around the country at the moment and doing extensive discussions with a number of stakeholders on changes required to civil defence.

We have heard some interesting speeches so far in this debate. I really do acknowledge Te Ururoa Flavell’s contribution around the contribution of iwi to the response phase and also recovery in civil defence emergencies. I think we have seen some stark examples in recent times of just how necessary that iwi response is and how competent and organised it is in contrast to the normal responses that should be undertaken. I am hoping that out of this technical advisory group process, which, may I reiterate, did come about—and I do want to acknowledge Gerry Brownlee, the former Minister responsible for initiating the advisory group. He was under enormous political pressure and community pressure to do something, because there had been so many issues in how the national civil defence process was actually occurring.

I am not just putting the emphasis on MCDEM, as it is known—the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management—it is how the civil defence operates on the ground and how inconsistent it is around the country. Not only that, but the difficulties in getting information, making decisions, communicating those decisions, and getting actions to happen. When there is a major emergency, whether it is Edgecumbe and those floods, whether it is Kaikōura and that major earthquake and the tsunami alert, which, thankfully, did not hit most of our built-up coastline, our coastline where people live, and that was amazing luck. But the inconsistent, patchy communication that has occurred around those things, as well as the Christchurch fires and the lack of communication that occurred there, that potentially put homes at risk and possibly people. These things are all really important. So I want to seriously acknowledge the contribution that Minister Flavell made and also acknowledge the New Zealand First contribution around the increasing cost of civil defence events.

Our ministry is a very small ministry—52 people, I think, in that ministry. It is a massive job. A lot of the time it is a bureaucratic job: consulting on strategies, making sure local civil defence is actually doing what it is supposed to do, but when an emergency happens—and we are having, as was said, more and more of these emergencies happening every year—there has to be an instant response and a very good response. Now, 52 people and a budget of around $16 million is not enough, in my view. It is not sufficient to be able to manage the extraordinary events that are happening.

We have also got questions being raised about our legislative framework to declare emergencies. We have national emergencies and we have local emergencies. We have seen some local emergencies being declared in the last 12 months—a number of them; I cannot name exactly how many, because they seem to be happening every month or so. But we are seeing more and more of these emergencies being declared, and one of the questions that the TAG is dealing with is whether or not those two mechanisms: the declaring of a national emergency—the last one was Christchurch—and the declaring of a local emergency, are sufficient to wheel into action and make the decisions that need to be made. Are the people making those decisions the right people to be making those decisions, and are they making the right decisions? Are they getting the best information that they need?

This is why the Labour Party released a petition immediately after the Kaikōura earthquake last year to fund Geonet 24/7, because, as we discovered to our horror, the agency that we depend on to provide the best-possible intelligence when there is a major earthquake, does not operate on a round-the-clock basis. People have to be woken up. They have to turn their computers on. They have to analyse massive amounts of important data instantly, and then communicate that information to people, who then have phone conferences and make decisions about whether or not there should be a national tsunami alert issued.

That is not the best process for our country in 2017. Other countries—Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Malaysia—and all of the countries in the rim around which all those earthquakes are occurring have got much better processes. They put much more resources into this. Why do we not? Nearly 12,000 people signed that petition in just over a week, or within a couple of weeks. That petition is still before a select committee, because the Government still has not said whether it is going to invest in a 24/7 analysis and capacity for Geonet.

This is an issue that needs to be dealt with urgently for our country. This is not something that should go into the bureaucratic mire of going backwards and forwards. It is either something we do or we do not. I would like to hear from the Government as to whether it is going to fund a 24/7, round-the-clock service for Geonet, because that is one of the things that we need to sort out. The other thing we need to sort out is the inconsistency of the local civil defence response around our country, and the training and the capability that exists in each of our local civil defence and emergency management areas—I think there are around 16 of them. What the technical advisory group has discovered—and I have met with the technical advisory group; they have not reported yet, so I am not pre-empting their recommendations—is that there is major inconsistency, and so you have the ministry trying to do its best at the top with only 52 people, a small budget, and it is having to deal with civil defence and emergency management groups around the country that are inconsistent in their ability to respond and their willingness to respond quickly to major events.

