Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill

Good morning members. When we rose for the evening, we were considering Part 1 of the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. Jo Hayes has the call and has 40 seconds remaining if she so wishes—if we get a Minister in the chair.

Thank you very much for allowing me to complete my discussion last night—my debate on the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. As I said last night, there needed to be some shaping up of the role of the Earthquake Commission. A lot of people in Christchurch needed something like this bill. We can’t get it right all the time, but I think that with National supporting this bill, we can make sure that it is really fit for purpose. As I said last night, Christchurch seems to have horrible disasters that end up affecting and making stronger the pieces of legislation. The Christchurch earthquake—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. Your time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d firstly like to congratulate the Hon Willie Jackson, who seems to have been able to set his alarm clock very well this morning! So it’s great to see you in the chair, Minister.

I want to talk about the collection of information and I’d like to—and while I accept this is a vital part and a role for the commission to actually utilise the information that they have and that can be gathered by them and other agencies to help inform for future disasters and the management of the disaster that they’re in at that time. However, I would point to the evidence given in the Finance and Expenditure Committee by the Privacy Commissioner. Their role, of course, is to scrutinise—or one of their roles—legislation and to consider how that may or may not affect the privacy of individuals. In their submission, firstly, they pointed out they weren’t able to see the legislation before it was entered into the House, and I think that is not a good thing in the first instance.

I think really what’s been happening with this Government’s been quite schizophrenic in some ways—where it’s rushing headlong in with great haste to do some things and with other things they’re putting all of these commissions and inquiries in and so on. But a little bit more care would be much more helpful, I think, to ensure that we get good legislation, because we all accept right across the House that the Earthquake Commission (EQC) has a vital role to play, and that being set up as a good organisation is underpinned by legislation. And if we don’t get the legislation right, then we’re not doing a good service to those people who were badly affected in Christchurch and will be in the future, if we don’t get this legislation right.

Their comments on the bill relate solely to new section 31A in clause 5. That was where their big concerns were, and they were very concerned they didn’t have the opportunity to review the bill prior to its introduction. So they said there was “unintended consequences for privacy and lead to greater complexity for EQC.” And I think those are things that we should be concerned about. We want this organisation to be able to run smoothly and provide the service that we all expect. And so they proposed that new section 31A be removed. So I’d really like to have the Minister tell us what reaction the Minister has to that. What does the Minister think would be achieved for the greater good without impacting on the privacy of individuals? I think it’s vital that we don’t trample on those rights of individuals.

It says in new section 31A(4)—they don’t support the new section as it departed from the definition of personal information under the Privacy Act. They think that “Creating a bespoke definition for EQC’s specific circumstances is unnecessary” and, once again, we support EQC. We support the whole premise of the legislation. However, we have to be mindful of people’s privacy. And so a little more care, I think, in the work behind drafting this legislation would have been well rewarded and would have made things much simpler for people in this situation. I know the select committee spent a lot of time going over these issues and I think that we owe it to ourselves, when entering legislation on to the books, to do a good job. A select committee process is part of that, but getting things before institutions such as the Privacy Commissioner ahead of the introduction of a bill would short circuit a whole lot of these issues.

So I’d really like to hear from the Minister in the chair on his reaction to that. He looks bright and sparky this morning. I’m sure he’s ready to answer the question and ease all of our concerns on this side of the Chamber so that we may go further through with this bill with a greater sense of confidence that New Zealand is going to be well served by this legislation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to take a brief call—and it probably will be brief—on that Part 1, clause 7(2), inserting clause 7(2A) into schedule 3, and it points to the fraught difficulty of this type of legislation and the challenges that the commission will inevitably face despite the cleverness of our legislative ability in this Chamber.

So if you look at 7(2A), it talks about time limits and things like that on claims. I can point to evidence, even in the Manawatū, of a building that was damaged in the 1931 Napier earthquake, patched up, and re-damaged again in recent earthquakes. The issue that this part of the legislation brings out is the extreme difficulty that will occur in places where we’ve had major earthquakes, such as Christchurch, in the event of another event, and then the dissemination of the information that’s required to point to whether that damage was created earlier or later and which event it was part of. And whilst I think that this is as good as you could do with the legislation, it none the less will inevitably lead to significant arguments.

So 7(2A)(b), for example, points to the time that notice is given, and it gives the commission, I think, something like three months to accept or decline that information. And that will be very difficult, because it will take some understanding of the time that the damage occurred, and it is inevitable that there will be significant amounts of damage—it might not be significant damage—that have never been detected as a result of earthquakes of the magnitude of either Kaikōura or Christchurch.

Of course, the methods by which we build now are so different than they used to be. If you looked at Napier in 1931, the wooden buildings in Napier survived very well—probably in Christchurch they did as well—but there’s none the less some significant structural changes to those buildings, but not obvious damage. Whereas, with our modern building standards and using brick and concrete and all that sort of stuff as we do, the opportunity for damage to have occurred and be obvious—it’s relatively simple, because they crack, whereas old wooden buildings don’t crack, but the foundations move. So you can have all sorts of different damage occurring in these events.

So I think that whilst the select committee’s done a good job of the regulations, it’s very difficult to see how you could ever restrict the potential for the contesting of these types of regulations. So that was the point I wanted to make, and I don’t think it’s a serious one, and I don’t think it’s a big issue, but none the less it will rear its head again in the future. So thank you, Madam Chair. That’s my contribution.

Thank you for this call. I just wanted to comment on a couple of matters that have been raised in the House this morning. Firstly, the privacy issue. It’s right that the Privacy Commissioner did express some concerns around the gathering of personal information as is entirely appropriate. It’s important to remember, however, that the function of the Earthquake Commission here is really to ensure, importantly, preparedness in respect of an earthquake, and a lot of the information will be risk-based: about where loss is likely to occur and to ensure the commission can discharge its functions in terms of informing members of the public what steps to take to protect themselves against those issues.

In respect of the time limit issue raised by Mr McKelvie, the balance struck here is an important one because, in fact, by regulation, the Minister can extend time limits where certain circumstances occur. Mr McKelvie pointed out hidden damage, and, under clause 2A(a)(i), the insured person who couldn’t know that the damage existed, even acting reasonably, may have that time extended. The Minister can, in fact, extend that time not only outside the three months but even beyond the two years. So, as is in fact sometimes happening in Christchurch and Kaikōura today, damage may be hidden and only discovered when someone pulls up the floorboards or whatever; the Minister can still extend the time for those kinds of things. So this has been a very good process. These matters have been addressed.

The other final thing I’d say is that this piece of legislation came out of work of the previous Government in fact. It is the low-hanging fruit. It is the things we can immediately address. There is a commission of inquiry which is currently being undertaken under the guidance of Dame Silvia Cartwright. There are other things in this Act which will be able to be addressed, and that will no doubt be an entirely separate and more comprehensive piece of work. Thank you.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments with delayed commencement