As a result, you get hold-ups, you get miscommunications, and you get people paying patch protection. Thankfully, in my region, which has just had a major flooding event that affected most of my electorate, the capacity and capability of civil defence and emergency management has increased by enormous magnitude in the last 2 years, since the 2015 floods that affected South Dunedin, where there was an appalling response, or, pretty much, a non-response from civil defence and emergency management. Thankfully, that has improved, and the credit needs to go to the Dunedin City Council and the Otago Regional Council for pulling their fingers out and actually realising that they had to get their act together. But I do not know to what extent they were being told that they had to do that, from the top.

I think that is where our strategy, which we are discussing in this legislation, and the need for extended consultation, is where we need to be going to, as to just what are the expectations that it had of civil defence around the country, because it should not depend on where you live as to what kind of response you are going to get from your local civil defence area. There is major work to be done. It needs to be done. It needs to be reported on soon. The need for this legislation is sensible, and we support it.

I am just rising on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill (No 2), which is a very, very, very small amendment. It is extending the time that this 10-year plan has been in place for another 15 months. Anybody can see that that needs to happen. The fact that we are here to debate this under extended hours with 2 weeks to go, as I have already said in my previous speech, really beggars belief in so far as the organisation—or disorganisation—of the Government to realise that this is the situation. This is a very, very small bill. It is only two pages, and one of those pages is taken up with an explanatory note as to why we are doing it.

Civil defence plays a major role in the recovery of communities in times of need. We have seen more and more of these events around the country. Most recently we have had the Edgecumbe floods. I had the pleasure, if you like, to travel through Edgecumbe a couple of weeks ago with the Rt Hon Winston Peters to talk to the people who are on the ground, doing the tidy up, and getting that community back on its feet. They need support. They need help. More importantly, that community needs to get back together so that it can actually become the community that it once was, without living in fear that that sort of thing is going to happen again. So there are a lot of questions in Edgecumbe to be asked, and the best way that we can respond is to help those communities get themselves back on their feet.

Kaikōura, obviously, is the one that we have had that was a huge earthquake, post the Christchurch earthquake, where we saw the ground and coastline raise by over 2 metres in some parts. Now, that is significant in so far as we narrowly avoided a huge catastrophe, because if that earth had moved out to sea by 2 metres, if we were talking even just 5 to 10 kilometres out to sea, we would have had a ginormous tsunami hit that coastline there in Rūnanga. It would have been a far bigger issue with the way that that community is nestled on the coastline. It does not make any sense that Geonet is not managed and monitored 24/7. It does not make any sense that we do not have any resilience or preparation for the event of a tsunami or a warning system for those people in that community.

I was on the ground speaking to some of the first responders at the fire station, the volunteers down there, and they went rushing down to the fire station to, obviously, get their equipment ready, to be prepared for the worst after that ginormous shake, and one of the young firemen said: “I looked out across the road to the ocean and I thought goodness me, the tide is out far.” Boats were on their sides. Rocks in the ocean that they had never seen before were apparent. And then he had an “Oh my God!” moment, thinking “What if the tsunami is coming?”. And, of course, there was nothing available. It was only by chance that they quickly got their fire truck up to high ground, expecting the worst. But what about all those families who were not up and looking out their window to see what the ocean was doing? He thought that the water was retreating, getting ready for that big wave that we all remember from the Boxing Day tsunami.

We seriously need to get our act together in this department—the civil defence emergency groups—to get those communities prepared for the worst. We have had weather events, we have had fire events, we have had slips and floods and slides and all sorts of problems, and we are not ready.

The other thing that I bring your attention to is the fact that one-third—one-third—of all the businesses that applied for a business support package to get their community back on their feet were denied. That is, surely, part of the responsibility of the Government and the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management to ensure that that recovery period comes in, yet a third of them were denied any business package support. So wages were lost for communities. They may not recover for many, many years, and we have to look at this with a technical advisory group behind it as a huge priority, and to put it into a ministry, a department, that is properly and adequately resourced and funded to ensure that these communities are prepared for the absolute worst. We just cannot believe that this has actually been going on for as long as it has, as inadequately as it has.

The other point to make is to commend, if you like, of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, which was the marae that was dealing first-hand in Kaikōura with the hundreds and hundreds of displaced people in that community. They played an absolute pivotal role as a meeting point, as a place where people who had had their lives tipped upside down, literally, could reset, get fed, get dry, get warm. The weather was abysmal down there at that time of the year. I know; I was there, and I was drenched to the bones after about 4 hours of walking around. It just goes to show the community spirit, and that was driven largely from that marae.

But right around the country, whether it be the fires that were there, it is the volunteers who come out to help out, it is the neighbours who set up Facebook pages in communities to say: “Hey, come and stay at our place. We’ve got space, we’ve got beds, we’ve accommodation, we’ve got clothes.” We have to hero those heroes, and those heroes can come in all shapes and sizes and groups. Iwi have been very, very good right around this country looking after those displaced people, and so have many other community groups and non-Government organisations that step up to the plate at time of need. They also need to be assured that they have got the resources, because I know it came at a huge cost to the Ngāi Tahu who were feeding so many people and yet they were powerless to—dare I say—move on some of those people who were there rubbernecking, who were not adding to the clean-up; they were actually becoming a bit of a drain on the area themselves and there was not any support by way of Government to assist with the food packages and parcels and the cost to house and look after those people.

That is something that this technical advisory group, I hope, looks at seriously, because nobody would ever be worried about the time and effort and energy that they put into helping out their community, but some people do not have the fiscal resources to ensure that they can continue on that path, and this is exactly where the Government needs to pick up the pieces of a situation within the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management that is somewhat broken. Where that civil defence emergency management sits within a ministry needs to be decided. I think there is some merit in regards to what has been said and been discussed, albeit vaguely, by one of the Ministers with regards to putting civil defence inside Fire and Emergency. I think that is potentially a good place for it to be put in, and it certainly would be far better resourced.

We will be supporting this through. We would like to see this come to a timely conclusion and we would be very much a big part of the decision making moving forward post the election to ensure that we can have a better recovery response and resilience for civil defence incidents happening around the country. New Zealand First commends this bill to the Committee, but not the way it has been dealt with at such short notice. Like I say, this is very much The Lorax bill, flying by the seat of the pants, and it does beg questions from people in the community as to what this Government has been doing for 9 years. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. Like previous speakers in the Committee, I am happy to take a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill (No 2), a fairly small but very significant piece of legislation that we are supporting. Obviously, I am referring to the new Part 2, inserted by the schedule, of the particular bill where we are talking about extending it out for 12 months. First, I want to just say to all our people out there who work in the emergency space, those volunteers and those on the committee who respond in time of disaster—I want to acknowledge their efforts.

If there is one thing that I think this country should be expert at, it is, exactly, responding to emergencies. In my own electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti I had the 1931 Napier earthquakes, where not only did the people at the time respond but, particularly, the Māori community of the Napier earthquakes responded, and often these stories are not told. I want to acknowledge the Minister for Māori Development, who made a contribution in the first reading of the bill. Māori involvement in emergencies can go right back in time, and often their response in the way they carry out in times of disaster gets lost in the mix. We are passing a piece of legislation to ensure that the technical advisory group comes back, I believe, with the advice to ensure that we have a world-class civil defence emergency management system in this country. That is why I am standing in support of this piece of legislation.

But the point is not only do we have the earthquake; we had the Cyclone Bola floods up the coast. People have referenced all the disasters we have had in the country, which goes to my point: if anything, we should have learnt from those multiple disasters in our recent history to ensure that the systems that kick into place and the agencies and the response teams are well supported. I take on the point of my colleague Clare Curran, who says that the resourcing of the agency that leads this is probably underfunded. I would support her plea to the Government that we need to look at resourcing the agency responsible for coming up with this world-class civil defence response system that we are debating in this Chamber today.

I want to acknowledge not just Māori, iwi, hapū, and whānau who have come to the fore in times of disaster—I want to talk about Edgecumbe. Colleagues from this side of the Chamber—Peeni Henare, Adrian Rurawhe—and I went to Edgecumbe, and we also mucked in to help the many, many volunteers. We were impressed by the set-up at the marae there in Te Teko. We got to talk to the lady who was leading the response team, who was housing the many volunteers who came not just from the district, not only from throughout New Zealand but we actually had international visitors who were actually sleeping at the marae, being fed by the marae, and being transported down to Edgecumbe to help with the clean-up. In talking to the lady—and the name escapes me, sorry—she was really, really clear that one of the difficulties in terms of the Edgecumbe response was the lack of coordination between the council, and she was talking about the Whakatāne District Council, and the community of Edgecumbe itself.

They had actually moved beyond just trying to help with the clean-up. They were actually trying to work in the space of providing emergency housing, and it was one of the discussions we had. They had a plan, so she pulled her team together. We wanted to make sure that her voice and her experience of the Edgecumbe disaster was not lost as we go forward. I mention that only because it is not just about the immediate response of helping people get out and the clean-up; it is also the flow-on effects around providing emergency housing. This particular team in Edgecumbe, I believe, having sat with them for a few hours and having her share her vision with us, was to there to ensure that on-the-ground information about where local housing was, how they could put people up, who required housing—that that piece of advice was not lost.

So when I hear that, as part of passing this particular bill in the House, there is the extension so that your technical advisory group can come back, my plea to the group is to make sure that we are talking to not just ourselves as bureaucrats, as politicians but we are actually talking to people on the ground. I do acknowledge and note that there has been engagement with Ngāi Tahu, Ngā Rauru Kītahi, Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui, and Ngāti Apa, and that is fine. But what I want to plea is to ensure that the technical advisory group are talking to front-line people who are not only in the Edgecumbe example but, obviously, in the Kaikōura earthquakes and in Christchurch. They are gems of people who are not necessarily the chairmen of iwi or CEOs of iwi; they are actually the people on the ground who can provide insight that I think the technical advisers, in bringing back the advice to this House, would gain immeasurably by that insight and experience.

So my point to the Minister of Civil Defence, and through the Minister to the technical advisory group, is to make sure we are not just talking to heads, but we are talking to people on the ground. That is my advice and there have been plenty of individuals leading recovery efforts who would more than happily provide that experience and insight to the Minister.

So that is my small contribution on a very important piece of legislation. We need this extended, but I want to make sure that we are aiming for a very world-class emergency management system, given our history of dealing with disasters, and to give some assurances to all New Zealanders that this Government is committed to delivering and implementing that world-class system. Thank you very much.

I would like to just thank and acknowledge members who have contributed to this Committee stage of the bill for their contributions. I have been listening carefully to them, and I am sure that members of the technical advisory group will probably study the Hansard equally as carefully.

This bill makes a very minor amendment to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act of 2002. It allows for the current National Civil Defence Emergency Management Strategy to be in place, and to continue in place, until 9 April 2019. So this, as members have said, is a technical, small, but important piece of legislation to enable, really, the work of the technical advisory group that has been set up to look at exactly the sorts of issues that members from around the Chamber have been highlighting. It will allow it to do its work in good time and to then report back, to consult with, and to digest the information from submissions from people, organisations, and professionals from around the countryside.

This piece of legislation allows it to do that, and that is exactly because of some of the concerns that have been raised about civil defence and our ability to respond in emergencies. I come from an electorate in the Coromandel where exactly those sorts of issues are foremost and front of mind for many people in my electorate, and have been over recent times. It is fair to say that the Government does have concerns about the current system, and that is why the technical advisory group has been established. So, just in conclusion, I want to once again thank members for their contributions in this Committee stage.

Clauses 1 to 4 and schedule agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading